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By Lee Duigon
April 11, 2013
NewsWithViews.com

Readers identifying themselves as “pagans” have objected to me lumping them in with progressives. The good name of paganism, such as it is, suffers when placed in the company of such names as Obama, Pelosi, Gore, and Reid. Hint to progs: what does it say about your reputation, when even pagans don’t want to be seen with you?

I grant that all pagans are not progressives. But all progressives are pagans, whether they know it or not.

By “pagan” I mean someone who is an idolater, someone who worships the work of human hands or human minds: who worships created things, but not the Creator—animals, trees, the sun, the earth, or Nature in general. They may or may not have pagan gods. I think progressives would feel it was unhip to worship Hecate, Baal, or Quetzalcoatl. But of course these people who despise Christianity always feign an affectionate respect for idols.

My readers say that pagans, unlike progressives, do have morals and ethics. I understand that, although I’m not sure where modern pagans’ morals and ethics come from. Homer tells us that a man is expected to behave in a certain way—for instance, to be kind and hospitable to travelers—or risk incurring the wrath of the gods. If he performs a sacrifice, he expects the gods to reward him in some way. In either case, it’s deemed wise to stay on the good side of the gods.

Historically, that’s the pagan basis for morality.

Most progressives say they’re atheists. They are great enough fools to think they inhabit a religious vacuum. They look down their noses at honest pagans and their wooden idols. But to see whether they really are atheists, or just another kind of pagan, let’s quote from one of the holy writings of progressive paganism—the opening paragraph of “Humanist Manifesto II.”

“…Using technology wisely, we can control our environment, conquer poverty, markedly reduce disease, extend our life-span, significantly modify our behavior, alter the course of human evolution and cultural development, unlock vast new powers, and provide humankind with unparalleled opportunity for achieving an abundant and meaningful life.”

No wonder pagans are offended. The most shameless used car salesman would be embarrassed to offer you a pitch like this. And yet the document has been signed by a virtual army of scientists, academics, artists, and politicians, including dozens of Nobel Prize winners—progressives all, and every last one of them a superstitious, credulous knucklehead.

This is what makes progressives pagans: they put themselves, and the work of their hands, in place of God. They don’t worship hawks or oak trees. They worship technology, and the wise and godlike use they propose to make of it.

An ancient Greek pagan might hope Zeus and the rest of the Olympian gods might accomplish some of the objectives laid out by the humanists; but he wouldn’t count on it. But progressives think that they themselves, behind their experts, can really do these things. Pagans sought to direct the actions of the gods by bribing them with sacrifices. Progressives demand sacrifices to themselves, offered up by all the rest of us in the form of higher and higher taxes, tighter and tighter restrictions on our liberties, surrender of our children to progressive public schooling, and even the loss of our self-respect as they herd us like cattle.

“Give us all that we demand of you,” they said, “and we’ll give you an earthly paradise!”

No more hurricanes, droughts, or cold snaps; no more poverty; hardly any more disease; a long and healthy life for everyone, provided it’s okay with the death panels; no more bad behavior, it’ll all be modified out of us and only nice behavior will be left; experts wisely and firmly guiding human evolution and cultural development, using their vast new powers; an abundant and meaningful life for everyone, served up by the very same people who habitually deny that life has any meaning—

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Gee, what’s not to like?

For what it’s worth, I apologize to honest pagans for lumping them in with these stealth pagans, the progressives. Nobody deserves to be lumped in with progressives—clowns who say we don’t need God because we’ve got them, the smartest people in the world, and what more could we want?

Heaven on earth, they’re going to give us.

Just as soon as they’ve finished putting us through hell.