Social Philosophy: The Messianic nature of current politics

Jonah Goldberg writes:
[Eric] Voegelin argued that progressivism, like other political religions, manifested itself as a form of gnosticism. In both its ancient and modern forms, gnosticism has two core assumptions. First, it condemns the existing world as broken and alienating, plagued by evil forces preventing a complete and happy restoration of man's spiritual and material life. In other words…the world is a place of broken souls. But the gnostic promise, to borrow a phrase from John Edwards, is that “it doesn't have to be this way." Enter the second core assumption: Gnostic political religions promise (in Russell Kirk’s words) “a mode of deliverance or salvation from the prison of the world for man through a secret gnosis.” That is, with just the right mixture of abracadabra words and prestidigitatory politics we can create a “kingdom of heaven on earth" ¬not coincidentally, a phrase invoked by Bolsheviks, progressives, fascists, and every other variety of utopian collectivist. This effort to lasso the hereafter and pull it down to the here-and-now was dubbed by Voegelin "immanentizing the eschaton."

What is this gnosis, this secret knowledge that can usher in a perfect world? That varies. For the Marxists, the secret lay in the intricacies of "scientific socialism." With just the right manipulation of material or historical forces we could-ta-da!-create a land where each lives according to his need. For the Marxist, Voegelin quipped, "Christ the Redeemer is replaced by the steam engine as the promise of the realm to come." For the progressives, the trick was giving ourselves over to the social planners and gnostic "ideologists of Christ."

A group called Bring Us Change…know little to nothing about the intellectual precursors of their political religion. And that is a major theme of Voegelin's argument. Utopian desires are part of the human condition, and the craving to create a heaven on earth is the inevitable consequence of a godless society. "Totalitarianism, defined as the existential rule of Gnostic activists, is the end form of progressive civilization," Voegelin insisted. Indeed, the story of totalitarianism is the story of men trying to replace the allegedly discredited old God with one of their own creation. “When God is invisible behind the world," Voegelin writes, "the contents of the world will become new gods; when the symbols of transcendent religiosity are banned, new symbols develop from the inner-worldly language of science to take their place." This purely political "'science" becomes, in effect, the new faith dedicated to the "redivinization of society." Which explains liberals' oddly passionate reactions when faced with conservative disagreement. Those who take the slogan "If you're not part of the solution then you're part of the problem" as a spiritual imperative (whether they see it as spiritual or not) are inclined to take disagreement or apathy not as dissent, but as heresy.

Moreover, when God is no longer the measure of man, man--or mankind--becomes the object of worship. (It shouldn't surprise us that Herbert Croly, the indispensable intellectual of modern liberalism, was literally baptized into Auguste Comte's "Religion of Humanity," in which great scientists and statesmen were designated "saints.") When there is no power other than "people power," worship of people power becomes the new faith. Members of the movement worship themselves. Or, in Voegelin's words, they "build the corpus mysticum of the collectivity and bind the members to form the oneness of the body." Or again, in Barack Obama's words, we quite become the ones we've been waiting for. There is where progressivism meets populism. Populism, after all, is ultimately a form of narcissism in which an individual's self-regard and self-pity are multiplied by the population of the mob. My grievances become our grievances, and the satisfaction of grievance is the only true measure of what is right. As Willie Stark says to the masses in All the King's Men, “Your will is my strength, and your need is my justice." In a rightly ordered society, such sentiments are better directed toward God than toward a throng of angry supplicants.

---Excerpts from “The Limits of Hope” by Jonah Goldberg