In the latest edition of &#8220;The Rubin Report&#8221; podcast, two people I adore, Dave Rubin and Heather Mac Donald, dialogue about some of the great issues facing America. Interestingly, though both are secular, Dave opened the interview asking Heather about God and religion.
She began by saying that she is not conservative because of religion but because of her commitment to empirical truth. It is empirical truth that leads her to affirm, for example, &#8220;the necessity of the two-parent family&#8221; and &#8220;most traditional values.&#8221;
Heather is right that one cannot be committed to empirical truth and be a leftist (though one can be a conservative or a liberal). Left-wing assertions that men give birth; that America was founded in 1619 (when the first enslaved black was brought to the American colonies); that people can be lifted from poverty on a mass scale without capitalism; that there are no innate differences between men and women; that America is a racist nation; that women are paid less than men for the same type and amount of work because they are women; and innumerable other leftist assertions are all false.
But while a secular conservative may be committed to the two-parent family because of empirical truth, marriage and family are not &#8220;empirical truths&#8221; nearly as much as they are religious values. Few secular arguments to get married and/or have children are as compelling as religious ones. That&#8217;s why religious people are so much more likely to get married and have children.
Mac Donald said: &#8220;(P)eople who I respect enormously &#8230; whether it&#8217;s Dennis Prager or Michael Medved &#8230; are making the argument that you cannot have a moral society without a foundation of religious belief.&#8221;
That is precisely the argument nearly every founder of America made. Not all were Christ-centered Christians, but virtually every one believed that inalienable rights come from the Creator, and only from the Creator. And none (except perhaps Thomas Paine) believed that America could endure if it were to become a godless society.
Mac Donald: &#8220;Part of my resistance to this is simply I don&#8217;t find claims of petitionary prayer and the idea of a personal loving God consistent with what I see — what I call the daily massacre of the innocents. To me it&#8217;s a very hard claim to make that I should expect God to pay attention to my well-being when He&#8217;s willing to allow horrific things to happen to people far more deserving and innocent than I am. So, for me, it&#8217;s partly just a truth value. I cannot stomach what appears to me to be a patently false claim about a personal loving God.&#8221;
I agree with Heather&#8217;s premises but not with her conclusion. I have never believed that God has any reason to pay more attention to me than to any other innocent human being. And I, too, &#8220;cannot stomach&#8221; the &#8220;daily massacre of the innocents&#8221; — so much so that I have written how I find the commandment to love God the hardest commandment in the Bible.
But what I also cannot stomach is the thought of a universe in which the horrible suffering of innocents is never compensated by a good and just God: The good and the evil all die; the former receive no reward and the latter no punishment.
The problem of unjust suffering troubles every thinking believer. But the Jewish theologian Milton Steinberg offered a powerful response: &#8220;The believer in God has to account for unjust suffering; the atheist has to account for everything else.&#8221; Between the two, I would argue that the atheist&#8217;s burden is infinitely greater. And insurmountable.
Mac Donald: &#8220;(T)he idea of what started the universe — we can&#8217;t really answer that. I think to say, &#8216;God&#8217; — that&#8217;s just a placeholder for ignorance. That doesn&#8217;t help.&#8221;
Maybe we really can&#8217;t answer what started the universe. But, as Charles Krauthammer, a great secular conservative, said, &#8220;The idea that this universe always existed, that it created itself ex nihilo — I mean, talk about the violation of human rationality. That, to me, is off the charts.&#8221; God, therefore, is not &#8220;just a placeholder for ignorance.&#8221; Since science can never and will never answer the question &#8220;Why is there anything?&#8221; attributing the origins of the universe to an intelligent force (which we call &#8220;God&#8221;) strikes me as the most rational explanation.
Rubin: &#8220;I might have to get you in here with Prager.&#8221;
Mac Donald: &#8220;I&#8217;d love to.&#8221;
I&#8217;d love to, too.
Mac Donald: &#8220;Where are we all headed? What is the meaning of life? To me, anybody who claims &#8230; he doesn&#8217;t find meaning in life when there is Mozart and Haydn — to invoke a Dennis Prager favorite — or Beethoven or John Milton or Aeschylus or Anthony Trollope —&#8221;
Rubin: &#8220;Or just waking up with purpose for whatever you do.&#8221;
Mac Donald: &#8220;Exactly &#8230; trying to do the best you can do. I don&#8217;t find life meaningless for one second.&#8221;
Haydn began every manuscript with the Latin words &#8220;in nomine Domini,&#8221; &#8220;in the name of the Lord,&#8221; and ended his manuscripts with the words &#8220;Lauds Deo,&#8221; &#8220;Praise be to God.&#8221; I would ask Heather and other secular conservatives: Do you or don&#8217;t you identify the steep deterioration of the arts with the death of God and religion? Is a secular society capable of achieving artistic achievement equal to that which was accomplished in tribute to God?
As for meaning, you — and I — may find meaning every day in trying to do the best we can do, or in great works of art. But, as I know you will agree, that does not mean life has any ultimate meaning. If there is no God, we are nothing more than self-conscious stellar dust. And stellar dust has no meaning.
We really need to continue this dialogue. In the meantime, for what it&#8217;s worth, I want to say to both of you, who do so much for our country, God bless you.
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; came to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Microphone

PRAGER: A Response To 2 Secular Conservatives I Adore

Dave Rubin

Heather Mac Donald

Judeo-Christian Values

Religion

Secular conservative

If you want to understand a human being or the human condition, what is the single most important question you should ask?
Most religious people would probably ask, &#8220;Do you believe in God?&#8221;
The most important question most secular people, especially progressives, could imagine asking is probably a policy question. Today it would be &#8220;Do you support Donald Trump?&#8221; Otherwise it might be &#8220;Do you support abortion rights?&#8221; or &#8220;Do you support gay marriage?&#8221;
As important as all of these questions are, in attempting to understand human beings, especially large groups of human beings — i.e., their society — the most important question to ask is &#8220;What in life gives you the most meaning?&#8221;
The answer does not explain everything, of course, but it explains the human condition better than any other question.
The reason is this: After food, the greatest human need and human desire is meaning. Even more so than the ability to reason or even to speak, this is the great divide between human and animal. We share all other needs with the higher animal species and share many needs with some of the lower animal species. Like them, we need food, shelter and companionship. But, while human beings seek and need meaning more than anything except food (and companionship — but for human beings, companionship usually provides some meaning, and sometimes enough), no animal needs or seeks meaning. As an aside, this is one of the reasons I believe in God, the Creator. There is no evolutionary explanation for the need for meaning. Meaning is not a biological need.
Given its unique importance, that is why what gives us meaning must be deemed the most important question.
The problem, however, is that just as the need for food has no inherent moral quality, the need for meaning has no inherent moral quality. Meaning can be found in evil just as it can be found in good. Nazism provided millions of Germans with as much meaning as helping the dying in Calcutta provided Mother Teresa. Slaughtering infidels gives radical Islamic terrorists as much meaning as feeding the poor gives those who work for the Salvation Army. Killing the &#8220;Christ-killer&#8221; Jews gave some medieval Christians as much meaning as saving Jews gave some European Christians during the Holocaust.
For most Americans until the last generation, the need for meaning was filled by family, religion, community and patriotism (i.e., love of America and belief in America as Abraham Lincoln put it: as &#8220;the last best hope of earth.&#8221;)
All, or nearly all, of those sources of meaning are being lost. In fact, the present generation of Americans has few or none of those meaning providers.
As regards family, Americans are marrying at a later age than ever before. Fewer Americans are marrying than ever before. And fewer are having children than ever before.
With regard to religion, more than a third of millennials — by far the largest percentage of any generation in American history — do not identify with any religion.
As for community, a vast number of Americans — of every age — have lost ties to any community. This is a major reason for the epidemic of loneliness that afflicts so many Americans (and so many others) at the present time. For example, The New York Times reported in 2018 that in Britain, &#8220;more than nine million people in the country often or always feel lonely, according to a 2017 report published by the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness.&#8221; Then-Prime Minister Theresa May actually appointed a minister of loneliness.
And regarding America, what is there to believe in? For more than a generation, young Americans have been taught contempt for this country: Its past is essentially racist, genocidal and imperialist. So much for patriotism.
So, then, what is to give meaning to Americans who have lost all or most of the above? Something has to, because the need for meaning is as built in and as universal as the need for food.
The answer is self-evident: Whatever it is, it must provide meaning without being dependent on family, community, religion or patriotism.
And what is that? Leftism.
All of leftism (not liberalism, which affirms all the traditional meaning providers) consists of meaning providers that replace community, religion, America and even family (single women are a major, even dominant, demographic of the left).
For leftists, feminism, environmentalism, socialism and trans rights provide meaning. The life-filling meaning of leftism is most evident in the constant leftist use of the term &#8220;existential threat.&#8221; President Donald Trump &#8220;is posing an existential threat to America,&#8221; wrote leftist Frank Rich in the latest issue of New York Magazine. &#8220;Bloomberg, in Campaign Event, Calls Trump an &#8216;Existential Threat,'&#8221; ABC News headlined two months ago. A Mother Jones headline two weeks ago read, &#8220;Trump Is an &#8216;Existential&#8217; Threat: Ilana Glazer, Eric Holder, and 2020.&#8221; A ThinkProgress headline last July read, &#8220;The Existential Threat Trump Poses to the World Political Order Is a 2020 Campaign Issue.&#8221; The Sioux City Journal headlined last week, &#8220;Biden: Trump Represents &#8216;an Existential Threat to the Future of Our Country.'&#8221;
Fighting President Trump means fighting for the very existence of the world&#8217;s order and for democracy in America. What could possibly give those devoid of meaning more meaning than that?
Well, there is one other thing: fighting for the very existence of the world itself. That is the animating impulse of the left&#8217;s obsession with global warming. &#8220;(T)he world is going to end in 12 years if we don&#8217;t address climate change,&#8221; says Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at a recent CNN town hall that the &#8220;climate crisis&#8221; is an &#8220;existential threat to the planet.&#8221; There are as many assertions of fossil fuels posing an existential threat to Earth&#8217;s survival as there are leftists (and the many liberals who fear the left).
The proof that this alleged saving of democracy and the world from extinction are nothing more than left-wing meaning givers is this: The only communities who don&#8217;t believe this continue to possess all the traditional meaning givers. We don&#8217;t need the left&#8217;s substitutes.
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; came to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Street lights.

PRAGER: The Question That Explains Almost Everything

Environmentalism

Leftism

Socialism

I began part one of &#8220;Why Are So Many Young People Unhappy?&#8221; with data showing the apparently unprecedentedly high rate of unhappiness among young people in America (and elsewhere, but I am focusing on America). The rates of suicide, self-injury, depression, mass shootings and loneliness (at all ages) are higher than ever recorded. It seems that Americans may have been happier, and certainly less lonely, during the Great Depression and World War II than today, even with today&#8217;s unprecedentedly high levels of health, longevity, education and material well-being.
There is, of course, no single explanation, and I listed a number of possible explanations: &#8220;Increased use of illicit drugs and prescription drug abuse, and less human interaction because of constant cellphone use are two widely offered, valid explanations. Less valid explanations include competition, grades anxiety, capitalism and income inequality. And then there are young people&#8217;s fears that because of global warming, they have a bleak, and perhaps no, future.&#8221;
But I do believe that a loss of values and meaning are the two greatest sources of unhappiness.
Among the values lost are those of communal associations. As the great foreign observer of early American life Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1831, Americans&#8217; unique strength derived largely from their participation in innumerable nongovernmental associations – professional, social, civil, political, artistic, philanthropic and, of course, religious.
But these have all dwindled as government has become ever larger. Whereas Americans got together and formed bonds of friendship through nongovernmental associations, through what organizations will Americans form friendships today? In a video presentation at its 2012 national convention, the Democratic Party offered its answer: &#8220;Government&#8217;s the only thing that we all belong to,&#8221; the narrator said.
Then there are traditional middle-class values, like getting married first and then having children. Today, a greater percentage of Americans are born to unwed mothers than ever before, and fewer people are marrying than ever before. There are, for the first time in our history, more single Americans than married Americans. While it is certainly possible to feel lonely in a marriage, people are far more likely to feel lonely without a spouse, and increasingly without children, than with a spouse and children.
And now we come to the biggest problem of all: the lack of meaning.
Aside from food, the greatest human need is meaning. I owe this insight to Viktor Frankl and his classic work &#8220;Man&#8217;s Search for Meaning,&#8221; which I first read in high school and which influenced me more than any book other than the Bible. Karl Marx saw man as primarily motivated by economics; Sigmund Freud saw man as primarily driven by the sexual drive; Charles Darwin, or at least his followers, see us as primarily driven by biology.
But Frankl was right.
As regards economics, poor people who have meaning can be happy, but wealthy people who lack meaning cannot be.
As regards sex, people who do not have a sexual life (such as priests, who keep their vow of chastity; many widowed and divorced older people; and others) but have meaning can be happy. Sexually active people who do not have meaning cannot be.
As regards biology, there is no evolutionary explanation for the need for meaning. Every creature except the human being does fine without meaning.
And nothing has given Americans – or any other people, for that matter – as much meaning as religion. But since World War II, God and religion have been relegated to the dustbin of history.
The result?
More than a third of Americans born after 1980 affiliate with no religion. This is unprecedented in American history; until this generation, the vast majority of Americans have been religious.
Maybe, just maybe, the death of religion – the greatest provider of meaning, while certainly not the only – is the single biggest factor in the increasing sadness and loneliness among Americans (and so many others). A 2016 study published in the American Medical Association JAMA Psychiatry journal found that American women who attended a religious service at least once a week were five times less likely to commit suicide. Common sense suggests the same is true of men.
The bottom line: The reason so many young people are depressed, unhappy and angry is the left has told them that God and Judeo-Christian religions are nonsense; their country is largely evil; their past is deplorable; and their future is hopeless.
That seems to be a major reason, if not the reason, for so much unhappiness: not capitalism, not inequality, not patriarchy, sexism, racism, homophobia or xenophobia but rather having no religion, no God, no spouse, no community, no country to believe in and, ultimately, no meaning. That explains much of the unprecedented unhappiness.
And it explains the widespread adoption of that secular substitute for traditional religion: leftism. But unlike Judaism and Christianity, leftism does not bring its adherents happiness.
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; came to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Sadness.

PRAGER: Why Are So Many Young People Unhappy? Part 2

Christianity

Judaism

Lonliness

Suicide

youth

Here are some unhappy statistics:
— In America between 1946 and 2006, the suicide rate quadrupled for males ages 15 to 24 and doubled for females the same age.
— In 1950, the suicide rate per 100,000 Americans was 11.4. In 2017, it was 14.
— According to Grant Duwe, director of research and evaluation at the Minnesota Department of Corrections, in the 1980s, there were 32 mass public shootings (which he defines as incidents in which four or more people are killed publicly with guns within 24 hours). In the 1990s, there were 42. In the first decade of this century, there were 28. In all the 1950s, when there were fewer controls on guns, there was one. Fifty years before that, in the 1900s, there were none.
— Reuters Health reported in 2019, &#8220;Suicidal thinking, severe depression and rates of self-injury among U.S. college students more than doubled over less than a decade, a nationwide study suggests.&#8221; The study co-author Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, said, &#8220;It suggests that something is seriously wrong in the lives of young people.&#8221;
This data is not only applicable to Americans. As social commentator Kay Hymowitz wrote in City Journal in 2019: &#8220;Loneliness, public-health experts tell us, is killing as many people as obesity and smoking. &#8230; Germans are lonely, the bon vivant French are lonely, and even the Scandinavians — the happiest people in the world, according to the UN&#8217;s World Happiness Report — are lonely, too. British prime minister Theresa May recently appointed a &#8216;Minister of Loneliness.&#8217; &#8230; consider Japan, a country now in the throes of an epidemic of kodokushi, roughly translated as &#8216;lonely deaths.&#8217; Local Japanese papers regularly publish stories about kinless elderly whose deaths go unnoticed until the telltale smell of maggot-eaten flesh alerts neighbors.&#8221;
Though people have more money, better health care, better health, better housing and more education, and live longer than at any time in history, they — especially young people — are unhappier than at any time since data collection began.
Why has this happened?
There are any number of reasons. Increased use of illicit drugs and prescription drug abuse, and less human interaction because of constant cellphone use are two widely offered, valid explanations. Less valid explanations include competition, grades anxiety, capitalism and income inequality. And then there are young people&#8217;s fears that because of global warming, they have a bleak, and perhaps no, future.
But the biggest reason may be the almost-complete loss of values and meaning over the last half-century.
Let&#8217;s begin with values.
America — and much of the rest of the West, but I will confine my discussion to America — was founded on two sets of values: Judeo-Christian and American. This combination created the freest, most opportunity-giving, most affluent country in world history. This is not chauvinism. It is fact. And it was regarded as such throughout the world. That is why France gave America — and only America — the Statue of Liberty. That&#8217;s why people from every country on Earth so wanted to immigrate to America — and still do.
Chief among American values was keeping government as small as possible. This enabled nongovernmental institutions — Kiwanis International, Rotary International and Lions Clubs International; book clubs; the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts; bowling leagues; music societies; and, of course, churches — to provide Americans with friends and to provide the neediest Americans with help. But as government has gotten ever larger, many of these nongovernmental groups have dwindled in number or simply disappeared.
Another set of values is what is referred to as &#8220;middle-class&#8221; or &#8220;bourgeois&#8221; values. These include getting married before one has a child; making a family; getting a job so as to be self-sustaining and sustain one&#8217;s family; self-discipline; delayed gratification; and patriotism.
All of these have been under attack by America&#8217;s elites, with the following results:
One in 5 young Americans has no contact with his or her father (not including fathers who have died).
In 2011, 72% of black children were born to unmarried mothers. In 1965, it was 24%. In 2012, 29% of white children were born to unmarried women. In 1965, it was 3.1%.
The majority of births to millennials are to unmarried women. Yet, according to a 2018 Cigna study, single parents are generally the loneliest Americans.
Marriage and family are the single greatest sources of happiness for most people. Yet, the percentage of American adults who have never been married is at a historic high. More Americans than ever will not get married, or they will marry so late they will not have children. In 1960, 9% of blacks ages 25 and older had never been married. In 2012, it was nearly 40%.
And I haven&#8217;t even mentioned the biggest problem: the loss of meaning in young people&#8217;s lives. I will discuss that in part two.
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; came to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Depressed man.

PRAGER: Why Are So Many Young People Unhappy?

In my last column, &#8220;Newsweek Hits a New Low,&#8221; I wrote about Newsweek&#8217;s dishonest description of what I had said on one of my weekly PragerU &#8220;Fireside Chats.&#8221; A viewer had asked me to respond to a statement Anne Frank made in her epic Holocaust diary. Frank said, &#8220;Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.&#8221;
The Newsweek headline, &#8220;Conservative Radio Host Ridicules Anne Frank,&#8221; was simply a lie. In order for readers to appreciate the level of mendacity, I had my entire response transcribed and placed it in the column.
A few days later I received a message from Nancy Cooper, global editor-in-chief of Newsweek. She emailed me her personal cellphone number and asked me to call her. I did, and we had a good conversation. She agreed that what Newsweek published mischaracterized my remarks and corrected both the headline and the article, written by deputy editor Benjamin Fearnow.
She changed the headline to &#8220;Conservative Radio Host Counters Anne Frank&#8217;s View That People Are &#8216;Good at Heart.'&#8221;
In addition, she deleted Fearnow&#8217;s sentence characterizing me as having mocked Anne Frank. And she deleted another Fearnow falsehood: &#8220;He also brings up Nazi comparisons frequently on his radio program, The Dennis Prager Show, to criticize modern Democrats and liberals.&#8221;
I told Cooper that in 37 years of radio, I have never compared Democrats or liberals to Nazis; Fearnow had made that up out of whole cloth.
In its place, she wrote the truth: &#8220;He also brings up Nazi comparisons on his radio program, The Dennis Prager Show, saying the left &#8216;cheapens&#8217; Nazi evil by using the term to dismiss political opponents or that liberals focus on Nazism while failing to acknowledge the horrors wrought by Communism.&#8221;
The following notice now appears at the end of the article: &#8220;Update 1/8, 4:45 p.m. ET: The original headline on this story misrepresented Prager&#8217;s comments; the headline and story have been edited to reflect that Prager did not &#8216;ridicule&#8217; or &#8216;mock&#8217; Anne Frank but took issue with her view.&#8221;
As I wrote to Cooper, &#8220;Your attention to this says a lot about you and your hopes for Newsweek. Thank you.&#8221;
But the story doesn&#8217;t end there.
First, has Newsweek disciplined Fearnow in any way? (I never heard from Fearnow.)
Second, and more important, the original lie about me has taken on a life of its own. It was conveyed on numerous left-wing sites.
Wonkette, under the sarcastic headline &#8220;Dennis Prager Will Not Be Bullied by Anne Frank,&#8221; wrote a deceit-filled article about my comments about Anne Frank. At this writing, the column is followed by 654 reader comments — virtually every one of them repeating the lie started by Newsweek and continued by Wonkette.
There has not been a word on Wonkette about Newsweek&#8217;s correction.
The Daily Dot — &#8220;conceived as the Internet&#8217;s &#8216;hometown newspaper,&#8217; focuses on topics such as streaming entertainment, geek culture, memes, gadgets and social issues, such as LGBT, gender and race,&#8221; as Wikipedia describes — reprinted the original Newsweek charge.
There has not been a word on The Daily Dot about Newsweek&#8217;s correction.
Under the headline &#8220;Dennis Prager on Anne Frank: &#8216;I Don&#8217;t Get My Wisdom from Teenagers,'&#8221; the Patheos website&#8217;s Friendly Atheist page wrote, &#8220;Leave it to right-wing commentator Dennis Prager, founder of a fake online &#8216;university&#8217; &#8230; to dismiss Frank&#8217;s comment &#8230; because she was a child and therefore too dumb to understand anything.&#8221;
There has not been a word on Patheos about Newsweek&#8217;s correction.
Inquisitr, which claims 40 million readers a month, headlined its disparaging article &#8220;Conservative Pundit Dennis Prager Ridicules Anne Frank.&#8221;
There has not been a word on Inquistr about Newsweek&#8217;s correction.
Democratic Undergound&#8217;s headline read, &#8220;Conservative Radio Host Dennis Prager Ridicules Anne Frank.&#8221; It features a tweet from @Kokomothegreat that has 499 retweets.
There has not been a word on Democratic Underground or from Koko about Newsweek&#8217;s correction.
I note all of this to make three points.
First, as I have said for decades: While truth is a conservative value and a liberal value, it has never been a left-wing value.
Second, the left&#8217;s primary response to those with whom it differs is to smear.
Third, smears cannot be undone.
This was brilliantly brought home to me in a famous Jewish story I first heard when I was a student in yeshiva.
The tale is told of a Jew in Eastern Europe who had slandered his rabbi but soon regretted it. So, he went to his rabbi, told him what he had done, sincerely apologized and asked the rabbi&#8217;s forgiveness.
&#8220;Bring me two feather pillows,&#8221; the rabbi responded.
The man did.
&#8220;Am I now forgiven?&#8221; he asked.
&#8220;Now cut open the pillows,&#8221; the rabbi responded.
The man had no idea why the rabbi made these requests, but deeply wanting the rabbi&#8217;s forgiveness, he did as he was told.
&#8220;Am I now forgiven?&#8221; the man asked.
&#8220;Now let the feathers fly away,&#8221; the rabbi responded.
Once again, the man did as the rabbi requested.
&#8220;Am I now forgiven?&#8221; the exasperated man asked.
&#8220;Just do one more thing,&#8221; the rabbi responded. &#8220;Bring back the feathers.&#8221;
Benjamin Fearnow and the left-wing websites cannot bring back the feathers. Nor, apparently, do they want to.
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; came to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Feather.

PRAGER: Newsweek Changed Its Article About Me. But …

Dennis Prager

Media Bias

Newsweek

If decent people working in mainstream American media want to know why many Americans do not trust them and are willing to use the term &#8220;fake news&#8221; to describe the mainstream media, I offer one of the most glaring examples of a lie in my lifetime.
Last week, Newsweek headlined the following: &#8220;Conservative Radio Host Ridicules Anne Frank: &#8216;I Don&#8217;t Get My Wisdom From Teenagers.'&#8221;
Now, imagine how that must have struck any reader not familiar with the &#8220;conservative radio host&#8221; or with what he actually said. &#8220;Ridicule Anne Frank&#8221; — what kind of terrible human being would do that?
Well, it turns out the &#8220;conservative radio host&#8221; was me. Yes, me — a religious Jew who has devoted much of his life to the welfare of the Jewish people, served on the board of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, made the most widely viewed pro-Israel video in the world, written a book on anti-Semitism that is in its third printing, and founded a synagogue and a Jewish day school.
To understand how terrible a lie this is, you need to know what happened: Every week I do a video podcast for PragerU called &#8220;The Fireside Chat.&#8221; In it, I offer thoughts on life and then take questions from around the world (we have received questions from 52 countries). A few weeks ago, I received the following question from Sam in Meridian, Idaho: &#8220;On your most recent Fireside Chat, you said that people are not basically good. We&#8217;ve heard you discuss this topic before. Anne Frank is quoted as saying, &#8216;Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.&#8217; How do you respond to her quote?&#8221;
Here is my response (this is a word-for-word transcription, except for the words in parentheses added for clarity): &#8220;She wrote that in her diary, the most famous Holocaust document. (She was) a teenage girl, a Dutch Jewish girl, who hid with her family until they were betrayed by someone to the Nazis, who then shipped them to death camps. And she died, murdered by the Nazis in the death camps. She was about 16 years old, maybe 15. Her diary is very famous. It gives a face to the horror of the Holocaust.
&#8220;I know she wrote that, and my answer is it doesn&#8217;t matter that she wrote it. I don&#8217;t get my wisdom from teenagers. That she was a wonderful young woman and wrote an unbelievably powerful document that will last forever is beside the point. I don&#8217;t expect 16-year-olds, unless they grew up in a religious Jewish or Christian home (where it is taught as basic religious doctrine that people are not born basically good). She was a secular Jew. Most kids believe that (people are basically good). But it is not true. So, it has never been an issue for me — &#8216;Well, you disagree with Anne Frank.&#8217; So what?
&#8220;And, by the way, to be very serious for a moment, I would be very curious — I&#8217;ve thought about this a lot — if I were to be able to visit Anne Frank while in a concentration camp, would she have still believed that? We don&#8217;t know.&#8221;
Readers can watch the actual video <a href="https://www.prageru.com/video/ep-114-how-to-tackle-new-years-resolutions/">clip</a> (starting at 19:04).
Only someone who deliberately seeks to smear someone would claim that what I said ridicules Anne Frank.
The person who wrote this is Benjamin Fearnow, a deputy editor at Newsweek, who previously worked for the left-wing site Mediaite.
When I looked up Fearnow, I came across this December 2018 tweet from talk show host Mark Levin: &#8220;Newsweek&#8217;s Benjamin Fearnow is a very, very sick person.&#8221;
And Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, one of the most revered Jewish scholars in America — author of such Jewish classics as &#8220;Jewish Literacy&#8221; and &#8220;Biblical Literacy&#8221; — called me to say that Fearnow&#8217;s article saying I ridiculed Anne Frank is &#8220;the most despicable lie I recall reading in a mainstream news source.&#8221;
Yesterday, Newsweek published Fearnow&#8217;s column headlined, &#8220;Top Iranian Presidential Adviser Says Tehran&#8217;s &#8216;Sole Problem Is Trump,&#8217; Not Average American People.&#8221;
Apparently, Fearnow has chosen to serve as a useful idiot for the Iranian regime, which hates America, not only Trump. (Does Fearnow believe that the Iranian chant &#8220;death to Israel&#8221; only means &#8220;death to Netanyahu&#8221;?) The Iranian regime has gathered millions of Iranians to chant &#8220;death to America&#8221; since long before it ever heard of Donald Trump. It has been wishing death on us and killing Americans (not to mention Iranians) since it came into power in 1979. But Fearnow cites the Iranian dictator, Ayatollah Khamenei, as having said last February that &#8220;&#8216;Death to America&#8217; means death to Trump, (National Security Adviser) John Bolton, and (Secretary of State Mike) Pompeo,&#8221; as if it were credible.
Meanwhile, multiple left-wing sites have picked up Fearnow&#8217;s and Newsweek&#8217;s lie that I ridiculed Anne Frank.
If Newsweek has any honor, it will remove Fearnow&#8217;s article and apologize to me.
But neither is likely. As I wrote 30 years ago, &#8220;Being on the left means never having to say you&#8217;re sorry.&#8221;
Next time someone challenges you for using the term &#8220;fake news&#8221; to describe mainstream media, just cite Newsweek and Fearnow.
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; comes to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Fake news.

PRAGER: Newsweek Hits A New Low

Anne Frank

Fake News

It is not easy to understand what the Left — as opposed to liberals — stands for. If you ask a Christian what to read to learn the basics of Christianity, you will be told the Bible. If you ask a (religious) Jew, you will be told the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud. If you ask a Mormon, you will be told the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Ask a Muslim, and you will be told the Quran.
But if you ask a leftist what one or two books you should read to understand leftism, every leftist will give you a different answer — or need some time to think it over. Few, if any, will suggest Marx&#8217;s &#8220;Das Kapital&#8221; because almost no leftists have read it and because you will either not finish the book or reject it as incoherent.
So, then, how is one to understand what leftism stands for?
The truth is it is almost impossible. What leftist in history would have ever imagined that to be a leftist, one would have to believe that men give birth or men have periods, or that it is fair to women to have to compete in sports with biological males who identify as females?
There are two primary reasons it is so difficult, if not impossible, to define leftism. One is that it ultimately stands for chaos:
— Open borders.
— &#8220;Nonbinary&#8221; genders.
— Nonsensical and scatological &#8220;art.&#8221;
— &#8220;Music&#8221; without tonality, melody or harmony.
— Drag Queen Story Hour for 5-year-olds.
— Rejection of the concept of better or worse civilizations.
— Rejection of the concept of better or worse art.
— Removal of Shakespeare&#8217;s picture from a university English department because he was a white male.
— The end of all use of fossil fuels — even in transportation (as per the recent recommendation by the head of the U.N. World Meteorological Organization).
— The dismantling of capitalism, the economic engine that has lifted billions of people out of abject poverty.
And much more.
The other major reason it is impossible to define leftism is that it is emotion-based. Leftism consists of causes that give those who otherwise lack meaning something to cling to for meaning.
Two things about Greta Thunberg, Time Magazine&#8217;s 2019 person of the year, embody these explanations.
With regard to chaos, here is what Greta Thunberg wrote at the beginning of the month: &#8220;The climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice and of political will. Colonial, racist and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fuelled it. We need to dismantle them all.&#8221;
Greta Thunberg, like all leftists, seeks to dismantle just about everything. As former President Barack Obama said five days before the 2008 election, &#8220;We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.&#8221;
As regards emotion and meaning, the Guardian reports, this is what Thunberg&#8217;s father just told the BBC: &#8220;Greta Thunberg&#8217;s father has opened up about how activism helped his daughter out of depression &#8230; how activism had changed the outlook of the teenager, who suffered from depression for &#8216;three or four years&#8217; before she began her school strike protest outside the Swedish parliament. She was now &#8216;very happy&#8217;, he said &#8230; &#8216;She stopped talking &#8230; she stopped going to school,&#8217; he said of her illness.&#8221;
The post-Judeo-Christian world the Left has created has left a vast number of the West&#8217;s citizens, especially more and more young people, with no meaning. This Grand-Canyon-sized hole is filled by leftist causes.
The fact is life is better, safer and more affluent, and offers more opportunities for more people, than ever before in history. Just about all emotionally stable, mature people should be walking around the West almost delirious at their good fortune. Americans in particular should feel this way. But leftists (again, as opposed to many liberals) are not usually emotionally stable and are certainly not mature. That is why depression among young Americans (and perhaps Swedes) is at the highest levels ever recorded. So, like Greta, they look to left-wing causes to find meaning and emotional fulfillment. Until she embraced climate crisis activism — a chance, as she sees it, to literally save the world — Greta Thunberg was so depressed &#8220;she stopped talking.&#8221; But thanks to climate activism and other left-wing activism, she is now &#8220;very happy&#8221; (an assessment I suspect many observers find hard to believe).
Feminism and &#8220;fighting patriarchy&#8221; (in an age when American women have more opportunities than ever before and more opportunities than women almost anywhere else in the world), fighting racism (in the least racist multiracial society in history), fighting white supremacy (which has almost disappeared from American life) and fighting on behalf of myriad other leftist causes — in other words, fundamentally transforming society — gives meaning to people with no meaning.
None of that is morally or rationally coherent. But it is very emotionally satisfying. Just ask Greta Thunberg&#8217;s dad.
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; comes to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Greta Thunberg.

PRAGER: Greta Thunberg: A Living Explanation Of The Left

Greta Thunberg

The editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, Mark Galli, wrote an editorial calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
In my view, this editorial only serves to confirm one of the sadder realizations of my life: that religious conviction guarantees neither moral clarity nor common sense.
The gist of the editorial — and of most religious and conservative opposition to President Trump — is that any good the president has done is dwarfed by his character defects.
This is an amoral view that says more about Galli than it does about the president. He and the people who share his opinion are making the following statement: No matter how much good this president does, it is less important than his character flaws.
Why is this wrong?
First, because it devalues policies that benefit millions of people.
And second, because it is a simplistic view of character.
I do not know how to assess a person&#8217;s character — including my own — outside of how one&#8217;s actions affect others. Since I agree with almost all of President Trump&#8217;s actions as president and believe they have positively affected millions of people, I have to conclude that as president, Trump thus far has been a man of particularly good character.
Of course, if you think his policies have harmed millions of people, you will assess his character negatively. But that is not what never-Trump conservatives or Christians such as the Christianity Today editor-in-chief argue. They argue that his policies have indeed helped America (and even the world), but this fact is far less significant than his character.
In the words of Galli: &#8220;(I)t&#8217;s time to call a spade a spade, to say that no matter how many hands we win in this political poker game, we are playing with a stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence.&#8221;
This rhetorical sleight of hand reflects poorly on Galli&#8217;s intellectual and moral honesty.
Galli and every other Christian and conservative opponent of the president believe their concerns are moral, and that the president&#8217;s Christian and other conservative supporters are political.
This is simply wrong.
I and every other supporter of the president I know support him for moral reasons, not to win a &#8220;political poker game.&#8221; Galli&#8217;s view is purely self-serving; he&#8217;s saying, &#8220;We Christian and other conservative opponents of the president think in moral terms, while Christian and other conservative supporters of the president think in political terms.&#8221;
So, permit me to inform Galli and all the other people who consider themselves conservative and/or Christian that our support for the president is entirely moral.
— To us, putting pressure on the Iranian regime — one of the most evil and dangerous regimes on Earth — by getting out of the Iran nuclear deal made by former President Barack Obama is a moral issue. Even New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who loathes Trump, has written how important the president&#8217;s rejection of the Obama-Iran agreement has been.
— To us, enabling millions of black Americans to find work — resulting in the lowest black unemployment rate ever recorded — is a moral issue.
— To us, more Americans than ever being employed and almost 4 million Americans freed from reliance on food stamps is a moral issue.
— To us, appointing more conservative judges than any president in history — over the same period of time — is a moral issue. That whether the courts, including the Supreme Court, are dominated by the left or by conservatives is dismissed by Galli as &#8220;political poker&#8221; makes one question not only Galli&#8217;s moral thinking but also his moral theology.
— To us, moving the American embassy to Israel&#8217;s capital city, Jerusalem — something promised by almost every presidential candidate — is a moral issue, not to mention profoundly courageous. And courage is a moral virtue.
— To us, increasing the U.S. military budget — after the severe cuts of the previous eight years — is a moral issue. As conservatives see it, the American military is the world&#8217;s greatest guarantor of world peace.
Yet, none of these things matter to Galli and other misguided Christians and conservatives. What matters more to them is Trump&#8217;s occasional crude language and intemperate tweets, what he said about women in a private conversation and his having committed adultery.
Regarding adultery, that sin is for spouses and God to judge. There is no connection between marital sexual fidelity and moral leadership. I wish there were. And as regards the &#8220;Access Hollywood&#8221; tape, every religious person, indeed every thinking person, should understand that there is no connection between what people say privately and their ability to be a moral leader. That&#8217;s why I wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal 20 years ago defending Hillary Clinton when she was charged with having privately expressed anti-Semitic sentiments.
That the editor of Christianity Today thinks the president&#8217;s personal flaws, whatever they might be, are more important than all the good he has done for conservatives, for Christians, for Jews, for blacks and for America tells us a lot &#8230; about Galli and the decline of Christian moral thought.
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; comes to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Hand on Bible.

PRAGER: A Response To The Editor Of Christianity Today

Christianity Today

Donald Trump

Many on the left (as opposed to liberals) have been warring on Christmas for more than a generation. Leftists always deny there is a war on Christmas and mock those who claim there is.
There is a mind-blowing chutzpah or lack of self-awareness when people do something and yet deny that they are actually doing it. But the evidence is overwhelming. The left has stopped schools from calling Christmas vacations by that name — the name schools called them throughout American history until the last couple of decades. Almost every non-Christian school in America now calls Christmas vacation &#8220;winter break.&#8221; Fewer and fewer Americans, stores, companies or media wish people &#8220;merry Christmas,&#8221; preferring the neutered &#8220;happy holidays&#8221; (despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans celebrate Christmas). And in but one generation, virtually every American business has gone from having a &#8220;Christmas party&#8221; to having a &#8220;holiday party.&#8221;
Having written in the past about the falsehood of &#8220;merry Christmas,&#8221; &#8220;Christmas vacation&#8221; and &#8220;Christmas party&#8221; not being &#8220;inclusive,&#8221; I will not reiterate the point here. Suffice it to say that it takes a breathtaking level of narcissism for a non-Christian to be offended by mentions of Christmas and a breathtaking level of meanness to seek to deprive the vast majority of fellow Americans of the public mention of their holiday.
Rather, I want to try to explain why this has happened.
The &#8220;inclusive&#8221; argument is so absurd — I am a religious Jew and cannot even fathom being offended or feeling &#8220;not included&#8221; by an invitation to a Christmas party — that there have to be other, or at least additional, reasons for the left&#8217;s neutering of Christmas.
One is that the left sees in Christianity its primary ideological and political enemy. And it is right to do so. The only large-scale organized opposition to the left comes from the traditional Christian community — evangelical Protestants, traditional Catholics and faithful Mormons — and Orthodox Jews. Leftism is a secular religion, and it deems all other religions immoral and false.
From Karl Marx to Vladimir Lenin to George Soros, the left has regarded religion in general and Christianity in particular as the &#8220;opiate of the masses&#8221; — a drug that dulls the masses into accepting their oppressed condition and, thereby, keeps them from engaging in revolution.
The left understands that the more people believe in Christianity (and Judaism), the less chance the left has to gain power. The left doesn&#8217;t concern itself with Islam, because it perceives Islam as an ally in its war against Western civilization, and because leftists do not have the courage to confront Islam. They know that confronting religious Muslims can be fatal, whereas confronting religious Christians entails no risks.
Second, the left regards Christianity in America as an intrinsic part of American national identity — an identity it wishes to erode in favor of a &#8220;world citizen&#8221; identity. The left has not only warred against Christmas; it has sought to undermine other national identity holidays. For any number of reasons, not only including the left, Americans no longer celebrate George Washington&#8217;s birthday (it has de facto been replaced by the utterly meaningless &#8220;Presidents Day&#8221;) or Abraham Lincoln&#8217;s birthday, as they did when I was a child, my father was a child and his father was a child. The only American celebrated in a national holiday is Martin Luther King Jr., which is acceptable to the left since he is not white. One proof of the left&#8217;s desire to undermine specifically American national holidays is its war on the two remaining specifically American holidays: July Fourth and Thanksgiving.
The left deems Thanksgiving a historical fraud and an immoral celebration of &#8220;genocide&#8221; of the American Indians — which is what American children are now taught in many American public schools. And &#8220;happy Thanksgiving&#8221; has been replaced by &#8220;happy holidays.&#8221; As for July Fourth, The New York Times is leading the undermining of the celebration of America&#8217;s birthday by declaring that the real founding of America was 1619, the year, The Times asserts, African slaves first arrived on the American continent.
Of course, there is still Veterans Day and Memorial Day, but they are not specifically American national holidays; just about every country has such holidays.
But Christmas is a problem for the left. It celebrates religion, and it does so in quintessentially American ways (take American Christmas music, for example).
The third and final reason is that the left is joyless. Whatever and whomever the left influences has less joy in life. I have met happy and unhappy liberals, and happy and unhappy conservatives, but I&#8217;ve never encountered a happy leftist. And the further left you go, the more angry and unhappy the people you will encounter. Happy women and happy blacks, for example, are far more likely to be conservative than on the left.
Christmas is just too happy for the left. &#8220;Holly, jolly&#8221; is not a left-wing term.
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; comes to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Christmas ornament.

PRAGER: Why The Left Doesn’t Like Christmas

Christmas

If you&#8217;ve ever wondered what Judaism is, here is a list of its principal beliefs. This is not not an official list, but these beliefs have been widely held by religious Jews for thousands of years.
As for my background, I have taught Judaism all of my life including two years as a member of the Brooklyn College Department of Judaic Studies; written two books and hundreds of articles on Judaism; and written two volumes — Genesis and Exodus — of a projected five-volume commentary on the Torah (called &#8220;The Rational Bible&#8221;).
I am publishing this list because fewer and fewer Jews know anything about Judaism, and because many non-Jews understandably but erroneously identify Judaism with what most Jews believe.
I. There is one universal God.
This God is the Creator of the world and the God of all humanity.
II. One universal God means there is one universal morality.
III. God is:
a) Incorporeal (not physical): All matter comes to an end.
b) Eternal: All matter has a beginning and an end. But God exists outside of time.
c) Outside of nature: God is not in nature. And nature is not divine.
d) Personal: God knows each of us.
e) Good: God is moral, just and compassionate.
IV. God is the God revealed in the Torah — the God of Creation, the God of Israel, the God of the Ten Commandments.
V. God&#8217;s primary demand is that people be good.
Therefore, God cares more about how we act toward one another than how we act toward Him — just as we humans care more about how our children treat one another than how they treat us.
Therefore, right behavior matters more than intentions and even more than faith.
VI. There is an afterlife — God rewards the good and punishes the bad.
If good people and bad people have the same fate, there is either no God or a God that is not just.
VII. Though there is an afterlife, God wants us to be preoccupied with this life.
VIII. Reward in the afterlife (&#8220;heaven&#8221;) is available to all good people, not just good Jews.
IX. Human beings are not born basically good.
Therefore, evil comes primarily from within the human being, not from external causes, such as poverty.
Therefore, the most important task of society must be to make good people, which is Judaism&#8217;s primary task.
X. All people are created in the image of God.
Therefore, racism is theologically impossible.
Therefore, the most important distinction among human beings is not their race, religion, nationality, class or sex; it is their behavior. In the words of Viktor Frankl, &#8220;There are only two races, the decent and the indecent.&#8221;
Therefore, human life is sacred and animal life is not (though we are forbidden from inflicting gratuitous suffering on animals).
XI. God created the world for man.
Therefore, there is no purpose to nature without man to appreciate and (responsibly) use it.
XII. The Jews are the Chosen People, chosen to bring mankind to the God of the Torah and to the Ten Commandments (but not necessarily to Judaism).
Chosenness has, therefore, never meant that the Jews are better than anyone else. Indeed, the Torah and the entire Hebrew Bible go out of their way to depict the Jews as flawed.
XIII. The Torah is from God.
This belief does not necessarily mean that God dictated each word of the Torah. Nor does it mean that only a literal reading of the Torah is valid. It means that the Torah ultimately comes from God, not men.
XIV. Judaism, too, has a trinity: God, Torah and Israel (meaning Jewish peoplehood and the Land of Israel).
The removal of any one of them is no longer Judaism. It would be as if the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit were removed from Christianity.
XV. Jewish faith rests on two pillars: creation and exodus.
Judaism cannot survive denial of either as a divine event. They are to Judaism what the crucifixion and resurrection are to Christianity.
XVI. Judaism is a religion of distinctions.
These distinctions are:
a) God and man.
b) Good and evil.
c) Man and woman.
d) Holy and profane.
e) Life and death.
XVII. Judaism can ennoble anyone.
Therefore, any non-Jew is welcome to embrace Judaism and become a member of the Jewish people. But no one needs to become a Jew to be saved.
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; comes to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Israeli flag.

PRAGER: What Is Judaism?

We all know some individuals who are so obviously good and kind that we are certain if anyone were to dislike them, that&#8217;s all we would need to know about the person. We would immediately assume he or she is a bad person. To hate the manifestly good is a sure sign of being bad.
Such is the case regarding the left&#8217;s hatred of The Salvation Army. You don&#8217;t have to be a Christian — I am not — to appreciate the goodness of the people who run and work for The Salvation Army. They devote their lives to helping the poorest, the saddest, the loneliest and the most troubled among us — completely irrespective of race, gender, transgender identity, faith or no faith. And they do it for almost no money. They do it because of their Christian faith.
They provide these downtrodden people with not only food and shelter but also human warmth and love. And they offer the people they care for the one thing most likely to get them out of their predicament: meaning. They offer it; they do not coerce it. And while the vehicle for this meaning — Christian faith — may not be your faith or mine, so what? It takes a truly narrow-minded bigot to want to deprive people of meaning just because that meaning is rooted in faith or in a faith other than their own.
Yet, leftists — most especially LGBTQ groups, which spread a remarkable amount of hate in the name of &#8220;love&#8221; — seek to crush The Salvation Army. They threaten and pressure whoever supports The Salvation Army. &#8220;British pop singer Ellie Goulding,&#8221; the Wall Street Journal recently reported, &#8220;threatened to cancel an appearance at the Dallas Cowboys&#8217; Thanksgiving halftime show, which will celebrate the army&#8217;s red-kettle campaign, unless it made a &#8216;pledge or donation to the LGBTQ community.&#8217; She backed down after the Salvation Army assured her it serves needy members of that community.&#8221;
Most depressing of all, Chick-fil-A, a business owned by a Christian and heretofore run according to Christian principles, caved in to LGBTQ organizations&#8217; pressure and stopped funding The Salvation Army, while it has also donated to a left-wing group that hates the good, the Southern Poverty Law Center.
I never thought I&#8217;d see the day when The Salvation Army would be hated by a substantial number of Americans or lose the support of a Christian-run business.
But given the left&#8217;s loathing of virtually all things good — such as America, Israel, traditional Christianity and Judaism, the Boy Scouts, the nuclear family ideal, Thanksgiving and America&#8217;s founders — it is not surprising.
As I have said for years, the left destroys everything it touches: music, art, Christianity, Judaism, economies, universities, high schools, late-night comedy, pro football, women&#8217;s likelihood of finding happiness, men&#8217;s likelihood of maturing, the Boy Scouts and the innocence of children (think &#8220;Drag Queen Story Hour&#8221; for 5-year-olds at libraries), to cite some of the more obvious examples.
And while it destroys good institutions, the left never builds a viable replacement. Is there a left-wing equivalent to the Boy Scouts, a left-wing institution that helps mold boys into responsible men? Of course not. The left destroys, but it builds nothing — except state power. Or, to take the present example, is there a left-wing equivalent to The Salvation Army? No, there isn&#8217;t.
&#8220;We believe we are the largest provider of poverty relief to the LGBTQ+ population,&#8221; The Salvation Army said in a statement after Chick-fil-A announced its decision. As the Wall Street Journal concluded, &#8220;Considering it serves nearly 25 million people every year, that&#8217;s likely true.&#8221;
But all the good The Salvation Army does means nothing to the left. The left judges people or institutions not by their behavior but by their beliefs. And The Salvation Army believes — as has every civilization in recorded history, and as former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton did until a few years ago — that marriage should be defined as the union of a man and a woman. To the left, that belief outweighs helping 25 million people including married gays.
One of the great puzzles in contemporary American life is whether there is anything the left could do to make Americans understand how destructive it is. If suppressing free speech at colleges and on the internet, fomenting interracial anger, supporting those who wish to annihilate Israel, allowing (and even encouraging) teenage girls to have their healthy breasts surgically removed if they think they are a boy and trying to crush The Salvation Army don&#8217;t do it, probably nothing will.
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; comes to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Salvation Army.

PRAGER: The Left Hates The Salvation Army. That’s All You Need To Know About The Left

LGBT

Salvation Army

The former senior director for European and Russian affairs for the Trump administration, Fiona Hill, testified last week in the House impeachment hearings.
At one point, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., asked her: &#8220;Would you say that these different theories, these conspiracy theories that have been targeting you, spun in part by folks like Mr. Stone as well as fueled by Rudy Giuliani and others, basically have a tinge of anti-Semitism to them at least?&#8221;
This was Ms. Hill&#8217;s response: &#8220;Well, certainly when they involve George Soros, they do. I&#8217;d just like to point out that in the early 1900s, the czarist secret police produced something called &#8216;The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,&#8217; which, actually, you can still obtain on the internet. And you can buy it, actually, sometimes, at bookshops in Russia and elsewhere. This is the longest-running anti-Semitic trope that we have in history. And the trope against Mr. Soros, George Soros, was also created for political purposes, and this is the new &#8216;Protocols of the Elders of Zion.&#8217; I actually intended to write something about this before I was actually invited to come into the administration. Because it&#8217;s an absolute outrage.&#8221;
What is really an &#8220;absolute outrage&#8221; is that anyone — especially someone testifying in Congress before a national audience — would compare criticism of George Soros with &#8220;The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.&#8221; For those unfamiliar with &#8220;The Protocols,&#8221; they are the most infamous anti-Semitic forgery in history. Believed to have been written by Russian czarist officials in the 19th century, they purported to be a document written by Jews that outlined a Jewish plot to take over the world.
&#8220;The Protocols&#8221; are a lie, and their sole intent was to create anti-Semitism.
Criticism of Soros is rarely a lie, and its intent is rarely to create anti-Semitism.
George Soros is a billionaire whose Open Society Foundations, with offices in 70 countries, is the world&#8217;s major funder of left-wing causes.
If Soros were to come from a Lutheran or Catholic family, there would be no less criticism of him. While it is always possible that some people attack Soros solely because he was born into a Jewish family (he does not identify as a Jew), there are few such people.
Much of Israel&#8217;s Jewish population, for example, loathes Soros. Are they anti-Semites?
Moreover, Soros loathes Israel. As Joshua Muravchik reported in the Wall Street Journal, &#8220;(I)n a speech &#8230; to the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, Mr. Soros likened the behavior of Israel to that of the Nazis &#8230;&#8221;
&#8220;George Soros,&#8221; the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement in July 2017, &#8220;continuously undermines Israel&#8217;s democratically elected governments by funding organizations that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself.&#8221;
Martin Peretz, former longtime editor-in-chief of The New Republic, wrote: &#8220;Soros is ostentatiously indifferent to his own Jewishness. He is not a believer. He has no Jewish communal ties. He certainly isn&#8217;t a Zionist. He told Connie Bruck in The New Yorker — testily, she recounted — that &#8216;I don&#8217;t deny the Jews their right to a national existence — but I don&#8217;t want to be part of it.'&#8221;
Hill&#8217;s charge that criticism of Soros is &#8220;the new &#8216;Protocols of the Elders of Zion'&#8221; is vile. It is what leftists like Hill — who was a member of the board of Soros&#8217; Open Society Institute from 2000 to 2006 — always do when a fellow leftist (who is not a Christian white male) is criticized. Leftists constantly labeled criticism of former President Barack Obama &#8220;racist&#8221; and branded criticism of Hillary Clinton &#8220;sexist&#8221; and &#8220;misogynist.&#8221;
Their goal is to inoculate leftists from criticism.
In addition to being an illegitimate tactic to silence critics, what Hill said was immoral because it reduces the evil of real anti-Semitism. The left has already cheapened the terms &#8220;Nazi,&#8221; &#8220;racist&#8221; and &#8220;white supremacist.&#8221; You can now add &#8220;Protocols of the Elders of Zion&#8221; to the list. If &#8220;The Protocols of the Elders of Zion&#8221; is the same as attacking George Soros, then &#8220;The Protocols&#8221; were not all that bad.
Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League should have censured Hill. But they won&#8217;t because so many Jewish groups — once run by liberals and conservatives who cared deeply about Israel and the Jewish people — are today run by many Soros-admiring leftists, whose primary commitment is to further left-wing causes.
In fact, it is close to certain that the leaders of most American (not Israeli) Jewish organizations agree with Fiona Hill.
I began a 2007 column on George Soros this way: &#8220;What do Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Noam Chomsky and George Soros have in common? They were/are all radicals, born to Jewish parents, had no Jewish identity and hurt Jews (not to mention non-Jews).&#8221;
Criticizing George Soros is no more inherently anti-Semitic than attacking Marx, Trotsky or Chomsky.
As the left sees it, isolating Israel for rhetorical attack, even supporting its economic strangulation — e.g., through the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement — is not anti-Semitic. But attacking George Soros is.
Such is the broken state of the moral compass of the left and people like Fiona Hill.
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; comes to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Fiona Hill.

PRAGER: Fiona Hill Should Be Condemned by Jewish Groups. She Won’t Be

Anti-Semitism

George Soros

Whenever leftists are charged with not loving or even with hating America, they respond angrily, labeling the question absurd, mean-spirited and an example of right-wing McCarthyism.
But there can be little doubt that the left has no love for America, just as there can be little doubt that liberals and conservatives love America. Love of America is one of the many dividing lines between liberalism and leftism. (For a description of six differences between liberalism and leftism, please see my PragerU video <a href="https://https//www.prageru.com/video/left-or-liberal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">&#8220;Left or Liberal?&#8221;</a>)
Here are six reasons to believe the left hates America:
1. No one denies that the international left — the left in Europe, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere — hates America. Therefore, in order to argue that American leftists do not hate America, one would have to argue that on one of the most fundamental principles of international leftism — hatred of America — American leftists differ with fellow leftists around the world: All the world&#8217;s left hates the U.S., but the American left loves it.
This, of course, makes no sense. Leftists around the world agree on every important issue. Why, then, would they differ with regard to America? Has any leftist at The New York Times, for example, written one column critical of the international left&#8217;s anti-Americanism?
2. Leftists want to &#8220;fundamentally transform&#8221; the United States. Five days before the 2008 presidential election, candidate Barack Obama told a huge audience in Columbia, Missouri, &#8220;We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.&#8221;
More recently, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced that she plans to &#8220;fundamentally transform our government,&#8221; that America needs &#8220;big, structural change&#8221; and that her proposed Accountable Capitalism Act would bring about &#8220;fundamental change.&#8221;
Likewise, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said earlier this year, &#8220;We&#8217;re going to try to transform the United States of America,&#8221; and last month he said, &#8220;This campaign is about fundamental change.&#8221;
Examples are legion.
So, here&#8217;s a question: How can one claim to love what one wishes to fundamentally transform?
The answer is obvious: It isn&#8217;t possible.
If a man were to confide to you that he wants to fundamentally transform his wife, would you assume he loves his wife? If a woman were to tell you she wants to fundamentally transform her husband, would you assume she loves him? Of course not.
3. Leftists have contempt for the American flag.
I am unaware of a single left-wing individual or organization that has condemned NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick for refusing to stand for the flag during the playing or singing of the national anthem that precedes NFL games. To the contrary, on the left, he is universally regarded as a hero. Indeed, Nike anointed him as one, making him its brand model.
Leftists might respond that Kaepernick&#8217;s public refusal to stand for the flag and national anthem says nothing about his love for America, as it is only a form of protest against racial injustice. But that is nonsense. Would leftists argue that anyone who publicly refuses to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day really loves Dr. King?
4. Leftists routinely describe America as racist, sexist, xenophobic, imperialist, genocidal, homophobic, obsessed with money and morally inferior to most Western European countries. No moral person could love such a place. As one person commenting on a Paul Krugman column wrote, &#8220;Does loving your country mean you love or ignore the fact that we destroyed Iraq, shot down an Iranian commercial airliner, and waged a brutal war in Asia for reasons that today make no sense?&#8221;
5. America is the most successful country in world history — while being the most committed to capitalism and remaining the most religious of all the industrialized democracies. To the extent that America is great, that means two of the institutions the left most loathes — Christianity and capitalism — are also great.
6. Love is, among other things, an emotion. So, here is a question about leftists&#8217; emotions: Do any leftists get the chills when the national anthem is played or when they see the American flag waving as the anthem is played? Given their rhetoric, it is most unlikely. Yet, every person I know who loves America does get a chill at such moments. Do leftists, as opposed to some liberals and conservatives, display the flag on any national holiday? How many leftists even own a flag?
Finally, if leftists do not love America, what do they love?
According to their own rhetoric, they love the planet — Mother Earth, as they frequently refer to it. And they love animals.
They really love power, and they claim to love material equality.
They don&#8217;t love Western culture — and they now dismiss praise for it as a euphemism for white supremacy.
Interestingly, while they often claim to love humanity, many don&#8217;t seem to love people. They give less charity and volunteer less time to the downtrodden than conservatives, for example. They have much less interest in having children and making families. They are far more likely than conservatives to cut off relations with friends or relatives with whom they differ politically. And if they really loved people, they would love capitalism because only capitalism has lifted billions of people from poverty.
But most of all, they love &#8230; themselves.
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; comes to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

United States flags

PRAGER: Does the Left Hate America?

Barack Obama

Democratic Party

Elizabeth Warren

The left-right divide in America is, unfortunately, unbridgeable.
There are three reasons.
First, we are divided by our vision of what we want America to be.
The right believes the founders&#8217; vision was brilliant and moral, that bourgeois middle-class values are superior to alternative value systems; that rights come from God, not man; and that the state must be as small as possible. The left (not liberals) shares none of those values.
Second, we are divided by the means we use to achieve our vision. Given their different ends, left and right obviously differ on what means to use to achieve their ends.
Third, and perhaps most troubling, there is a reality-perception divide.
Left and right have different perceptions of reality.
I have been aware of this for many years, but it was dramatically brought home last week when I was a guest on &#8220;Real Time With Bill Maher.&#8221; Given that the other two guests on the panel and more or less the entire studio audience were on the left, their reactions to what I said proved my point.
For example, I said that though there are, of course, racists in the United States, America is the least racist multiethnic and multiracial country in the world.
I was booed.
I said the United States military has brought so much liberty to the world it deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
I was booed.
Clearly, there is an unbridgeable divide in the way we perceive the reality of the American military&#8217;s role in the world.
I said that it turned out the Russia-Trump campaign collusion never happened.
I was booed.
There is an unbridgeable divide in the way left and right perceive this reality.
I said the Trump-Ukrainian president phone transcript did not show a quid pro quo.
I was booed, and one of the other panelists said it actually showed &#8220;extortion.&#8221;
This, too, constitutes an unbridgeable divide between the way left and right view reality.
I said John Brennan, the former CIA director, has voted communist. (He has admitted that he voted for the Communist Party USA presidential candidate Gus Hall in 1976.) I was dismissed as having made something up. Bill Maher sarcastically responded that he didn&#8217;t recall Mao having been on any ballot.
And I said that people on the left say men can menstruate.
For that, I was not merely booed; I was laughed at by the panel, Maher and the audience.
Anyone can Google this and learn that I was entirely right. Just type &#8220;can men menstruate.&#8221; One of the first results will be from the popular left-wing website The Daily Beast: &#8220;Yes, Men Can Have Periods and We Need to Talk About Them,&#8221; reads one of its headlines. &#8220;How is this possible?&#8221; you might ask. Well, if a woman declares herself to be a man, then &#8220;a man&#8221; can have a period. In fact, last month, Procter &amp; Gamble announced that it will remove the female Venus symbol from its Always line of menstrual products. After all, not only women menstruate.
The irony is that as soon as most progressives become aware that LGBTQ groups say that men menstruate, they will say that men menstruate. And that will be another differing perception of reality.
On each of these issues — all the issues for which I was booed — right and left have different perceptions of reality. That — even more so than differing values — makes the left-right divide unbridgeable. When you cannot agree on what is real, there is no possible bridging of the gulf.
The left believes the president colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. The reality is that there was no collusion. This is the conclusion of the Mueller report, but still, the left doesn&#8217;t accept it.
The left is certain President Trump said the neo-Nazis are &#8220;very fine people&#8221; when referring to the protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. The right is certain the president didn&#8217;t say there are good neo-Nazis any more than he said there are good &#8220;antifa&#8221; members. When he said there were &#8220;very fine people on both sides,&#8221; he was referring to those demonstrating on behalf of keeping Confederate statues and those opposed. See &#8220;The Charlottesville Lie&#8221; by CNN analyst Steve Cortes.
The left believes socialism is economically superior to capitalism. But the reality is that only capitalism has lifted billions of people out of poverty. This is, therefore, not an opinion divide — &#8220;You prefer capitalism. I prefer socialism&#8221; — but a reality divide.
The reason this is so frightening is that it means one side has lost its grip on reality. If half of this country cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, that is not a good sign for the nation&#8217;s future. On that point, ironically, left and right can agree.
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; comes to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Fork in road.

PRAGER: The Left-Right Divide Is About Reality Itself

Conservatism

Transgender

Here are some of the messages the left has been giving America&#8217;s young people:
— Your past is terrible, and your future is terrible.
The American past is a story of genocide, slavery, racism, patriarchy and colonialism. You should be ashamed of it.
As regards your future, your very existence is in jeopardy. You may well die at a young age unless society completely shifts from fossil fuels to wind and solar power. In fact, your future is so bleak you should probably not consider getting married and having children.
— If you are a girl, you should know that American society has contempt for you. You will be paid less than a man for the exact same work and exact same number of hours of work. You will have between a 1 in 4 and 1 in 3 chance of being sexually assaulted if you attend college. There is a glass ceiling that will prevent you from professional success. And professional success, not marriage and family, is what you should concentrate on.
That none of the above is true is irrelevant to the left. What is relevant to the left is that these messages make young women leftists — because they make them angry (virtually all leftists are angry), sad (there are happy liberals and happy conservatives but very few happy leftists) and lonely (singles are overwhelmingly on the left).
— If you are a young black, the most important thing for you to know is that this country loathes you — that racism is &#8220;part of our DNA,&#8221; as President Barack Obama put it — and that just being black gets you suspended or expelled from school, shot by police, denied the vote whenever possible and disproportionately imprisoned.
Again, almost none of that is true. But a happy black — let alone a black grateful for being an American — is much less likely to support the left.
— If you are a young Latino, know the white majority is so xenophobic that if it could, it would expel you from the country.
— If you are a white male, you are the recipient of unearned privilege, and you are a racist.
— Boys and girls, you need to know from as young an age as possible that there is actually no such thing as &#8220;boys and girls.&#8221; That is why your teachers have been told not to refer to you as &#8220;boys and girls&#8221; but only as &#8220;students.&#8221;
— Young people, you should know that there is no God. So don&#8217;t look to God or religion for meaning. They are for the emotionally handicapped and for intellectual lightweights. For meaning, look to social action.
— Christianity, the religion of the great majority of Americans since America&#8217;s founding, the religion of nearly all your parents or grandparents, justified slavery, the slaughter of Native Americans and the persecution of gays. And in our time, most people who call themselves believing Christians are bigots and hypocrites. Whatever good was achieved was done so by believers with secular Enlightenment values, not Judeo-Christian values. Islam, on the other hand, has always been a religion of peace.
— Western civilization is nothing for you to be proud of. It is neither culturally nor morally superior to any other civilization or culture. And in many ways, it is worse: It is largely a record of persecution and genocide. That&#8217;s why you will no longer celebrate Columbus Day but rather Indigenous Peoples Day.
— Columbus Day will not be the only national holiday we will either erase or minimize in importance. Whereas Americans have always had meaningful holidays to celebrate and enrich their lives, you will have few or none (aside from Halloween). Previous generations found great meaning in Washington&#8217;s and Lincoln&#8217;s birthdays. You won&#8217;t. Their birthdays are no longer celebrated. Throughout American history, July Fourth meant a great deal to nearly all Americans. They celebrated it with patriotic marches, parades and speeches. No longer. Anyway, America wasn&#8217;t founded in 1776: According to The New York Times, it was founded in 1619, when the first slaves arrived. As for Memorial Day, this once solemn day in which Americans placed flowers at the graves of those who died to preserve our freedoms, is just another day off. And most of the deceased probably died in vain anyway.
— You have few American heroes.
Hey, kids, America&#8217;s founders, known as heroes to every generation until the present one, were not heroes at all. They were rich white men who believed in patriarchy, the suppression of women and slavery. They were all racists, and some were rapists. In short, as an American, you have few, if any, heroes.
Only when one understands that the left — the left, not liberalism — has always and everywhere been a destructive force can one begin to understand what is happening to America. And the left has damaged no group more than America&#8217;s youth. Leftists speak about &#8220;the children&#8221; — but they care about &#8220;the children&#8221; as much as the communists cared about &#8220;the workers.&#8221;
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in April 2018, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Exodus. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; comes to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Old American flag.

PRAGER: ‘Your Past Is Terrible, And Your Future Is Terrible’: What The Left Tells Young Americans

Progressivism

Air Canada announced last week that it will no longer use the phrase &#8220;ladies and gentlemen&#8221; on board its flights. The policy is part of a &#8220;commitment to respect sexual identity, diversity, and inclusion,&#8221; the company said in an internal memo.
Instead of the gender-specific &#8220;ladies and gentlemen&#8221; (and &#8220;mesdames et messieurs&#8221; — all announcements on Air Canada are in English and French), flight attendants are to address passengers as &#8220;everybody&#8221; and &#8220;tout le monde.&#8221;
LGBTQ groups are delighted.
Most other people are not.
Needless to say, Air Canada never polled its passengers or its employees. The left believes in democracy only when it wins a popular vote. When it loses a popular vote, it regards democracy as defective. A perfect example is the attempt by the left in Britain and the rest of Europe to overturn the British people&#8217;s vote in favor of leaving the European Union (also known as Brexit). Because the left lost, it regards that exercise in democracy as invalid.
Everyone knows that had there been a vote among Air Canada passengers — say, all those enrolled in the airline&#8217;s frequent flier program — even liberal Canadians would have voted to retain &#8220;ladies and gentlemen.&#8221; Even the infinitesimally small number of Canadians who are transgender would almost all vote to retain &#8220;ladies and gentlemen.&#8221; Remember, transgender individuals strongly identify as male or female — they simply reject their biological sexual identity. So, who, exactly, is Air Canada making more comfortable? Not the 99-plus percent of Canadians who identify with their biological sex, and not the fraction of a percent of Canadians who are transgender.
They are allegedly making the most rare of all human beings comfortable: those with no sexual identity. And not even every member of that group would vote to have Air Canada drop &#8220;ladies and gentlemen.&#8221; I recently interviewed one such individual on my radio show, Professor Camille Paglia, one of the major thinkers of our time. She told me she identifies as neither female nor male but she thinks society is going mad in its rush to obliterate male and female.
The truth is no one but LGBTQ activists (including their cisgender heterosexual supporters) approve of Air Canada&#8217;s change.
So why did Air Canada do this?
To feel good about itself and buy goodwill with some of the most powerful social forces in the English-speaking world: LGBTQ activist groups. Big-business leftism — like Citibank&#8217;s recent video featuring the hurt and angry reactions of young girls (around ages 10 to 13) when told women are &#8220;paid less than men&#8221; for the same work — can best be described as moral onanism.
There are no other reasons for Air Canada&#8217;s decision. Air Canada has offended nearly all its passengers — male, female, straight, gay and transgender — who want to be referred to as ladies or gentlemen. But this means nothing to Air Canada. And it is likely that U.S. airlines will follow suit. There is no left-wing position, no matter how radical or absurd, that hurts a business.
Only taking a conservative position can hurt a business. The owner of Chick-fil-A believes in the only sex-based definition of marriage that has ever existed — the union of male and female — and is boycotted, closed down or never allowed to open. That Chick-fil-A hires and serves gays, including married gays, makes no difference to left-wing haters.
Forbes reported last week that just eight days after a new Chick-fil-A was opened for business, &#8220;the Oracle shopping mall in Reading, outside London &#8230; yanked its lease. &#8230; The outlet in Reading, about 35 miles from London, was an effort to test the metropolitan area&#8217;s waters. But, campaigners from Reading Pride, an LGBT organization, called for a boycott of the American brand because of its foundation&#8217;s support of groups they say are hostile to gay rights.&#8221;
Earlier this year, the San Antonio Airport banned Chick-fil-A from opening a restaurant there. And New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel tried to prevent Chick-fil-A from opening in their cities — because of the owner&#8217;s views, not Chick-fil-A&#8217;s policies.
Air Canada will pay no price for a decision that insults the vast majority of its clients and undermines one of the most beautiful and essential building blocks of civilization: the existence, and even celebration, of the two sexes. No company pays a price — from Air Canada to Citibank to Gillette (whose &#8220;toxic masculinity&#8221; video was a &#8220;screw you&#8221; to nearly all its male clients) to Nike (which has appointed as its national spokesman a football player who won&#8217;t stand for the national anthem and loathes America).
Such is the power and stranglehold of the left today — in big business as much as in journalism and our schools. This is not new. As the famous quote attributed to (but perhaps not actually said by) Lenin put it, &#8220;The capitalists&#8221; — in this case, Western businesses — &#8220;will sell us the rope with which to hang them.&#8221;
If the West sinks, you can thank big businesses like Air Canada as much as the universities and the media.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in April 2018, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Exodus. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; comes to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Air Canada jet.

PRAGER: Air Canada To Its Passengers: ‘Screw You’

Gender

Gender Pronouns

Dear Mr. Brin: Fifty years ago this week, when I was a 21-year-old college senior, I was in the Soviet Union, sent by the government of Israel to smuggle in Jewish religious items and smuggle out names of Jews who wanted to escape the Soviet Union and could then be issued a formal invitation to Israel.
I was chosen because I was a committed Jew and because I knew Hebrew and Russian. I was no hero, but the trip did entail risk. The Soviets did not appreciate people smuggling out names of Soviet citizens who sought to emigrate, information the Israeli government and activist groups in America used to advocate on their behalf.
My four weeks in the USSR were, of course, life-changing. This young American, lucky beyond belief to have spent his entire life in the freest country in the world, experienced what it was like to live in a totalitarian police state. People feared merely being seen speaking with a Westerner, lest the KGB arrest and interrogate them. People arranged to meet me at a certain tree in a certain park and only spoke to me while walking to avoid eavesdroppers. I met with Jewish engineers, doctors and professors who could find no work because they were known to the government to be &#8220;otkazniki,&#8221; or &#8220;refuseniks&#8221; — Jews who had applied for exit visas to leave the Soviet Union and been refused permission. I&#8217;m sure you know of them from your parents.
I left the Soviet Union angry and grateful — angry there are people who have the audacity to tell other people what they could and could not say, and grateful beyond measure to have been born in America, where no one could tell anyone what they could say. From that day to this, I have never taken freedom, especially freedom of speech, for granted.
Why I am writing to you about this?
Because, beyond my wildest dreams, two things are happening in America.
One is that for the first time in America&#8217;s history, free speech is seriously threatened.
In 1977, when Nazis sought to march in Skokie, Illinois — those terrible human beings chose Skokie because it was home to many Jewish Holocaust survivors — virtually every liberal and conservative organization, including Jewish organizations, defended the Nazis&#8217; right to march. Because in America — and only in America — it was understood that even if the most loathsome speech was not protected, all speech was at risk.
That has changed.
Today, decent people — people who abhor Nazism and every other form of evil, left or right; people like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro and Ayaan Hirsi Ali — are shouted down, threatened, disinvited or never invited to speak at America&#8217;s universities.
The other thing that is happening is even more frightening. The company that you co-founded, Google, the greatest conduit of speech in world history, is also suppressing speech. I have asked myself over and over: How could the company founded by a man whose parents fled the Soviet Union do this?
It so boggles the mind that I have to hope you are simply not fully aware of what your company is doing.
So, in a nutshell, let me tell you what Google has done to one organization, Prager University (better known as PragerU). Every week, PragerU releases a five-minute video on virtually every subject outside of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). Some of the finest minds in the world have presented these videos — including professors from Harvard, Stanford and MIT; four Pulitzer Prize winners; three former prime ministers; liberals; conservatives; Democrats; Republicans (including never-Trumpers); gays; and, of course, many women and members of ethnic and racial minorities.
Yet YouTube, which Google owns, has placed hundreds of our videos on its restricted list. In addition to the inherent smear of being labeled &#8220;inappropriate for children,&#8221; this means no family that filters out pornography and graphic violence, no school and no library can see those videos. Among those restricted videos is one during former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper defends Israel. Had someone told me 50 years ago that a company led by the son of Soviet Jewish refuseniks would suppress a video by a world leader defending the Jewish state, I would have told them they were out of their mind. That&#8217;s one reason I can only assume, or at least hope, that you are not fully aware of what your company is doing.
Or how about a video series I present on the Ten Commandments? YouTube is suppressing a number of those, too. When Sen. Ted Cruz asked a Google official why Google restricted one of my videos on the Ten Commandments, the official responded (it&#8217;s on YouTube) that it was because the video &#8220;contains references to murder.&#8221;
In fact, PragerU has repeatedly asked Google over the past several years why any of our videos are on the restricted list, and we have received either a runaround or silence. We have never received a substantive explanation. We have no desire to see government intervene in private business to protect free speech. But your company has availed itself of protections under law that shield it from liability for defamation, copyright infringement, etc. Your company&#8217;s arrogance is such that a vast number of Americans — liberals as well as conservatives — are worried that the major conduit of speech in the Free World doesn&#8217;t care about free speech.
Mr. Brin, along with millions of other Americans, I fought to bring your parents from a land with no freedom to the Land of the Free. None of us has ever asked for anything in return. It was our honor to work for liberty in general and for Soviet Jewry specifically.
What Americans most want from immigrants is that they help keep America free. I never had any doubt that those leaving the Soviet Union would fulfill that mission.
Until now.
Freedom of speech is the most fundamental of all freedoms. It&#8217;s what your parents yearned for and bequeathed to you. Please don&#8217;t help take it away from those who made it possible — the people of America.
Sincerely yours,
Dennis Prager
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in April 2018, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Exodus. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; comes to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Sergey Brin.

PRAGER: An Open Letter To Sergey Brin

Communism

Free Speech

Google

Russia

A rule of life is that everything the left touches it ruins: art, music, Christianity, Judaism, race relations, male-female relations, universities, high schools, elementary schools, late-night comedy, sports, liberty, journalism, the Boy Scouts, national economies, language and everything else it influences.
The left, not liberalism. (I have written a column and done a PragerU video on the differences between liberalism and leftism.)
To this list, we can now add childhood and children.
1. The left robs children of their innocence and has helped produce an unprecedented number of anxious and depressed young people.
Most of us are aware of how the left prematurely introduced sexuality into young children&#8217;s lives under the guise of &#8220;sex education.&#8221; That was just the beginning. Then the left changed same-sex college dorms, which had been the norm throughout American history, into coed dorms on virtually every American campus. Then came coed bathrooms. And just in case college students were not thinking about — or having enough — sex, the left introduced sex columns in college newspapers and &#8220;sex week&#8221; on virtually every college campus. One is more graphic than the other. After reading a college newspaper sex column or experiencing the college&#8217;s sex week, a student could easily conclude that without having experienced a menage a trois and mastering cunnilingus or fellatio techniques, life is neither exciting nor fulfilling.
There are many reasons a greater percentage of college students are more depressed than ever before. But the immersion in loveless and romance-less sex is undoubtedly one of them. That is what contributes to the especially high rate of female depression on campuses.
The left hypersexualized colleges and now laments that colleges are all filled with a &#8220;rape culture.&#8221;
2. The left has devalued marriage.
An unprecedentedly large percentage of young Americans are not married, and more of them than ever do not consider marriage important. The left has indoctrinated a generation (or two) of young Americans into believing that marriage is unimportant — career alone is the road to a meaningful life for both men and women. Throughout American history, until the left took over the culture and universities beginning in the 1960s, it was a given, as Frank Sinatra sang, that &#8220;love and marriage &#8230; go together like a horse and carriage.&#8221;
3. The left has devalued having children.
The left is ambivalent and often hostile to people having children. That&#8217;s why people on the left have the fewest children of all political and religious groups.
The latest reason not to have children is that much of humanity is doomed if global warming is not immediately reversed. But since the 1970s, the left has offered other reasons not to have children including that the world would not produce nearly enough food and other basic resources to sustain the growing world population. Thus began the zero population growth (ZPG) movement.
But the left&#8217;s ambivalence over having children isn&#8217;t just hysteria over too many people, lack of food or global warming. Many people on the left (again, unlike liberals or conservatives) just don&#8217;t particularly want kids. Children are a nuisance: They interfere with one&#8217;s career; they cost too much; and dogs and cats are perfectly acceptable substitutes.
In sum, the left doesn&#8217;t particularly like children.
4. The left is ruining the childhood of many children by depriving them of the joys and excitement of growing into men and women. The left has invented a new idea in history: that human beings are not born male or female but are &#8220;assigned&#8221; their sex at birth by sexist parents, physicians and a society that is not yet &#8220;woke&#8221; to this &#8220;fact.&#8221; In schools throughout America, teachers are told to no longer call their students &#8220;boys&#8221; and &#8220;girls,&#8221; just &#8220;students,&#8221; lest they impose a gender identity on them. Mattel has released a doll that has no gender. A New York Times columnist whose photo shows him with a beard has requested that his readers refer to him only as &#8220;they,&#8221; as he believes gender is useless. Teenage girls who declare themselves boys are allowed to have their breasts surgically removed without their parents&#8217; permission. Divorced parents who tell their 5-year-old male child who feels he is a girl that he is a boy risk losing custody or parental rights if the other parent affirms the child is a girl. Girls who compete in sports against boys who identify as females and complain that they lose unfairly are attacked as &#8220;transphobic.&#8221;
5. The left has convinced innumerable young Americans that their past is terrible and their future is terrible.
The left tells American children that their past — the American past — is shameful and their future is even worse: They will likely die prematurely as a result of global warming.
Whatever the left touches it ruins. The latest example is children.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in April 2018, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Exodus. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Dem donkey.

PRAGER: The Left To America’s Children: Your Past Is Terrible, And Your Future Is Terrible

Climate Change

Ask any young person — even a young child — &#8220;What do you want to be?&#8221; and just about everyone will answer, &#8220;a doctor,&#8221; &#8220;an engineer,&#8221; &#8220;a teacher,&#8221; &#8220;a firefighter,&#8221; &#8220;an airplane pilot&#8221; or a member of some other profession.
This is completely understandable.
But I have a suggestion that would change your child&#8217;s life — and the world — for the better. Tell your child to answer, &#8220;I want to be a good person.&#8221; This would completely change the way your child sees himself or herself.
As a rule, people become what they want to become. If you devote the entire first half of your life including your most formative years to being a good student in order to be a good professional, you probably will become &#8230; a good student and a good professional.
Think of how long it takes and how hard one has to work to accomplish those two goals. Why wouldn&#8217;t it take as much time and effort to become a good person? How would anyone become proficient at anything that wasn&#8217;t his or her goal to achieve?
Every generation in recorded history has witnessed a terrible amount of evil. One would think that making good people would therefore be the first goal of every decent society, indeed of every society that wishes to long survive. But with a few exceptions, this has not been the case — and is not the case today.
What preoccupies parents today is not that their child be a good person but that their child be a good student, get into a &#8220;good&#8221; school and become good at some profession. You can test this. Ask your child, whether he or she is 5 years old or 50 years old, &#8220;What do you think I, your mother (or I, your father) most want (or most wanted) you to be: smart, successful, good or happy?&#8221;
For 30 years, I have suggested listeners of my radio show do this, and for 30 years, parents have called to tell me how disappointed they were that their children did not answer, &#8220;good.&#8221;
But given how few parents make goodness their children&#8217;s primary goal, why should they be surprised?
To be fair, one obvious reason few children respond, &#8220;a good person&#8221; to the question &#8220;What do you want to be?&#8221; is that the question (often ending with &#8220;when you grow up&#8221;) implies a profession.
But the very fact that the question is only understood to mean &#8220;What type of work do you intend to do?&#8221; is precisely the problem. Therefore, parents need to change the meaning of the question, and they can easily do so by having their children answer, &#8220;a good person.&#8221;
Just imagine how adults asking the question would react to a child who gives that answer.
And that answer would force you, the parent, to work on your child&#8217;s goodness. The moment you tell your child to answer, &#8220;a good person,&#8221; you will have to start communicating that you value their character more than their grades.
There is another reason virtually no parent tells his or her child to answer, &#8220;a good person.&#8221; Most secular parents think that human nature is basically good and, therefore, that all most children need to be good is love, not moral instruction.
Unfortunately, even the answer &#8220;a good person&#8221; does not ensure character development. Among too many parents, &#8220;a good person&#8221; has come to mean holding the proper political positions. Many parents, especially among the best educated, believe that if their child believes that America is racist; that all whites have &#8220;white privilege&#8221;; that patriarchy is a serious problem and needs to be eradicated; that carbon emissions threaten life on Earth, that economic inequality is a great evil; that there are scores of genders; that Republicans are deplorable people; and other left-wing positions, then their child is good person.
But, while political/social positions do indeed have a moral component, they are not necessarily related to a person&#8217;s character. With regard to young people, we should be much more concerned with how they treat their parents and teachers, how they treat their peers, whether or not they cheat on tests and how honest they are in general than their position on carbon emissions.
Finally, if &#8220;a good person&#8221; strikes you as too corny or objectionable for some other reason, how about telling your child to answer the question &#8220;What do you want to be?&#8221; with one or more of these responses:
— &#8220;A good man.&#8221;
— &#8220;A good Christian (or Jew).&#8221;
— &#8220;A good American.&#8221;
— &#8220;A good father and husband.&#8221;
— &#8220;A good mother and wife.&#8221;
They&#8217;re all better answers than any profession.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in April 2018, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Exodus. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Kids playing.

PRAGER: What Do You Want Your Child To Be?

The entire American left — the mainstream media, the environmentalist movement and Democratic politicians in particular — are celebrating the involvement of teenagers and even younger children in protesting the world&#8217;s &#8220;inaction&#8221; with regard to global warming.
And not just the American left, of course. The left throughout the world is celebrating. A 16-year-old Swedish girl whose contempt for adults is breathtaking is an international hero. Congressional Democrats invited her to testify in Congress, and the United Nations has likewise invited her.
The mayor and city council of New York City further politicized their city&#8217;s public schools by allowing students to skip school to actively participate in a global warming protest.
The message of young climate change activists is: &#8220;You adults aren&#8217;t doing your job. As a result, we have no future.&#8221; As a sympathetic reporter — are there any non-sympathetic reporters? — for the Los Angeles Times put it, &#8220;(T)eens are still waiting for a sign that their elders get it.&#8221;
The Times&#8217; coverage is typical. It reported: &#8220;Underneath the activism lies a simple truth: Young people are incredibly scared about climate change. They see it as a profound injustice and an existential threat to their generation and those that will follow. &#8230;
&#8220;&#8216;They do worry, and they worry kind of a lot,&#8217; said Maria Ojala, an environmental psychologist at Orebro University in Sweden. &#8230;
&#8220;Arielle Martinez Cohen&#8221; — an 18-year-old Los Angeles activist with the youth climate group Zero Hour — &#8220;remembers reading a report from an Australian think tank that warned the human species could face extinction by 2050 if society doesn&#8217;t get its act together.
&#8220;&#8216;I almost imagine, like, an apocalypse-type thing happening,&#8217; Arielle said.
&#8220;Many young people say they can&#8217;t fathom bringing kids of their own into the world. &#8230;
&#8220;&#8216;It&#8217;s not ethical. It&#8217;s literally a burning house,&#8217; Lana said.
&#8220;&#8216;That&#8217;s something that&#8217;s not realistic,&#8217; agreed her twin sister, Yena.
&#8220;And how can they even think about college or contemplate their careers when faced with so much uncertainty?
&#8220;&#8216;It&#8217;s something I feel every single day,&#8217; Yena said. &#8216;I work really hard at school and I do all these things, and I&#8217;m like, &#8220;What am I working for? Do I have a future?&#8221;&#8216;&#8221;
It is critical to remember that hysterias — such as Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, &#8220;endemic and systemic racism in America,&#8221; the heterosexual AIDS &#8220;crisis&#8221; in America and the &#8220;rape culture&#8221; on American college campuses — are to the left what oxygen is to biological life. No oxygen, no life; no hysteria, no left.
Apparently, however, the left-wing hysteria about global warming leading to the virtual extinction of life on Earth has not moved enough adults. Many adults who do not deny that the Earth is getting warmer — such as Danish writer and environmentalist thinker Bjorn Lomborg — do deny that the threat is &#8220;existential&#8221; and do believe that the left&#8217;s solutions, such as the Green New Deal, will damage the world far more than will carbon emissions. Proof that the left is hysterical is its unwillingness to promote nuclear power — a completely clean, non-fossil fuel-based source of power. It provides France with 70 percent of its energy. Anyone who really believes life on Earth is endangered would grasp at the nuclear power lifeboat. That they do not proves what many of us have believed from the beginning: The &#8220;existential threat&#8221; scenario is another left-wing falsehood used to whip up hysteria that will lead to the left&#8217;s control of the economy and society.
And that takes us back to the children: If you can&#8217;t sell your hysteria to adults, try kids. And that is what the left has done. After all, no one is as malleable or as easily indoctrinated as children.
Consider this: If the left didn&#8217;t tell them the world is going to end, they wouldn&#8217;t worry about it. They&#8217;d be enjoying their young lives, maybe even learning to appreciate that they live in the freest country at the most prosperous time in human history. Instead, thanks to leftists (who are children in adult bodies), they live in their grip of &#8220;existential eco-anxiety.&#8221;
This is but one more way in which the left abuses children (along with telling them they are neither boys nor girls but whatever they later choose to be; teaching them contempt for their country; and depriving them of the greatest source of morality, meaning, community and happiness — any of the Judeo-Christian religions).
It&#8217;s depressing, and it&#8217;s frightening.
The scariest movies are those featuring brainwashed children. This horror show is happening in real life.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in April 2018, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Exodus. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Great Thunberg.

PRAGER: If You Can’t Sell Your Hysteria To Adults, Try Kids

Global Warming

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