Leftism defined, leftism nailed
December 10, 2009 2:11 pm Christianity, Culture, Political Correctness, PoliticsKlavan: “Shame and guilt and self-hatred are universal. Whether you chalk it up to original sin or to Oedipus or call it Jewish guilt or Catholic guilt or white guilt or black guilt, every single one of us knows he is not the person he was made to be. There are honest ways to confront that. You can kneel before God and pray for forgiveness and live in the joy of his love. Or you can drink heavily and make sardonic remarks until you destroy everyone you care about and then keel over dead – that’s honest too.
“But what a lot of people do is try to escape their sense of shame dishonestly by constructing elaborate moral frameworks that allow them to parade their virtue and their lavish repentance without any real inconvenience to themselves while simultaneously indulging in self-righteousness by condemning others for their impenitent evil.
“That’s the bad version of religion – the sort of religion Jesus came to dismantle. And that’s exactly the sort of religion leftism is: an elaborate system for hiding shame behind a cheap mask of virtue.
“That’s why they demonize any opposition. To them, we’re not just disagreeing with them, we’re threatening to tear off the mask of their virtue and reveal them to themselves. Which, without God or sufficient whiskey, would be unbearable.
Andrew Klavan is a screenwriter, crime novelist, and former atheist.
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Dalwhinnie
Byng :
Date: December 10, 2009 @ 3:17 PM
a beautiful summary of today’s malaise
If the left gets away with this charade , and we all give in to the debunked Copenhagen nonsense, then our hard earned freedom is cooked
CK :
Date: December 10, 2009 @ 4:51 PM
I love how conservatives twist the stories of Jesus to suit their whims.
Got a news Flash: Jesus helped the poor, the weak and the sick. He wanted mankind to help the poor, the weak, the sick, the downtrodden.
These biblical stories are pretty left.
If that wasn’t true, Andy Schlafly Conervapedia’s brainchild and son of Phyllis Schlafly would not be setting out to rewrite the bible to suit the whims of paranoid conservatives.
Western thought :
Date: December 11, 2009 @ 7:10 AM
Sigh. Helping the poor is not the private preserve of “leftists.” Government has a role in helping the poor but unlike leftists conservatives prefer not to download their humanity to civil servants. Or, as a Liberal acquaintance once told me when I dropped a twoonie into a Sally Anne jar, “I never give to charity – I pay my taxes for that.” So I tend to think that Jesus expects a little more of us than filing regularly with Revenue Canada. Maybe the difference is just that one group wants to ease poverty another wants to enable it.
A Recovered Right Winger :
Date: December 13, 2009 @ 7:35 PM
Rightism revealed: Religious fascists who view the world and every problem big or small in black and white terms with no thought to context.