Give me that old time religion! A few years ago, Jay Nordlinger wrote in National Review Online:

Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute tells a story about Julian Simon, the late and great economist.

He was at some environmental forum, and he said, “How many people here believe that the earth is increasingly polluted and that our natural resources are being exhausted?” Naturally, every hand shot up. He said, “Is there any evidence that could dissuade you?” Nothing. Again: “Is there any evidence I could give you — anything at all — that would lead you to reconsider these assumptions?” Not a stir. Simon then said, “Well, excuse me, I’m not dressed for church.”

I love that story, for what it says about the fixity of these beliefs, immune to evidence, reason, or anything else.

Last year, Jonah Goldberg explored the concept of liberalism as religion in depth; the whole article is very much worth your time, but here's a representative sample:

It was the philosopher Eric Voegelin who, in a phrase made famous by William F. Buckley Jr., decried the liberal impulse as an attempt to "immanentize the eschaton," or to create a heaven on earth. The often spiritual nature of the environmental movement; the quasi-messianic treatment of Martin Luther King Jr.; Bill Clinton's invocation of "covenants" with the American people; Hillary Clinton's hibernating "politics of meaning," which claimed to redefine what it meant to be a human being in the post-modern world--all of these are examples of what Voegelin would describe as the neo-Gnostic effort to make the hereafter simply here.

* * *

From Woodrow Wilson on, central to the new liberals' project was to create, in [Thurman] Arnold's words, a "religion of government," where the old dogma of a limited state with defined powers would be rendered obsolete in favor of an "organic" state and an oracular "living constitution." Perhaps Howard Dean should purchase some "Don't Immanentize the Eschaton!" buttons with the "Don't" crossed out.

Flashforward to today's announcement, which should therefore come as little surprise: Byron York writes that "the founder of DailyKos plans to move into the megachurch business. But the Church of Kos will be a little, well, different":

At what's arguably the top of his game, Moulitsas says he's "going offline" next year, taking his obvious knack for building online communities and applying it to that other great American pastime: sports. And once he gets his network of sports blogs ramped up, he'll turn to building communities in the real world, a chain of giant meeting places "replicating megachurches for the left" – complete with cafés and child care. Moulitsas has shown he can harness people's enthusiasm, but he says he doesn't want a leadership role in these "democracy centers"...

While working on the mechanics of the sports blogs, he plans to embark next year on building real-world destinations for progressives and liberals throughout the Midwest, "cultural outposts" designed to attract thousands of like-minded liberals. "Each one of these would have a vast left-wing conspiracy component," he says, like leadership training or discussions on progressive issues.

Well, at the least it should make for a fun interfaith rival with an even more supersized and eschaton-obsessed house of worship that's opening soon in England.