X will be more like Y if X just acts more like Y

Due to some basically random and kinda funny only to me things that the modern internet does to people’s information networks, I stumbled across this article:

Why white evangelicals rule the midterms

I can’t speak for the factual accuracy of the article, or whether you’d find its aims desirable. But I found it amusing that it basically boils down to recommending that if Liberals want the same outcomes as conservatives, they should act more like conservatives.

If liberals act like conservatives, then do they become conservatives? (Questions of acting and being, I suppose.)

It is tempting to see religion as an organizing principle within people’s lives, but the causality may go the other way–people who are prone to organized community life tend to join/form religious organizations.

As for the article’s general recommendation that liberals build more community from the ground up–well, I like community, or at least the idea of it. But I also think there are some strong impediments to liberals actually building community. Liberals are more likely to be young people, who simply haven’t lived in one place long enough to form communities. Liberals are more likely to be folks from small, diasporic ethnic groups, who don’t have a big group of people to join with. They are more likely to come from communities where factors like crime and poverty have large negative effects on people’s ability to have nice public spaces where they can hang out. Etc.

Beyond their ethnic enclaves, the far left seems to be having trouble with effective organization. Someone has said that trying to get liberals to do anything is like herding cats; much mention is also made of the circular liberal firing squad, and of course the metaphor of everyone jockying for position on a doomed, sinking ship.

Still, despite it all, communities that care about each other and provide basic social support and friendship for their members, without falling prey to some of the violent excesses of certain communities I could mention, seem like a good thing.