PrintOctober 4, 2009
Are liberal Jews secular millenarians?
"Put not your trust in princes," says Psalm 146, but both liberal Jews and Christians put all their trust in a Prince from Chicagoland in the last election. A prince of a guy who now feels he is empowered to carry out a Revolution from Above (Jozef Stalin's phrase). You can trust this guy. I mean, a black guy with a Harvard Law degree? And he wrote both of his autobiographies like an angel? Women all over the land had Momasms when Obama appeared on TV.
Distrust of princes and kings pervades the Hebrew Bible, and to a lesser extent the New Testament. There are very good reasons for that; if you were paying attention to Saddam Hussein and his fine boys, that's pretty much the pattern of behavior everybody could see going back thousands of years. Absolute monarchs are described just like that all over the Book of Kings. It was reality then, and it still is today.
Want to see a flagrant abuse of power today? Notice that 138 famous Hollywood celebrities signed a petition in support of a convicted child rapist just this week. Whoopee Goldberg said "It wasn't really rape-rape." Funny thing, I remember when Feminists would go into outer space when rape was even alleged. (As one wit wrote, "What if Roman Polanski had raped Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?")
Why do liberal Jews constantly vote for power-hungry statists, when Jews have a history of persecution by all-powerful states? Like Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union, just to name two.
It's not just liberal Jews. Christians who don't really believe much in their faith also tend to lean Left. In Britain that's been an open secret for decades. It is a staple joke in novels and political commentary. Much of the Church of England hierarchy has become agnostic or atheist, and also statist, socialist, and pro-Islamist. One follows the other.
In the real world the rule "Put not your trust in princes" still applies, just as much as it did in the Psalms and the Book of Kings. Biblical prophets always stand for the people against the Chicago Machine. The US Constitution stems from the same basic insight into human nature and the abuse of power. Which should not surprise us in the least. The Framers had read their Bible, and knew their Lives of the Caesars. The moral of the story is always the same.
That suggests there really is no mystery about liberal Jews who keep voting for fantastically corrupt and power-hungry Democrats: Al Franken, the Gang from Chicago, Bonnie and Clyde from Arkansas, Blagojevitch in Illinois, Spitzer, Cuomo and Hillary in New York, and thousands of others equally dubious characters. It doesn't take superhuman intelligence to figure out how an Alinskyite politician from Chicago who proclaims his love of Malcolm X in his phony autobiography is going to act in the most powerful job in the world. But the liberals, including Jews and Christians for whom liberalism has become a substitute faith, voted with willful blindness in the last election. Some of them are beginning to regret it now, when it is much too late. The New Republic's Marty Peretz seems to be a prominent example. His moment of realization came around the time he wrote the headline, "Cool ... But, Yes, Communist." That was about Van Jones, but it applies equally to our Great O.
It follows that most liberals, including liberal Jews, really don't care about corruption and misgovernment, because those temporary glitches just take second place to a millenarian fantasy of a future of Paradise on Earth: The fantasy of Total World Government by the Good People.
Psychologically that is nothing but the childhood fantasy of a Good Parent who soothes all your doubts and fears. It is a regressive wish for pseudo-adults, who just yearn to go back to those years of childhood. It is purely magical thinking.
The wishful image of the United Nations taking care of us forever, in its great benevolence, trumps the reality of Kofi Annan and Saddam's Oil for Food scam, the never-ending tales of abuse by UN "peace keepers" in poor countries, and the long and vicious anti-Israel campaign by the Left in collusion with Islamic Fascists. Magical hope trumps real life every single time. That is the mark of a secular True Believer, not of an ordinary, sensible, realistic human being.
Leftism is a religion of sorts, but lacking the skepticism about human beings that pervades Western monotheism back to the book of Genesis. Religious people are notoriously skeptical about secular messiahs, whether they be Kings of Judah or Comrade Stalin. But secular believers keep falling for the pseudo-messiahs: Fidel, Lenin, Chavez, Obama. It is disgusting beyond words.
There is no rational argument that will change secular millenarians, Jewish or not. They didn't get to their beliefs by rational argument, but out of an instinctive, childish need. They have pinned their faith on an all-too-human savior who has the answer to war, poverty, tyranny, and despair; they have gulped down the opiate of the Left; they are Hopey Dopes.
I am not a religious believer, so I am not making a self-serving argument for religious faith. I just think that secular millenarians are dangerous fruitcakes. They are much more dangerous than the Branch Davidians, who were just a tiny cult in the Texas countryside. Liberal millenarians are out there in the tens of millions, ready to fall for every pseudo-Messiah boosted by our pathetic media. When Obama fades from the Pantheon of the Gods like Bill Clinton, they will just look for another earthly Savior.
Neurotics do not learn. Liberals are lifelong suckers not because they lack intelligence -- some of them have endless schooling -- but because they constantly let Hope strangle Common Sense.
Which makes the world very dangerous indeed.
Well, maybe Obama's feet of clay will reveal themselves soon. The safety of the country and the world depend on it. But our needy liberals, Jews and Christians, will first have to find another human idol to worship.
Maybe Elvis will come back?
