No. 1: The NATO excuse
A widely offered explanation for the Russian invasion of Ukraine is that Russia — which at this time essentially means President Vladimir Putin — fears the expansion of NATO to its borders, especially Ukraine. The argument is often presented as an analogy: How would the United States react if Mexico had a mutual defense pact with Russia and received weapons from Russia?
A second explanation is that Russia is &#8220;paranoid&#8221; as a result of its having been devastated by the invasions of Napoleon&#8217;s France in the 19th century and Hitler&#8217;s Germany in the 20th. This was the excuse that many professional excuse makers made for the Soviet Union&#8217;s shooting down — without any warning — Korean Air Lines flight 007 in 1983, killing all 269 passengers and crew.
&#8220;The Russians are paranoid&#8221; became a widespread explanation. Seymour Hersh, the best-known New York Times investigative reporter for decades, wrote a book on the shooting down of KAL 007. As described in a 1986 New York Times book review, &#8220;On the Soviet side, writes Mr. Hersh, there was paranoia.&#8221;
When I was a graduate student at Columbia University&#8217;s Russian Institute, I regularly encountered the &#8220;paranoid&#8221; explanation for Soviet/Russian policies. It struck me then, and even more so now, as pathologic or false, or both. Russia is by far the largest country on Earth, spanning approximately one-ninth of all the world&#8217;s land surface. When that fact is combined with Russia&#8217;s vast nuclear weaponry, the &#8220;paranoia&#8221; explanation for Russian aggression is rendered absurd.
It is even more absurd when one considers the countries Russia allegedly fears will invade them. Which one of their Western-border countries — Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine — is likely to invade Russia? Wasn&#8217;t every one of them invaded by Russia? Shouldn&#8217;t every one of them be paranoid?
We&#8217;ll end the &#8220;paranoid&#8221; discussion with this rule of history: Generally speaking, wars are either between two police states or between a police state and a free state. And the latter are nearly always initiated or provoked by the police state. Russia has nothing to fear from its neighbors. Its neighbors have plenty to fear from Russia.
2. America is watching, not intervening.
I know of no American, on the Right or the Left, who has called for sending the U.S. military into Ukraine. But every American should feel awful — morally and as an American — about America sitting by and watching the first major invasion of a peaceful country since Hitler and Stalin. One reason is that since World War II, the weaker nations of the world have all held onto the hope that should they be attacked by a stronger nation, Americans would come to their aid.
America is aiding Ukraine with arms and economic sanctions, but as I watch peaceful Ukraine devoured by aggressive Russia, I can&#8217;t help but think that it appears that evil will triumph — and lead to more evil on Earth. I have never agreed with the throwaway line, &#8220;America is not the world&#8217;s policeman.&#8221; Does the world not need a policeman? And if not America, who? China? Russia? The U.N.?
If the strongest boy in high school, one whom the weakest boys and girls looked to for protection, decided one day to watch rather than to protect them as they were beaten by the school bully, even if there was good reason for the lack of intervention, wouldn&#8217;t that be a very sad day? And wouldn&#8217;t it affect the way the protector saw himself?
Most Americans see themselves as protectors of the weak against bully nations. This is the first time in our lifetime that America has abandoned that role.
No. 3: A comedian is the world&#8217;s most courageous political leader.
By general consensus among the world&#8217;s media and world&#8217;s nations, Ukraine&#8217;s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the most courageous leader in the world today.
For many people, this is particularly remarkable since Zelenskyy&#8217;s professional background is that of a comedian. It strikes most people as amazing that a comedian turns out to be the world&#8217;s most inspiring leader.
That, of course, was the reason so many dismissed Donald Trump when he ran for president: &#8220;He has no political experience, he&#8217;s just a wealthy real estate developer.&#8221; However, that real estate developer also turned out to be the most courageous leader in the world. Honest haters of Trump must at least acknowledge his courage — just as supporters must acknowledge his lack of a filter between his brain and his mouth.
It was Trump who had the courage to demand that our NATO allies live up to their obligations with regard to military spending. Ironically, thanks to Putin, the NATO countries are finally doing so. It was Trump who uncovered a deep state of corruption in nearly every major American governmental institution. It was Trump who took on the mainstream media, regarded by half of America as little better than Pravda, the Soviet newspaper. It was Trump who had the courage to do what president after president and Congress after Congress called for but never acted on: moving the American embassy in Israel to Israel&#8217;s capital city, Jerusalem. He did this despite the opposition of almost every world leader and his own State Department. If that&#8217;s not courage, what is?
And it remains a fact that Putin did not invade Ukraine while Trump was president. Putin feared Trump. Neither Putin nor anyone else fears President Joe Biden.
It is therefore not at all surprising that a comedian is the world&#8217;s most courageous leader. It is surprising that people still think a lifelong political career produces leaders. Biden is a lifelong politician and, as his behavior during COVID-19 showed, may well be the least courageous president in American history.
4. Western environmentalists made the invasion possible.
It is overwhelmingly likely that American and European environmentalists made the Russian invasion of Ukraine possible. Under Trump, America became energy independent and was even able to supply Europe with energy. But the environmental movement, which dominates the Democratic Party and nearly every Western European country, has made Russia the major supplier of natural gas to Europe, and especially to the most important country on the European continent, Germany.
The environmentalist movement uses climate change to achieve its primary objectives: undoing of the West&#8217;s economic foundations, reshaping the Western way of life, dismantling capitalism and transferring wealth to the Third World. They will pursue these aims at any cost — whether crippling inflation, energy blackouts, even the strengthening of Russia and China.
If you really believe climate change poses an &#8220;existential threat&#8221; to human life, there is no price too high to pay in order to eliminate fossil fuel-based energy. That includes empowering and enriching evil men.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

PRAGER: On Ukraine, Comedians, NATO, America And Environmentalists

NATO

Russia

Ukraine

Canada is leaving the Western world.
In terms of all-encompassing government, suppression of dissent and the denial of fundamental human rights to many of its citizens, Canada is now more similar to Cuba than to any free country. Canada may eventually return to Western civilization, but as of this writing, the majority of Canadians appear to have no interest in it doing so. According to Maru Public Opinion, &#8220;two-thirds (66%) of Canadians support Prime Minister Justin Trudeau bringing in the Emergencies Act &#8230; A majority (56%) of Canadians do not support the truckers who are protesting in any way, shape, or form &#8230; This is a majority view held in every province/region across the country.&#8221;
I suspect that most Americans — and certainly most people outside of America or Canada — do not know precisely what Canada&#8217;s Marxist prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is doing to his country.
So, allow me to review.
Last week, for only the second time in Canadian history other than wartime — the first time was under Justin Trudeau&#8217;s father, Pierre Trudeau, the other Marxist to govern Canada — Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act. This statute enables a Canadian prime minister to suspend fundamental human rights and rule as a dictator.
The CBC described in detail how Trudeau is using the Emergencies Act to destroy the lives of Canadian dissidents. This should be read carefully. Such policies have never been enacted by a Western country against its own citizens (with the extremely rare exceptions of those actively engaged in terrorism):
&#8220;Using powers granted under the Emergencies Act, the federal government has directed banks and other financial institutions to stop doing business with people associated with the anti-vaccine mandate convoy occupying the nation&#8217;s capital.
&#8220;The government&#8217;s new directive, called the &#8217;emergency economic measures order,&#8217; goes beyond asking banks to simply stop transferring funds to protest organizers. The government wants banks to stop doing business with some people altogether.
&#8220;The order says that banks and other financial entities (like credit unions, co-ops, loan companies, trusts and cryptocurrency platforms) must stop &#8216;providing any financial or related services&#8217; to people associated with the protests — a move that will result in frozen accounts, stranded money and cancelled credit cards.
&#8220;The Emergencies Act gives authorities the power to freeze the finances of those connected to blockades and protests, and the consequences could last long after the demonstrations end&#8230;
&#8220;The regulation&#8217;s definition of a &#8220;designated person&#8221; also includes &#8230; anyone sending funds to support these protests&#8230;
&#8220;Mark Blumberg is a lawyer at Blumberg Segal LLP who specializes in non-profit and charity law. In an interview, he said that while the Emergencies Act gives banks time-limited powers, these institutions &#8216;may just decide to shut the person&#8217;s account down&#8217; because there could be &#8216;huge risks&#8217; for banks servicing these customers in the future. Banks will be working with law enforcement to decide who should be &#8216;de-banked.&#8217;
&#8220;A senior government official said &#8230; police could gather the names and license plate numbers of people participating in a protest or an unlawful assembly and share that information with FINTRAC (Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada) &#8230;
&#8220;Former CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) senior strategic analyst Jessica Davis (said) &#8216;the people who are participating in the protest aren&#8217;t going to be able to do things like pay bills, pay their hotel bills. They will eventually run out of supplies as well&#8230;
&#8220;With access to bank accounts and credit cards and other financial instruments suspended, protesters won&#8217;t be able to pay for things like hotel and fuel bills&#8230;
&#8220;Over the longer term, Davis said, it may be hard for some of the truckers participating to ever find work again because they could lack the necessary insurance to operate a big rig. &#8216;Paying bills, paying rent and any kind of day-to-day financial transaction can be stopped for people who are part of the protest movement,&#8217; she said. There may also be some &#8216;unintended consequences&#8217; from frozen accounts, such as suspended alimony and child support payments, Davis said. &#8216;It&#8217;s going to be very difficult for them.&#8217;
&#8220;Banks have been granted immunity against legal action in the event of disputes over whether someone should have been denied financial services. &#8216;No proceedings under the Emergencies Act and no civil proceedings lie against an entity for complying with this Order,&#8217; the regulations read.&#8221;
None of these life-ruining, due-process defying measures is necessary. The truckers&#8217; demonstrations could have been ended by arresting drivers who would not move their trucks or simply just towing their trucks. The purpose of these regulations is to destroy dissenters and deter future dissent. In a word, it is to ruin the lives of those who disobey Justin Trudeau.
As one who has followed Canadian life over the decades — I have lectured in nine of Canada&#8217;s 10 provinces — the moral descent of Canada is depressing but not especially surprising. Since I was in college in the 1970s, I traveled abroad every year of my life except in 2020 — to some 130 countries. I not only took interest in the countries I visited but in the tourists who visited them. I recall well that when I was young, many young Canadians stitched a Canadian flag onto their backpacks. As almost no tourists from other nations did that, I asked Canadians why they did. Their reason was to identify themselves as Canadian rather than as American.
I am not the first observer of Canadians to note that a major part of Canadian identity — especially among Canadian elites — is being a not-American. Many Canadians were and remain first and foremost not-Americans. Other than that, not much defines Canadians. And when a nation stands essentially for nothing, bad things eventually happen — because nothingness is eventually filled or replaced by bad.
On my radio show, I once asked the late Charles Krauthammer, one of the most insightful commentators of this era, what he saw as the greatest difference between his native Canada and his adopted country, the United States. Without hesitation, he said that in America the national motto is &#8220;Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,&#8221; and in Canada it is &#8220;Peace, Order, and Good Government.&#8221;
The first inspires a nation. The second doesn&#8217;t.
Upon the death of Fidel Castro, Justin Trudeau gave the most positive assessment of the Cuban tyrant of any Western leader. It is worth quoting in full because it demonstrates Trudeau&#8217;s affection for communism and because Trudeau is transforming Canada into Cuba:
&#8220;It is with deep sorrow that I learned today of the death of Cuba&#8217;s longest serving President. Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation.
&#8220;While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro&#8217;s supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for &#8216;el Comandante.&#8217;
&#8220;I know my father was very proud to call him a friend and I had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away. It was also a real honor to meet his three sons and his brother, President Raul Castro, during my recent visit to Cuba.
&#8220;On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to the family, friends and many, many supporters of Mr. Castro. We join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader.&#8221;
There does remain one major difference between Canada and Cuba. Few Cubans support their Marxist leaders, but most Canadians support theirs. They don&#8217;t know what they&#8217;re in for.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Canadian flag

PRAGER: Is Canada Becoming North America’s Cuba?

Canada

Cuba

Justin Trudeau

How individuals and institutions react to Lia Thomas, the biological male who is allowed to compete in women&#8217;s college swim competitions, is a good indicator of people&#8217;s values and level of rationality.
To recap, Will Thomas, a man who until two years ago was a member of the University of Pennsylvania&#8217;s men&#8217;s swim team, announced he was female and then joined the University of Pennsylvania&#8217;s women&#8217;s swim team.
Now named Lia, Thomas has set national records in women&#8217;s swimming, such as in the 200 and 500 freestyle. Women who have trained nearly all their lives to be competitive swimmers were cheated out of wins.
The obvious question is: Is this fair? Is it fair for a biological male to compete as a female against females? Or is Thomas cheating?
To most Americans the answer is clear: Thomas is cheating.
As I recently wrote a column arguing that Thomas is a cheat, I will not belabor the point.
Instead, I will discuss others&#8217; reactions, for, as I wrote, they reveal a great deal about those people and institutions.
We will begin with the New York Times. Rather than as a cheat, the New York Times regards Thomas as heroic. When the Times finally got around to covering the story — weeks after the non-Left media began covering the story did any of the &#8220;mainstream media&#8221; cover it — the Times&#8217; writer on college sports, Billy Witz, wrote about the Thomas affair.
He ended his column with an ode to Thomas:
&#8220;And so if there was something enduring about Saturday(&#8216;s swim competition between Penn and Harvard), it was not the two races that Thomas comfortably won or the two relays where she gamely tried. It was the way she carried herself in the water — head down, with grace and ease.&#8221;
That is how &#8220;woke&#8221; — a term that includes amorality and irrationality — The New York Times has become.
Now let&#8217;s proceed to the college whose women&#8217;s team Thomas swims for, the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), and the colleges which have competed against Penn — Cornell and Harvard.
Like virtually every other university in America, and every other Ivy League college, the University of Pennsylvania threw its women swimmers under the bus. Not only did it not side with the women swimmers, nearly all of whom, according to reports, felt cheated when Thomas beat them in every race they competed, but it had no reaction to Thomas displaying male genitals in the women&#8217;s locker room.
As reported in the Daily Mail:
&#8220;&#8216;We&#8217;re uncomfortable in our own locker room.&#8217; Lia Thomas&#8217; UPenn teammate tells how the trans swimmer doesn&#8217;t always cover up her male genitals when changing and their concerns go ignored by their coach&#8230;
&#8220;&#8216;It&#8217;s definitely awkward because Lia still has male body parts and is still attracted to women,&#8217; one swimmer on the team told Daily Mail &#8230; Lia has told her teammates that she dates women.
&#8220;&#8216;While Lia covers herself with a towel sometimes, there&#8217;s a decent amount of nudity,&#8217; the swimmer said. She and others have had a glimpse at her private parts.
&#8220;She stated that team members have raised their concern with the coach, trying to get Thomas ousted from the female locker room, but got nowhere.
&#8220;&#8216;Multiple swimmers have raised it, multiple different times,&#8217; the UPenn swimmer said. &#8216;But we were basically told that we could not ostracize Lia by not having her in the locker room and that there&#8217;s nothing we can do about it, that we basically have to roll over and accept it, or we cannot use our own locker room.&#8217;
&#8216;It&#8217;s really upsetting because Lia doesn&#8217;t seem to care how it makes anyone else feel,&#8217; the swimmer continued. &#8216;The 35 of us are just supposed to accept being uncomfortable in our own space and locker room for, like, the feelings of one.'&#8221;
UPenn&#8217;s reaction:
&#8220;The school released a terse statement last month that it was offering mental health services to student-athletes.&#8221;
Of course, neither Cornell nor Harvard defended their women either.
And those women dare not speak out. They know their futures could be destroyed if they did. As one Penn swimmer told the Daily Mail, &#8220;I might go on the record, but I&#8217;m definitely a little afraid. What I&#8217;m afraid of is that potential employers will Google my name and see commentary about things I said and think, oh, this person&#8217;s transphobic.&#8221;
However, just in case some brave women were considering speaking out, the Daily Mail reported that the University of Pennsylvania is &#8220;prohibiting students from talking to the media.&#8221; One assumes Harvard and Cornell did the same.
In the meantime, the woke cowards of the Ivy League released this statement:
&#8220;The Ivy League reaffirms its unwavering commitment to providing an inclusive environment for all student-athletes while condemning transphobia and discrimination in any form.&#8221;
Ironically, Lia Thomas has rendered us a service. She has helped clarify the moral and intellectual state of the Ivy League and the New York Times, two formerly respected institutions. But, of course, that was a long time ago.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

PRAGER: Trans Athletes, The New York Times, And The Ivy League

New York Times

Transgender Athletes

The Algemeiner, a Jewish publication I highly respect, published a column about Judaism that is not merely wrong; it actually advances a thesis that is the opposite of what Judaism teaches.
That fact alone would not have prompted me to write a rebuttal. What prompts me is that the column was written by an Orthodox rabbi. It is sad enough that many non-Orthodox rabbis have been influenced more by their secular/Left educations than by the Torah. But when a rabbi identified as &#8220;centrist Orthodox&#8221; distorts one of the most important and normative ideas in Judaism, and is published in a major Jewish journal, we might be in trouble. Of course, he might be an outlier. But I don&#8217;t think he is unique. Though certainly not yet dominant, secular values have entered parts of modern Orthodox life just as they have traditional Catholic and Protestant Christian life.
With regard to mainstream Christianity — both Catholicism and Protestantism — and non-Orthodox Judaism, we are indeed in trouble. The secular and leftist influence on these denominations has been disastrous.
I should note that I am not mentioning the rabbi&#8217;s name as I have no desire to make this issue personal, let alone engage in an ad hominem attack. I know that the curious can identify the rabbi by searching the internet, but I cannot control that. I can only control what I write. And since I assume that this rabbi is a sincere individual, I want to restrict my response to what he wrote.
The rabbi wrote that Judaism posits that people are basically good, that human nature is good.
This is one of the most foolish and dangerous ideas of the secular world. No Abrahamic religion — not Judaism, not Christianity, not Islam — asserts that people are basically good. This notion is a product of the secular age and a major reason for the moral confusion that characterizes our era.
With regard to Judaism, the Torah completely rejects the notion that man is basically good. God Himself states that &#8220;the will of man&#8217;s heart is evil from his youth&#8221; (Genesis 8:21) and that &#8220;every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time&#8221; (Genesis 6:5).
For a rabbi to assert that man is basically good is to assert that God was wrong. I am used to secular people saying that, not Orthodox rabbis.
In addition, the Torah — and the rest of the Bible — repeatedly warns us not to follow our hearts. In fact, Orthodox Jews cite this admonition from the Torah three times every day: &#8220;Do not follow your hearts and your eyes after which you prostitute yourselves&#8221; (Numbers 15:39).
If the human heart is basically good, why does the Bible repeatedly warn us not to follow it?
The rabbi never cites any of these verses. For good reason: They would simply invalidate his argument. This secular belief in the inherent goodness of man is not only not Jewish; as noted, it is foolish and dangerous.
How foolish? It is not possible to be aware of human history and to rationally maintain that people are basically good. For a Jew to believe such nonsense after the Holocaust is simply breathtaking. Apparently, basically good people murdered six million Jews.
But we don&#8217;t need references to the Holocaust to make our case.
In the 20th century alone, more than a hundred million people — civilians, not soldiers — were murdered by vile regimes and their vile followers. These include the approximately 20 million killed in the Gulag Archipelago; the slaughter of the Tutsis in Rwanda; the genocidal murder of Armenians; the deliberate starvation of about 60 million Chinese; the Japanese mass rape of Korean &#8220;comfort women&#8221; and hideous medical experiments on Chinese civilians; and the torture and murder of approximately one out of four Cambodians.
And that is only a partial list.
Virtually every serious thinker in history knew people were not basically good. They knew about the universality of slavery and the tortures and rapes that accompanied slavery. They knew how men behaved in wartime.
Were all the people who engaged in these evils aberrations? In fact, most were quite normal. The aberrations in history have been the truly good individuals. To cite the Holocaust, the Germans, French, Poles, Hungarians, Lithuanians and others who aided the Holocaust, let alone those who did nothing, were normal people. The handful who aided Jews were the aberrations.
And what about childhood bullying? Are fat, or slow, or unattractive boys and girls generally treated with kindness and empathy? The question is rhetorical.
And what about child sexual abuse? The WHO in 2002 estimated that 73 million boys and 150 million girls under the age of 18 years had experienced various forms of sexual violence. Quite remarkable for a world of basically good people.
So much for the foolishness of the belief that people are basically good. Now let&#8217;s deal with why it is dangerous.
One reason is that the most important, and most difficult, task of parents and of society is to raise good human beings. Yet, those who believe we are born good will not concentrate on making good people. Why bother if we&#8217;re already good?
A second reason the belief is dangerous is that those who believe it blame the evil that people do on outside forces, not on the individual who committed the evil. Belief in the basic goodness of human nature is the major reason people claim that poverty, or guns, or racism causes crime. Anything except the perpetrator.
The rabbi cites a Yale study that purports to show that babies are not only moral agents but are actually moral beings. Such studies are one reason so many Americans have come to hold universities in increasing contempt. The idea that babies know right and wrong is preposterous. The idea that babies are moral is even more preposterous. Babies are neither moral nor immoral since they have no more free will than your family dog.
Babies are selfish — as they have to be to survive. And babies are innocent. But innocent is not the same as good. The rabbi conflates &#8220;innocent&#8221; with &#8220;good.&#8221;
He also conflates &#8220;in God&#8217;s image&#8221; with &#8220;good.&#8221; He writes: &#8220;the Torah stating that human beings are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) (is) a statement that underscored humanity&#8217;s inherent goodness.&#8221;
Not so. Created &#8220;in God&#8217;s image&#8221; has never meant man is basically good. Rather, it means that human beings, like God (and unlike animals), know good from evil and have moral free will. In Genesis 1:27, Rashi, author of the most influential Jewish Bible commentary ever written, explains &#8220;in God&#8217;s image&#8221; as &#8220;the power to comprehend and to discern.&#8221; Second, it means that human life (again, unlike animal life) is infinitely precious.
Finally, if people are basically good, what is the Torah for? What are all the commandments for? If people are basically good, why would God need to command us not to murder? Don&#8217;t basically good creatures know this?
It is very troubling that an Orthodox rabbi would teach the opposite of what the Torah and Judaism teach concerning one of the most fundamental issues of life. As more and more modern Orthodox Jews attend college and graduate school, it is imperative that Jewish schools teach the distinctiveness of Jewish values.
Increasingly, they do not.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Torah

PRAGER: An Orthodox Rabbi Writes That People Are Basically Good – Judaism Is In Trouble

Judaism

Religion

Under the pretext of public health, the soul of what is known as the Free West has left most Western countries. Looking at the government overreach and abuses of power in virtually every other Western nation, one can only conclude that America truly is the last free man standing.
Here is a rundown of the suppression of liberty in major Western countries.
CANADA
Let&#8217;s start with our neighbor to the north.
Canada is one of the least free countries in the Western world. In some ways it is the least free. In every area of life, including freedom of speech, Canada severely restricts its citizens&#8217; rights. Canada is one of the only countries in the world that bans the unvaccinated from all public transportation — airplanes, trains and buses. And no Canadian home can entertain more than three non-household visitors — a ban that prevented families and friends from getting together for Christmas.
Canada is a moral embarrassment. But apparently most Canadians are perfectly content to live in a country moving toward dictatorship.
They should replace the maple leaf on the Canadian flag with a sheep.
EUROPE
In the summer of 2021, most European countries introduced the so-called health pass or &#8220;European COVID-19 Pass.&#8221; This digital pass, in the form of a QR code, is a prerequisite to access cafes, bars, restaurants, theaters and even long-distance transport. Only the naive can now deny that the real goal of the EU has long been a digital identity system for all European citizens.
NETHERLANDS
The Netherlands is among the least free countries in the West.
From Dec. 19 &#8220;until at least&#8221; Jan. 14, 2022, the Dutch must:
Stay at home as much as possible; receive no more than two visitors per day; be with no more than one other person outdoors; and work from home.
In addition, restaurants, cafes and bars and nonessential shops are all closed.
Nor do the Dutch have the right to protest these draconian restrictions. Two days ago, an anti-lockdown protest was banned by the leftist mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, because people would &#8220;not be adhering to social distancing rules.&#8221; Thousands of people nevertheless showed up. They were met with drones, water cannons and huge numbers of police. Footage capturing a police dog biting down on a peaceful protester&#8217;s arm has gone viral.
FRANCE
Starting next week, working from home will become compulsory for those who can.
French Prime Minister Jean Castex said, &#8220;Even if we do not yet see hospitals as overloaded by omicron, the contagiousness of the variant and the speed at which it is spreading require us to go further.&#8221;
And the country has had a &#8220;health pass&#8221; since last summer, which only allows the vaccinated, those who have a negative COVID-19 test result from within 24 hours, or who had COVID-19 to enter cafes, restaurants, museums, cinemas and other public places. So, too, wearing a mask is compulsory throughout the country for everyone aged 11 and over in enclosed spaces and on public transport, on pain of a fine. Accordingly, consumption of food and drink is banned on public transport — including long-distance trains.
In schools, wearing a mask is compulsory from the age of 6, including in outdoor areas of the school.
AUSTRIA
Austria competes with the Netherlands for the title of Western Europe&#8217;s least free country.
From Nov. 22 to Dec. 12 no one was allowed to leave their home except for specific reasons such as buying groceries, going to the doctor or exercising. The lockdown has continued for the more than 30% of Austrians who remain unvaccinated.
In other words, nearly a third of all Austrians have not been allowed to leave their homes since Nov. 22 and will not be allowed to do so for the foreseeable future.
It is about to get much worse. Austria is about to become the first country in the world that will make the COVID-19 vaccine compulsory. It will be illegal to be unvaccinated. Beginning Feb. 1, unvaccinated Austrians will be fined 200 euros every month, and the fine will be increased every time they are caught in any activity outside of their house. Germany has already stated it wants to follow suit.
AUSTRALIA
Australia placed most of its citizens under house arrest for much of 2021. Sydney, Australia&#8217;s most populous city, was locked down for 106 days, ending only on Nov. 15. And Melbourne, the country&#8217;s second largest city, described by the Voice of America on Oct. 21 as &#8220;officially the world&#8217;s most locked down city,&#8221; was locked down 260 days. Residents were prohibited from traveling more than five kilometers from their homes, visiting family or friends, entering supermarkets except for pickup, and attending funerals. Schools were, and remain, still closed, and international travel was, and remains, prohibited. Needless to say, all shops, bars, and restaurants were closed. Essentially, people were prohibited from leaving their homes for a third of a year.
NEW ZEALAND
The lockdowns in New Zealand rendered that formerly free country essentially a totalitarian state in 2021. Befitting a totalitarian state, New Zealand&#8217;s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, actually said at one point regarding COVID-19 information, &#8220;Unless you hear it from the government, it is not true.&#8221; The woman, a bona fide fanatic, locked down her entire country because one person had the delta variant. Even pro-lockdown CNN seemed to find this a bit over-the-top. It headlined on Aug. 17: &#8220;New Zealand announces it&#8217;s locking down the entire country &#8230; over one Covid case.”
GERMANY
At the beginning of December, Germany announced a lockdown on the unvaccinated. They were banned from restaurants and bars, movie theaters, gyms, nonessential shops, and Christmas markets. About a quarter of all Germans are unvaccinated.
UNITED KINGDOM
Scotland has banned spectators, even if vaccinated, from attending sporting events. Masks must be worn indoors at public venues such as nightclubs, and one must show a health pass to enter nightclubs and other venues.
Wales went even further, allowing a maximum of six people to meet in pubs, cinemas and restaurants. Nightclubs were simply closed as of Dec. 27. Mandatory six-feet social distancing came into effect in offices from the same date. People must work from home unless it is impossible to do so.
While England does not yet have the same lockdown rules as Wales and Scotland, throughout the U.K. one must show a health pass certifying vaccination — or had a negative COVID-19 test within the past 72 hours or had COVID-19 under six months earlier — in order to enter most public locations.
THE UNITED STATES
And then there is the United States of America. With states like Florida and most other Republican-governed states, we have the freest places in the Western world. Going from Canada or Western Europe to Florida is like going from Romania or Poland to Western Europe during the Cold War. Indeed, going from most Democrat-run cities to most Republican-run cities is also like passing through the Iron Curtain.
Thanks to its conservative half and thanks to the Founders&#8217; genius of defanging the national government by giving states great power, America remains the beacon of liberty it was when Lincoln said, &#8220;America is the last best hope of Earth&#8221; and when France gave us the Statue of Liberty. If it were up to the Left, America would be as unfree as Canada or Austria. That&#8217;s why fighting the Left is the most important thing any American who cherishes liberty can do.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Statue of Liberty

PRAGER: As Of This Moment, America Is Still A Beacon Of Liberty

Australia

COVID

Europe

As this is my last column of 2021, I thought it would be worthwhile to review some of the most important observations I made over the course of an awful year. I hope you agree, and wish you — and our country — a happier New Year.
JAN. 5: These past few years have taught me not to so quickly judge the quiet Germans, Russians, etc. Of course, I still judge Germans who helped the Nazis and Germans who in any way hurt Jews. But the Germans who did nothing? Not so fast.
What has changed my thinking has been watching what is happening in America (and Canada and Australia and elsewhere, for that matter). The ease with which tens of millions of Americans have accepted irrational, unconstitutional and unprecedented police-state-type restrictions on their freedoms, including even the freedom to make a living, has been, to understate the case, sobering.
JAN. 12: We are faced with a lockdown on speech the likes of which have never been seen in America. And the parallels with Germany are even more stark. What the Left is doing is announcing — and enforcing — that conservatives &#8220;do not belong&#8221; in our society. The parallels to 1933 are precise. And most good Americans are keeping silent, just as did most Germans. Though they do not risk being beaten up, are Americans in 2021 as afraid of the American Left as Germans in 1933 were of the German fascists? We&#8217;re about to find out.
JAN. 19: Why does the Left need to crush all dissent? This is a question made all the more stark because there is no parallel on the right: Conservatives do not shut down dissent or debate.
The answer is the Left fears dissent. And they do so for good reason. Leftism is essentially a giant balloon filled with nothing but hot air. Therefore, no matter how big the balloon — the Democratic Party, The New York Times, Yale University — all it takes is a mere pin to burst it.
FEB. 9: The American medical profession as a whole and many individual doctors are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans — very possibly, more than that. Along with the media — from The New York Times to Google/YouTube, Facebook and Twitter — Americans have been denied both life-saving information and life-saving drugs.
FEB. 23: If you don&#8217;t hate communism, you don&#8217;t care about, much less love, people.
MARCH 2: The great tragedy of our time is that liberals vote Left. Virtually every value liberals have held for a century is now held by conservatives and scorned by leftists.
MARCH 9: Schools teach children to hate reason, tradition, America, Christianity, white people, excellence, freedom and masculinity. Parents must either find a school that teaches reading, writing and arithmetic rather than America-hatred, or they should home-school their child.
MARCH 16: The bigger the government, the fewer the institutions in which people can feel important. Therefore, given the deep human need to feel important, people will look elsewhere for their importance — like fighting systemic racism, heteronormativity, capitalism, patriarchy and transphobia. And, most of all, global warming — because you cannot feel more important than when you believe you are saving the world.
MARCH 30: When Christianity died in Europe, we got communism, fascism and Nazism. What will we get in America if Christianity and Judeo-Christian values die?
APRIL 6: Mask-wearing represents fear and blind obedience, not science.
APRIL 20: Whites aren&#8217;t hated for slavery. They are hated for making America and for making Western civilization.
APRIL 27: Affluence plus secularism equals boredom equals leftism.
MAY 18: The Left demands we believe and announce that men menstruate and give birth and that it is in no way unfair to girls and women when biological men compete in girls&#8217; and women&#8217;s sports. In tens of thousands of American schools, students are brainwashed to believe that America was not founded in 1776, but in 1619. The world&#8217;s Left demands that we believe Israel is the villain and Hamas is the victim.
JUNE 8: The single best thing Americans can do to counter the left-wing attack on America — against its freedoms, its schools, its families, its children, its governmental institutions, its sports, its news and entertainment media, its medical establishment, the CIA, the FBI, the State Department and the military — is to take their children out of America&#8217;s schools.
Sending your child(ren) to most American schools is playing Russian roulette with their values — but unlike the gun in Russian roulette, which has a bullet in only one of its six chambers, the schools&#8217; guns hold four or five bullets.
JUNE 15: Unconditional love is neither biblical nor rational nor moral. Can you name anything good that is or should be given with no moral or ethical conditions?
JUNE 22: If America is racist, why have millions of blacks emigrated here? Did Jews emigrate to Germany in the 1930s?
JUNE 29: &#8220;Safetyism,&#8221; like all religions, places what it values — in this case, being safe — above other values. Safetyism explains the willingness of Americans to give up their most cherished values — including liberty — in the name of safety.
The desire to lead as safe a life as possible is a major factor that explains why fewer and fewer young Americans are getting married and even fewer are having children. Neither marriage nor having children is safe. Both are filled with risks.
You can live a safe life. Or you can live a full life. You can&#8217;t live both.
JULY 20: You have a right to be transgender. You don&#8217;t have a right to expose your penis to women.
JULY 27: It is hard to imagine greater proof of the power of mass media and of the Left than a normal woman celebrating her daughter&#8217;s choice not to be a mother and not to make her a grandmother because of climate change.
AUG. 24: Imagine if some of the biggest cities in America seceded from their states. Imagine Illinois without Chicago, Pennsylvania without Philadelphia, California without Los Angeles or San Francisco, New York state without New York City, or Texas without Houston, Dallas or San Antonio. Those states would lose a major tax base and some of their best orchestras and other artistic institutions. But the gains in quality of life would completely offset any financial or artistic losses.
Big cities have been and continue to be centers of destructive ideas, and the people living in them are generally coarser and often just plain meaner.
SEPT. 7: Colorblind means one does not believe a person&#8217;s color is in any way significant. There is little that reveals the immorality, dishonesty and racism of the Left more than its war on colorblindness.<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" alt="pastedGraphic.png" />
SEPT. 14: Will the Left succeed? Unless Americans fight the Left as hard as the Union fought the slave states, the answer is yes.
SEPT. 21: As America has become more secular, it has become less free. Individuals can differ as to whether these two facts are correlated, but no honest person can deny they are facts.
OCT. 5: There is almost nothing Democrats can do to damage America, or Israel, that would change most American Jews&#8217; political leanings. The latest example took place just last week. A college student speaking to the vice president of the United States, a Democrat, condemned America for supporting Israel, and charged Israel with committing &#8220;ethnic genocide&#8221; against Palestinians.
Harris&#8217; response?
&#8220;Your voice, your perspective, your experience, your truth cannot be suppressed, and it must be heard.&#8221;
OCT. 19: The fate of America and the West lies largely in the hands of liberals. There are simply not enough leftists to destroy our most revered institutions. They need liberals to serve as fellow travelers to accomplish their ends.
OCT. 26: If no one goes to prison for actor Alec Baldwin&#8217;s accidental killing of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, our society will have failed a crucial moral test. We will be saying human life is not sacred; that it, in effect, is of little or no consequence.
NOV. 2: As incredible as this assertion is to just about all religious people and virtually all conservatives, most leftists do not believe stealing is wrong.
NOV. 9: Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, confirmed an Israeli study: &#8220;In Israel, vaccinated individuals had 27 times higher risk of symptomatic COVID infection compared to those with natural immunity from prior COVID disease.&#8221;
The denial of the efficacy of natural immunity is among the many reasons so many Americans no longer trust the American medical establishment.
NOV. 23: All my life, I thought love and hate were the two most powerful human emotions. But owing to recent events, I have changed my mind. I now understand that for most people, fear is the strongest emotion.
DEC. 7: If you are a conservative, why should you come out of the closet?
First, you will sleep better. Staying in the closet exacts a serious mental price. Second, kindred spirits, all quality people, will reach out to you, some of whom will undoubtedly become close friends. Third, you will respect yourself more. Fourth, you will help save this country from tyranny. For some, that is reason enough.
DEC. 21: Trans swimmer Lia Thomas is a cheat. As far as sports are concerned, one&#8217;s biology, not one&#8217;s gender identity, is all that matters.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

2021

PRAGER: The (Crappy) Year We Just Lived Through

Communism

Critical Race Theory

Leftism

Lockdowns

If you want one exemplar of the moral and intellectual chaos that characterizes the age in which we live, there are a number of candidates:
&#8220;Having fewer police leads to a decrease in violent crime&#8221; is one.
&#8220;Men give birth&#8221; is another.
But perhaps the most obvious moral and intellectual absurdity of all is the notion that Lia Thomas, a member of the University of Pennsylvania&#8217;s women&#8217;s swim team, won fairly in the team&#8217;s recent meet against the Cornell University women&#8217;s swim team.
You see, Lia Thomas was a man until two years ago, when he announced that she is really a woman.
Now, neither I nor most fair-minded people care if Lia Thomas considers herself a woman. Many of us are even prepared to refer to Lia as &#8220;she&#8221; — especially if she dresses, acts and looks like a woman. (For the record, most people who watch Lia&#8217;s interview online and did not know that Lia claims to be a woman would assume that they are watching a man.)
But no fair-minded person can accept that Lia should be allowed to join a women&#8217;s swim team and compete against female teammates and against other women&#8217;s swim teams.
That Lia wishes to be considered a woman is entirely irrelevant to the question of whether it is at all fair for this individual to compete against women. As far as sports are concerned, one&#8217;s biology, not one&#8217;s gender identity, is all that matters.
If Lia or any other biological male is allowed to compete against biological women, women&#8217;s sports are rendered pointless and therefore unnecessary. The entire reason women&#8217;s sports exist is to enable women to compete only against other women — because males have innate physical advantages in virtually every sport.
Needless to say, Lia Thomas has broken numerous University of Pennsylvania women&#8217;s swim records. In her 1650-meter freestyle win, Thomas beat second-place finisher and teammate Anna Kalandadze by more than 38 seconds.
That means that the women who had held those records no longer hold them. They have been stripped of their records because the University of Pennsylvania, like other universities, allows biological men to join women&#8217;s swim teams. That is the ruling of the woke cowards of the NCAA, who have decreed that all women&#8217;s teams, in all sports, must allow men to compete in women&#8217;s sports. All a man has to do to compete against women is announce that he is a woman and take testosterone suppressors for a year.
It is revolting that LGBTQ activists, virtually all sports writers (a band of sheep, if there ever was one) and just about the entire Left claim this is fair.
Headline in the left-wing Independent:
&#8220;Lia Thomas: LGBT-plus rights campaigners defend swimming champion amid transphobic abuse.&#8221;
The left-wing activists who run the Human Rights Campaign defended Thomas:
&#8220;Living your truth is an incredible and powerful feeling &#8230; We&#8217;re in solidarity with Lia and all athletes who compete in the sports they love and on teams consistent with their gender identity.&#8221;
Headline of an article by The Hill left-wing staff-writer, Brooke Migdon:
&#8220;College swimming champion Lia Thomas targeted by transphobic rhetoric.&#8221;
&#8220;The assumption that being born with a male body automatically gives transgender women a leg up when competing against cisgender women is not well founded,&#8221; Migdon writes, quoting the NCAA.
The ability of people to lie to themselves is a depressing fact of life.
The fact is this issue has nothing to do with trans acceptance or &#8220;transphobia.&#8221; It is purely a moral question: Is it fair?
As John Lohn, the rare honest editor of Swimming World magazine, wrote on Sunday:
&#8220;Despite the hormone suppressants she has taken, in accordance with NCAA guidelines, Thomas&#8217; male-puberty advantage has not been rolled back an adequate amount&#8230;
&#8220;The fact is, for nearly 20 years, she built muscle and benefited from the testosterone naturally produced by her body. That strength does not disappear overnight, nor with a year&#8217;s worth of suppressants&#8230;
&#8220;What we are stating is this: The effects of being born a biological male, as they relate to the sport of swimming, offer Thomas a clear-cut edge over the biological females against whom she is competing. She is stronger. It is that simple. And this strength is beneficial to her stroke, on turns and to her endurance. Doping has the same effect.&#8221;
&#8220;Doping has the same effect.&#8221; Read that a few times and let the unfairness sink in.
Because of the Left, we are living — no, drowning — in an ocean of lies.
If you ever wonder why your kind, sweet friends on the Left differ with you, here is a big part of the answer: They do not know what we know. Google &#8220;Lia Thomas&#8221; and you will not find a single result in any mainstream media. For example, no reader of The New York Times or The Washington Post knows about this.
But those who know understand that Lia Thomas is a cheat.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Pool

PRAGER: Trans Swimmer Lia Thomas Is A Cheat – Period

Transgender

Anyone who thinks about the current civil war in America comes to realize that it is, in large measure, a war between the religious and the anti-religious. The Left has contempt for evangelical Protestants, traditional Catholics and Orthodox Jews for good reason: They represent everything the Left loathes; and while there are, of course, secular conservatives who fight the Left, the largest and most effective opposition comes from conservative Christians and Jews.
The differences begin in childhood. Most religious kids — especially those who attend traditional Christian and Jewish schools — are raised with different values than most secular kids.
Here are some examples:
No. 1: Religious upbringing: Fight yourself. Secular upbringing: Fight society.
I studied in yeshiva (Orthodox Jewish school, where half the day I studied Bible and other religious subjects in Hebrew, and half the day I studied secular subjects in English) from kindergarten to 12th grade. I learned early on that the biggest problem in Dennis Prager&#8217;s life was Dennis Prager. In nearly all secular schools and in liberal religious schools, kids learn that the biggest problem in their lives is American society — in fact, everything other than themselves.
Which do you think produces a more self-critical, more self-controlled and overall better human being?
Which do you think produces an angrier and less happy human being?
No. 2: Religious Upbringing: Learn wisdom. Secular Upbringing: No body of wisdom conveyed.
I have no doubt that most kids raised with the Bible and other Jewish or Christian works have more wisdom than almost any secular professor or other secular intellectual. Yes, there are secular individuals who have wisdom (the Judeo-Christian body of wisdom sometimes continues to have influence for a generation or two), but I cannot think of a single secular institution with wisdom. That is why the institutions with the least wisdom and that believe and teach the most nonsense are universities — they are, after all, the most secular institutions in our society.
No. 3: Religious Upbringing: People are not basically good. Secular Upbringing: People are basically good.
&#8220;Wisdom begins,&#8221; both Psalms and Proverbs teach, &#8220;with fear of God.&#8221; In other words, no God, no wisdom. But there is another way of asserting how and where wisdom begins. Wisdom begins with acknowledging how flawed human nature is. Or, to put it as succinctly as possible, you cannot be wise if you think people are basically good. You can be a sweet, kind and well-intentioned person if you believe people are basically good, but you cannot be wise. Indeed, you are more likely to be a naive fool.
The belief that people are basically good, a belief that neither Judaism nor Christianity has ever held, is a major obstacle to making a good society. For one thing, parents who believe this will not discipline their children as much as they need to. They will assume, as three generations of American parents now have, that all a child needs is love. And for another, people who believe human nature is good are much less inclined to punish criminals because they will blame murder, theft, rape and other evils on economic circumstances, parents and society — on anything but the criminal&#8217;s failure to control his flawed nature.
No. 4: Religious Upbringing: Holy days. Secular Upbringing: No holy days.
Religious children celebrate holy days — the Sabbath each week and other holy days in their respective religious calendars. Regular times devoted to the Transcendent have a major impact on the development of a child. The secular child has secular holidays, but they mean little to most American young people. July Fourth is a day off with a barbecue. Meaningless Halloween has come to have more significance than meaningful Christmas. Presidents&#8217; Day means nothing. And Thanksgiving is increasingly declared Indigenous Peoples&#8217; Genocide Day.
No. 5: Religious Upbringing: Friends plus community. Secular Upbringing: Friends, but no community.
Loneliness is a greater pandemic in the modern world than COVID-19, so much so that the U.K. now has a Minister of Loneliness to try to combat the problem.
This is, in large measure, another consequence of secularism. Religious Jewish and Christian (including Mormon) kids grow up with an abundance of friends and a whole religious community thanks to religious school and thanks to their synagogue or church. What is the communal secular equivalent of the church, synagogue and religious school? Other than sports (which, in any event, is available to only the handful of young people who play on a team), there isn&#8217;t any.
No. 6: Religious Upbringing: The obligation to honor parents. Secular Upbringing: No such obligation.
Religious Jewish and Christian children are taught the Ten Commandments, one of which is &#8220;Honor your father and mother.&#8221; It goes without saying that many secular children honor their parents, but they do so only if they want to. Religious children are told to honor parents whether they feel like it or not — which is important because very few children always feel like honoring their mother and father.
There is another pandemic in America — that of adult children who have decided never to talk to one or both of their parents. I would wager a serious sum of money that few of those adult children are religious Jews or Christians.
There&#8217;s a lot more that distinguishes religious and secular upbringings. But one stands out: Religious kids are generally happier.
Is one upbringing better than the other? You decide.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Sunset

PRAGER: Differences Between A Secular And A Religious – Jewish Or Christian – Upbringing

Christianity

Secularism

To understand the modern world, perhaps the most important rule one needs to know is this: Everything the Left touches it ruins.
This first became clear to me years ago during my radio show. I was talking about the Left&#8217;s war on the Boy Scouts (for not accepting announced gay people). It was becoming clear that this would ultimately lead to the decline of the Boy Scouts, which led me to ask: &#8220;Will the left replace the Boy Scouts with a left-wing Boy Scouts?&#8221;
Then I answered my own question: Of course not. Because the Left only destroys; it doesn&#8217;t build anything (other than government).
In support of that observation, here is a list of many of the things the Left ruins and often destroys.
No. 1: Art.
The Left long ago conquered the art world. Consequently, since the 20th century, most modern art has been ugly, meaningless and nihilistic — the opposite of what Western art had always been.
No. 2: Music.
What the Left did to the eyes in art, it did to the ears in music. As a part-time conductor, I can say with some knowledge that since the invention of atonal music (an oxymoron if there ever was one), most contemporary classical music is also ugly, meaningless and uninspiring. The people who like such music are almost all music critics and, of course, music professors. Most lovers of classical music never listen to the stuff.
No. 3: Journalism.
Journalists were once highly respected. Unless a piece was listed as &#8220;opinion,&#8221; people generally believed they were getting, to the best of a journalist&#8217;s ability, as truthful a report as possible — &#8220;just the facts.&#8221; Today, on virtually any controversial issue, they are getting opinion, not truth. The purpose of nearly every major newspaper and other &#8220;news&#8221; outlet is the same purpose Pravda had in the Soviet Union: to transmit the party line.
No. 4: Colleges and universities.
The Left has destroyed universities as places of learning devoted to seeking truth and therefore welcoming, even cultivating, diverse opinions. Virtually every left-wing idea was born at a university.
No. 5: High schools and elementary schools.
Most schools in America — private as much as public — teach children that America is systemically racist and that they are not born male or female, but at a later age will choose whether to be one or the other — or neither. And increasingly, American educational institutions deny objective truth exists, even in mathematics.
No. 6: Happiness.
You can meet happy and unhappy liberals and happy and unhappy conservatives, but you are unlikely to ever meet a happy leftist. The only question is whether the unhappy gravitate to leftism or whether leftism makes people unhappy. Both are probably true.
No. 7: The family.
People on the Left increasingly choose not to get married and not to have children — in other words, not to make families. And their welfare policies serve to disincentivize the creation of families.
No. 8: Women.
The rates of depression among young people, especially young women, are higher than ever recorded in American history. One reason is that for half a century, women have been told, as one famous feminist saw put it, &#8220;A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.&#8221; But the fact is that the vast majority of (heterosexual) women need a man to be fulfilled, just as the vast majority of (heterosexual) men need a woman to be fulfilled.
No. 9: Childhood.
One reason young people on the Left don&#8217;t want children is that the Left doesn&#8217;t particularly like children. The teachers unions&#8217; adamant refusal to open schools for over a year has opened many Americans&#8217; eyes to this fact. So has the war on children&#8217;s innocence &#8211; like prematurely talking to them about sex and having schools introduce them to drag queens from the age of five.
No. 10: Black life.
Like the Democratic Party historically, the left is racist. And it is so in precisely the way the word was always used — the Left believes in black inferiority. That is why leftists advocate lowering standards for blacks. That is why they advocate policies that always result in more blacks dying at the hands of other blacks. That is why they believe the state must take care of blacks more than any other group. That is why left-wing policies, from the Great Society to today, have destroyed so much of black life, especially its family life — and they don&#8217;t care.
No. 11: Black-white relations.
According to polls and according to just about every American who remembers life from about a decade ago, black-white relations were far superior then and both groups were optimistic about relations continuing to improve. The Left shattered that with its anti-white, &#8220;America is systemically racist&#8221; propaganda shouted from almost every major media and relentlessly pushed in almost every school and big business. The Left knows that when blacks and whites feel good about one another, the Left loses its appeal and loses elections.
No. 12: The military.
As the military gets more and more woke — recall the testimony of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testifying before Congress about the need to teach the military about white racism — soldier morale declines. Add to this the utterly gratuitous and cruel mandate that every member of the military get vaccinated or be discharged and you understand why military morale is in steep decline.
No. 13: Late-night television.
Americans who remember the titans of late-night comedy — Johnny Carson and Jay Leno — remember how their sole aim was to bring some smiles and laughter to Americans before they went to sleep. Few people had any inkling of the political views of either host. That is now history. The Left has destroyed late-night comedy. It now consists of little more than angry rants against conservatives.
No. 14: Superman.
Superman was an iconic American hero. Thanks to the Left, he is no more. About a decade ago, Superman stood in front of the United Nations to announce he was renouncing his American citizenship to become a &#8220;citizen of the world.&#8221; And the Left has now changed his motto from &#8220;Truth, Justice, and the American way&#8221; to &#8220;Truth, Justice, and a Better Tomorrow.&#8221;
No. 15: Free speech.
Never before has freedom of speech been threatened as it is today. As has been true since the communist revolution in Russia, everywhere the Left has gained power — from Russia in 1917 to the university and social media today — it has suppressed free speech. There is no exception.
No. 16: Sports.
Until last year, sport was a great American unifier. It was one place Americans could go and, leaving politics behind, Left and Right, Democrat and Republican could root for the same team. No longer. The Left has ruined it by radically politicizing baseball, football and basketball.
The great American tragedy is just about every liberal knows the above is true, but nearly every one will still vote for the Left.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Fire

PRAGER: A Brief Guide To Leftist Destruction

To most readers of this column, the question is absurd. The reason is not because the question is, in fact, absurd; it is because most readers of this column are conservative, and many are religious.
Am I implying that most leftists do not believe stealing is wrong?
Yes, I am.
As incredible as this assertion is to just about all religious people and virtually all conservatives, most leftists do not believe stealing is wrong. Since I always draw a distinction between those on the Left and liberals, let me add that I suspect most liberals think stealing is wrong. But it almost doesn&#8217;t matter because they vote for people who do not think it is.
One proof is the passage of Proposition 47, a California ballot initiative passed in 2014, under which theft of less than $950 in goods is treated as a nonviolent misdemeanor and rarely prosecuted. As a result, in Democrat-run California cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, retail theft has soared.
Walgreens stores in San Francisco are racking up four times the average amount of theft in Walgreens stores across the country; spending on security guards in San Francisco is 35 times more than the chain&#8217;s average in other cities. Walgreens has been forced to close 22 stores in the city since 2016.
As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle: &#8220;The Safeway located in San Francisco&#8217;s Castro neighborhood &#8230; was a longstanding, 24-hour fixture in San Francisco&#8217;s Castro neighborhood. But as of last week, the store&#8217;s hours have been cut back to 6 a.m. to 9 p.m &#8230; A Safeway spokesperson (said) that the cutbacks are &#8216;due to an increasing amount of theft at the store.'&#8221;
Further proof that the Left doesn&#8217;t consider theft wrong — at least when committed by a person of color — was an interview broadcast on NPR last year with the author of a book titled &#8220;In Defense of Looting.&#8221; The NPR interviewer threw only softball questions to the author.
In the last election, Los Angeles voters elected San Francisco&#8217;s previous district attorney, George Gascon, as Los Angeles’ district attorney. It was Los Angeles’ way of declaring that stealing is not wrong. And it is worth noting that it is not only racial minorities and the poor who make these elections possible; it is also prosperous whites. The Los Angeles DA is a wealthy white, and he was supported by a white billionaire, George Soros.
It is hard to believe that millions of Americans do not deem stealing from stores morally wrong, so let&#8217;s try to explain how this has come about.
Reason No. 1 is moral relativism. For as long as there has been a Left, it has rejected moral absolutes. As the great British historian, Paul Johnson, pointed out a half-century ago in his magnum opus, &#8220;Modern Times,&#8221; the secular world applied the relativism of the natural sciences to morality.
Reason No. 2 is the reason for reason number one: the collapse of the Judeo-Christian value system and the accompanying abandonment of, and often disdain for, biblical ethics. Biblical morality posits moral absolutes — meaning that stealing is wrong for everyone, certainly people of every color. Yes, one can offer a biblical defense of a starving man stealing food for his starving family. But that is hardly what is happening in San Francisco and other American cities.
Reason No. 3 is Marxist morality. From Marx to the present, Marxism has divided the world not between right and wrong, but between economic classes. Therefore, it is morally acceptable for members of the poorer classes to steal from members of the more affluent classes. This notion has made its way into young people&#8217;s minds for decades. About 30 years ago, I spoke to students from four Cleveland high schools. I asked them to raise their hand if they would steal something they really wanted from a department store if they were certain they would not get caught. Nearly all the students raised their hands. When I asked some of them to justify their reasoning, they all said the same thing: they wouldn&#8217;t steal from a mom-and-pop store, but they would steal from a department store. It is OK to steal from &#8220;the rich.&#8221;
Reason No. 4 is leftists&#8217; view of nonwhites, especially blacks, a view that conservatives have never shared. Leftists truly believe that blacks are intellectually and morally inferior to whites. The evidence? They do not believe blacks should be held to the same intellectual and moral standards to which leftists hold whites. Leftists do not defend whites who steal, and they hold whites to higher intellectual standards. Leftists do not argue for lowering math standards for whites, only for blacks.
The bottom line is the Left is immoral. That is why it defends stealing.
The views expressed in this piece are the author&#8217;s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Theft

PRAGER: Is Stealing Wrong? Not On The Left

If no one goes to prison for actor Alec Baldwin&#8217;s accidental killing of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, our society will have failed a crucial moral test.
We will be saying human life is not sacred; that it, in effect, is of little or no consequence.
The killing was, we presume, unintentional (though we do not know for sure, as the possibility remains that someone had motive to load the gun with real ammunition). But that does not mean that no one should be held culpable and punished. Society must regard the taking of human life — even when unintentional — as something terrible.
I learned this principle from the Bible, which was, until the last century, the source of America&#8217;s and the Western world&#8217;s moral values.
This principle is repeated over and over in the Bible&#8217;s first five books (the Torah), the source of all biblical laws. This repetition strongly indicates how seriously the Bible takes this issue.
Example one:
Exodus 21:28: &#8220;When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned &#8230;&#8221;
The obvious question is: Why would the ox be put to death? It is surely not guilty of murder; oxen have no free will. The reason it is put to death is that the killing of a human being cannot go unpunished.
The Jewish Bible scholar, professor Nahum Sarna, wrote:
&#8220;The execution of the ox was carried out in the presence, and with the participation, of the entire community (the animal was stoned, not merely killed) — implying the killing of a human being is a source of mass pollution and the proceedings had an expiatory function. The killing of a homicidal beast is ordained in Genesis 9:5-6: &#8216;For your own life-blood I will require a reckoning: I will require it of every beast &#8230; Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for in His image did God make man.&#8217; The sanctity of human life is such as to make bloodshed the consummate offense, one viewed with unspeakable horror. Both man and beast that destroy human life are thereafter tainted by bloodguilt.&#8221;
Example two:
Deuteronomy 19:5: &#8220;(If) a man goes with his neighbor into a grove to cut wood; and as his hand swings the ax to cut down a tree, the ax-head flies off the handle and strikes the other so that he dies, that man shall flee to one of these cities and live.&#8221;
Again, the Bible describes a homicide that is entirely accidental. But the person who accidentally committed the homicide is not free to live a normal life. He cannot go on with life as if nothing happened. While he is not to be executed, he must flee to one of three &#8220;cities of refuge&#8221; in ancient Israel. There he may not be killed or otherwise hurt by a member of the killed man&#8217;s family. But he is not a completely free man.
In my Bible commentary, &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; I quote Leeor Gottlieb, a professor of Bible at Israel&#8217;s Bar-Ilan University: &#8220;The Torah is morally ahead of some modern societies, in which people&#8217;s lives go on nearly uninterrupted if they killed unintentionally.&#8221;
As the Bible explains five verses later:
&#8220;Thus blood of the innocent will not be shed, bringing bloodguilt upon you in the land that the Lord your God is allotting to you.&#8221;
Human bloodshed brings bloodguilt upon the land.
Example three:
Deuteronomy 21:1-4 and 7: &#8220;If, in the land that the Lord your God is assigning you to possess, someone slain is found lying in the open, the identity of the slayer not being known, your elders and magistrates shall go out and measure the distances from the corpse to the nearby towns &#8230; And they shall make this declaration: &#8216;Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done. Absolve, O Lord, Your people Israel whom You redeemed, and do not let guilt for the blood of the innocent remain among Your people Israel.&#8217; And they will be absolved of bloodguilt.&#8221;
Unlike the previous instance, in which the (unintentional) killer is known, the killer of the slain man found &#8220;in the open&#8221; is not known. Nevertheless, the community is still held accountable and must ask for forgiveness for not preventing a homicide.
Example four:
The final example is not biblical but from my radio show. Many years ago, a woman called to tell me about an ostrich raised on her family&#8217;s ostrich farm. One day, this ostrich kicked her father to death. I asked the woman what was done to the ostrich. &#8220;Nothing,&#8221; she replied.
Given my biblical background, I was taken aback.
&#8220;So you tell people who visit your farm, &#8216;This is the ostrich that killed my father&#8217;?&#8221;
&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she responded.
In my view, that cheapened her father&#8217;s life and death.
How much more so will Halyna Hutchins&#8217; life and death be cheapened if no one pays a steep price — for a death that was entirely preventable had proper precautions been followed?
But given how little the Bible means to most Americans today, I would not be surprised if no one goes to prison.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Bonanza Creek Ranch

PRAGER: Someone Must Go To Prison For The Killing Of Halyna Hutchins

Alec Baldwin

Hollywood

Shooting

As I have noted repeatedly, liberalism and leftism have virtually nothing in common. In fact, leftism is the enemy of liberalism — as a handful of liberals such as former New York Times writer Bari Weiss, former Young Turk Dave Rubin and others have come to recognize.
The Left has never believed in free speech and has suppressed dissent wherever it has assumed power. Free speech is a pillar of liberalism, and it has always embraced dissent.
The Left rejects the anti-racist ideal of colorblindness. Colorblind is the liberal racial ideal.
The Left supports racial segregation — such as all-black dorms and separate black graduations. Liberals have always advocated racial integration.
The Left has always loathed capitalism. Liberals were always major advocates of capitalism — recognizing that only capitalism has lifted billions of people out of poverty.
The Left has always been anti-Israel. Liberals have always been fervent supporters of Israel.
The Left has always held America in contempt. Liberals loved this country. A liberal wrote &#8220;God Bless America.&#8221; No leftist would write such a song.
Leftists want to defund the police. No liberal does.
The list of liberal-Left differences is as long as the list of left-wing positions.
Yet, it is liberals who keep the Left in power. Were it not for the liberal vote, the Left would have no power.
Why do liberals vote Left? Why do liberals vote for those who have contempt for virtually everything they, the liberals, hold dear?
The question is all the more apt given that it is conservatives who protect virtually every liberal value. It is conservatives who seek to preserve free speech, racial integration, love of America, a strong Israel and capitalism.
So why do liberals vote for the Left, for the very people who hold liberals and their values in contempt?
There are two primary reasons.
One is brainwashing. Liberals are brainwashed from childhood into believing that the right is their enemy and that &#8220;pas d&#8217;ennemis a gauche&#8221; (there are &#8220;no enemies on the left&#8221;). That is why there is no left-wing position, no matter how destructive or vile, that could move a liberal to vote Republican or identify with conservatives.
The second reason is fear. Liberals fear they will lose friends and even family if they do not vote Democrat or if they publicly criticize the Left. And this is not an irrational fear.
America and the West are being destroyed by the Left. But this destruction of the universities, the high schools, art and music, journalism and freedom itself could not take place were it not for liberals.
The fate of America and the West lies largely in the hands of liberals. There are simply not enough leftists to destroy our most revered institutions. They need liberals to serve as fellow travelers to accomplish their ends.
Should the American experiment fail, and it may, that profile in lack of courage, the liberal, will have made it possible.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

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Dennis Prager