Taking off from my comment and kolnai’s response at August 6th, 2014 at 12:36 pm about whether the Left is best characterized as religion or tribe, your comment brings to mind the related question: Is the Christian Church Christianity?

In other words, is the Christian Church a tribe and Christianity separately a religion claimed by a tribe called the Christian Church?

By the same token, there’s a recent dust-up with feminists about this social media phenomenon:
https://www.facebook.com/WomenAgainstFeminism

Generally, the women against feminism protest the track record of “lies, deceit, and hatred” of feminists (ie, the tribe) while feminists have countered with the ‘mission statement’ goals, ideals, purposes of feminism (ie, the religion).

Like people who remain Christian but have left the Christian Church because they deem the tribe is no longer true to the religion, I wonder if people like Nora Gold who believe in liberalism can be weaned from the Left if they can be made to see the difference between the religion they believe in and the tribe that practices “lies, deceit, and hatred” under the cover of the religion.

The same religion-or-tribe notion underlies my suggestion to Ann at August 6th, 2014 at 10:43 am. President Bush and other “neocon Republicans” have been thoroughly stigmatized by the tribe calling itself Liberal. However, Bush’s “neocon” post-9/11 foreign policy, though disclaimed by the tribe Liberal, was actually paradigmatically liberal. I’m curious what Ann’s friend reaction would be if she explained the contradiction to her friend.

No doubt thinking of yourself as a “good person” and your cause as a “good cause” papers over the lies, deceit, and hatred.

And Artfidgr as always spot on, they can do massive damage with their passive aggression. ESPECIALLY when they run agencies like the IRS, and Dept of InJustice and achieve the power of POTUS.

You make a sound point, but I stick with the religion characterization for the following reason, while admitting it’s problematic: most of the leftists I know genuinely believe in their utopian values, so far as it’s possible to “believe in” something one has no clear or consistent conception of.

This brings us down (or up) to pretty sticky philosophical issues and I’ve already waded too far into those thickets for one thread, so you’ll understand if I’m a bit elliptical here. The basic idea is that utopianism is an inherently self-contradictory belief system that is premised upon (that marvelous phrase) an immanentizing of the eschaton.

This makes it more accurate to call it a “secular religion” (Raymond Aron’s term), a unique species of the larger genus.

In short, I stick with the “leftism is religion” slogan because 1) utopianism is at root a perversion of the belief in transcendent, higher values, a kind of political Gnosticism; 2) the fact that the left does, as you accurately note, routinely contradict their proclaimed values without regret, is an inevitable consequence of the perfection-on-earth nature of their values; and 3) the tribal element is a part of the religious devotion, an ecclesia of sorts.

I would need to add a lot of footnotes to this to flesh it out, but I’ll only mention the most important one, viz. , that the devotion to chimerical utopian values has a further perverse consequence, in that it makes it easier, not harder, to violate one’s professed values. This is because, first, what’s a little lying, cheating, and egg-breaking on the road to earthly paradise; and second, because if the conscience is troubled – as the Gnostic/utopian conscience tends to be – by merely being bound up with the fallen world in all of its pettiness, superficiality, and ordinariness, it isn’t likely to be bothered much by plain jane offenses against everyday ethical norms. Truly moral people don’t go around, like the left, trying to be Moral.

In other words, as the real Kolnai put it,

“if my personal feeling of guilt is centered on my ‘contamination’ by ‘original sin,’ little of it may be spared for the secondary and consecutive things of which I am properly and distinctively guilty, i.e., my ‘actual sins.”

Now, all of that being said, I take your point and I grant it could be right. I would only suggest that perhaps the Tribal and the Religious understanding of leftism are not necessarily at odds, at least if we take the above as what is meant by calling leftism “religious.” Both characterizations can accommodate the phenomena. The sticking point is what it means to say that “The left really believes in their ‘higher values,” and that’s a post for another day.

the above person has a solution to ALL the problems…

I agree with the direction, but not the destination, though I’ve used it, too.

Religion implies higher values, such as the utopian characterization. While leftists do cite to higher values, they also routinely contradict them with a marked lack of regret.

That tells me that the religion characterization for the left is off the mark. Tribe, rather than religion, seems the more apt characterization.

Left activism is client based, not principle based.

Suggestion: Explain to your friend that a neoconservative is essentially a Wilsonian liberal in the Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy lineage, which is a keystone of the Democrats heritage.

While they vilified Bush for partisan gain, the Democrats and Obama also continued to claim the traditional liberal goals they share with Bush. In the partisan arena, the Democrats have turned the trick on their fundamental contradiction by rhetorically relabeling Bush’s post-9/11 liberal foreign policy as neocon, said pejoratively (liberal:neocon :: studious:nerd).

The Democrats’ reward for pulling off the trick, with the support of people like your friend, was winning partisan political advantage. But there’s been a real-world cost.

In the real world, abjuring Bush’s practical means to achieve the liberal goals has rendered American leadership a feckless failure. At the same time, Obama’s continuing claim of the liberal goals while advantaging the Islamists versus the region’s liberals has made America leadership a betraying liar.

If the conversation turns to the Iraq enforcement at any point, which it often does, explain to him that the truth is OIF was right on the law, justified on the policy, and defined by essentially liberal principles.

Cowardice changes means, not ends.