The Rise of the Political Atheist
The Death of Civic Faith
I used to believe in the system. Not in unicorns or bipartisan kumbayas—just the notion that governance might still function behind the scenes. I believed elections mattered, debates had meaning, and somewhere in the bureaucratic swamp, a few frogs were still swimming toward something that looked like Integrity.
I graduated from Republican orthodoxy to Libertarian purity: self-ownership, private property, limited government, Constitutional sanctity, and the sacred Non-Aggression Principle. I evangelized on Talk Radio, spoke at conventions, hosted icons like Walter Williams, and truly believed we’d cracked the code to save the Republic. Turns out it was just another dialect of dysfunction as I watched the Party regularly implode under the weight of its own purity tests and amateur theatrics. Libertarians are just Republicans with better vocabulary and worse organizational skills.
But Belief has a shelf life. Mine expired after watching Republicans and Democrats re-enacting the same rituals, producing the same rot. Politics, politicians, and process—the holy trinity of American governance—had morphed into a taxpayer-funded escape room: rigged, performative, and absurdly expensive.
What I once saw as civic faith, I now recognize as institutional theater. And like any atheist who’s left the church, I traded reverence for ridicule, hope for a well-earned eye roll, and belief for the cold clarity of disillusionment.
The Political Atheist Defined
The political atheist isn’t an anarchist. He doesn’t reject order—he rejects sanctimony. He doesn’t burn the Constitution—he just stopped pretending anyone reads it. What he rejects is the civic religion: the quaint idea that politics is sacred, that politicians are high priests, and that the rituals of governance deserve obeisance simply because they exist.
Where the religious atheist walks away from divine authority, the political atheist walks away from institutional authority that demand reverence. He’s unmoved by phrases like “sacred duty,” “moral arc,” “soul of the nation,” or the ever-nauseating “for the greater good”—not because he lacks morality, but because he’s seen how those words are used to launder power. He doesn’t pray at the altar of party or process. Instead, he asks who built the altar, who profits from the sermon, and why the pews never change.
Political atheism isn’t nihilism. It’s clarity. It’s the refusal to genuflect before a system that rewards cowardice, punishes dissent, and cloaks dysfunction in ritualized jabberwocky. It’s not the absence of belief—it’s the presence of discernment. The political atheist doesn’t want chaos. He wants accountability. But he’s done imagining accountability lives in a government pulpit.
The Ritual of Cowardice
The system doesn’t demand courage; it requires choreography. Politicians don’t lead; they perform. They rehearse outrage, recite empathy, and bow to optics like altar boys afraid of excommunication. The brave are
Article from LewRockwell
LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
