David Brooks writes in his New York Times column:
What is new is how cultish this dispute has become. The researchers asked a wide variety of questions, on everything from child-rearing to national anthem protests. In many cases, 97 to 99 percent of Progressive Activists said one thing and 93 to 95 percent of Dedicated Conservatives said the opposite. There's little evidence of individual thought, just cult conformity. The current situation really does begin to look like the religious wars that ripped through Europe after the invention of the printing press, except that our religions now wear pagan political garb.
To readers of FutureOfCapitalism, this idea that politics is turning into a religion for some of its participants may seem familiar. From our August 31 post, "Social Capital Collapse And Other Supertrends," citing a paper from Baron Public Affairs:
Religion is on the decline, "with membership in traditional religious organizations down 20 percent and the rate of those claiming no religious affiliation quadrupling since 1970." Americans are trying to replace the fulfillment they might have once gotten from religion with "the enhanced meaning people increasingly assign to food, the environment, exercise, and partisan politics." (A trend noted in certain respects also by Stanley Kurtz in his 2001 National Review Online article "The Church of the Left.")
