{"id":9859,"date":"2012-03-14T05:19:41","date_gmt":"2012-03-14T05:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/14\/leftism-not-a-religion\/"},"modified":"2012-03-14T05:19:41","modified_gmt":"2012-03-14T05:19:41","slug":"leftism-not-a-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/14\/leftism-not-a-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Leftism Not a Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Dennis Prager often says that leftism  is a religion. That is a sloppy use of language. Leftism is an anti-religious political ideology that functions in the lives of its adherents much like religions function in the lives of their adherents. To call leftism a religion only sires confusion. It is enough to say it is <em>like<\/em> a religion in certain key respects. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Or you could say that leftism is an ersatz religion for leftists.  &#39;Ersatz&#39; here functions as an <em>alienans<\/em> adjective.  A substitute <em>for<\/em> religion is not a religion. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">It is also important to observe that conservatism for irreligious conservatives does not typically function as an ersatz religion for them.  That would make a nice separate post.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Resemblance is not identity.  Language matters.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\"> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dennis Prager often says that leftism is a religion. That is a sloppy use of language. Leftism is an anti-religious political ideology that functions in the lives of its adherents much like religions function in the lives of their adherents. To call leftism a religion only sires confusion. It is enough to say it is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/03\/14\/leftism-not-a-religion\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Leftism Not a Religion&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,163],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-matters","category-leftism-and-political-correctness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}