Watching a cable TV network the other day (I think it was CNN), I saw a brief discussion between a liberal and one of CNN’s token conservatives regarding the question of whether or not the Democrat party is hostile to religion. In the discussion, the word “religion” obviously had reference above all to Christianity. Nobody was talking about Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism, and probably not even Judaism.
The conservative asserted that the Democrat party is hostile to religion. The liberal denied this. To prove his point, the liberal reminded listeners that blacks are a major fraction of the Democrat party and that these same blacks are almost all of them Christian believers. How absurd, then, to say that the party is anti-religious.
Also the other day (whether on CNN or MSNBC I cannot remember), somebody attempted to refute the “slander” that the Democrat party is anti-religious by asserting that Joe Biden, head of the Democrat party, is the “most religious” president of the USA that we have had for a long, long time.
You may ask me why I waste my time listening to the nonsense that is so plentifully available on CNN and MSNBC. I do it for the same reason that, in my youth, I used to read the writings of Marx and Engels and other communists. I wanted to learn what the enemy was saying. (Let me apologize to Dr. Marx and his pal Mr. Engels if I have given the impression that they, real if erroneous thinkers, belong in the same intellectual bush league with the “philosophers” of CNN and MSNBC.)
If we wish to know whether or not the Democrat party is an anti-Christianity party, we have to look not at black Democrat church-goers and not at white Catholic Democrat church-goers and not at Protestant Democrat church-goers, but at people who compose “the mind” or “the intellect” of the Democrat party. Who are these people? They are the ideologues who create and disseminate the distinctive ideas of the party. Almost never in recent times have these people been church-going Christians. With only rare exceptions, they are hostile to Christianity. Usually they are atheists or near-atheists, and the ideas they develop and spread are often radically incompatible with Christianity, at least as that religion has been understood for almost all of the last 2,000 years and is still understood by most Christians even today — such ideas as:
- the moral rightness of unrestricted sexual freedom, provided the sexual behavior in question is based on mutual consent
- the right to unlimited abortion,
- the moral rightness of homosexual practice
- the right to same-sex marriage
- the moral rightness of choosing a transgender identity
- the moral rightness of voluntary euthanasia
- the rightness of teaching the above ideas to children in public schools
Where are these ideologues to be found?Are they scattered evenly throughout the American population?Are they scattered evenly throughout the Democrat party?Far from it.
No, they are concentrated in a small but influential number of locations:
- University faculties, especially in non-scientific departments — e.g., literature, philosophy, psychology, and the (so-called) social sciences.
- The profession of journalism, both print and electronic, especially those press organizations with a national audience.
- The entertainment industry: TV, movies, popular music.
- Some high-prestige sections of the publishing industry.
- Among many leaders of public education, including teacher unions and graduate schools of education.
- The social work profession.
Over many decades, these anti-Christian ideas have been “trickling down” to receptive portions of the general public, many of whom, with logical insouciance, have embraced these anti-Christian ideas while at the same time retaining their Christian religious affiliation. (Joe Biden is the most conspicuous example of this logical insouciance. The leaders of his religion, including the pope, allow him to get away with this.)
These anti-Christianity ideas have also “trickled down” into the heads of many Democrat politicians at the national, state, and local levels. Most of these politicians don’t really care about ideology, even though they may be tainted with it. What they really care about is winning elections. But if they think they will pick up a few extra votes and few extra campaign dollars by announcing their support for these anti-Christian ideas, they will announce their support.
There was a time within the memory of people still living when the Democrat party was an almost purely pragmatic party. Its mission in life was to win elections and then, having won, to distribute goodies to its friends and followers — such goodies as jobs and government contracts. Today’s Democrat party is to a great extent an ideological party. It has fallen in love with a radically leftist set of ideas and values — ideas and values that the party uses to shape its public policies. Further, it tries to convert the general public to this leftist ideology, rather like the way a religious missionary tries to convert the heathen to the one true faith.
This leftist ideology contains a number of essential elements.
For one, a racist element. White people are too high a percentage of the American population. The USA will be much better off when a clear majority of Americans are “persons of color” (POC).
For another, a totalitarian element. All social problems, and most personal problems, can be solved by a nearly all-powerful central government — what Thomas Hobbes called a “mortal god.”
Last but by no means least, an anti-Christianity element. Christianity is a pernicious religion, bad for society and bad for individual believers. The time has come, and has more than come, to assign that old and outdated religion to the dust heap of history.
This three-part ideology is what the “mind” of today’s Democrat party believes in and propagates to the party’s rank and file.
David Carlin, who more than 30 years ago served as the Democrat majority leader of the Rhode Island state Senate, is the author of Atheistic Humanism, the Democrat party, and the Catholic Church (Lectio Publishing, 2023).
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