<The heart of the worldview of the honest (not powerseeking) leftist is seeing the world as he wishes it to be, and not as it is,

Stipulated: however, not exclusive to the leftists. A case can easily be made for rightists seeing the workd as they wish it once was.

and the firm belief that by wishing hard enough, or saying something often enough, or insisting that something is real when it's not, it's going to come true.

Evident in the behavior of many advocates of many causes, and again not just liberal ones. It's called 'shouting down the opposition' and is, in fact, the most often used tactic by extremists of all stripes and colors: those have no innate grasp of (or formal training in) persuasive speech or writing.

It is no coincidence that "New Age" beliefs, which are largely "magical" in nature (crystals, homeopathy, astrology, feng shui, etc.), are appealing to such people.

Ah, yes... "New Age" beliefs such as astrology.... thousands of years old and the inadvertant precursor of naked-eye astrometrics; devoted adherents include such noted leftists as Nancy Reagan.

I am applying this generally, not to any specific people on this board.

Of course not "any specific people on this board"!!! But you're not applying it generally enough, Tom.

Beyond that.... it's really easy to mistake sprituality for pseudoscience, as easy as it is to mistake anyone else's religion for mythology (or, in extreme cases, an excuse to kill them). The way I see it, "pseudoscience" is exactly that: natural philosophies, as the phrase used to go, hiding behind a thin (often tranparent) veneer of buzzwords and claiming to be science - also usually claiming, loudly (see 'shouting down the opposition', above) that they're being suppressed by a global conspiracy of ivory-tower eggheads... the very people they're simultaneously emulating. It's all quite laughable.

'Creation science', for instance - now there's a magnet for espousers of liberal causes...

And then, of course, there's SDAI - 'nuff said yet?

E'