Leftists Doing What They Do Best, Continued

     Ann Coulter wrote in Slander:

     Liberals hate religion because politics is a religion substitute for liberals and they can’t stand the competition.

     Though phrased as a quip, and a snarky one at that, it was one of Coulter’s more valuable insights. Politics is the “preferred destination” for the atheist’s unsatisfied melioristic impulses. Whatever faith a liberal politician may claim to hold, his true faith lies in the ability of the Omnipotent State to “make the world a better place.” Contrast that attitude, so prevalent among American liberals, with Albert Jay Nock’s prescription: “There’s only one way to improve society: present it with a single improved unit: yourself.”

     The starkest approach reveals even more about liberals’ attitudes. By adopting a wholesome religious creed, the individual seeks to improve himself. By enlisting in a “progressive” movement or political party, the individual seeks to improve others: i.e., by sticking the muzzle of a gun in their ribs.

     That contrast illuminates the otherwise incredible arrogance of the Halpin-Palmieri email exchange that expresses so much contempt for Catholics and Catholicism. And from there we segue to still further revelations on the subject:

     A newly leaked email shows Hillary Clinton’s current campaign chairman John Podesta and a Left-wing activist casually discussing fomenting “revolution” in the Catholic Church.

     “There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic Church,” Sandy Newman, president and founder of the progressive nonprofit Voices for Progress, writes to Podesta in an email titled “opening for a Catholic Spring? just musing.”...

     In response, Podesta assures Newman to rest easy for he and his progressive pals have already created organizations explicitly designed to infiltrate the Catholic Church with progressive ideology, though he cautions that the time may not be right for full revolution — just yet.

     “We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this. But I think it lacks the leadership to do so now. Likewise Catholics United. Like most Spring movements, I think this one will have to be bottom up,” Podesta writes.

     It should come as no surprise that persons steeped entirely in politics should seek to politicize the Church. Left-wing politics is their faith. They admit to no other possibility of salvation. How could it be otherwise, when they so readily and stridently denounce “conservatives” – by which they mean everyone who fails to march in lock-step with them – as evil, and embrace any strategy and tactic, however low and foul, that might advance their pogrom against us?

     “Politics is a religion substitute” actually understates the intensity of the Left’s hatred for the Catholic Church. Its venerability and its special authority make the Church a barrier against certain kinds of change. After all, if God has commanded or forbidden it, the will of the majority, whether real or imaginary, has no bearing on the subject. (“In matters of conscience the law of the majority has no place.” – Mohandas K. Gandhi) That’s the premise implied by any religious attachment. The Left knows it, which is why whenever Leftists capture a nation, religion and religious practice are among their first targets.

     No religion has been more steadfast against the demands of the Left than Catholicism. No religious institution has stood firmer on its teachings than the Catholic Church. And Catholics, some 24% of American voters, are slowly but steadily losing their affection for the social-welfare fascism of the Left and the Democrat Party.

     Therefore, the Democrats must undermine and “transform” the Catholic Church, at least here in America, before the trickle of Catholic voters edging away from the Democrat plantation becomes a flood that hands the GOP a long-term lease on federal power.

     It’s particularly risible that a highly placed Democrat, a kingmaker in one of America’s least democratic – note the small “d” – institutions, should speak of introducing “democracy” to the Church. Democracy – “the law of the majority” – is wholly irrelevant to the teachings of Christ and the institution that He charged with conserving and promulgating them. By “gender equality,” Podesta can only be referring to abortion, one of the five “non-negotiables” of the Church. But at the suggestion that the Church should learn to tolerate the slaughter of the unborn, the laugh track swells again, for survey after survey reveals that a majority of Americans opposes unrestricted abortion, with emphasis on third-trimester / “late term” / “partial birth” abortions. What does our “Democrat” have to say to that?

     These email revelations have enormous potential. Perhaps there will be more, but even what we’ve seen to date suggest that the Democrats seek to delegitimize and debase any and every “intermediating institution” that can impede the power of the Omnipotent State. That’s entirely consistent with every other aspect of Leftist practice. Contemplate in this regard the steady diminution of the authority and responsibilities of state and local governments. The Founders regarded the state governments as important counterpoises to the federal one. To the Left, this is intolerable. Therefore, by a clever combination of mandates and bribes paid from the U.S. Treasury, the Left aims at reducing them to mere administrative extensions of Washington...and is near to succeeding.

     The Left demands that all power lie in a single locus: its hands. If it is to attain that end, the Catholic Church and all other “intermediating institutions” must be destroyed. And now, thanks to Wikileaks, what American Catholics have suspected all along has been dragged into the light.