A regular topic around here is the emerging new religion of the cultural elites. This new faith is based on the “Four News” (new customs, new culture, new habits, new ideas), which are rooted in egalitarianism, multiculturalism and anti-racism. These are axioms from which our rulers build policy.

Throughout the West, the people commanding the political, cultural and financial high ground demand obedience to the new thinking with regards to human society. “New thinking” is the way they phrase it, as in not the “old thinking,” which is all bad. Naturally, anyone, who rejects the Four News, is dismissed as a bad thinker.

In some countries, you can be thrown in jail for being rude to members of a protected class. Every day we see news stories from Europe about someone being hauled in front of a judge for the crime of hate speech. In France, they are hauling the leader of a major political party into court under suspicion of bad-think.

In America, your career is at risk if you violate any of the sacred taboos. If you fail to show proper enthusiasm for the one true faith, you run the risk of being expelled from polite society. The term of art is “Watsoned.” Now, the social media giants are “disappearing” people for violating the new religion, by banning their accounts. Robert Stacy McCain is the most recent example.

This new religion is not a reaction to or even a response to the traditional Christianity it seeks to replace. Instead, it is just a collection of aspirations cobbled together in order to fill the void where Christianity once existed in the culture. It’s often completely irrational. The NBA is hailed for its diversity, while the Oscars are pilloried for their lack of diversity.

It is, however, all about the piety display. Instead of obeying dogma in order to gain the grace of God, the people of the New Religion obey the rules in order to gain the grace of one another. They are locked into a perpetual pose down, advertising their piety to one another, like peacocks fighting for a mate.

You see this most clearly with race. Our betters are always trying to show they are more opposed to racism than everyone else. So much so that trivial nonsense is treated like serious crime, blown up into scandal just so some people have an excuse to tell us they oppose racism. Because this is about signaling piety, it means posing in the media, like animals on display at the zoo. This from Jim Geraghty the other day is a good example

If we're not on this earth to stand up to the David Dukes of the world, to declare that his hate is un-American, why are we here?

— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) February 28, 2016

Jim Geraghty is a small bore chattering skull hanging on to the lower rungs of the commentariat. His ability to remain indoors and eat regularly depends on him winning the favor of those above him on the ladder. The way to do that is to be the most enthusiastic for the one true faith. Exactly no one is paying him to think about the events of the day. His job is to repeat what others say. He hopes to gain attention by impressing his superiors with his enthusiasm.

Now, until this weekend I was pretty sure that David Duke was dead, but it turns out he is still on the sunny side of the grass. Putting that aside, look at the language here. We’re put on earth to oppose David Duke?  Of course, he means racism, not David Duke the person, but that’s no less trivial. That’s what he thinks man is on earth to do, oppose racism? That’s it? That’s why we’re here?

The smallness of the New Religion is, I suspect, its great weakness. Religions have always served to fill in the gaps between what man knows about the world and what he observes. As Lucretius put it, “it was fear that made the gods.” The fear of the unknown, the fear of uncertainty, the fear of death, that’s what a proper religions address. Fear of being a racist falls somewhere around fear of clowns.

The pettiness of this religion does not make it less vicious in the hands of the believer. In fact, it is the petty religions that are the bloodiest. Nazism led Germany to the precipice of the abyss just to be rid of the Jews. Bolshevism murdered tens of millions just to meet the monthly quotas of the concrete factories. The new religion ruins lives on a daily basis for nothing more than a few moments of smug satisfaction by the adherents.

What was made plain with the materialist cults of the previous era is they offered nothing, other than a reason for the strong to exploit the weak. The cultural weirdness of Russia allowed such a system to stagger on for 70 years, but most everywhere else these cults collapse under the weight of their pettiness and pointlessness. They answer no questions and they promise nothing worth having.

Eventually they run out of weak to exploit.