Tocqueville on leftism and Islam

In discussions at this site, liberalism has often been compared with Islam as a false religion seeking total power. We’re not the first people to have noted the resemblances between leftism and Islam. Ellis Sandoz writes in A Government of Laws (p. 134),

Tocqueville is … uniquely astute in recognizing that the spiritual dimensions of human existence do not simply vanish because men become atheistic and rebellious. He brilliantly analyzed the ideology of the French Revolution as an Ersatz religion aiming at “nothing short of a regeneration of the whole human race…. This strange religion has, like Islam, overrun the whole world with its apostles, militants, and martyrs.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 09, 2009 10:05 AM | Send