The Cult of Liberalism

Religions are largely kept together by the faith of the followers as opposed to proof. Whether it’s Christianity, Judaism, Islam or any other religion, it’s not science or empirical evidence that keeps millions or billions of people believing, it’s faith. Indeed, religions are full of claims that our current scientific knowledge would say are impossible, but nonetheless, faith persists. Given horrific events that seem to fly in the face of what one would expect from a compassionate or just God, faith still persists. Believers believe, and they interpret events in their lives and the world in a way that comports with their religion. At the end of the day, religion is about faith, period.

By the above measure, liberalism is a religion. How else would it be possible that in the face of a history of demonstrable failure that there are those who continue to believe? Liberalism, in the form of outright Communism failed miserably everywhere from the Soviet Union to Cuba and a multitude of places in between. Yet the faith remains. Liberalism in the form of socialism has failed miserably across Europe as practically the entire continent is floundering in mounting debt, double digit unemployment and depressingly low growth rates. Yet the faith remains. Liberalism in the form of Democrat party policies have destroyed wide swaths of America’s landscape, from cities like Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia to black families that suffer from unprecedented rates of unemployment, unwed motherhood and tragically high rates of crime. Yet the faith remains.

Add willfully blind faith to presence of an anointed one among us and you get a cult. Which is exactly what liberalism and the virtual worship of Barack Obama has become:

Obamacare: Every day seems to bring new information that only adds to the understanding that Obamacare is a disaster of epic proportions. Yet faith remains.

Economic Growth: Barack Obama’s “recovery” has been the worst since the Great Depression and incomes have fallen over $4,000 per household since he took office. Yet the faith remains.

Welfare: Welfare has become so generous that in 35 states, it’s actually more profitable to sit at home and collect welfare benefits than it is to go out and find a job. In Hawaii the pretax wage equivalent of welfare benefits is $60,590 per year. In Washington DC it’s $50,820 while in Massachusetts it’s $50,540. Those are dollars that have to be paid for by taxes on those working. Yet the faith remains.

Race: In less than 50 years from the day Martin Luther King Jr. spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial the United States elected a black man as president, twice! Yet race relations in the United States are worse than they have been in decades. Yet the faith remains.

On virtually every single empirically measurable measure, from education to economic growth as well as simple observable measures such as regulation and freedom, liberalism has been a failure in general and particularly so under Barack Obama. Yet, despite the fact that the consequences of this failure hurts the very people it's supposed to help, the faith remains.  

While the 1st Amendment enshrines the notion of freedom of religion, today the United States is being governed by the cult of liberalism, which seems more like a religion than many of the mainstream religions in the world.

It demands subservience to its policies and is willing to use the police power of the state to impose them while nonbelieving infidels must be marginalized. Speak critically of the Messiah and you are a racist. Disagree with gay marriage you’re a homophobe. Suggest that its culture and unwed motherhood that are ravaging black families and again you’re a racist. Advocate for limited government or state’s rights and you’re an extremist. Promote school choice and you don’t care about children. Advocate for lower taxes and you’re greedy. Champion free markets and you’re a selfish capitalist. Question man made global warming and you’re anti-science. Disagree and you must be discredited and vilified.

Liberals often champion a wall of separation between church and state. This may be the one time they might actually be right about something. However it isn’t Christianity that the country needs to be saved from, it’s the secular religion of Liberalism with Barack Obama as its messiah.

The left's 40% blue core... insanity, stupidity or religion?

It’s still a year out from the election, but Rasmussen’s most recent poll makes one start to wonder. It shows President Obama at 46% of the vote against GOP frontrunner Rick Perry’s 39%. That was a flip from the previous week’s Obama 41% vs. Perry’s 44%.

The Perry part of that poll is not really of consequence. President Obama tends to perform about the same against various other challengers and against the “generic” Republican candidate. The ebb and flow of a weekly news cycle has an impact on the fringes, but not so much on the core. And that core is the thing that one has to wonder.

It appears that about 40% of the country makes up a core of blue… people who are wedded to their leftist philosophy as if it were a religion… they believe it will succeed despite all evidence to the contrary. From the economic malaise it has inflicted on the United States to the economic meltdown that is playing itself out in Europe to the wholesale abandonment of the leftist policies by governments from Beijing to Delhi to Hanoi. Despite the complete lack of a single demonstrable example of a sustained success of the Marxist / Keynesian / Alinsky philosophy, they still believe and it appears that virtually nothing anyone in the red corner can say can change their minds.

Today the aspirations embodied by their messiah are no longer just theoretical solutions and aspirational promises. This is not 2008 when the press could blame all of America’s woes on a reviled Bush White House. It’s not 2008 when Barack Obama could tell stories about how he plans on putting America back to work by rebuilding our infrastructure and creating green jobs. It’s not 2008 where Barack Obama could promise to make America respected again in the eyes of the world by closing Guantanamo and ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s not 2008 where Barack Obama could rail against George Bush’s “years of unprecedented fiscal irresponsibility.” On the contrary, in the summer of 2011 President Obama finds himself in the middle of a perfect storm of failure, yet it seems to have no effect on his followers.

The most recent issue is of course Solyndra. The solar panel company that was the poster child for the green jobs that were the key to fulfilling his campaign pledge to future generations that (his election) “was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” In 2009 the Administration gave the company $535 million in loan guarantees and in March of 2010 the President toured the company, declaring “the promise of clean energy isn’t just an article of faith.” Today the company sits bankrupt and taxpayers are out half a billion dollars. What’s worse for President Obama’s green jobs agenda is the fact that apparently each of those touted green jobs costs $5 million…

On the jobs front the President has just gone back to Congress and requested that they give him an additional $500 billion for a second stimulus program… because his previous $1 Trillion stimulus plan worked so well. The President suggested that his stimulus program (circa 2009) would bring unemployment down to 7.1% by August of 2011. In reality, his stimulus program did pass yet unemployment stands at 9.1% today. Fully two million more Americans are unemployed today than were promised by the President.

On the single most important issue of the day, jobs, President Obama has demonstrated not only that he is out of ideas, but that he wants to double down on the same bad ideas didn’t work in the past… and he wants to pay for the whole thing by raising taxes by $1.5 trillion. Unfortunately for him, things don’t look any better anywhere else. Domestically, inflation is on the rise, the economy is on life support and federal deficits are larger than at any time in history. Internationally, America’s leadership is once again so strong that the Palestinians are heading to the UN to ask for recognition despite US opposition, the Arab spring threatens to put Islamists in charge across the region, Europe is crumbling and Asian allies wonder about America’s commitment to the region as Taiwan is left twisting in the wind by the administration’s decision not to sell the island nation 66 new F-16 fighter jets for fear of offending the Chinese. Politically, the President’s leftist policies have so pummeled the citizens of New York that last week the GOP captured a house seat that had been held by the Democrats since 1923.

While the nirvana that was to be ushered in by Hope and Change has not materialized, it’s not because the administration has demurred from putting its policies in place. On the contrary, they’ve done so in most cases either by legislation or executive action. Despite all of this failure, a solid 40% of the electorate still supports President Obama and the discredited policies of the left. One wonders how is it possible that seeing all of this they could still believe? Then again, maybe it’s not so difficult to understand. A sign of a religion after all, is believing in something despite all empirical data that suggest it might not be true, or perhaps more accurately, the lack of empirical data that suggest it is true. The difference between a religion and the leftist policies of President Obama is that the former typically promises nirvana in the afterlife while the latter is supposed to be focused on this one. Nothing can prove Heaven doesn’t exist and therefore believers continue to believe. It’s called faith. History on the other hand, from FDR right up to Barack Obama, demonstrates clearly that the socialist, redistributive policies of the left simply do not work. Yet, the believers still believe, and vote accordingly. That fits Einstein's definition of insanity. In this case it might just be called stupidity.