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Progressives are, by and large, psychologically and spiritually alienated, meaning they feel little to no sympathetic or affective connection to God or their fellow man outside their narrow ideological tribe. You can hear it in their dismissive and mocking rhetoric of others: Fly-over country, hillbillies, rednecks, Jesus-freaks, fascists, racists, etc.

As a result of their alienation, progressives have a sense that human society is fundamentally hostile and disordered and that their fellow man is at best a latent threat. This leads to two patterns of behavior. First is a revolutionary spirit that speculatively seeks to remake the world in such a way to ensure what they would consider to be hostile and disordered forces are permanently eliminated. The second is a deep seated compulsion to control people's lives, thoughts, and behaviors, a characteristic that the philosopher Eric Voegelin, tipping his hat to Church Fathers like St. Augustine, called libido dominandi.

The upshot of their alienation is this: progressives will always attempt to regulate, manipulate, and dominate others as a way to enforce their vision of the world, and upon noncompliance, they will seek their complete exclusion from society if not their total destruction.

Sources of Alienation

One issue that arises when speaking of alienation is simply this: What is its source?

The problem is, there is no single source. If there is an overarching theme, then perhaps it's this: alienation arises when the economy of loving and being loved is somehow broken.

Sometimes, the alienation is intrinsic to the person: from neuroses or personality disorders preventing the individual from either loving or feeling worthy of being loved.

Sometimes, it is from a deep wound from a relationship that by rights should have been loving, but wasn't. It might due to an abusive or overbearing father, or a hypercritical or alcoholic mother. It could arise from the betrayal of a spouse, or a cycle of loveless or abusive physical relationships.

Sometimes, it comes from the feeling that one is in a group that is constantly embattled within society. Conversely, it could come from being captive within a group that somehow is beset by pathologies of its own making.

Sometimes, alienation is specifically cultivated among people by the unscrupulous who see the alienation as a source of angry and vengeful political action that they can exploit for political power.

There is a way out of alienation but it requires sacrificial love, a deference for the truth, a respect of human frailty, and a commitment to merciful forgiveness. At that point, human concord can flourish, with friendship and trust growing among those previously set apart through alienation.