There’s No Virtue in Damnation

Nobody enjoys playing God more than the secular left.

For as tolerant and inclusive as these folks purport to be, the secular humanist wing of the American political left is infinitely more spiteful than the God of the Old Testament whom they despise and vastly more intolerant than the religious folks who they deride as “bitter clingers,” in the words of former President Barack Obama. These are the nihilists, atheists, and moral subjectivists; all those who contend that human life is inherently meaningless, that there is no objective standard of morality, and that religion is merely a covert vehicle for the imposition of homophobic bigotry under the protection of the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause.

These folks are our moral superiors.

They tell us that Christian business owners are bad people for refusing to participate in gay weddings against their religious beliefs; that conservatives are immoral for supporting President Trump in spite of his nasty behavior toward women; that Pro-life folks intent on preserving unborn human life are patriarchal sexists bent on controlling women. The left pride themselves on championing for the marginalized and downtrodden with a moral dogmatism they don’t dare subscribe to.

How is it then that the left can declare human life to be inherently meaningless in their support for late-term abortion, but weep when innocent children are murdered in school shootings? How can they argue against an objective standard of morality only to damn half their own in Hollywood to hell for sexually assaulting vulnerable women? Where do they seize the moral authority to accuse Christian bakers of discrimination while simultaneously infringing upon their constitutional right to religious freedom, the very same clause that correctly grants Rep. Ilhan Omar the right to don a hijab on the House floor?

The answer is simple. The left receive their moral authority not from God but from that warm, fuzzy feeling of self-righteousness. They condemn, critique, and ostracize those who refuse or simply fail to conform to their standard of moral and social rectitude. The left’s virtue-signaling is incessant and their judgment unforgiving. But, as these folks would understand if they paid any attention to the religious teachings they sneer at, there is no virtue in damnation.

As David Brooks writes in The New York Times, “These days many people seem to think that the way to prove virtue is by denouncing and shunning, not through mercy and rigorous forgiveness.” This is infinitely true in modern American society as folks like editor-at-large of Vox Ezra Klein contend that with the erosion of religious principles comes an upswing in tolerance.

From the standpoint of the left, this would appear to be correct. If you view religious folks as vehemently intolerant of gay people, for example, then simply removing religion and its teachings from the mainstream of society would seem to provoke an increase in tolerance.

The problem, of course, is threefold.

(1) The scope of exclusion extends well beyond religious people, (2) the manner by which the left dispose of the supposed intolerant is inherently intolerant and (3) the banning of intolerance only extends to political enemies of the left.

As the nation is aware by now, Kyle Kashuv, an eighteen-year-old Parkland survivor and gun rights activist, announced on Monday that his admission to Harvard University had been withdrawn after his political opponents released physical evidence of racist and anti-Semitic remarks he made at sixteen years of age and months prior to the school shooting. The left seized this latest opportunity to condemn and subsequently ostracize Kashuv from the public arena. After the comments became public, the left proceeded to push and threaten Harvard into rescinding his acceptance to which nudging the university happily complied if for no other reason than to avoid the public backlash.

This, recall, was the same strategy utilized by the left in their failed attempts to oust Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson following the public scrutiny they received for unpopular comments—remarks aged over a decade in the case of Carlson. Harvard Law School professor Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. was ousted from his position as a dean for the grave crime of having performed his job as a defense attorney for Harvey Weinstein. The left called for boycotts of Chick-fil-A because CEO Dan Cathy believes in traditional marriage.

This is all wildly disingenuous behavior, for the left to seek censorship of political opponents for comments or past transgressions unrelated to present behavior or beliefs; particularly when Ralph Northam is still the governor of Virginia, Elizabeth Warren is still a sitting U.S. senator, Ted Kennedy revered as the “Lion of the Senate,” and former President Bill Clinton still a leftist idol.

The important truth of the matter is that, returning to David Brooks, there is no virtue to be found in the left’s self-righteous practice of ostracizing political opponents for past misconduct, particularly if they’ve genuinely reprobated and displayed growth from the experience.

While many of us will never wear blackface, utter the N-word, or cheat on the First Lady with an intern in the Oval Office, we all have something ugly we’re not proud of, something that was exponential in our learning and maturing as a human being. While the experience may remain buried, the lesson learned manifests in our present behavior.

How unlikely is it that the staunchest defenders of the LGBT community once remarked an offensive slur that deeply hurt a gay person? Then, of course, they vowed never to utter such sentiment again and dedicated themselves to the advocating of gay and transgender rights. However, thirty years later, a political opponent unearths that comment only for the left to denounce this individual as a homophobe and shun them from society.

The left has decided that past transgressions reign supreme over the present, and that the atonement, growth, and positive actions since shall not be taken into consideration. They’ve deemed fellow liberals immune, and knighted themselves moral superiors to those deplorable, bitter clingers.

Until we learn proper forgiveness in society under legitimately justifiable circumstances and ween ourselves off the leftist solution of outright damnation for those of us who dare mistake, America’s growth as a nation will remain stunted and the people will continue to distrust one another. This is an ugly situation. But maybe that’s what we deserve for replacing God with people who have such contempt for Him.

(Photo: Allen Allen/Flickr/CC BY 2.0)

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of Heroes Media Group