Creating A Boogeyman: Liberals' Hypocritical Fear of Religion

We all have fears. They rise up out of the muck of our subconscious and exert extraordinary power over us. Some fears are perfectly rational, others are strictly irrational. Irrational fear arises out of 1) deep-seated knowledge that the other side is right (the ego perceives a threat to a well-entrenched belief), 2) a projection of one’s more unpleasant qualities onto the “Other” (the Jungian Shadow), or 3) Plain old-fashioned ignorance.

I’ve noticed that many of my Liberal friends constantly harped on George W. Bush’s faith in Jesus. They wrung their hands in terror that something would be implemented that would…be really bad. Ultimately, they just didn’t like his religion being foisted on them, although when pressed, they had trouble specifying exactly what would result from the President’s faith.

Now, we’re seeing the same fears being sounded over Gov. Perry’s faith. The message is that Liberals don’t want to be forced into believing something they don’t want to believe in, or that some religiously-driven policy will be enacted against their own interest, or that it will somehow restrict their personal freedom.

That is perfectly reasonable, and I agree with them completely.

The irony is that the Liberal approach to policy in general is cloaked behind its own ideological philosophy. It may not be an established religion, but Conservatives and Libertarians are equally opposed to some policy being put in place that restricts freedom, that forces them to believe something they don’t want to believe in, or that is against their own interest.

And I naturally agree with them, as well.

In the case of Liberals, it isn’t called Christianity. It’s called “fairness“. Just like Christianity, it carries its own set of rules about an idealized view of the world and how to achieve it. For every complaint the Left may have about Christians pushing their views on others, the Right has a legitimate set of complaints about the Fair-ites pushing their views on them.

The difference is that Christianity has rarely been actively forced into public policy, and when it has, it does not impact personal freedom in this country. The country was founded on Judeo-Christian tenets, after all. Sure, there’s the occasional attempt to restrict abortion rights via some state legislation. I don’t support that legislation because it’s folly to begin with, never has a chance of passing, and is strictly political that only serves to further divide. But there are those who consider abortion to be murder, and that position is well within the bounds of morality and the public interest. Who wants murder to be legal? Liberals, however, exclusively see it as an assault on a woman’s freedom, without once respecting the Christian view that it has nothing to do with that, and that there are plenty of easier ways to restrict women’s freedom were that the goal.

Regardless, I get why people are upset about an attempt to restrict abortion, seeing it as an attempt to restrict personal freedom. Well, guess what? A lot of folks are upset about Liberal attempts to restrict their personal freedom. Yet Liberals belittle those concerns because they are done to make things “fair”.

The Fair-ites endorse policies that directly restrict freedom, and seek punitive action for those who have earned things such as status, wealth, comfort, a large radio audience, and good health care. The Fair-ites seek to seize those assets and give them to others who have not earned them, and to do so by force. They insist on imposing their own morality by taxing the rich for their “fair share”, and by combining it with their ignorance of economics, this makes things even worse for the economy. They even name their attempt to censor free speech as the “Fairness Doctrine“, because they hate that Conservatives have achieved great (and earned) success in radio.

Folks, there’s a reason Superman stood for “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” and not “Truth, Fairness, and the American Way”.

In short, Christians believe that “what’s mine is yours”, and leave it to one’s personal convictions whether or not to share (which they do, in vastly greater amounts than Liberals). Fair-ites believe that “what’s yours is mine”, and seek legislation and regulation to accomplish this – all the while conveniently forgetting that Conservatives freely and willingly give more to charity than Liberals (and if you’re Joe Biden, you give almost nothing and it consists mainly of old clothes. Such a class act).

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Left’s quasi-religious movement known as “Global Warming”. Here they have a God (Al Gore), whose Gospel they try to spread to the heretics (which includes those who may simply be on the fence about man-made global warming), a Bible (“peer-reviewed studies”), proclamations about the unerring word of the Bible (“the science is settled”), an Apocalypse prophecy (“The world is going to be submerged under melting glaciers”), sin and absolution (“carbon emission” and “carbon offsets”), infidels (“Global warming deniers”), Apostates (“Bjorn Lomborg”), call for sacrifice (“hybrid vehicles” over “gas guzzlers”), ritual (“recycling”), Puritans (“Man is bad, we have caused global warming and must suffer to make amends”), control and imposition of authority (“environmental studies prior to construction”), and the AntiChrist (“Lord Monckton”).

Global Warming Alarmism seeks and has actually succeeded in doing that which has only been feared of Christianity: to restrict our freedom by forcing us to engage in behavior that we may not want to engage in “for the greater good”, to over-regulate to the point where jobs are lost and the economy tanks further, and to insist upon the insertion of the ideology into our daily lives – whether we like it or not.

But here’s the most delicious part of this entire discussion. I wrote a memoir about an extraordinary teacher named Edwin Barlow. He was a follower of the Scholastics, who used reason to support their belief in God. Reason and faith are not mutually exclusive. And yet, Liberals seem to reject both faith and reason in favor of irrational fear and emotion.

So for Liberals who fear the Christian will force his religion upon you, I ask one simple question: George Bush had both houses of Congress for four entire years. Name one religious-based policy that was foisted on you personally from which you suffered.

Now, for Conservatives who fear the Liberal will force his religion on you, I ask one simple question: Barack Obama had both houses of Congress for two entire years. Name ten Liberal-based policies that were foisted on you personally from which you suffered.

Hint: The second question is much easier to answer than the first.