According to Dennis Prager, liberals are amoral communist heathens. In an editorial so far off base, so hysterically unmoored from reality that it’s almost impossible to understand how it could actually be published as anything other than as a dark parody of Right-wing paranoia, Prager essentially argues in Human Events that the difference between liberals and conservatives in modern day America is the former do not believe in the divinity of the Torah (i.e. the five books of Moses), while the latter takes on faith the fact that this document is indeed the received word of the Almighty.
According to Prager: “That a belief or lack of belief in the divinity of a book dating back over 2,500 years is at the center of the Culture War in America and between religious America and secular Europe is almost unbelievable. But it not only explains these divisions; it also explains the hatred that much of the Left has for Jewish, Protestant, Catholic and Mormon Bible-believers.
For the Left, such beliefs are irrational, absurd and immoral. (emphasis added)
Which is exactly how most conservatives regard most leftist beliefs, such as: there is nothing inherently superior in a child being raised by a mother and father rather than by two fathers or two mothers; men and women are not basically different, but only socially influenced to be different; Marxism was scientific; that the Soviet Union was not an evil empire; it was immoral for Israel to bomb Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor; morality is relative to the individual or society; there is no moral judgment to be made about a woman aborting a healthy human fetus solely because she doesn’t want a baby at this time; material poverty, not moral poverty, causes violent crime, etc.
This divide explains why the wrath of the Left has fallen on those of us who lament the exclusion of the Bible at a ceremonial swearing-in of an American congressman. The Left wants to see that book dethroned. And that, in a nutshell, is what the present civil war is about.”
Like his intellectual brother-in-arms and fellow blowhard hypocrite Bill O’Reilly, Dennis Prager would like us to believe that America is presently engulfed in some sort of a “culture war” between those who are basically moral relativists (i.e. liberals) and those who are moral absolutists who draw their moral code from the Torah (i.e. the Judeo-Christian conservatives). Conservatives believe in right and wrong, liberals are immature children who lead shallow lives without the benefit of a moral compass.
The great thing about this country is that there is no official religion. In fact, the Constitution specifically created a Chinese Wall between the Church and the State and prevents the government from establishing a connection between the two. Nevertheless, radicals like Prager would like to create a neat little dichotomy between those who believe in the Torah and those who do not, imagining the separate factions engaged in mortal combat for the soul of the nation. Forget the fact that there are in fact plenty of liberal Jews who believe in the moral precepts of the Torah, and plenty of conservative Hindus who don’t believe in the Torah or accept Judeo-Christian theology at all. In fact, it would be interesting to see Prager try to support with, you know, actual evidence, his theory that liberals “hate” Bible-believers because such a gross generalization is simply not borne out by the facts.
If there is a culture war being waged in America in the 21st Century, it is a rather one-sided affair instigated by holier-than-thou hypocrites like Dennis Prager who endeavor to stereotype liberals as morally bankrupt and hostile to Judeo-Christian religious beliefs. Most liberals that I know feel no hatred in their hearts for anyone who sincerely believes in the sanctity of the Torah, and in fact many liberals hold genuine beliefs themselves. Then again, all of this should really be irrelevant in the first place as athiests, Hindus and Buddhists are just as American as religious Jews or Christians, and are capable of leading ethical, principled lives.
The issue is not whether the Torah ought to be removed from public life as Prager posits – it is about whether one can be a loyal, productive member of American society without necessarily hewing to the laws and principles advanced by the Torah, and there is a conspicuous absence of supporting evidence in the editorial to lead one to believe this is not the case.
Steve,
Prager’s said this nonsense for 25 years. I recall, in the late 1980s, being in a small group with the guy where he said that crap. I stood up at the end and pointed out how it was Reagan who had the divorce, messed up relationship with kids, and kids who acted out–at the time it was well known that Patti Davis was a groupie for the Eagles, for example. I then contrasted that with the fairly dull married life of Walter Mondale and his kids.
Prager said, “Well, I’d have to speak for an hour to answer that.”
I responded, “Well, sir, you’ve already spoken for a long time and I’ve just spoken for a minute.”
That was the end of the Q and A, if I recall correctly.
What I don’t get after all these years is how any Jew who is not a right winger can have any positive feelings about him. He’s a jerk, a bully, and a hack. Yet, he’s still a revered guy in too many Temples around our nation. Oy.