The “Sacred” and “Profane” of the Left—Or Rather, Their Cynicism, Malevolence, and Nihilism

Ayn Rand described religion as a primitive form of philosophy that has “usurped the highest moral concepts of our language,” thereby putting the accompanying emotions and connotational meanings outside of our reach on earth. “Sacred” is one such concept. “Profane” is its opposite.

To Rand, “sacred” means “the best, the highest possible to man,” the “not-to-be-betrayed, the not-to-be-sacrificed for anything or anyone.” The “profane” defiles the sacred by exerting minimal or no effort—or worse, by the desperate, self-doubt-driven effort of destruction that betrays the “highest possible to man” and sacrifices higher, more worthy values to lesser ones or to non-values.

In religion, which preaches the doctrine of self-sacrifice, Rand continues, “‘Sacred’ means superior to and not-to-be-touched-by any concerns of man or of this earth.” That is, the “sacred” is the altar upon which we must dutifully sacrifice ourselves, deriving little or no benefit from our sacrifices. This is the  opposite of Rand’s uplifting and man-worshipping ideal.

Today’s Left is not and has never been religious, but they are altruistic, demanding self-sacrifice, and border on being a religious cult. Philosophy professor Molly Brigid McGrath demonstrates this by analogy to such religious concepts as the sacred and profane, and piety and blasphemy.

The sacred, for example, as McGrath understands the Left, are oppressed victims—blacks, women, and gays—who suffer unjustly, whereas the pious are guilty privileged and mostly white straight males who must cleanse themselves of their (original) sins by sacrificing to the sacred.

The profane are privileged (white straight males) who do not feel guilty and therefore refuse to suffer or sacrifice for the sacred. Blasphemers, though, are the worst. They deny the validity of a “sacred” class, desecrating them and perpetrating injustices and committing crimes, often through speech that is indistinguishable from violence.

“It is difficult, in any sacred system,” says McGrath, “to make room for benevolent and intelligent people who simply disagree.” Blasphemers must be “publicly shamed, deplatformed, ostracized, often slandered and fired.” The punishment is “what justifies, psychologically, for activists and social media mobs, their unmeasured response.”

“Unmeasured response,” of course, is an academic’s polite way of saying hatred, hostility, and aggression, emotions and defensive actions I attributed to the Left in an earlier post.

The analogy indeed applies, but additional emotions identify today’s Left, such as cynicism, malevolence, and nihilism. And it’s not difficult to come up with examples.

Cynically intense pessimism is often expressed as sneering sarcasm at any attempt to hold up approvingly the American values of hard work, accomplishment, and earning one’s own way.

Malevolently desiring evil to others can be seen in the glee with which leftists celebrate the jailing of political opponents, especially in that modern version of the dungeon, solitary confinement, and doing so over trifles that had the same infraction, and in some cases the alleged infraction, been committed by a member of the Left either would have been dismissed or never would have surfaced in the legal system.

Nihilism? It’s everywhere in our culture, or what’s left of it, since the goal of the Left for many years has been to tear down and destroy all remaining remnants of Western civilization, especially reason, logic, objectivity and the notion of an objective reality, art, and, of course, capitalism. Art? Take a look at what the postmoderns have done. But be careful. You might get spit in your eye!

Sacred? To the Left? McGrath is being far too generous, even by granting them the religious version of the concept.

Ayn Rand asks us to look at “a child’s face when he grasps the answer to some problem he has been striving to understand. It is a radiant look of joy, of liberation, almost of triumph, which is unself-conscious, yet self-assertive, and its radiance seems to spread in two directions: outward, as an illumination of the world—inward, as the first spark of what is to become the fire of an earned pride.”

The child’s face is sacred, “the not-to-be-betrayed, the not-to-be-sacrificed for anything or anyone.”

That first spark and eventual fire of earned pride is precisely what the Left is aiming to extinguish.