News For You, Buddy: The “Left” Isn’t Controlled By Anybody

From a New York Times article about the resurgence of left-wing political activism among “communities of faith” and even “evangelicals”:

“The fact that one party has strategically used and abused religion, while the other has had a habitually allergic and negative response to religion per se, puts our side in a more difficult position in regard to political influence,” said the Rev. Jim Wallis, the evangelical social justice advocate who founded the Sojourners community and magazine in 1971.

“Most progressive religious leaders I talk to, almost all of them, feel dissed by the left,” he said. “The left is really controlled by a lot of secular fundamentalists.”

I have some bad news for Reverend Wallis: the “Left” isn’t controlled by anybody.  There is no “Left” per se.  There is a “Right” called “The Moral Majority” and led by Don the Con.  But there is no one politician, nor any one group, that can claim possession of the soul of the “Left.”  Even the Democratic Party doesn’t have the allegiance of left-wingers.  They wanted Bernie Sanders, not Hillary Clinton, remember?

So if I wanted to say that a true Left-wing position includes religious people who are willing to tolerate other faiths and even atheists/agnostics, no one could say that I am wrong.  Because no-one has the moral authority to claim that exclusion of anyone who wants to be included is right.  So there.