Need to Worship

Sarah Hoyt is trying to figure out why the press et al refuse to believe (or at least acknowledge) anything bad about their progressive heroes, despite ample evidence.

People want to believe figures of authority are right.  Constitutional monarchies give the people a figure head to believe in, while they can jump on and kick the actual government five ways from Monday.  We don’t have that.  (And no, I don’t want that.  Yes, I was a monarchist before after I was an anarchist, but that was Portugal and in Portugal you can’t wring the idea some people are better than others by virtue of their birth out of the culture.  It’s something I don’t want to install itself in minds here.)  The president was SORTA supposed to be like that.  But it was long ago (and besides, the wench is as dead as the Portuguese monarchist I once was.)
But still, we want to believe people in power, people at the head of any field, any company, any institution can be trusted.  It’s the monkey brain. 

I think she's in the ballpark, but I'd like to offer a refinement.

Whether you think it's an evolutionary adaptation or not, human beings have a deep need to worship something. I think that explains a lot about celebrity culture, and I think it explains a lot about why political culture in America breaks down like it does.

People who believe in God have that need to worship satisfied in their religion. People who don't concern themselves with religion often find themselves at the altar of government, and, and as a grand orator might say, they bitterly cling to that altar.

As always, I'm not saying that small-government conservatives are all Christians and big-government liberals are all atheists. But when you look at the two groups, you can see some pretty obvious tendencies in what they worship.