The Left Co-opts Religion for "Social Justice"

What could be a more concerning entity to a rational person than a religious leftist? But that's what's coming down the cultural pike.

The Religious Right has historically staked its moral claim on the Republican Party, focusing on what they call "pro-life" issues such as abortion, stem-cell research, euthanasia, human cloning, and other issues that pertain to life and death.

But we have an emerging phenomenon among what has traditionally been the morally-vacuous Left: a religious basis for their agenda to tackle the Iraq war, so-called "social justice" and environmentalism.

To many, the Left has been always been perceived as coldly "scientific" and therefore anti-moral. But now that the Democrats are eagerly embracing religion, it must be reassuring to some voters on the fence who "kind of like" the leftist ideology, but just can't embrace its moral hollowness. Now they have a new leader: Barack Obama, who has been unapologetically leading his Christian Democrat soldiers into battle.

This is a bad marriage of two kinds of faiths: belief in the supernatural with hatred for individualism.

The 20th century novelist and philosopher, Ayn Rand, opened the lid on the leftist movement in her book, The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution. Although published in 1970s, the essays are as relevant today as ever.

Now the Left can go beyond it's morally-absent statism: it can claim religious moral sanction for its platform, Obama's Blueprint for Change.

His plan is explicitly clear: Obama will expropriate wealth from capitalist producers and fund a welfare state on a grand scale with the the moral command that we are our brothers' and sisters' keepers (to paraphrase his exact quote).

What a rallying cry for a purposeful America! The Taliban couldn't do any better!

Where is that third alternative to the bible-quoting statism of the Left and the
mystical-biblical politics of the Right? It is a philosophy that is based on individualism, also called rational egoism.

Rational egoism means that an objective reality exists as we perceive by our senses and by a process of reason (not by prayer or mystical revelation). This includes the knowledge that humans are individuals, not globs of "society" that must follow the state's or God's commands. Morally we have the right to pursue happiness and our necessities of life without violating the rights of others to do the same. It means we can have a society where we interact benevolently with others on the basis of trade with one another, free from theft of our lives and property by the state or criminals.

The bleak reality is this: our politicians are ruining America. But they don't have our minds yet. It is the ideas of reason and individualism that will lead us to a better future--a future of freedom, wealth and happiness.