what I've been saying for a while

In his latest Substack, Dr. Vallicella writes:

We American conservatives are at a certain disadvantage as compared to our leftist brethren. We don’t seek the meaning of our lives in the political sphere but in the private arena: in hobbies, sports, our jobs and professions, in ourselves, our families, friends, neighborhoods, communities, clubs and churches; in foot races and chess tournaments; in the particular pleasures of the quotidian round in all of their scandalous particularity.

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We don't look to politics for meaning. Or rather, we do not seek any transcendent meaning in the political sphere. We either deny that there is such a thing as transcendent meaning, or we seek it in religion, or in philosophy, or in such spiritual exercises as meditation.

[ ... ]

The conservative accepts no ersatz soteriology. And precisely because he understands human nature and the human heart, the typical atheist conservative will respect religion and the good that it has done, a good obviously not unmixed with evil. Respect for religion among nonreligious conservatives is due in large part to the fact that conservatism for the conservative is not itself a religion or a substitute for a religion. The leftist, by contrast is virulently against religion because leftism is an ideology that sees religion as a competing ideology.

Leftism sees politics as religion. The way it's divided up in my mind, if you're an interlocutor with whom I can speak civilly and not shout at polemically, that's in part because you're a liberal who doesn't conflate politics and religion. We might not agree, but you're welcome to tea. If, however, you're the type to break off a years-long friendship with me merely because we have different political viewpoints, then you're a leftist who conflates politics and religion, which is why your behavior scans as religious—the extremities of emotion and action, the intolerance, the stark black-and-white worldview, the unwillingness/inability to engage in discussion and debate. The irony is that your behavior reads as fundamentalist: you're exhibiting the same traits as those of the fundie Christians you claim to despise, and there's something both sad and funny about that. This is obviously not a scholarly contrast between liberals and leftists; it's more of a "by their fruits shall you know them" rule of thumb. Maybe in a later post, I might break down what I see as the core differences between liberals and leftists—something that runs much deeper than "friendly/unfriendly to Kevin."