Joel Kotkin is shocked by the new illiberal California State Religion

California's state religion

We have written about this cancer in the California body politic before.

The Official Religion of California is about to round up Witches, er,  Heretics

More below the break.

Kotkin:

"Although they target widely different issues, these pieces of legislation reflect a highly authoritarian and illiberal brand of progressivism evolving into something of a state religion. On one hand, California cannot tolerate the autonomy of religious institutions if they refuse to embrace the secularist ideology that dominates the state. Even religious clubs on California State University campuses can no longer restrict their leadership to those who actually are believers.

Similarly, the emerging attack on anyone questioning climate change orthodoxy represents another kind of religion, one that gives officially sanctioned science something close to papal infallibility. Despite the fact that there remain widely divergent views on both the severity of climate change and how best to address it, one has to adhere to the accepted “science” – or else.

Perhaps most shocking of all, this new spirit of progressive intolerance is affecting other institutions, notably academia and the media. Long incubators for free thinking, the academy, as liberal legal scholars such as Alan Dershowitz note, now routinely violates due process."

There is no liberal progressivism, it is but one of the limbs of socialism, which includes fascism, Nazism, Soviet, and Maoist socialism, and modern euro-socialism. There is nothing liberal about socialism, it is a political ideology driven by the desire to control others, not liberate.

"But the new progressive intolerance now represents, in many ways, as great, if not more pervasive, a threat to the republic than that posed by either religious fundamentalists or even the most fervent climate change denier. It violates the Madisonian principle that assumed that religious and moral ideas “must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.” To revoke that principle is to reduce the United States to just another authoritarian state, even if the official ideology is couched in scientific research or estimable embrace of racial or gender differences.

It is no surprise, then, that today many Christians – as much as two-thirds, according to one recent survey – feel that they are being persecuted. Indeed, if they dissent from orthodox views, they now can find themselves the subjects of official opprobrium, as seen in the case of Chick-fil-A in New York, where Mayor Bill de Blasio has urged his constituents, somewhat unsuccessfully, to boycott the popular restaurant. In some cases, you can lose your job by taking the wrong position, as was the case for Brendan Eich, former CEO of Mozilla. The attempt to impose orthodoxy on religious schools, as in SB1146, seems the logical extension of such thinking.

The jihad against anyone who dissents on climate issues also impacts those who are not religious. Couched in the oft-repeated hysterical language that has come to dominate green politics, anyone who dissents on the orthodoxy – whether a moderate Democrat, an energy company or the stray scientific skeptic – faces the possibility of official persecution."

Christianity is one of the primary foundations of the republic, progressivism is one of the primary corrosives to the republic, scientific skepticism is one of the founding principles of science, required consensus is one of the limiters of scientific advancement. This is a malignant, unreformed, secular religion, and like all similar which have come before, it will kill in the millions if not thwarted. Nazism, Stalinist socialism, Maoist socialism and all of the other unreformed secular religions are ultimately extremely deadly. 

"Ultimately, we as Americans – and Californians – will pay a price for this. History is replete with stories of decline brought on by enforced official orthodoxy, from Byzantium to China’s Qing dynasty, the Spain of the Inquisition, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union or the current religious autocracies of the contemporary Middle East. As we seek to limit options and ways of thought about everything from marriage and bathrooms to how the planet operates, we don’t just persecute dissenters. We also undermine our ability to innovate, adapt and evolve as a society."

Agreed. If this continues there will be serious strife, perhaps worse. American's will not willingly go under the yoke of an unreformed secular religion. The illiberal lunatics who think they will are simply mistaken. However, one of the reasons California can progress so far down the dystopian road is the huge number of wealthy progressives who feel insulated from these rules, and the huge numbers of recent immigrants who are much more attuned to despotism, autarchy, and tyranny. The middle class, the great brake on political insanities, is weak in California, and disempowered. The federal government likes the idea of powerful centralized government both at the state and foreign levels. 

All socialist states must also have gun control, for without this the people have the ability to stand against those who would rule them. In the end, this is the existential issue for progressives, without a gun ban they cannot gain complete control.

This bodes ill for America generally, and California particularly.
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Progressivism lost its way by 1972, it has had no valuable contributions to make politically since. Yet as a mass movement it has grown powerful, with a large following. This is a dangerous and precarious position. Our political future will be either bright, or despotic. The despotism will not come from christians, or climate change skeptics, or free speech advocates, it will come from the progressive masses, and the power seeking politicians who lead them. It will end with serfdom.