Bernie Sanders and the left's problem with magical thinking

Idealism in politics gets too much good press

Bernie Sanders.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

Idealism in politics gets too much good press.

When it informs political rhetoric, elevating the pursuit of power and giving it moral shape, idealism has its place. But too often it becomes indistinguishable from magical thinking — from the empirically unfalsifiable conviction that what one's ideological compatriots hope to achieve is so self-evidently wonderful, so obviously pure, so transparently righteous that it is bound to prevail.

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.