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Human Sacrifice in the Modern Age
For those who think that human sacrifice is a relic of the past, you are wrong. Its manifestations in the modern age are different, but they are violent, heartless, immoral, and unrepentant. We only need to look at the actions of the Progressive movement to understand how human sacrifice thrives and is equally deadly.
Let’s look first at the origins of human sacrifice to lay the foundation for my argument:
Almost all of us would cringe at thought of sacrificing a person’s life for the purpose of appeasing the gods. Modern society associates the phrase ‘human sacrifice’ with brutal, demonic, or satanic rituals. However, cultures that are considered by scholars to be highly civilized, affluent, and advanced considered human sacrifice a normal part of life.
Some ancient cultures engaged in human ritual killings to gain the favor of the gods, while others practiced it to show respect and devotion to their leaders. The ritual could be as serene as simply drinking poison or as cruel as getting buried or burned alive. But above all, it was considered perfectly normal.
Let me show you the parallels between Progressivism and ancient practices. First, I would suggest that some of the “gods” of the Left are Marxism/socialism, climate change, abortion, and those issues associated with them. As many of us have already acknowledged, Progressivism supposedly thrives on secularism, but we know that its ideology shows all the attributes of a cultish religion: a belief system, belief in supernatural beings (Gaia), distinction between the sacred (utopia) and profane (fossil fuels, Conservatives, etc.), rituals and sacred objects (protests, chanting); a moral code (nature matters, people do not; windmills, solar panels are elevated), and finally destroying anyone who challenges their beliefs. The human sacrifices are the intentions and actions that will destroy the life of another human being and everyone connected to him and her to preserve their “religion.”
We can look at three Supreme Court nominees to see the lengths the Left will go to, to initiate a human sacrifice. In the case of Robert Bork, it was an ugly display. Although he had a list of worthy credentials to be considered for SCOTUS, Ted Kennedy decided to make his best effort to destroy him:
Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy. . .
In addition to his legal legacy, Bork also has a word named for him in the Oxford English Dictionary. The verb ‘bork’ is used as slang, to ‘defame or vilify (a person) systematically, esp. in the mass media, usually with the aim of preventing his or her appointment to public office; to obstruct or thwart (a person) in this way.’
Robert Bork reflected on this rejection later in his life l :
The rejection deeply affected Bork, turning him further against a system in which, he said, ‘the tactics and techniques of national political campaigns have been unleashed on the process of confirming judges. That is not simply disturbing. It is dangerous.’ Ever more vociferously, he railed against left-wing judicial activism that, in his view, sought to substitute courts for elected politicians.
The rejection of Bork defined the future behavior of Supreme Court nominees who realized that providing limited comments about their views provided less ammunition for attacks by the Progressive Left.
The second example was the “lynching” of Clarence Thomas; this word was Justice Thomas’ own choice when he responded to the actions of the Senate Judiciary Committee:
This is not an opportunity to talk about difficult matters privately or in a closed environment. This is a circus. It’s a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.
Anita Hill had accused Justice Thomas of sexual harassment when she worked for him; he denied all charges and went on to be confirmed to the Court. It’s important to note that in spite of his confirmation, other women who accused him of sexual harassment but were not deemed credible (as seen in the Kavanaugh hearings).
Justice Thomas also learned the sad truth about who he could trust during the hearings. Although Joe Biden had promised to protect his privacy, Biden lied:
Thomas recalled, ‘Throughout my life I’ve often found truth embedded in the lyrics of my favorite records. At Yale, for example, I’d listened often to ‘Smiling Faces Sometimes,’ a song by the Undisputed Truth that warns of the dangers of trusting the hypocrites who ‘pretend to be your friend’ while secretly planning to do you wrong. Now I knew I’d met one of them: Senator Biden’s smooth, insincere promises that he would treat me fairly were nothing but talk.’
Finally, we come to Justice Brett Kavanaugh. I’m choosing to not provide detail of his nomination and the way the investigations were handled because they are well known. But as an example of the disgusting efforts to annihilate him, there is this comment:
According to the Constitution it is within the purview of the Senate to ‘advise and consent’ on SCOTUS appointees. The Constitution says nothing about grilling these appointees half to death, about setting land mines made out of vague and ancient fictions. The concern is supposed to be whether or not the candidate has the education, the clarity, the self-discipline to weigh issues brought before him. It is not about changing the world. It is not about getting the jump on the opposing party. It is certainly not about high school antics –- if in fact any happened. The left seems to think that a SCOTUS judge can just haul off and change laws, which explains their hysteria, but a little knowledge about the balance of power would calm those fears. SCOTUS can’t initiate lawsuits; they can only rule on what is brought before them.
Kavanaugh responded to the Senate Judiciary Committee and said, in part:
These are smears, pure and simple. And they debase our public discourse. But they are also a threat to any man or woman who wishes to serve our country. Such grotesque and obvious character assassination—if allowed to succeed—will dissuade competent and good people of all political persuasions from service.
As I told the Committee during my hearing, a federal judge must be independent, not swayed by public or political pressure. That is the kind of judge I will always be. I will not be intimidated into withdrawing from this process. The coordinated effort to destroy my good name will not drive me out. The vile threats of violence against my family will not drive me out. The last-minute character assassination will not succeed.
People’s reputations should be sacred and inviolable, especially when they have a history of being honorable and dedicated. That assumption is no longer valid.
The effects on these men, their families, wives, and children cannot be measured. Those people who love them know that the enemy has tried not only to prevent their confirmations, but they have set out to destroy their lives. Their efforts have the sounds of zealotry, hatred for those who do not agree with them, and disdain for people who do not see the wisdom of their ways. Their movement has become a crusade, in the worst sense of the word. They will make sure their goals are met, and that people are either converted to their cause, or they will be sacrificed. We have seen many more human sacrifices in recent years; I hope you will speak to those abhorrent exploits.
With this kind of sick religious dogma, why would anyone choose to be a Supreme Court nominee?
Who will be the next human sacrifice?
Published in Culture
If you go back to my original comment on this thread (#45) you’ll see that I excluded abortionists from it. Yes, they are “literally” killing people. And I don’t mind saying so. My objection was to using that inflammatory language about people who were not doing so.
First, I think convincing anyone who is radical on the Left that what they are doing is wrong may be a waste, but I feel compelled to try. We are not credible to them under any circumstances. I’d be curious to know how you would describe the effect of their actions described in this OP, @catorand–the devastation, upheaval and lies–and the impact those actions had on the lives of the justices.
Of course it’s unconscionable, and I don’t think it served them well politically. Look, one of the things you learn as a lawyer is that if you have to persuade someone, you’re usually better off on the high road. They are not on it. We should be.
Just like Donald Trump is, right? Also, you characterize my comments as being on “the low road,” I take it. So be it.
Cato has a point, and I think it is underlined by the confusion many of us felt on seeing the title of the OP: “Human Sacrifice in the Modern Age.” Like many, I thought it was going to be about abortion, because human sacrifice is generally understood to be “killing people.” E.g. throwing ’em into a volcano or pit of fire or whatever the illustration is showing us.
There are connections to be made between actually killing people, and going all-out to destroy someone’s reputation, life and livelihood. Brett Kavanaugh isn’t dead, and wasn’t at risk of becoming so…and yet, somehow it doesn’t seem all that difficult to imagine that the same people (women, mostly) who were clawing at the doors of the chamber in which he was being sworn in would be happy to do as much to his face. Or to his still-beating heart.
Anyone who has studied the Holocaust knows that the Nazis didn’t start with wholesale murder; they started with calumny. As @Cato says, this deserves to be taken seriously, but as the left has shown us with their over-the-top rhetoric, when words = violence, the chances of actual violence increase.
It’s worth being careful about that.
Still, it’s an interesting question given the bewilderingly excessive viciousness of the left’s attacks on what even the most credulous reading of the evidence reveals as ordinary, generally pleasant men and women going about the quotidian business of governance.
Part of me wonders whether people with a natural affinity for high drama are drawn to the left nowadays because America today isn’t really all that dramatic?
Well, it can be dramatic. Sort of. That is, there’s plenty of personal risk of injury, death or vicarious trauma in fire fighting and law enforcement and more than enough human suffering to be found in counseling addicts, or cleaning up a homeless encampment.
There remain dragons to fight, in other words, but the knights on the left don’t appear to be interested in rescuing real people —flawed, smelly, obnoxious and often irritatingly resistant to rescue. They prefer to fight imaginary dragons with imaginary claws on behalf of the imaginary (rather than actual) poor. So they create little melodramas in which they “Resist,” fight Nazis, defy Satan as Satan is now defined, and Save The World. Since the hero must defy death , the opponent has to be a death-dealer. Hence the tendency, within my middle-class denomination, to declare that the White Supremacy that seeps like a miasma in and amongst our pews is “destroying lives.”
No, Donald Trump is obviously not on the high road. In a nutshell, that’s my problem with him.
It would be very, very nice if, when we stagger at last to 2024, everyone in the U.S. collectively draws a breath and decides that we’d really like our politics to be less…ahem…entertaining henceforth.
A new civility could, paradoxically, be among the gifts of the Trump presidency, if only the Democrats would see it that way.
I have the same problem. But he has certainly gotten the attention of a lot of people who behave as if the status quo is just fine, when our government is corrupt and inept. On the one hand, I’m frequently rolling my eyes when I hear him (I’m not on Twitter); but he has also crashed through the veneer of respectability (which it is not). Some will see my comments as hyperbole, but it might break through.
It’s like your spouse screaming that you need to stop the car when you are getting ready to crash. If they scream when you are half a mile away rather than gently saying “I think you need to slow down it looks like they are stopped up ahead” — that is hyperbole. When they scream “Stop!” when you are about 50 feet from disaster — that is not hyperbole.
I’m thinking this through, @GrannyDude. Especially your Nazi analogy. The Nazis were the ones who were violent and eventually murdered 12 million people. Along the way, no one stood up to them. No one. Here in America, we are seeing much violence and fortunately no deaths (yet). The violent groups, for the most part, act with impunity, since they meet little resistance. I think the question is, how do we meet that irrational and violent force with actions that make a difference? Reasoning with them doesn’t work. Complaining about them doesn’t work. Keeping silent (I believe) leaves them free to do what they want. So my question to you and @catorand (and I mean it most sincerely), do we do nothing? Do we hope we have an election that is overwhelming for Conservatives and Republicans? Will that make any difference to these particular people? Or will it incite them even more. Please know that I’m asking from my heart: what are the words or actions that will slow them down, or even stop them in their tracks before someone does get killed? (I asked Cato Rand this question earlier, but he didn’t answer.)
By the way, others are welcome to join in.
Alright, on that point I want to agree with you without advocating unilateral rhetorical disarmament. We can go too far with our language and I have to guard myself against that tendency. We should not indulge in character assassination, that’s a given, or in totally demonizing every single Democrat or Leftist who ever drew breathe. But, neither should we give them a free pass to assail the character of prominent conservative figures without feeling retribution. Leave no unfounded attack unanswered, threaten and sue for liable where actionable and meet fist with block every time. Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal both had brilliant responses to the antics of the Left in their respective states- play the audio of their DUI arrests online, show the footage from LiveAction’s stings of Planned Parenthood on giant screens on the lawn of the governor’s mansion, etc. We don’t go hounding people out of restaurants or laying siege to their houses, but can’t act like this is shuffleboard on the Pacific Princess either.
Firstly, isn’t your middle-class denomination upper-class? Secondly, in your specific Church location which has unusually high racial diversity for the UU Church, who is more worried about white Supremacy, the white or non-white population.
We are in accord.
Are you sure you’re deplorable enough?
There was the woman in Charlottesville.
No thanks. I was satisfied with the perfectly reasonable, rational, important discussion with an attention-getting title that you intended. (So much better than the all-too-frequent Ricochet-style Charlottesville-Trump-Racialist buffoonery.) The over-concern-ism by hyper-literalists bored me to tears long ago.
My niceness is greatly overrated!
Thank you, @philo. When I think I’ve made a mistake, I own up. I don’t think I made one here, although I’ve considered everyone’s concerns. Your comment means a lot.
Hmmmnnn. Been pondering this.
Human sacrifice might not be exactly the right metaphor—I say this humbly, because I don’t know for sure.
As ritual propitiation of a God or Gods, human sacrifice demands that the victim be selected for his or her value to the sacrificer. That’s the meaning of “sacrifice;” I give up something that I want and need, not something or someone that I dislike and would just as soon be rid of.
Abraham and his beloved, long-awaited son Isaac are the obvious example here.
Children like Greta Thunberg are more akin to human sacrifices—presumably, the parents love their child, so they have to be pretty darned religious about their environmentalism if they let their precious daughter sail across the ocean to kvetch at politicians rather than have a normal childhood. Unless, of course, they secretly find her sort of difficult. Being a cynic, I tende to think that, back when various primitive tribes were chucking virgins into the steaming crater, surely human weakness would ensure that the offering to God might occasionally have been the obnoxious virgin who hurt the other girl’s feelings and annoyed everyone with her egotism and upspeak .
Anyway, this is not to say that the attacks on Kavanaugh et al aren’t a big deal. Quite the opposite, in fact. We should be so lucky that the left was actually willing to sacrifice their own safety, cash and well-being rather than everyone else’s. The savage attacks of leftists on inconvenient conservatives are more akin to the time-honored treatment of enemies, and distinctly analogous to the mostly verbal attacks the Nazis made on the Jews in the run-up to the Holocaust. For reasons I still can’t fathom, the Nazis were convinced that the Jews were actually dangerous—the Jews were the Dragon the Nazis “knights” were supposed to vanquish.
Which isn’t to say that the Democratic party is, as we speak, planning extermination. It’s only that their absurdly vituperative rhetoric should be vigorously resisted and rejected, and leftists with some trace of honor left in them should be called out for their tolerance toward, or calculated ignorance of such revolting behavior. It doesn’t have to be murder in order to be beyond the pale. I’m glad Kavanaugh wasn’t lynched. I’m glad those Catholic high school boys weren’t tarred and feathered. But what happened to them was more than bad enough, and ought not be allowed to stand.
@GrannyDude, thanks so much for your thoughtful comment. It’s helped me clarify my efforts in writing this OP.
First, metaphors, by definition, are rarely “exactly right”; they are meant to create imagery in the mind that we hope people will relate to. I think for that reason that IMHO we don’t have to sacrifice things that we treasure; we only need to make offers to the gods. I completely agree with your assessment of Greta Thunberg; @exjon‘s post demonstrates that well. Anyway, back to the imagery issue. So the metaphor, that the attacks on the justices and others were human sacrifices, were intended to create imagery. In this case, the metaphor disturbed some because it was imprecise. Underneath that conclusion, however, may have been the revulsion that image caused: it suggests that some of us are reverting to primitive and dangerous behavior. Indeed. I prefer to turn away myself. For others, the imagery worked as metaphor because–well, because of their own personal reactions; in some way they were willing or able to digest that imagery as metaphor.
I really do understand people’s reluctance to accept my premise. But because it is metaphor, it’s hard to call it imprecise or wrong. But at the same time people can reject it or criticize it.