Day 903 of 1000
I just finished reading a great article titled The Secular Religion of the Left. It is worth your while to read the whole thing. It articulates some of the things we have seen in the downward spiral of our society. An amazing connection is made between the culture malaise we see in parts of our own family who have immigrated here to the United States from Mexico and the idea that “Organic” food is somehow morally superior. The premise of the article is that the religion of the secular left is materialism. Here is the comment about immigrants that rings so true in light of our own personal experience:
Those most in need of the moral system of materialism are the descendants of the displaced, whether by immigration to the United States or migration within the United States from rural to urban areas, who have become detached from a large extended family structure that once sustained them.
Their grandparents had already loosened their grip on religion and as the family disintegrated, materialism took its place. Their grandparents worked hard to provide for their children, but the children no longer saw maintaining the family as a moral activity. Sometimes they didn’t even bother with a family. They became lonely individuals looking for a collective. A virtual political family.
Liberalism fills the missing space once inhabited by religion and the family. It provides a moral and ethical system as religion did and the accompanying sense of purpose and its state institutions replace and supplant the family. It does both of these things destructively and badly as its institutions forever try to patch social problems created by the disintegration of the family and its ideas provide too few people with a sense of purpose of a meaningful life.
Amazingly, the author, Daniel Greenfield, ties all this to the culture and religion of those who buy their organic food at Whole Foods. And it is a coherent connection. Whole Foods is a pretentious place. Here is a snippet about that connection:
Organic, a category with a debatable meaning, doesn’t really provide that much more value. And environmental labels are worth very little. And yet the average product at Whole Foods is covered in so many “ethical liberal” labels that it’s hard to figure out what it even is.
He finishes the post with this brilliant gem:
The left can’t replace family or religion. Its social solutions are alien and artificial. They fix nothing and damage everything. Their appeal is to those who are arrogant and starved for meaning, who want religion without religion and family without family only to discover that they are not enough.
The quotes above are great, but do not come close to doing justice to the entire piece. Read it. I am adding Greenfield’s blog to my daily reading list.
Betty Blonde #67 – 10/17/2008
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.
We have decided to minimalize our material goods while we wait to see where we will land in the next few years. We have already sold a bunch of stuff. This is a picture of Christian putting a bunch of the rest of the stuff on Craig’s List. It actually feels very, very good. The funny deal is that we are only really intent on keeping mementos, the homeschool and other books we have not already sold, photos and a few pieces of furniture.