One tidbit:
Atheism/ Materialism
This runs all through the Liberal Movement, and has since the beginning. We see hints of this in the early Philosophes`, such as Scottish philosopher David Hume’s comment
“The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.”
Or these comments by Voltaire;
“You will notice that in all disputes between Christians since the birth of the Church, Rome has always favored the doctrine which most completely subjugated the human mind and annihilated reason.
“Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.”
~ Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 1764
The German philosopher Frederick Nietzche states
“I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty-I call it the one mortal blemish of mankind.”
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The common thread was a denial of God and Religion, a belief in the purely material nature of reality. The pervasive view that “God is dead” and that the material world is all that exists has enormous repercussions in the liberal movement.
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This also explains something which is often puzzling to Conservatives: why the Left is so joyless. Liberals are amazingly glum, and seem totally devoid of humor or mirth. Why is that? Actually, why shouldn’t that be the case? The liberal has to act as his own god, and that is a heavy burden, indeed! Everything depends on his own efforts. How can one be happy when, like Atlas, one must carry the World upon ones shoulders? Liberalism is a recipe for despair.
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These three principles have always colored the views of the Left, but, much like the family who hides their crazy aunt in a closet when guests come, they’ve succeeded in hiding this insanity, thanks to their control of the news media, education, and their influence in government. Why haven’t we seen this side of them until now?
Because they are losing their control of the dissemination of information, and of the Holy Church of Government. The new media – talk radio, Fox News, The American Thinker and the rest of the blogopshere - have broken their control of the electronic leviathan. They have seen their hopes in Socialism and Communism dashed; they have seen their belief in the United Nations destroyed. The loss of the Presidency, Congress, and the potential loss of the Supreme Court threaten to put the Left out to pasture permanently. How can they stand that?
The ability to affect their environment is all they have; they have no heaven waiting in reward, no hope for something outlasting them. Their only purpose in life is to change the world they live in here and now. They have lost the ability to do that, and it’s causing them to have a collective nervous breakdown.
4 comments:
There are plenty of fulfilled atheists in the world, and not all of them are conservatives. So many on the left (whether religious, agnostic or atheist) are persistently bitter and negative simply because that is their habit: They see every glass as half-empty. It has nothing to do with religion or lack thereof. They make too few efforts to see the good things in life and seldom recognize their own capacity to lead a happy or joyful life. This is perhaps one of the major reasons they see the government as a helper rather than a necessary inefficiency.
Speaking for myself, as a formerly bitter leftist, I can say that religion has made a major difference. I think the article is describing a very real and widespread dynamic, although, as you point out, not universal.
Now that is truly stunning. Because you disagree with a certain opinion, those that hold it must therefore be described as joyless, souless, and amoral. And these sorts of rhetorical insults are smiled upon.
Truly, you've become a much nicer person rather than simply exchanged one snobby nasty ideology for another!
Yes, indeed I have. Thanks for noticing.
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