This past weekend, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd added another column to the myriad irrational and hysterical pieces about the &#8220;existential threat&#8221; climate change allegedly poses to human life.
As I do after almost every piece I read on the internet, I read comments submitted by readers.
One provided me with an epiphany.
It was a comment submitted by New York Times reader &#8220;Sophia&#8221; of Bangor, Maine:
&#8220;I have one child, a daughter, who told me age 8 that she would never have a child because of global warming. She&#8217;s now 34 and has never changed her mind. So I will not experience a grandchild. For her wisdom, I am grateful. I would be heartsick if I did have a grandchild who would have to experience the onslaught of changing climate.&#8221;
It is hard to imagine greater proof than that comment of the power of mass media and of the Left. That a normal woman would celebrate her daughter&#8217;s choice not to be a mother and not to make her a grandmother can only be described as deranged. No normal-thinking human being would think that way. Jews had children during the Holocaust and made sure to have children if they survived the Holocaust.
Does this deranged woman know how few people are dying due to weather-related incidents in the era of global warming?
Danish statistician and economist Bjorn Lomborg noted this past week:
&#8220;Over the past hundred years, annual climate-related deaths have declined by more than 96%. In the 1920s, the death count from climate-related disasters was 485,000 on average every year. In the last full decade, 2010-2019, the average was 18,362 dead per year, or 96.2% lower.
&#8220;In the first year of the new decade, 2020, the number of dead was even lower at 14,893 — 97% lower than the 1920s average &#8230;
&#8220;The preliminary estimate of 2021 climate-related deaths (is) 5,569 or 98.9% lower than the 1920s &#8230;
&#8220;The newest Lancet study of heat and cold deaths show(s) that cold &#8216;vastly&#8217; outweigh heat, and that climate actually has dramatically lowered (the number of) total death(s) &#8230; &#8221;
Of course, none of that matters to Sophia — because she relies on The New York Times (and probably NPR and CNN) for her understanding of the world.
For more proof of how deranged many New York Times readers — and Washington Post readers, CNN viewers and NPR listeners — are because they rely on these sources for what they believe about the world, here are some replies to Sophia&#8217;s comment from other New York Times readers:
B. Rothman, New York City: &#8220;I completely agree. I have 6 grandchildren and weep inside for the calamitous life that is ahead for them.&#8221;
Ida Martinac, Berkeley, California: &#8220;I weep with you, Sophia. Whenever I look my 11 year old daughter in the eyes I feel so many emotions: guilt for bringing her into this dying world.&#8221;
Liberal, Texas: &#8220;I feel your pain. I have 2 sons. Neither one will have children and their partners agree. I&#8217;ll never have grandchildren. But I also realize that their decisions have in some way been molded by me. I am proud of their decision.&#8221;
Liz, Portland: &#8220;Frankly, as someone who has been concerned about climate change, and observing what is happening over the last ten years with real dread, I do not understand why anyone in the last ten years would voluntarily have a child.&#8221;
CC, Sonoma, California: &#8220;My only daughter shares your daughter&#8217;s feelings. I will have no grandchildren. As I watch my peers enjoying their final years surrounded by grandchildren, I can&#8217;t help feeling a little jealous. At the same time &#8230; our daughters are stepping up to the challenge. I&#8217;m proud of them.&#8221;
Marisa Leaf, Brooklyn, New York: &#8220;I, too, am coming to terms and accepting that my 36 year old son will not have a child as well — for stated reasons. It is painful for me when I watch other young men and women his age going about town with their children. But I understand, and concur, on an intellectual level, that of course they&#8217;re right. Bringing more children into the world these days is an existential worry. And irresponsible. So, as I grieve for our planet, I also grieve for the grandchildren that I will never have.&#8221;
What do all these deranged reactions have in common? How could so many people living in the healthiest, wealthiest society in human history welcome not having grandchildren?
The answer is they have been brainwashed by the media (and college). They have read and heard nothing — absolutely nothing — by scientists and scholars (such as Steve Koonin of NYU, Richard Lindzen of MIT or William Happer of Princeton, to name just three) who have studied climate change and found the hysteria morally as well as scientifically indefensible. It is not possible to live a life insulated from left-wing ideas. But it is extraordinarily easy to lead a life insulated from all non-left-wing ideas.
So, then, the epiphany I had was this: A majority of people will believe anything the mass media tell them. This is especially true of those who received a college education. Colleges teach students not to question, not think for themselves and not to think rationally.
That is why many people believe the world is coming to an end; it is good not to have children or grandchildren; men give birth; Russia colluded with the Trump campaign; Israel is an apartheid state; all-black dormitories on college campuses are progressive; there should be fewer police; it is fair to women to allow biological men to compete in women&#8217;s sports; and myriad other absurdities.
There is no other explanation for these deluded readers of The New York Times.
However, I do agree with them on one point. I, too, support their children&#8217;s decisions not to have children. The world doesn&#8217;t need more fools.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

New York Times

PRAGER: The Media Produces Derangement: Proof From New York Times Readers

Climate Change

Global Warming

How many examples could one give to show what a sick world left-wing activists, the media and the Democrats — the Left’s political party — have wrought? The number is equal to the number of policies they advocate.
There is no more obvious example than their position on the display of a penis in front of girls and women.
No issue — with the possible exceptions of defunding police departments as murders increase and biological men competing in women&#8217;s sports — better reveals the moral and rational decline of an individual or institution. If anyone you care about defends a person&#8217;s right to display their penis in front of a group of girls and women, my heart goes out to you. It is very painful to lose respect for a loved one.
Within the lifetime of even the youngest person reading this column, exposing the male organ to strangers, especially women and girls, was considered sick and criminal. Men who did it were arrested and charged with indecent exposure, and rightly so. In the span of a few years, thanks to the schools people still send their children to, and thanks to the media people still watch, listen to and read, exposing one&#8217;s penis is to be considered wholesome and not only legal but a fundamental civil right.
A couple of weeks ago at a spa in Los Angeles, a biological man walked into a women&#8217;s changing area completely naked. Needless to say, the girls and women were shocked to see this naked man, but thanks to progressive politicians in California, if a man says he is a woman, this individual can go to any place heretofore reserved to women.
Women&#8217;s colleges, for example, must accept anyone who claims to be a woman. But to show how intellectually dishonest progressives and women&#8217;s colleges are, if a female student at a women&#8217;s college decides she is a man, she/he is allowed to remain a student there. Either they do not believe that a girl who transitions to a male is really a male or they no longer believe they are a women&#8217;s college.
A Los Angeles Times editorial defending the right of the biological man to expose his penis to girls and women illustrates the intellectual and moral state of the Left.
Take, for example, this sentence from the editorial:
&#8220;There is no doubt that Wi Spa did the right thing in defending the right of a transgender customer to be nude in the women&#8217;s area, even though the sight of male-appearing genitalia discomfited at least one female customer, who complained at the front desk.&#8221;
Note the Los Angeles Times&#8217; way of describing a penis: &#8220;male-appearing genitalia,&#8221; not &#8220;male genitalia.&#8221;
Regarding the discomfort of any of the girls or women at the spa, the Times editorial simply dismissed it: &#8220;No one has an absolute right to feel comfortable all the time.&#8221; However, that is not the position of the Los Angeles Times or the rest of the Left regarding transgender people. The Left emphatically insists that trans people have an absolute right to feel comfortable all the time.
But they don&#8217;t. A man who identifies as a woman yet retains male genitalia may have a legal right, but not a moral right, to display those genitalia in front of women.
A man who identifies as a man and exposes himself to a woman, let alone to a group of women and girls, is deemed sick and arrested. But, according to the Left, a man who says he is a woman and does the exact same thing — with the exact same disturbing effect on women, let alone girls — is to be given universal support. In fact, however, this individual is the apotheosis of narcissism. And is still a man: As one woman pointed out to me, his engaging in such behavior is demonstrative proof that he is still a man (one with an exhibitionist streak). Women don&#8217;t expose themselves like that.
Meanwhile, members of antifa, the closest thing America has to the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth), attacked the woman who led the demonstration against the Wi Spa.
Such is the state of America and the West in the year 2021.
When the right of a man — regardless of whether he identifies as a woman — to expose his penis to girls supersedes society&#8217;s obligation to protect girls&#8217; innocence and most women&#8217;s sense of decency, we have reached a new low.
For those who believe that mankind inexorably heads in a moral direction, the Left’s attacks on Western culture, Western norms, freedom of speech, objective truth and Judeo-Christian values should serve as a disturbing wake-up call.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Trans flag

PRAGER: You Have A Right To Be Transgender. You Don’t Have A Right To Expose Yourself To Women

Transgender

If America is systemically racist, why have millions of blacks from Africa and the Caribbean come to this country over the past 50 years? Why would they and many millions more want to move from all-black societies to a white-dominated, racist one?
This is a question every black and white leftist should be asked. After all, no Jews moved to Germany in the 1930s. And why didn&#8217;t any? After all, many Jews were suffering terrible persecution and poverty in Russia and in Eastern Europe. Why didn&#8217;t any of them move to Germany after 1933?
We all know the answer: Because Germany was systemically antisemitic.
Even leftists know that answer.
So, one can only conclude that, in the view of America&#8217;s leftists, non-German Jews of the 1930s had the wisdom not to move to Germany, but present-day non-American blacks have no wisdom. In the view of America&#8217;s leftists, then, the millions of blacks who have moved here and the many millions who want to move here must be fools.
How else could leftists regard blacks who willingly move to America? Any black person who decides to leave a black country for America — a place the left claims was founded by racists to perpetuate racism, built and sustained by racism, to this day composed largely of whites, every one of whom is racist and many of whom are white supremacists, and therefore remains systemically racist — must be either be a fool, an ignoramus or both.
If so-called black &#8220;leaders&#8221; and other blacks on the Left and white progressives believe what they say about America, why aren&#8217;t they doing everything they can to dissuade blacks in Africa and the Caribbean from coming to America? Why aren&#8217;t they regularly visiting African and Caribbean countries to warn Africans away from the black-hating country they are thinking of emigrating to?
To this question there is only one possible answer: They do not believe what they say about America.
Whether leftists believe their lies is a question I have pondered for years. And I have concluded that in general, they do. Most leftists believe that Russia colluded with the Trump campaign; that men menstruate and give birth; that Shakespeare and Beethoven are revered not because they are great but because they are white; that global warming is an &#8220;existential&#8221; threat; that the events of Jan. 6 were an &#8220;insurrection&#8221;; that voter IDs are a form of voter suppression; and that people who had COVID-19 need to be vaccinated.
But with regard to their believing America is systemically racist and so persecutes blacks — LeBron James tweets that … &#8220;We&#8217;re literally hunted EVERYDAY/EVERYTIME we step foot outside the comfort of our homes!&#8221; and Oprah Winfrey likens present-day America to &#8220;the days of Jim Crow when black men would be lynched and dragged through the town as an example for other people to see&#8221; — their not making any attempt to dissuade blacks from coming to America makes no sense. It only makes sense if they don&#8217;t believe what they say about America.
Truth has never been a left-wing value. Truth is a liberal value and it is a conservative value. But it has never been a left-wing value. Truth is nothing more than whatever the Left says it is at any given moment. That is why Lenin, the father of modern leftism, named the Soviet Communist Party newspaper &#8220;Pravda,&#8221; the Russian word for &#8220;truth&#8221; — truth was what the Soviet Communist Party said it was. For Lenin, then, as for Rep. Adam Schiff, The New York Times, Yale University and CNN today, truth is what they say it is.
Their pravda is that America is a systemically racist country. Their pravda is that all whites are racist. Their pravda is that Donald Trump is a white supremacist and that everyone who voted for any Republican is a racist.
Yet, there is a reality that Schiff and these others cannot deny: Vast numbers of blacks yearn to come to America. They do so because they have not been influenced by the pravda of Schiff and his fellow Democrats, The New York Times and the rest of the left-wing media, or by Yale and the rest of America&#8217;s left-wing universities. They do so because they have been influenced not by pravda, but by actual truth: America is the least racist multi-ethnic, multi-racial country in world history, and any black who seeks to improve his life and that of his family has a better chance of doing so in America than anywhere else. In fact, within one generation of emigrating to America, Africans from sub-Saharan African countries attain higher levels of educational attainment than the U.S. population as a whole and are more likely to have earned a degree in a science, technology, engineering, and math (Pew Research).
That&#8217;s why it is not Africans who are foolish for wanting to come to America; it is America&#8217;s Left for thinking they are fools.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Airplane wing

PRAGER: If America Is Racist, Why Have Millions Of Blacks Emigrated Here? Did Jews Emigrate To Germany In The 1930s?

America

Racism

The most frequent question people pose to me is: What can I/we do to fight back against the nihilistic anti-American destruction of virtually all the country&#8217;s major institutions?
There is an answer.
The single best thing Americans can do to counter the left-wing attack on America — against its freedoms, its schools, its families, its children, its governmental institutions, its sports, its news and entertainment media, its medical establishment, the CIA, the FBI, the State Department and the military — is to take their children out of America&#8217;s schools.
Other than in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), the vast majority of America&#8217;s elementary schools, high schools, colleges, and universities teach your child or grandchild almost nothing important; prematurely sexualize them, thereby robbing them of their innocence; and harm them intellectually and morally. They rarely teach them, for example, art or music because they are too busy teaching them race-centered hatred of whites, of America and of America&#8217;s values. Sending your child(ren) to most American schools is playing Russian roulette with their values — but unlike the gun in Russian roulette, which has a bullet in only one of its six chambers, the schools&#8217; guns hold four or five bullets.
In many elementary schools, your child is taught that gender is chosen and that there is no difference between boys and girls (in a growing number of schools, the teachers are told not to call their students &#8220;boys and girls&#8221;); they are taught about masturbation; and many children from first grade on attend &#8220;Drag Queen Story Hour,&#8221; wherein an obvious man wearing women&#8217;s clothing, garish makeup, and a wig entertains them.
Given that all this is well-known, why do any nonleft — meaning, liberal or conservative — parents send their children to an American school?
One reason is they are in denial. Many parents do not want to know what their children are being taught and the consequent damage done to them. They don&#8217;t really believe school(s) will ruin their child, let alone their child&#8217;s relationship with them.
These parents should speak to any of the millions — yes, millions — of Americans whose children have contempt for America, for free speech and for their parents as a result of attending an American college or even high school. I meet such people at every speech I give, and I speak to them regularly on my radio show. Ask these parents, if they could redo their lives, whether they would keep their child in school.
A second reason is they feel they have no choice. If they remove their child from the local public or private school (most private schools are just as committed to anti-American indoctrination over education as public schools), what will they do with their child? They often cannot find a local school that does not harm their child. They cannot necessarily even rely on Christian or Jewish schools. Most of them are as &#8220;woke&#8221; as most secular schools. And if they do find a school that teaches rather than poisons, they may not be able to afford the tuition.
The only other option, then, is to home-school one&#8217;s child. The problem is that many parents assume this is essentially impossible. For one thing, they assume that one of the parents would have to leave his or her work, which would mean a serious reduction in the family&#8217;s income. In addition, home-schooling strikes most people as simply too daunting a task, even if they could afford to take it on.
Neither fear is entirely justified. It is true that, at least at the outset, a working parent may have to cut back from full-time work, and it is true that no matter what the family&#8217;s financial condition, there are challenges to taking one&#8217;s children out of school and home-schooling them.
But given the low intellectual state of most American schools, the damage they do to young children&#8217;s innocence and the anti-American, anti-white, anti-Western indoctrination in most schools, if you are a parent of school-age children, what is your choice?
Other than a) finding a good school that b) you can afford, you have no other choice. You are fooling yourself if you think the odds are that after attending American schools from kindergarten through college (not to mention through graduate school), your child will turn out well-educated, intellectually alive, rational, kind, happy, well-adjusted, grateful to be American, and respectful of you and your values.
While there are some wonderful young Americans who recently attended American schools, and there are some lost souls who were home-schooled, American schools are largely producing the following:
Poorly educated students. Ask your college son or daughter to diagram a sentence; identify Joseph Stalin, &#8220;The Gulag Archipelago&#8221; or the Soviet Union; name the branches of the American government; identify — or just spell — Beethoven; date the Civil War; identify the Holocaust; and name which sentence is correct — &#8220;He gave the book to my friend and me&#8221; or, &#8220;He gave the book to my friend and I.&#8221;
Angry young people. Why wouldn&#8217;t they be? First, they graduate college with a huge load of debt, having received almost nothing useful for their money. Second, if they are anything other than a white heterosexual Christian male, they have been taught to regard themselves as victims of oppression. Third, their future is so bleak they may not even have one: They are threatened with extinction by climate change.
The single best thing Americans can do to fight the left-wing destruction of the country is to withdraw from the &#8220;educational&#8221; system that is actively, deliberately miseducating them by the tens of millions. If millions of American parents did so, the country would turn around as fast as you could say &#8220;teachers unions.&#8221; If they don&#8217;t, their children will continue being used as guinea pigs in the Left’s sick and dystopian experiment.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Kids

PRAGER: The Single Best Thing Americans Can Do To Retake America

Education

Homeschool

Public Schools

If you&#8217;ve seen videos of recent attacks on Jews in New York City, Los Angeles, London and elsewhere, you may have missed a very revealing aspect of those attacks. They were almost always — as they have been for decades — accompanied by curses such as, &#8220;F*** the Jews.&#8221;
Now, given that the perpetrators are almost always Muslims — whether immigrants or children of immigrants from an Arab or other Muslim country — two questions present themselves:
Why attack American or French or British Jews? And why curse &#8220;the Jews&#8221;? In other words, given that the recent wars have been between Hamas and Israel, why aren&#8217;t these attacks outside of Israel on Israelis and Israeli institutions? And why level curses at &#8220;the Jews&#8221;?
The answer is this: The Muslims who seek Israel&#8217;s destruction do so because Israel is Jewish, not because Israel occupies the West Bank or Gaza.
First, the Muslim world sought Israel&#8217;s destruction from the day Israel was established in May 1948, before it occupied a centimeter of the West Bank or Gaza.
Second, Israel does not occupy Gaza. Israel withdrew completely from Gaza 16 years ago.
Third, the Palestinians rejected a state of their own five times:
Rejection No. 1: In 1937, the British Peel Commission offered the Arabs 80% of the geographical area known as Palestine. The Jews were offered 20%. The Arabs rejected it.
Rejection No. 2: In 1947, the Arabs rejected the United Nations partition plan.
Rejection No. 3: In 1967, in the course of defeating the attempt by Egypt, Syria and Jordan to destroy Israel, Israel conquered the West Bank from Jordan, Gaza from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria. Most Israelis had no interest in retaining Gaza or almost any part of the West Bank except for East Jerusalem, the Jewish city in which Jews have lived for 3,000 years, from 1,400 years before Muhammad was born. The Palestinians, as the Arabs of Palestine came to be known, and all the Arab states rejected partition and peace.
Rejection No. 4: In 2000, at Camp David, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat a Palestinian state in all of Gaza and 94% of the West Bank (Set ITAL)with East Jerusalem as its capital. But Arafat rejected the offer. In the words of U.S. President Bill Clinton, Arafat was &#8220;here 14 days and said no to everything.&#8221;
Rejection No. 5: In 2008, Israel tried again. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert went even further than Ehud Barak had, expanding the peace offer to include additional land to sweeten the deal. The Palestinians said no, again.
The reason for all these Palestinian/Arab rejections of a state of their own was that it meant a Jewish state in the Middle East still existed.
The Middle East dispute has never been about land. Israel is the size of New Jersey. It is slightly larger than El Salvador. If it were the size of Manhattan, the Palestinians and many Muslim states would still seek its destruction. There are 22 Arab states in the Middle East, but there is no room for one Jewish state. There is even a state with a Palestinian majority: Jordan. The issue is not land. The issue is religion.
Why is Iran wholly preoccupied with destroying Israel? It has nothing to do with Muslim solidarity; the Iranians don&#8217;t give a damn about Palestinians. It is entirely about hatred of Jews and the Jewish state. If the Iranians cared about fellow Muslims, they would be targeting China, which is accused by the United States and other Western countries of committing genocide against the Uyghurs — a predominately Muslim ethnic group that lives in China — a charge that includes forced sterilization of Uyghur women.
Westerners want to believe it is about land — in part because they are secular and think in secular terms. And in part because they need to believe that the dispute is about land. Only then can they blame Israel. If it were about a Muslim desire to destroy the Jewish state, they could no longer blame Israel. Even worse: They would have to blame Islamist fanaticism.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Israeli-Palestinian conflict

PRAGER: The Middle East Dispute Is About Religion, Not Land

Hamas

Israel

Middle East

When you meditate for a moment on what the Left expects honest and decent people to believe, you confront the world of absurdities and lies in which we live.
The Left demands we believe and announce that men menstruate and give birth, and that it is in no way unfair to girls and women when biological men compete in girls&#8217; and women&#8217;s sports.
In tens of thousands of American schools, students are brainwashed to believe that America was not founded in 1776 but in 1619, the year the first Africans were brought to North America as indentured servants or slaves. This is the &#8220;1619 Project&#8221; lie: It was labelled a lie by almost every leading historian of early America, many of whom are Democrats and liberals who supported the impeachment of former President Donald Trump.
And now, with Hamas — a totalitarian theocratic Islamist terror group — unleashing thousands of rockets on Israel&#8217;s civilian population and Israel responding to this latest of repeated attempts at mass murder, the world&#8217;s Left demands that we believe Israel is the villain and Hamas is the victim.
The Left’s condemnation of Israel and sympathy for Hamas is just another example of the morally inverted world the Left has constructed.
We live in a world in which the mass media and academia — all nothing more than mouthpieces of the Left — repeatedly tell the world that America fought the Revolutionary War in order to preserve slavery, that men menstruate, and that Hamas is a victim of Israeli aggression.
How such gargantuan lies have become mainstream truths is a question for another column. Suffice it to say they are all as absurd as they are mendacious.
The reason there is a war right now between Israel and Hamas is that Israel exists. It has nothing to do with anything Israel has actually done. Hamas and its backers in Iran do not have disputes with Israel. They have a dispute with Israel&#8217;s existence.
There is, therefore, nothing Israel can do that would satisfy its enemies except agree to destroy itself as the one Jewish state in the world.
For most (not all) Muslims and for most (not all) Muslim states and for the Left, there is room in the world for 22 Arab countries and for more than 50 Muslim countries, but there is no room for one Jewish state, even one the size of New Jersey and smaller than El Salvador.
Hamas and its supporters in Iran regularly announce they seek Israel&#8217;s destruction. There is no parallel to this in the world. No groups or nations seek the obliteration of any other nation in the world. This is in keeping with the history of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is not just another ethnic or racial bigotry. I wish it were. Anti-Semitism, unlike every other form of racism or ethnic bigotry, is exterminationist. Jew-haters don&#8217;t merely hate Jews; they want Jews dead. That is one of the many reasons that every honest person understands that anti-Zionism is merely the latest expression of anti-Semitism. The anti-Zionist claim is that Israel&#8217;s existence as a Jewish state is illegitimate.
Why do those on the Left (again, as I always point out, leftists; not liberals) deny this?
Because the Left hates the good and often supports the enemies of the good. Leftism is a moral sickness in the human condition. As I have previously written, it is not even an issue of the Left having a broken moral compass. A broken moral compass is occasionally accurate. The Left’s moral compass always shows north as south and east as west.
That is why the Left hates America. Precisely because it has been, in Abraham Lincoln&#8217;s incomparable words, &#8220;the last best hope of earth.&#8221; And that is why the Left hates Israel. With all its flaws, Israel, too, has been a moral beacon. Israel&#8217;s prime minister has just tweeted out a video made by Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, released by PragerU shortly after the last Israel-Hamas war in 2014. The title of the video says it all: &#8220;Israel: The World&#8217;s Most Moral Army.&#8221;
In Colonel Kemp&#8217;s words: &#8220;I was the commander of British Forces in Afghanistan. I have fought in combat zones around the world, including Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Macedonia and Iraq. I was also present throughout the conflict in Gaza in 2014.”
&#8220;Based on my experience and on my observations, the Israel Defense Force, the IDF, does more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.&#8221;
Which is why the Left hates Israel. It is morally better than its neighbors, not to mention its enemies. Just as America has been. But if you believe America was founded in 1619 and that men give birth, you will also believe Israel is the villain in its war with Hamas.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Israeli flag

PRAGER: Men Give Birth. America Was Founded In 1619. And Israel Is The aggressor.

Leftism

America is going through convulsions that may destroy it as the country we and the world have known for more than two centuries.
For all its flaws — virtually all of which were not unique to America but universal throughout human civilization — America has been regarded more than any other nation in modern times as a force for good in the world.
When a country is hit with a severe earthquake, its people do not look first to France or Germany — let alone to Russia or China — for assistance. They look to America. When bad people invade a country, the people of the invaded country hope and pray America will come to their aid. And for more than a century, when beleaguered people saw American troops, they generally danced with joy.
When people in any country in the world want to better their lives, whether in terms of freedom, human rights or economic opportunity, they think of emigrating to America more than to any other country.
Approximately 340,000 Africans came to America as slaves. But millions of Africans have come to America because they wanted to. To these millions and to many millions of Africans who have not been given visas to emigrate to America, America is the land of systemic opportunity, not systemic racism.
The only people to deny these facts are America&#8217;s homegrown America-haters. They see America as a force of evil at home and abroad.
So, too, they deny that on the planet called Earth, without a credible threat of American intervention, evil triumphs. In addition to America&#8217;s seminal contribution to vanquishing German and Japanese fascism, had America not won the Cold War, communism would have destroyed millions more lives than the more than 100 million it did. Had America not sacrificed 37,000 of its finest young men, all of Korea would be the giant concentration camp that became North Korea. Had America triumphed in Vietnam, that country, too, would have ultimately been half-free instead of entirely enslaved. The Stalinist communists who conquered South Vietnam produced a society so hellish nearly a million Vietnamese &#8220;boat people&#8221; risked drowning, being devoured by sharks, and murdered, tortured and raped by pirates on the high seas to leave the communist hell that followed America&#8217;s withdrawal from their country.
I remember the shame I felt as an American when I saw crowds of Vietnamese who had helped America begging to be taken out of Vietnam along with American troops when the last American helicopters left Vietnam. And who were simply abandoned to their fate.
Now America is poised to do in Afghanistan what it did then — abandon the people it defended to the Islamist sadists known as the Taliban. How many Afghan boys and women will be raped when we leave? How many Afghan men will be tortured to death? Only God knows. But you don&#8217;t have to be God to know that it will be a large number.
So, why would we do such a thing — again?
Three reasons are given.
One is, &#8220;We cannot stay in Afghanistan forever.&#8221;
That argument is offered as if it is so self-evident that it needs no explanation. Which is probably why no one seems to offer one. But why can&#8217;t we stay there &#8220;forever,&#8221; if doing so saves a country and tells the world that America sticks to its commitments and protects its allies?
We have stayed in Germany and South Korea &#8220;forever.&#8221; Is the world better or worse for it?
The second argument is, &#8220;We cannot nation-build.&#8221; That argument, too, is offered as if it is self-evidently valid. But it&#8217;s a phony argument. No one argued that we were in Afghanistan to &#8220;nation-build.&#8221; We were there because 9/11 was launched against us from there. And there is every reason to assume more terror will be directed from Afghanistan if we leave. And our presence there has kept Pakistan from falling into the control of Islamists.
We were not there, as Bret Stephens recently argued, &#8220;to kill Osama bin Laden, who was just one in a succession of terrorist masterminds. It was to prove Bin Laden wrong about America&#8217;s long-term commitments, especially overseas. In August 1996, Bin Laden issued his notorious fatwa declaring a war on the United States that he hoped would be long and bloody. He observed that, in one conflict after another, the Americans always cut and run.&#8221;
The third argument is that remaining in Afghanistan costs America blood and treasure. The blood argument is emotionally irrefutable. Every American killed in Afghanistan is an immeasurable tragedy. But in the last six years, the U.S. has lost fewer than 20 service members annually in hostile engagements in Afghanistan. Between 2006 and 2018, we lost twice as many service members to training accidents than to all overseas actions. As for treasure, we spend between $50 and $100 billion a year in Afghanistan. That is far more morally justifiable than the trillion or more dollars we have spent in the last year to bail out Democratic governors and mayors and the unions they serve.
For the record, I would have made the identical argument if Donald Trump were president and removed us from Afghanistan. But the actual withdrawal is being conducted in a different administration.
Moral arguments didn&#8217;t matter to one Democratic senator in 1975. As he put it in a Senate speech on April 23: &#8220;I do not believe the United States has an obligation, moral or otherwise, to evacuate foreign nationals &#8230; The United States has no obligation to evacuate one, or 100,001, South Vietnamese.&#8221; That senator was Joseph Biden of Delaware.
To Democrats and Republicans who support the retreat from Afghanistan, I have a question: If Afghanistan comes to resemble Cambodia&#8217;s killing fields, will you still think it was the right decision? Or, to put it another way: Is there any level of evil, any emboldening of America-hating Islamists, any effect of an American defeat on the world or on America that would make you regret your decision to withdraw?
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Military

PRAGER: Are We To Be The World’s Greatest Force For Good Or Not?

Afghanistan

Just as physicists look for equations to explain the natural world, I have always thought it useful to look for equations to explain human nature. For example, in my book on happiness, I offer this equation: U = I &#8211; R. Unhappiness = Image &#8211; Reality. The difference between the images we have for our life and the reality of our life is one way of measuring how much unhappiness we experience.
Here, I offer another theorem, this time to help explain leftism.
A + S = B = L
Affluence + Secularism = Boredom = Leftism
The search for an equation to help explain leftism (as distinguished from traditional liberalism) emanates from these facts:
Most leftists come from the upper and upper-middle class. This was true for the two founders of leftism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marx was supported by his family and by Engels, who was a wealthy businessman and the son of a very wealthy businessman. All the Western spies for the Soviet Union were economically secure. And the great funder of radical causes today is a billionaire — George Soros.
Nearly all leftists are irreligious people. And the breeding place of leftism, the university, is the most secular institution in modern society.
These two facts produce a problem: Many people lack meaning in their lives. And lack of meaning is another way of stating &#8220;boredom&#8221; — a boredom of the soul.
People need meaning. After food, that is the greatest human need. As important as sex is, there are happy people who go without sex (loss of a partner, never having found a partner, vows of chastity), but there are no happy people who go without meaning (no matter how much sex they have).
This need for meaning has traditionally been met by four things: religion, family, providing for oneself and one&#8217;s family, and patriotism. And all are fading.
Let&#8217;s begin with religion. In America today, religion is in sharp decline. According to Pew Research, more than a third of all Americans born after 1980 identify with no religion. That is the highest percentage ever. In a recent Gallup Poll, only 47% of American adults said they were members of a church, mosque, or synagogue. It was the first time since Gallup began asking Americans about religious membership in the 1930s that a majority of Americans said they were not members of a church, mosque, or synagogue.
Next comes family. Marrying and making a family have always been sources of meaning to the great majority of people. However, like religion, the American family is also in steep decline. For the first time in American history, according to Statista, as of 2020, nearly half of all men in America (46%) have never been married, and 41% of American women have never been married. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 85.4 million Americans 18 and over have never been married. There are presently 130 million unmarried American adults. Worse yet, as Dr. Bella DePaulo of the University of California at Santa Barbara wrote in Psychology Today, &#8220;Half of all solo single people don&#8217;t want a romantic relationship or even a date.&#8221;
As every criminologist knows, a lot of single men is a problem for society. And as the ubiquity of women on the Left and among the Left’s angriest protesters makes clear, a lot of single women is no blessing either.
Another nearly universal source of meaning has been providing for oneself and one&#8217;s family. That&#8217;s why, though the poor lack money and material wealth, they have never lacked meaning. Figuring out how to feed one&#8217;s family every day provides a person with a great deal of meaning.
Finally, belonging to one&#8217;s nation also provided meaning to most people in modern history. But love of country largely died in Western Europe after World War II, and it is dying in America today.
So, then, with the four primary sources of meaning dying — killed in large measure by leftist ideology — meaning must be found elsewhere. And that is where the Left steps in. Leftism has always been a secular religion. It kills traditional religion and presents itself as a secular alternative.
It certainly provides meaning. &#8220;Anti-racism&#8221; and saving the world from a threat to its very existence (global warming) are two prominent life-filling examples.
Therefore, the only way to prevent the Left from destroying America and its core value of freedom is to make the case for Judeo-Christian religions, the importance of marriage and family, and the unique achievement of America as the world&#8217;s first and greatest multiracial, multiethnic, multinational society.
Americans should have been making that case in every generation. Post-World War II, they forgot, or never really believed, that the land of the free is, as former President Ronald Reagan warned, always just one generation away from losing its freedom.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Dem Donkey

PRAGER: Affluence + Secularism = Boredom = Leftism

On March 23, Mohammad Anwar of Springfield, Virginia, a 66-year-old immigrant from Pakistan earning his living as an Uber Eats driver, was killed by two girls, ages 13 and 15. They carjacked Anwar, Tasered him and then, as he held on to the car (the source of his livelihood) in an attempt to stop them from stealing it, floored the gas pedal and crashed the car, killing him when he was thrown from the vehicle.
As reported the next day in The Washington Post:
&#8220;Anwar tried to force his way back into the car by climbing on top of the teen in the driver&#8217;s seat, (Detective Chad Leo of the Washington, D.C., police homicide unit) said. Before he could get all the way in, though, the 13-year-old reached over from the passenger seat, turned on the ignition and &#8216;manipulated&#8217; the gear shift, Leo said. With Anwar &#8216;hanging outside the car&#8217; through the open driver&#8217;s door, Leo said, the vehicle lurched forward and accelerated down the block, made a sharp right turn, struck a curb and overturned, landing passenger side up. Anwar was ejected and suffered broken bones and injury to his head.&#8221;
After the unharmed girls climbed out and joined the onlookers milling around the car, one of them could be heard yelling, &#8220;My phone is in there!&#8221; (The Washington Post, March 31) and, &#8220;He has my phone!&#8221; (CBS News, March 30).
I found no mainstream media that identified the girls as black.
In The Washington Post report cited above, there was no mention of the girls&#8217; race, just, &#8220;Two girls ages 13 and 15 have been charged with felony murder.&#8221;
CNN&#8217;s report on March 27 made no mention of race: &#8220;Two teenage girls have been charged in the carjacking death of an Uber Eats driver &#8230; The girls, 13 and 15, assaulted Anwar with a Taser while carjacking him &#8230; The younger girl is from the southeast section of DC, the older from Fort Washington, Maryland, police said.&#8221;
In a March 31 Washington Post editorial on the subject, there was no mention of the girls&#8217; race.
The New York Times never even reported the incident.
Why is this significant? Because white perpetrators of violence are always identified as such. When a white man engages in a mass killing, the first thing we learn, and are told over and over, is that he is white. If a white policeman kills a black man, no matter how justified (as in Ferguson, Missouri) or morally ambiguous (as in most other cases), we are reminded in every news story that the officer was white. In the very first New York Times report on the Atlanta massage parlor killings, the Times reported, &#8220;The suspect in custody is white.&#8221;
The mainstream media have a mission that has nothing to do with reporting truth. Along with the Democratic Party and the rest of the Left, their mission is to portray America — that is, its white population — as racist. Reporting that nonwhites have perpetrated violence — particularly against nonwhites — undermines that narrative, and these inconvenient facts are therefore consciously omitted. Or worse: The implication placed in people&#8217;s minds is that whites are the perpetrators.
This was my point in a previous column when I wrote: &#8220;Another New York Times article (about anti-Asian-American violence), under the headline &#8216;A Tense Lunar New Year for the Bay Area After Attacks on Asian-Americans,&#8217; opens with this: &#8216;The videos are graphic and shocking. In January, a local television station showed footage of a young man sprinting toward, then violently shoving to the ground, a man identified as Vicha Ratanapakdee, 84, who had been out for a morning walk in the Anza Vista neighborhood of San Francisco. He later died.&#8217; The Times piece never reveals the name or race of the perpetrator: Antoine Watson, a 19-year-old black man.&#8221;
Why? Because the Times wanted its readers to believe that Ratanapakdee, the elderly Asian American, was murdered by a white.
Truth, it is necessary to say again and again, is a liberal value and a conservative value, but it has never been a left-wing value.
Here is another example from just the past two weeks:
Last week, anti-black and anti-Semitic graffiti were discovered at Albion College, a school about 100 miles to the west of Detroit. As is usually the case with such incidents, police soon discovered that the culprit was not a white racist but a black person seeking to inflame anti-white hatred. Yet, here was how the Detroit Free Press headlined the discovery: &#8220;Albion Student Suspended Over Racist Graffiti.&#8221;
Nowhere in the article did the Detroit Free Press note that the suspended student was black.
America is drowning in left-wing lies. And it is being asphyxiated by the Left’s substitution of &#8220;social justice&#8221; for justice. The two girls, who committed a very adult crime, will not be charged as adults, will likely not be imprisoned and very possibly will not even be punished. And the Albion student — whose name has not been released — most likely won&#8217;t be punished either.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Uber Eats

PRAGER: Why The Left Ignores The Killing Of A Pakistani Immigrant Uber Driver

Crime

Conservatives often speak of Judeo-Christian values and how the current civil war in the United States and the rest of the West is essentially a battle between those values and the Left, which rejects Judeo-Christian values.
They are right.
But they rarely explain what Judeo-Christian values are. Yet, without an explanation, mentioning Judeo-Christian values is useless.
So, let me do that now.
First, a word about the term. Some Jews and Christians find the term confusing, if not objectionable, since Judaism and Christianity have different theologies. But no one speaks of Judeo-Christian theology, only of Judeo-Christian values.
Judeo-Christian values are essentially another term for biblical values. Judaism and Christianity are both based on the Old Testament — its God, its Ten Commandments, its admonition to love one&#8217;s neighbor as oneself, to love God, to lead a holy life, etc. Christians also believe in the New Testament, but only an opponent of Christianity would argue that the New Testament negates the values of the Old.
Here they are:
1. Objective moral standards come from God. As I have written and spoken about in a <a href="https://www.prageru.com/video/if-there-is-no-god-murder-isnt-wrong/">PragerU video</a> and elsewhere, if there is no God who declares murder wrong, murder can be subjectively wrong, but not objectively wrong. So, while there can certainly be nonbelievers who hold murder, stealing, and other actions wrong, without God, those are opinions, not moral facts. Without the God of the Bible, there are no moral facts.
2. God judges our behavior, and we are therefore accountable to God for our behavior. Outside of a religious worldview, there is no higher being to whom we are morally accountable.
3. Just as morality derives from God, so do rights. All men &#8220;are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,&#8221; declares the Declaration of Independence.
4. The human being is uniquely precious. While the Bible repeatedly forbids cruel behavior to animals (cutting or tearing off the limb of a living animal to eat it as a means of preserving the rest of the animal, not allowing an animal a day of rest, not allowing an animal to eat while working in the field), only human beings are created in God&#8217;s image.
5. The world is based on a divine order, meaning divinely ordained distinctions. Among these divine distinctions are: God and man, man and woman, human and animal, good and evil, and nature and God.
6. Human beings are not basically good. Therefore, the most important moral endeavor is making good people. Religious Jews and Christians understand that the greatest battle in life is with one&#8217;s nature. For the opponents of Judeo-Christian values, the greatest moral battle is not with one&#8217;s nature; it is with society (specifically, American society).
7. Precisely because we are not basically good, we must not trust our hearts to lead us to proper behavior. The road to hell is paved with good hearts. Feelings make us human, but they cannot direct our lives. This alone divides the Bible-based from those on the Left.
8. All human beings are created in God&#8217;s image. Therefore, race is of no significance. We all emanate from Adam and Eve, whose race is never mentioned. That many religious people held racist views only testifies to the almost infinite ability of people to distort what is good.
9. Fear God, not man. Fear of God is a foundation of morality. In the Book of Exodus, Egyptian midwives were ordered by the Pharaoh to kill all newborn Hebrew boys. They disobeyed the divine king of Egypt. Why? Because &#8220;the midwives feared God.&#8221; In America today, more people fear the print, electronic, and social media than fear God.
10. Human beings have free will. In the secular world, there is no free will because all human behavior is attributed to genes and environment. Only a religious worldview, which posits the existence of a divine soul — something independent of genes and environment — allows for free will.
11. Liberty. America was founded on the belief that God wants us to be free. On the Liberty Bell is inscribed just one thing (aside from the name of the company that manufactured the bell). It is a verse from the Bible: &#8220;Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof.&#8221; The current assaults on personal liberty — unprecedented in American history — emanate from those who reject the Bible as their moral guide (including more than a few Jews and Christians who have joined the assault, having been indoctrinated with anti-religious views in high school and college).
When Judeo-Christian principles are abandoned, evil eventually ensues. One doesn&#8217;t have to be a believer to acknowledge this. Many secular conservatives recognize that the end of religion in the West leads to moral chaos — which is exactly what we are witnessing today and exactly what we witnessed in Europe last century. When Christianity died in Europe, we got communism, fascism, and Nazism. What will we get in America if Christianity and Judeo-Christian values die?
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Bible

PRAGER: The American Civil War Is Over Judeo-Christian Values

Judeo-Christian Values

Readers Pass

Religion

Secularism

If you rely on The New York Times, the Democratic Party or CNN — they are interchangeable — for your perception of reality, you now believe America is reeling from the latest expression of white supremacy: Anti-Asian racism.
It is a lie, the purpose of which is to:
a) Further demonize America.
b) Further demonize white Americans.
c) Further divide Americans by race and ethnicity.
d) Reinforce — or create — the belief among Asian Americans that they are widely hated (and must therefore rely on the government and especially the Democratic Party).
e) Engender ethnic identity among Asian Americans, most of whom have heretofore essentially considered themselves Americans who happen to be of Asian descent.
Is there anti-Asian racism in America? Of course. Ethnic bigotry is a tragic part of the human condition. There is no country in which members of different races live that is bereft of ethnic or racial bigotry.
Therefore, the only question decent, wise or honest people ask is: How much?
And the answer in America is: very, very little.
But the Left lacks decency, wisdom and honesty. Therefore, it offers continuous reporting about anti-Asian racism, most of which so wildly exaggerates the issue as to constitute a lie.
Let&#8217;s begin with last week&#8217;s attack in Atlanta, in which a 21-year-old white man murdered eight people in Asian massage parlors, six of them Asian Americans.
Thus far, there is not a shred of evidence that the Asian Americans were killed because they were Asian. The reason the shooter killed them, according to those who knew him before the shootings and investigators who have spoken to him since the shootings, was that he had a sex addiction, for which he had already been in rehab, and had frequented some or all of the massage establishments he targeted, which he blamed for contributing to his addiction. As of today, there is also no evidence of the killer ever having expressed any anti-Asian sentiments on social media or in private conversation.
Nevertheless, the lying media — a term that has become redundant — have portrayed the shootings from the moment they reported them as anti-Asian racism.
Typical is this report in the Los Angeles Times: &#8220;Asian Americans and their supporters gathered Saturday across California and the nation in response to this week&#8217;s shooting rampage in the Atlanta area, which claimed eight lives, including six women of Asian descent.&#8221;
The Atlanta lie is part of the greater lie that there is a national epidemic of white supremacist anti-Asian racism. On March 18, for example, The Washington Post reported: &#8220;Anti-Asian hate crimes have spiked 150 percent since the pandemic began, according to a recent study.&#8221;
The study cited by The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN and the other left-wing media is from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. The 150% increase in anti-Asian American hate crimes is contained in its &#8220;Fact Sheet: Anti-Asian Prejudice March 2020,&#8221; according to which the number of anti-Asian American incidents rose from 49 in 2019 to 122 in 2020. So, the entire edifice of hate against Asian Americans is predicated on an alleged increase of 73 incidents.
Given that there are about 330 million Americans, and assuming a different American was responsible for each of the 122 anti-Asian incidents, that would mean that 1 in every 2,704,918 Americans committed an anti-Asian incident. And &#8220;incident&#8221; includes perceived slights.
As regards violent acts against Asian Americans, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics from September 2019, blacks have committed the greatest percentage of violent crimes against Asian Americans. But the mendacious media do not report that.
The New York Times, the leader in mass hysterias fomented by the Left — hysteria is the oxygen of the Left — printed this headline last week: &#8220;Attacks on Asian-Americans in New York Stoke Fear, Anxiety and Anger.&#8221; And the subhead reads: &#8220;Hate crimes involving Asian-American victims soared in New York City last year.&#8221;
Focus on the word &#8220;soared&#8221; and you will appreciate the Times&#8217; commitment to truth.
If one reads past the headline — which most people do not — the article gives the actual numbers: &#8220;The number of hate crimes with Asian-American victims reported to the New York Police Department jumped to 28 in 2020, from just three the previous year.&#8221;
You read that right: The number of incidents &#8220;soared&#8221; and &#8220;jumped&#8221; to 28. In a city of 8.4 million people, including, as of 2010, over 1 million Asian Americans. So, about 1 in every 300,000 New Yorkers committed a hate crime against an Asian American, and about 1 in every 36,000 Asian Americans living in New York was a victim of a hate crime. To put this number into perspective, the odds of your dying in a motor-vehicle accident are about 1 in 9,000.
Another New York Times article, under the headline, &#8220;A Tense Lunar New Year for the Bay Area After Attacks on Asian-Americans,&#8221; opens with this:
&#8220;The videos are graphic and shocking. In January, a local television station showed footage of a young man sprinting toward, then violently shoving to the ground, a man identified as Vicha Ratanapakdee, 84, who had been out for a morning walk in the Anza Vista neighborhood of San Francisco. He later died.&#8221;
The Times piece never reveals the name or race of the perpetrator: Antoine Watson, a 19-year-old black man.
But, in what could be called &#8220;compound lying,&#8221; the Times did blame &#8220;former President Donald J. Trump, who frequently used racist language to refer to the coronavirus.&#8221;
Of course, the Times did not provide an example of Trump&#8217;s racist language with regard to the coronavirus. One must assume that blaming the Chinese government for the virus or referring to the virus as the &#8220;China virus&#8221; or &#8220;Wuhan virus&#8221; is regarded as racist, even though virtually every prior epidemic was named after its city or region of origin: the &#8220;Spanish Flu,&#8221; &#8220;Hong Kong Flu,&#8221; &#8220;Ebola Virus,&#8221; etc.
Meanwhile, the blanketing of the country with the Atlanta lie and the anti-Asian violence continues. The cover of this week&#8217;s Time features a drawing of a young Asian woman under the headline: &#8220;We Are Not Silent: Confronting America&#8217;s Legacy of Anti-Asian Violence.&#8221;
It&#8217;s all a lie in service to the Left’s hatred of America.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Fake News

PRAGER: The Latest Left-Wing Anti-American Lie: ‘Anti-Asian Racism’

Asian American

Hate Crime

If one were to draw up a list of human needs, food and shelter would be at the top.
With great respect to Freudians, sex would not be No. 2.
The need for meaning would be second only to the need for food.
That meaning is more important to happiness than sex is easily shown. A great many people go long periods without sex, and while many of them miss it, if they have meaning in their lives, they can lead quite happy and fulfilling lives. On the other hand, few people who have regular sex but lack meaning are happy or fulfilled.
Third on the list of human needs is the need to feel important. This need is much less often cited than the need for food, sex and meaning. But it is so important that a case could be made that it is tied for No. 2 with the need for meaning.
The infamous &#8220;midlife crisis&#8221; is a crisis of importance: &#8220;I thought I would be much more important at this stage in life than I am.&#8221; That mostly afflicts men — just as feeling less important after one&#8217;s children have left home afflicts mothers more than fathers.
Among the many psycho-social crises afflicting Americans is a crisis of importance. Fewer Americans feel important than did Americans in the past.
Why? What has happened?
What has happened is a steep decline in the number of institutions that gave people a feeling of importance.
Given that work is generally regarded as one of the most ubiquitous providers of purpose, and that, prior to the COVID-19 lockdown, more Americans were working than ever before, one would think that more Americans than ever before felt important.
It has not turned out that way. For many, work has not provided the sense of importance people expected it to, let alone fulfilled the other great need: for meaning. This is especially true for women, but first, we will address men.
Work used to provide many men with a sense of importance. It is simply a fact that being the breadwinner for a family means one is important. However, since the 1970s and the rise of feminism, women have not only become breadwinners, but they have increasingly become the primary breadwinner within a marriage and for a family. That has helped couples financially, but it has also deprived a great many men of their sense of importance. When regarded by a wife and children as important, husbands/fathers felt important. Progressive America mocks the 1950s TV series &#8220;Father Knows Best.&#8221; But when wives and children believed that, men felt important because they were. The price for this, according to feminism, was paid by women, who didn&#8217;t receive the accolades of breadwinning. And they set about changing it.
However, contrary to the expectations of the well-educated, women becoming breadwinners has not provided most women with a sense of importance, and certainly not meaning in life. Contrary to what feminism, colleges, high schools, progressive parents and the mass media have claimed for decades, men and women do not have the same natures. Just as sex with many partners does not provide most women with the same satisfaction it provides men, most work does not provide women with the same sense of importance or meaning it provides men. For many women, being the breadwinner is financially beneficial but not especially satisfying. Most women would still like their man to be the primary breadwinner. That&#8217;s why very wealthy women so often marry even wealthier men. It is built into female nature.
Moreover, throughout history, work was rarely seen as a primary provider of importance or meaning — for either sex. Work was little more than a necessity, and the vast majority of people would have happily abandoned their often back-breaking, drudgery-inducing work if they could afford to.
For the most part, people sought — and found — importance and meaning outside of work. This was especially true in America, where &#8220;associations&#8221; provided both importance and meaning.
Nongovernmental associations, as Alexis de Tocqueville noted in his brilliant analysis of American life in the early 19th century, was the key to Americans&#8217; success and happiness. These included, first and foremost, religious associations and religion in general. Most religious people feel important — to God, to their community, to their family. My father was the president of our synagogue, and my mother was active in the synagogue&#8217;s &#8220;sisterhood.&#8221; Though both worked full time, those roles provided them with immense meaning and sense of importance.
Add to that: Rotary, Kiwanis and Lions clubs; book clubs; the Masons; bowling leagues; coaching Little League; volunteer charitable work; teaching Bible in Sunday school. These provided people with a sense of importance.
The key to all these associations was their being independent of government. As government has grown, nearly all these associations have shrunk. Therefore, we have a rule: The more government intrudes in people&#8217;s lives, the less important most people feel — unless they work for the government.
Yet, to progressives, government is, or should be, almost everything in people&#8217;s lives. It should take care of as many people as possible. However, at a massive price: The more one relies on the government, the more one will inevitably lack a sense of importance.
This ideal was announced at the 2012 Democratic Party Convention, when the narrator of a specially-created Barack Obama campaign-theme video asserted, &#8220;Government is the only thing that we all belong to.&#8221; The DNC also showed a fictional storybook ad titled &#8220;The Life of Julia.&#8221; It portrayed a woman from childhood to old age, wholly dependent on the government. Despite her having a child, there was not a man anywhere in the story, nor, apparently, was there a man in her life. The result? More and more American women have come to rely on the government, not on a husband. The results have been calamitous.
President Joe Biden repeated this theme last week: &#8220;Put trust and faith in our government,&#8221; he pleaded with Americans. One could accurately say that we are replacing America&#8217;s motto, &#8220;In God We Trust,&#8221; with, &#8220;In Government We Trust.&#8221;
The bigger the government, the fewer the institutions in which people can feel important. Therefore, given the deep human need to feel important, people will look elsewhere for their importance — like fighting systemic racism, heteronormativity, capitalism, patriarchy and transphobia. And, most of all, global warming — because you cannot feel more important than when you believe you are saving the world.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
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Dennis Prager