Project Veritas's recent videos of Bernie Sanders's campaign staffers brought an old issue into new focus: the ways in which leftism and its kissing cousin, atheism, end up at violent odds with just about everything good that is America.

To be sure, Sanders's campaign "field director," Kyle Jurek, didn't preface his video remarks with an announcement that he is an atheist, and Bernie Sanders holds himself out as a "secular Jew." But Jurek's viewpoints — and Sanders's campaign planks — track closely and logically with tenets of atheism. The result, as evidenced in Jurek's remarks, is an angry, ugly hostility to America, including to the culture that has developed from the founding ideals.

An important question looms in the background as Americans have watched a Democrat Party taken over by increasingly strident leftists and atheists: can America as founded be sustained under a governing worldview of atheism?

We think the answer to this question is an emphatic no. That emphatic "no" is foremost among the reasons why so many American patriots have a visceral dislike for or distrust of the current slate of Democrat presidential candidates. It's why the prospect of "President Bernie Sanders" sets off alarm bells as a profoundly radical and dangerous threat to this nation.

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Let's be clear at the outset that many atheists are "live and let live" productive citizens who are also polite to their friends, family and neighbors, including those who are practicing adherents of many different faiths and of no faith. Not all atheists are militant proselytizers of their unbelief; not all are politically active. And in any case, in America, atheists have every right to their beliefs (or unbeliefs).

The problem isn't athe-ists; the problem is athe-ism when it is a core animating principle (if "animating principle" is not an oxymoron to an atheist) of a candidate for elective office, including most significantly the president of the United States of America.

Atheism says life is essentially purposeless; men and women are arbitrary collections of stardust with not much more to them than instincts to eat, drink, and procreate. From such a starting point, Creator-endowed unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness may be nice words uttered in a backwater era, but they have no clear meaning or relevance in a godless universe.

Similarly, atheism essentially says the handing down and preservation of generational wisdom and aspiration — i.e., "securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity" — are quaint but ultimately silly ideas. Families — as the basic organizing units for successive generations — are highly inconvenient and inefficient artifacts. Test tubes can take care of any need for procreation, and government schools can handle indoctrination of future collections of stardust. There's no need to think with a long-term view for the betterment of humanity; that would imply a purpose to life. The logic of atheism would say: get what you can get now; there may not be a later.

What about that all men and women are "created equal"? Atheism says: give me a break. Look around. The masses are filled with born losers who have no way out or up. The idea of teaching them or anyone else the concept of righteousness, or precepts for moral living, as a way to improve their lot in life over time, is delusional and cruel. Whether the chips fall your way is a matter of chance; life's a b----, and then you die. Basic "secular morality" is all you need and all there is: as long as you don't hurt somebody else, do whatever you want whenever you want with whomever or whatever you want.

And so...atheism substantially undercuts the founding ideals and culture of America.

But that's not all.

When the worldview of atheism sees what it considers as imperfections in the human scene, the default answer to all of them is the immediate hammer of power (called "government") to make things as they ought to be.

Some people have less than others? Forget faith, patience, persistence, and the work ethic, AKA the American Dream. The need is for government-compelled redistribution of wealth, now.

Some people have a billion dollars? All success is random, not earned ("you didn't build that"). The rich are simply collections of stardust who happened to be the lucky winners of "life's lottery."

Nobody should have more than anybody else, and everybody should have everything, equally. So (1) take away those arbitrary, unearned riches, and send the billionaires to rock-splitting prisons to cut them down to size like everybody else, and (2) make the guarantee of free stuff the purpose of government, use those arbitrary riches you grabbed from the billionaires to pay for it, and spend your policy debate time deciding which free stuff should be handed out first and which should be later.

What about law and order? Another quaint but outdated and outmoded concept. The atheist knows that raw power defines what is or isn't law and enforces order. (Just ask our Deep State coup-plotters and Flynn-prosecutors at the DOJ and FBI.) Not truth, because there is no such thing.

And the idea of respecting free people freely choosing or electing their government? Not if the people they elect espouse beliefs, aspirations, or policies not grounded in atheism. Burn it all down if they make the wrong choice. So says Mr. Jurek.

Aren't those prisons/re-education camps/gulags a little harsh for those who don't submit? Mr. Jurek told us, hey, what's so bad about a re-education camp? The Soviet gulags purportedly paid a living wage and allowed conjugal visits. That's about as meaningful as a purposeless life gets — so what's the big concern?

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Bernie Sanders seems to embrace the scruffy old crazy-uncle-in-the-attic character to make himself more likeable, and he is savvy enough to know that overt atheism won't play well with the American electorate. He tempers his avowed socialism with a nod toward his "spiritual beliefs." And insert here the standard truism that nobody knows exactly what's in another's heart. But don't be fooled. Bernie Sanders is a hardcore leftist, which is essentially equivalent to a communist and is almost always synonymous, for all practical purposes, with an atheist. So is Mr. Jurek. And the governing ideas that flow from the worldview of atheism are poison to America as founded and to America's future.

One more thing: George Soros and his Open Society Foundation and their affiliates are together almost certainly the largest financing source for hard-left candidates and causes throughout the country. Soros's vision: to drive all religion — most especially Judaism and Christianity — out of America, to be replaced by his "open society." Atheism über alles.

If America as founded is to be preserved, Americans need to care about the atheism of the far left. They need to detect their candidates and spokesmen and organizations and policies — and reject all of them, emphatically.

Eric Georgatos is a former corporate lawyer who operated the Brushfires of Freedom blog from 2008 to 2016. (A book of top postings from the blog is available at America, Can We Talk?)

Image: Ralph Buckley via Flickr (red panels added).