RUSH: I received a note from a friend containing this amazing quote from a speech John Ashcroft gave to the Detroit Economic Club in November of 1998: “We must embrace the power of faith, but we must never confuse politics and piety. For me may I say that it is against my religion to impose my religion.”
Then, with incredible prescience, Ashcroft went on to share an observation from C. S. Lewis, the Christian apologist that defines perfectly the views of those who now oppose him. Said Ashcroft, “These are the observations of C. S. Lewis: ‘the greatest danger for those who love God and politics was that they would come to see their faith as a means to their political ends.'”
For many on those on the left who worship at the altar of man, politics is the means through which devotion is expressed. The State is God and the religion is politics, and any views that are in contrast are heretical. This is their creed. Hence, they fear John Ashcroft, and fear what that would mean if he were confirmed as attorney general and acted as they would.
The liberals are fundamentally people who are lawless and think that everybody else is the way they are. If they are corrupt, everybody’s corrupt. Because they have no respect for the law, except as a tool to achieve an end, they assume that he doesn’t either. They don’t believe in virtue. They’re suspicious of virtue because they know they’re not virtuous, in the traditional sense.
The Religious Left is Extreme
RUSH: Many on the left who worship at the altar of man – the environmentalist wackos or any of these left-wing extremist groups – are opposed to God because He is an authority higher than man. To them, of course, there is no authority higher than man, and their politics is simply the means through which their devotion to the altar of man is expressed.
To liberals, religion is their life. For example, abortion is the sacrament to the pro-abortion crowd’s religion. It is the reason they exist. They are the religious left, and they are as religious as anybody. It’s just that their religion is one of man, and politics is the means of imposing it on everyone. They do attempt to impose their religion – liberalism – on all of us.
Like any religious zealots and extremists, the liberals find any views that are in contrast to theirs heretical – and that, again, is why they fear John Ashcroft. They assume he is as zealous and extreme in the pursuit of his passions as they are of their own, and what that would mean if he were confirmed as attorney general because they think he would then have the power to impose his religion upon theirs and obliterate it.