In the aftermath of yesterday’s primary elections, as I watch the Democratic Party tear itself in two, I’m reminded of a post I wrote nine years ago as this was all beginning to happen.
An excerpt:
The leftmost edge of the Left has accelerated sharply leftward in recent years. This has exerted tidal stresses on what was never a monolithic cultural bloc to begin with, and the laminae are starting to pull apart — with the result that many old-fashioned and relatively moderate liberals are beginning to see for themselves the unmistakable features of a fundamentalist and authoritarian religion beneath the contours of what they had previously imagined to be nothing more than a compassionate and humanistic political attitude. Given that many of these sorts pride themselves on their atheism, to see that they have been associated with a religion is immediately to declare apostasy.
Also:
I (and others) have argued that because of the radical skepsis at the heart of the modern Left — the legacy of the Enlightenment, in which nothing is exempt from the most withering and critical scrutiny — that there is no limiting principle, no bedrock, upon which this implacably descending ideological movement can ultimately come to rest.
I suggested that as the Left orbits closer and closer to the political singularity that attracts it, tidal forces would begin to rip it apart. I think that’s exactly what’s happening now.
The original post is here.