Don's Tuesday Column

         THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   6/14/2022

Is it quasi-religious fanaticism?

Those on the right (in more ways than one) may benefit from understanding the base (in more ways than one) motives driving the various “crusades” perpetuated on America. Those on the progressive left will likely reject, ridicule and/or rationalize against accepting this perspective:

It is no coincidence that, while denigrating the role of traditional Judeo-Christian religion in personal, community and national well-being and stability, the leftist paradigm cannot exist without many of the supposed trappings and characteristics of religion: faith in things not seen, unquestionable authority, personal fulfillment in being part of a belief system, a cult, if you will.

The pattern is evident in abortion and so-called “reproductive health rights”; global warming/climate change/environmental sustainability; gun rights and violent gun crime; and deference to, and presumed beneficence of, problem-solving by government. Throw in the identification and vilification of those deemed enemies of those sacrosanct and (questionably) virtuous goals—including dissent from “health mandates,” election and political narratives—and let the dehumanizing begin.

Headlines in just the last week fall into such patterns, which “middle-of-the-road” independents should consider when evaluating the right/left disputes. Included: Mass shootings, abortion judicial decisions, the investigation (partisan to the core) of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol protests and riots, gas and energy price spikes; also, whether the economy is headed for “stag-flation,” recession and inflation or, as our teleprompter-reading, mumbler-in-chief tells us, “It’s doing great.”

We’ll get to the Jan. 6 Soviet-style “show trials” but first, let’s apply it to the abortion issue. The center-right majority, a solid 60+percent of Americans, thinks abortion restrictions are reasonable, given the biological fact of human (not cat or monkey) life in the womb. Democrats used to affirm that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare,” but then they dropped the “rare” part.

The “Roe” decision itself allowed for restrictions in the third trimester when the fetus could live outside the mother. You would think Roe enshrined only the fanatical “abortion rights” position of no restrictions up until birth. The vast majority of screaming pro-abortion protesters likely live in “blue” states where no restrictions will pass.

However, the “tell” that this is quasi-religious hysteria is the uncompromising insistence that no state be allowed to pass laws its voters prefer; only by prevailing in the top-down judicial rigidity of their demanded Supreme Court decision will they be pacified.

Many have said that abortion is the left’s devotional sacrament but it is much larger than just abortion. While most Americans believe and practice traditional courtship, resulting in either monogamous couples or marriage, the cultural left believes in the sexual and social “hookup” free-for-all, without consequences for such libertine behavior. While “protection” is abundantly available in stores everywhere, it’s a matter of faith to those worshiping sexual profligacy that abortion accompany such “freedoms.”

Those of us upholding personal responsibility as a necessary virtue are demonized and ostracized to the extent that the fanatical, hysterical pro-abortion side ignores state and federal law prohibiting protests and demonstrations at the personal residences of judges, threats to whom have increased 400 percent. Laws were necessary because…the Ku Klux Klan routinely intimidated judges who might find a Black man not guilty because the evidence said he didn’t do the crime.

Are such protesters proud to stoop so low outside judges’ homes that they share the perfidy of the Ku Klux Klan? Had justifiable arrests ensued from the start, it’s doubtful that a California man would have taken his weapons and hostage-taking tools to Justice Kavanaugh’s home; only lack of fleetness of foot, and observant marshals, prevented the first-ever assassination of a Supreme Court Justice.

This explains the hateful violence inflicted on pro-life centers around America, the leftist media’s lack of outrage, and the tacit approval of this by those revering the slaughter of life in the womb.

It’s likewise a matter of quasi-religious faith that the problems with gun violence are the inanimate objects that have never taken themselves from a shelf or locker and done harm: meaning guns, especially so-called “assault rifles” which anti-2^nd Amendment fanatics cannot define. They could be taken seriously if they proposed something that would have prevented any recent shootings, but they only want to restrict the rights of law-abiding people.

The anti-gun crowd is invested in their crusade against the “right to bear arms,” which has always been subject to criminal justice restrictions. Now it’s “red flag laws” to be implemented in non-judicial manner, and dependent on the same people that enforced mask mandates, workplace and business lockdowns, and abolished church attendance. No thanks, their record of abuse stands.

Ban the guns, they insist, and crime and murders will stop; hasn’t happened in history but they righteously believe in ordering us about. Consider only that they dispute the plain, evident facts that the places with the most gun controls—urban areas like Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York City, etc.—have the most gun crimes per capita; it’s just the opposite in rural counties. It’s another “faith-based” social engineering crusade against our God-given rights.

Likewise, the “human-caused global warming” fanatics are arguably earth-worshipers, so smug and self-righteously assured of their monopoly on “truth” that they 1) demonize those who disagree; 2) refuse to accept natural variations and geological records of higher and lower CO2 and temperatures, in no correlation; 3) demand we suffer under energy shortages, and expensive, unreliable wind and solar; and 4) advocate eliminating, for purely quasi-religious reasons, the only dependable energy: coal, natural gas, hydro and nuclear.

Every utterance, message, assertion and conclusion coming from the Jan. 6 committee is either a bald-faced lie, one-sided partisan manipulation, or massive exaggeration—to which few Americans give any credence.