Most people would date the start of the culture wars to the 1960s and the sexual revolution, but the secular left’s war against all things traditional actually began with the Chambers-Hiss case in 1948, according to Mark Judge. He makes a persuasive case. More surprising to some would be the man he puts at the heart of the effort to fight back against this alien religion, Richard Nixon. And that’s exactly what Judge argues, that communism and it’s offspring, modern liberalism, is a religion.
“What we must realize is that this struggle probably will not be decided in the military, economic, or scientific areas, important as these are. The battle in which we are engaged is primarily one of ideas. The test is one not so much of arms but of faith.”
The above quote is from a speech Richard Nixon gave in 1960 about communism. The quote has become central to what I call the Nixon Test. If a Nixon biographer does not understand that quote, they won’t understand faith, and if they don’t understand faith, they won’t understand Richard Nixon.
And if they don’t understand Nixon, they won’t understand the culture war, which began with Nixon.
The culture war is fundamentally a conflict of faiths, of incompatible worldviews, only one of which is totalitarian, the one that springs from the soil of communism. As Judge rightly says:
Communism, socialism, and liberalism are all faiths with their own dogma. They argue morality, for right and wrong sides of history, about the imperative of doing what’s right with the fever of country preachers. Conservatives, Christians, opponents of same sex marriage: these people are not just wrong — they’re evil, wretched, demonic. Opposing the State means you are not just deluded, but a lost soul who needs to be converted.
John McWhorter, a liberal himself in good standing, makes the same case for something he calls “antiracism.” He calls it our “Flawed New Religion.” His understanding of religion is itself flawed because not all religion is fideism, a leap of faith in spite of the evidence, but liberalism sure is, and “antiracism” is as good an example as any to prove it.
As the drive to redefine marriage has proved again and again, modern liberalism has no desire to live and let live; they will not tolerate you until you celebrate them.
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