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The Unforgiving Religion of Leftism

For all the talk on the Left about love and tolerance, it’s getting impossible to ignore the evidence presented to our senses, which screams that the Left is hard-hearted and hateful.

For the Left, grace is not to be found in any world above, and its supply is precious in this world, too. The redemptive power of love is absent on the Left, where there is only vengeance and bitter recrimination.

Leftists might not think of themselves as members of a religion, but their ideology surely resembles one—albeit one lacking in forgiveness or any of the insights that make religion a teacher of good and true habits.

That humans are sinful and need redemption through a higher power is one of the basic insights of religion. Rather than recognize this truth, the Left imagines humans as blank slates capable of moral perfection in the here and now with enough prodding and ideological re-education.

Not recognizing that human imperfection and sinfulness, the Left is unforgiving when people stray from the path of “social justice.” After all, if humans are perfectly educable blank slates, then there is no excuse for the seduction of things they call bigotry. Those who deviate from expected attitudes are “ignorant” of the newest progressive fashions and held in contempt.

Part of the difficulty with satisfying the Left’s moral standards is that they are constantly changing. The Left does not look for truths about right and wrong, but to ever-evolving “theory.”

Groping Toward a Perfectly “Tolerant” World
The Left doesn’t have morals so much as sensibility. This sensibility is constantly being purified and refashioned by the priests among the elites, so people are cautioned to “keep up with the times.” And since the Left’s moral standards are constantly mutating, everyone living today will be judged guilty of all kinds of horrible transgressions by the Left’s future, more “advanced” sensibilities.

While regarding humanity as capable of being educated into perfect “tolerance,” the Left simultaneously denies the existence of evil, looking instead to build a Tower of Babel—a perfectly “tolerant,” multicultural world without the limitations of morality and natural law.

The hubris to overcome limitations animates the Left at its core. Rejecting the “oppression” of concepts of right and wrong, the Left aims to overcome all restrictions on the worldly ambition of building a perfectly unlimited, tolerant humanity.

And while permissive of abortion, the Left is savagely, violently prohibitive of “intolerance.” Subordinating everything to the peculiar morality of “tolerance,” the Left is quite forgiving when it comes to killing babies and all transgressions against traditional morality, but hard-hearted toward even minor deviations from their elite sensibility.

While punishing people for distant, politically incorrect transgressions, the Left celebrates evil in the present. The only sin is intolerance—not only toward other cultures but also toward evil itself, when evil is necessary for “progress.” Human nature is not in need of chastening. Indeed, the Left celebrates the unlimited “Self.” As blank slates, humans are not only above needing grace, but are self-fashioning beings—little gods themselves—unrestricted by petty strictures from the past, by oppressive morals, or by biology.

If sin isn’t real, and if humans are not in need of moral guidance but are the arbiters of morality themselves, then humans don’t need forgiveness. They are better off left alone to pursue worldly, ecstatic experience. The most wayward instincts of human nature are to be indulged and encouraged, rather than controlled, and the consequences of bad decisions are trivial and reversible. If you are hurt by another person’s expression of “Self” then you have “hang ups.”

If killing babies is fine, then what is the point of grace? Mercy and forgiveness in such a worldview are meaningless.

Neither Grace Nor Redemption
The Left’s worldview precludes the necessity or possibility of grace. Rather than grace, what humans need is raised consciousness—or “wokeness.” They must be redeemed, not by acknowledging sin, but by acknowledging that sin is a “construct,” that opposition to abortion is a hoary remnant of a civilization ruled by dead white males, and that the real sin—bigotry—is everywhere in the world around them and in their hearts.

If humans are not sinful, but merely vulnerable to the socially conditioned evil of “intolerance”—and if evil does not exist in reality, but as a set of mistaken, learned prejudices—then redemption is possible only by signaling social consciousness. Salvation comes from recognizing one’s privilege, that the “marginalized” are one’s superiors, and that leftism is the one and true path.

The Left must make an example of those who reject this message: the unrepentant bigots, the lost souls, the “ignorant.” Any deviations from this path to grace must be punished with ostracism—their careers and reputations ruined.

Sinners are called upon to make penance to a greater or lesser degree in proportion to their position within the social hierarchy. But the necessity of dismantling all “intolerant” things and forms of distinction—between social groups, and between right and wrong—means that there are certain people the Left can never forgive.

Rather than acknowledge all humans as flawed, the Left preaches an identity-based form of predestination, dividing humanity into the marginalized elect and those destined for destruction. Even the most monkish self-flagellation cannot win an “oppressor” the enduring respect and trust of the radicals. No amount of social awareness can exonerate a white person, a man, or a Christian of their sins.

Lacking grace, the Left resembles a blood sacrifice religion that thrives on destruction, not only of the unborn but of those who by virtue of belonging to a certain identity group are stamped with the original sin of bigotry. The Left finds a religious ecstasy in the ritual punishment of those whose privilege marks them as the source of all evil. The symbolic destruction of these scapegoats provides an intoxicating rush.

The Left is not a movement animated by love. Instead it is animated by hate, selfishness, and resentment. Leftists are the members of a counterfeit religion without the chance of redemption—a paganistic cult of revenge.

With radicals like this, redemption is impossible. There is only the punishment of a devouring mob.

Photo Credit: Frédéric Soltan/Corbis via Getty Images

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About Matthew Boose

Matthew Boose is a Mt. Vernon fellow of the Center for American Greatness and a staff writer and weekly columnist at the Conservative Institute. His writing has also appeared in the Daily Caller. Follow him on Twitter @matt_boose. ‏