One of the more prescient essays in recent years is Jody Bottum’s “The Spiritual Shape of Political Ideas,” which I’m proud to say was published in THE WEEKLY STANDARD. The essay posits that religious ideas are transforming politics as we know it, only instead of the hand-wringing about the Moral Majority or the George W. Bush administration’s supposed attempts to impose theocracy, it’s the left that is, ahem, “culturally appropriating” religious ideas to suit their own attempts to seize power.
Take ethnicity, which has become a matter of original sin. Unlike the Judeo-Christian belief, however, this sin does not apply to all of humanity. “So profound is the sin, in fact, that not even its proponents escape. The more they are aware of white privilege, the more they see it everywhere, even in themselves,” writes Bottum. He quotes an essay of University of Texas professor Robert Jensen, who wrote: “There is not space here to list all the ways in which white privilege plays out, but it is clear that I will carry this privilege with me until the day white supremacy is erased.”
Even Andrew Sullivan recently reached this conclusion, when he recently examined “intersectionality,” the left-wing buzzword du jour, which he accurately describes as “neo-Marxist theory that argues that social oppression does not simply apply to single categories of identity — such as race, gender, sexual orientation, class, etc. — but to all of them in an interlocking system of hierarchy and power.” Sullivan further observes that intersectionality “is operating, in Orwell’s words, as a ‘smelly little orthodoxy,’ and it manifests itself, it seems to me, almost as a religion. It posits a classic orthodoxy through which all of human experience is explained — and through which all speech must be filtered. Its version of original sin is the power of some identity groups over others. To overcome this sin, you need first to confess, i.e., ‘check your privilege,’ and subsequently live your life and order your thoughts in a way that keeps this sin at bay.”
This idea of identity-as-sin works well as a metaphor. But every once in a while, a story comes along where the metaphor becomes all too literal:
I suppose it was only a matter of time before the left embraced formal sacraments such as confession. Only there’s one key aspect of America’s religious tradition the left will never embrace: I guarantee no man will walk out of this campus confession booth having been forgiven of the sin of “hypermasculinity.”
Certainly, the religious right has had its excesses. But if you think that’s bad, just imagine the consequences of a political system dominated by a religious left that doesn’t believe in redemption.
