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

Tape over mouth

PRAGER: The Left Is Evil – And Liberals Keep Voting For Them

Democrats

Leftism

Here is something any honest person must acknowledge: As America has become more secular, it has become less free.
Individuals can differ as to whether these two facts are correlated, but no honest person can deny they are facts.
It seems to me indisputable that they are correlated. To deny this, one would have to argue that it is merely coincidental that free speech, the greatest of all freedoms, is more seriously threatened than at any time in American history while a smaller-than-ever percentage of Americans believe in God or regularly attend church.
The United States became the freest country in the world, the sweet land of liberty, the recipient of the Statue of Liberty, the country whose flag freedom fighters around the world have often waved. This freedom was rooted in the deeply religious nature of its founding ideals. America was founded by God-centered individuals to be a God-centered country. The claims that America&#8217;s founders were mostly deists and that America was founded to be a godless secular society are not true.
Some of the Founders were not orthodox Christians, i.e., they did not believe in the Christian Trinity or in the divinity of Christ. But none of them were deists (with the possible exception of Jefferson). Deists believed in a creator God who was not only uninvolved with his creations, but he also did not even know them, let alone care about them. After creating the world, the deists&#8217; God abandoned it. The deists&#8217; God was Aristotle&#8217;s &#8220;unmoved mover.&#8221;
Every major Founder (again, with the possible exception of Jefferson) believed in the God of the Bible who heard prayer, acted in history, judged people in the hereafter, demanded ethical behavior, and without Whom morality did not objectively exist. Most importantly, they all believed that in order for a functioning democratic republic not to descend into tyranny, it was necessary to link freedom with God.
Whatever Jefferson&#8217;s view of God was, he was as influenced by the Bible as every other Founder. He and Benjamin Franklin proposed that the great seal of the United States depict Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt: Moses raising his rod to divide the sea; Pharaoh, in his chariot, overwhelmed by the waters; and the divine pillar of fire that led the Israelites by night. The seal&#8217;s proposed motto: &#8220;Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.&#8221; Jefferson and Franklin believed that freedom and obedience to God were synonymous. No God, no freedom.
The Founders linked freedom inextricably to God. That is why the inscription on the Liberty Bell is from the Bible: &#8220;Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof.&#8221; The verse comes from Leviticus, the third book of the Bible. The Founders knew their Bible. The present adult generation of Americans is more ignorant of the Bible than any in American history. And most young people know even less. I suspect that most students at Harvard could not identify Leviticus, let alone cite any of its verses.
The bell was named &#8220;the Liberty Bell&#8221; by the abolitionists. Their opposition to slavery was based entirely on the Bible. Their motivating principle, &#8220;All men are created equal,&#8221; came from the Bible. They did not get it from the ancient Greeks, who would have scoffed at such a notion.
Freedom permeates the Old Testament: The Bible begins with the story of Adam and Eve, a story about man&#8217;s assertion of his God-given freedom &#8230; freedom even to disobey God. The primary story of the Old Testament is the Exodus, a story about God liberating slaves.
For the Founders, the most obvious reason freedom was dependent on faith in God was that only if God is regarded as the source of freedom could men not rightfully take it away. If men are the source of the freedom, men can rightfully retract it. This is precisely what is happening today. Freedom is being destroyed primarily by those who scorn the idea that freedom comes from God.
The rule that the end of religion means the end of freedom does not mean that secularism would not be a welcome replacement for totalitarian theocracies such as Iran. But eventually that, too — a secular Iran — would lead to tyranny. Wherever God is delinked from freedom, freedom ultimately withers. When Christianity died in Europe, it was replaced by fascism, Nazism, and communism.
Freedom is central to the Bible. This is especially apparent in America, which until now has linked its unparalleled commitment to freedom to God and the Bible. But freedom is peripheral to leftism. That is why freedom in America is threatened as never before: The foundations upon which freedom rests — God, the Bible, Judeo-Christian values — are threatened as never before.
Every American coin bears two inscriptions: &#8220;In God We Trust&#8221; and &#8220;Liberty.&#8221; Every generation of Americans prior to the 1960s understood why. Most Americans today, including secular conservatives, do not.
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>.

Stained glass dove

PRAGER: As America Has Become More Secular, It Has Become Less Free

Freedom

Religion

Secularism

There is little that reveals the immorality and dishonesty of the Left more than its labeling the term &#8220;colorblind&#8221; racist.
Here are just a few of countless examples:
The University of California publishes a list of &#8220;microaggressions&#8221; — terms and ideas it considers racist — that white people should avoid using. The list includes the term &#8220;colorblindness&#8221; as well as statements such as &#8220;there is only one race, the human race.&#8221;
The Left’s racist war on colorblindness is everywhere.
Psychology Today published an article by a psychology professor titled, &#8220;Colorblind Ideology Is a Form of Racism.&#8221;
HuffPost published a piece titled, &#8220;How Colorblindness Is Actually Racist,&#8221; in which the author gives three examples of statements white people make that are racist:
&#8220;I am colorblind.&#8221;
&#8220;I see people, not color.&#8221;
&#8220;We are all the same.&#8221;
The Walt Disney Co. recommends that its white employees atone for their racism by &#8220;challeng(ing) colorblind ideologies and rhetoric&#8221; such as &#8230; &#8220;I don&#8217;t see color.&#8221;
Even the U.S. Army got into the act. It sent an email to all personnel saying that the word &#8220;colorblind&#8221; is &#8220;evidence of white supremacy.&#8221; (The Army later withdrew the email after a congressman threatened a federal investigation.)
I could give dozens of other examples of the Left’s Orwellian labelling of &#8220;colorblind&#8221; as &#8220;racist.&#8221;
Why Orwellian?
Because becoming colorblind is precisely what people opposed to racism should aspire to.
That is why Martin Luther King Jr.&#8217;s most famous quote, from his most famous speech, is: &#8220;I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.&#8221;
The Left’s position is that Martin Luther King Jr. was wrong.
But it&#8217;s the Left that&#8217;s wrong. The colorblind person is the very definition of a non-racist person.
Here&#8217;s one obvious proof: The worst racists — defenders of slavery, supporters of Jim Crow laws and the Ku Klux Klan, just to cite American examples — were the least colorblind people. Color is the one thing they and all racists see in people. Precisely because they defined people by their color, they justified their subjugation of black people.
Colorblind means one does not believe a person&#8217;s color is in any way significant.
Isn&#8217;t that the ideal? Shouldn&#8217;t we define a person by their heart, mind, personality and, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, above all, character? When people, of any color, look into a mirror, do they see color? No, they don&#8217;t. They see a human being. When a white person looks into a mirror, does he or she think, &#8220;Look, a white person!&#8221;? When a black person looks into a mirror, does he or she think, &#8220;Look, a black person!&#8221;?
Of course not. When we look at ourselves, we see John, or Jessica, or Tameka, or Jose. We see ourselves — not color. Why isn&#8217;t that how we would want everyone else to see us?
The Left’s insistence that color is important is one of the most racist and anti-human doctrines of our time. It was precisely when America was most racist that people&#8217;s color was deemed most important. Why would we want to return to that time?
Why is your skin color any more important than your hair color or, for that matter, the color of your shoes?
Name one important thing your color tells others about you. You can&#8217;t.
Does your color tell us if you&#8217;re kind, or smart, or what foods or music you like, or what you do for a living? Does it tell us anything about the most important thing about you — your values?
No. Your color tells us nothing about you.
So, why should anyone not be colorblind? To be colorblind means one ignores the least important thing about you. Isn&#8217;t that a good thing? And isn&#8217;t the opposite position — that your race is important — racist?
Those of us who regard the Bible as the greatest book ever written, as the greatest repository of wisdom, must be colorblind. The only thing the Bible tells us about the first human being, Adam, from whom we are all descended, is that he was created in God&#8217;s image. If the Bible placed any significance on race, wouldn&#8217;t it have told us Adam&#8217;s color?
That there were Christians who defended slavery on race grounds only proves that there were Christians who didn&#8217;t take the Bible seriously. Conversely, some Christians who did take the Bible seriously organized the first large-scale effort in world history to abolish slavery.
One final thought: Imagine that tomorrow every human being became blind. Would the world be more — or less — racist?
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>.

PRAGER: Colorblind Is The Moral Ideal

Racism

How does a leader decide what to do?
The most logical response is: &#8220;Cui bono?&#8221; — &#8220;Who benefits?&#8221; — from the decision.
If some policy benefits your country most, you should, within moral bounds, pursue it.
If your enemies benefit most, you should avoid it.
I&#8217;d be curious to learn what answer proponents of America leaving Afghanistan — conservative or liberal — would give to the question, &#8220;Cui bono?&#8221;
I can say that until this moment, I have not read or heard a single cogent argument from proponents of American withdrawal as to how exactly it benefits America.
&#8220;Twenty years is too long,&#8221; or its variant, &#8220;we have to end these endless wars,&#8221; the most commonly offered argument for withdrawal, has nothing to do with benefiting America.
It is an emotional sentiment, not a rational argument.
The withdrawal has already cost us in a single day more service members&#8217; lives than we lost on any one day in Afghanistan since June 2014, seven years ago.
The number of American servicemen killed in Afghanistan per year from 2015 to 2020 is respectively 22, 9, 14, 14, 21 and 11. No one can seriously argue that we are leaving Afghanistan because of high American casualties.
So, while America doesn&#8217;t benefit at all from leaving Afghanistan, it does get hurt.
The damage to the reputation of America — as an ally and as a strong country — is not easily overstated.
The damage done to NATO, whose members President Joe Biden didn&#8217;t bother to consult, is greater than any damage former President Donald Trump — whom the left-wing mainstream media constantly attacked for damaging NATO — was alleged to have done.
On the other hand, &#8220;Cui bono?&#8221; has some very clear answers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, every Islamic terror group in the world and every other anti-American regime and movement.
In The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro compiled a list of recent Western weakness in the face of tyrants and the commensurate strengthening of those tyrants:
&#8220;The West&#8217;s abandonment of Hong Kong in the face of Chinese aggression last year.
&#8220;The West&#8217;s continuing desire for a rapprochement with the Iranian mullahcracy.
&#8220;The West&#8217;s routine appeasement of Russia.
&#8220;All speak to the unwillingness of the West — and the West&#8217;s leader, the United States — to stand up for allies anywhere on earth.
&#8220;Afghanistan is simply the latest, and by far the most stunning, example of abandonment of an American ally &#8230;
&#8220;China&#8217;s Global Times, a Communist Party mouthpiece, chortled, &#8216;From what happened in Afghanistan, those in Taiwan should perceive that once a war breaks out in the Straits, the island&#8217;s defense will collapse in hours and U.S. military won&#8217;t come to help. As a result (Taiwan) will quickly surrender.&#8217;
&#8220;Indeed, given the window presented by the Biden administration, it would be somewhat of a surprise if China didn&#8217;t attempt some sort of action against Taiwan in the next few years &#8230;
&#8220;Foreign policy abhors vacuums, and the United States has now created one. That means that erstwhile American allies will begin to play footsie with countries like Russia and China, believing that American commitments mean little. They have reason for such suspicions, obviously.&#8221;
The effects on Americans&#8217; perceptions of the military constitute another terrible price paid by leaving Afghanistan. More and more Americans see the military as more concerned with fighting white supremacy in America and transphobia in the military than with fighting for the supremacy of freedom on earth. This is new. And it will have a devastating effect on both America and the military. One obvious consequence: Who will want to enlist in a woke military? (Perhaps that&#8217;s the goal.)
It seems that every generation has to relearn the basic laws of life, such as this one: There are many bad people and many bad countries in the world, and only a fear of good countries prevents them from conquering other countries.
There is less fear of good countries in the world today than at any time since World War II. And that is especially so because the good countries are preoccupied with their own alleged evils rather than with the world&#8217;s real evils.
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>.

C-17 Globemaster

PRAGER: Cui Bono? Who Benefits From The Afghanistan Withdrawal?

Afghanistan

Remember John Lennon&#8217;s silly song, &#8220;Imagine&#8221;?
Well, here&#8217;s my (much shorter) version.
Imagine if some of the biggest cities in America seceded from their states. Imagine Illinois without Chicago, Pennsylvania without Philadelphia, California without Los Angeles or San Francisco, New York state without New York City, or Texas without Houston, Dallas or San Antonio.
Those states would lose a major tax base and some of their best orchestras and other artistic institutions. But the gains in quality of life would completely offset any financial or artistic losses.
Big cities have been and continue to be centers of destructive ideas, and the people living in them are generally coarser and often just plain meaner. Of course, there are decent individuals in big cities and obnoxious people outside of big cities. But having a greater proportion of nice to obnoxious is more likely in smaller cities and other nonurban areas. Everyone reading this knows that one is more likely to be treated warmly when entering a store or dining in a restaurant in Cooperstown, New York, than in Brooklyn, New York; in Laramie, Wyoming, than in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
As regards bad and destructive ideas, big cities almost hold a monopoly.
What bad modern idea did not originate in a big city? And what bad idea is more likely to be believed in Laramie than in Philadelphia? Between city-dwellers and residents of small towns and rural communities, which group is more likely to embrace the belief that men give birth? Which group is more likely to believe the lie that America was &#8220;founded&#8221; in 1619 in order to perpetuate slavery? Which population is more likely to strongly advocate that people marry before having children? Which group is more likely to produce pampered, spoiled children? Which group is more likely to cherish liberty?
The list of differences between the Laramies of America and the big cities of America is long indeed. A study by the University of Indiana Center on Philanthropy concluded, &#8220;Rural donors donated a statistically significant higher percentage of their income to charity than urban donors did.&#8221;
It is not surprising that so many of Israel&#8217;s great prophets were shepherds, the most rural of folk. Moses, the man who brought the world the Ten Commandments, the most influential moral code in history, was a shepherd. Rutgers University professor Leonardo Vazquez wrote that the American founder, Thomas Jefferson, &#8220;was of one mind about cities: he hated them &#8230; &#8220;Though Jefferson partied in Paris and had a hand in shaping Washington, D.C., he thought cities were dens of corruption and iniquity that would spoil the young American republic.&#8221;
Hitler learned his antisemitism in Vienna; Marx spent his adult life in London, writing his totalitarian tomes at the London Library; Pol Pot, the genocidal butcher of Cambodia, became a committed communist in Paris; Lenin engaged in his Marxist activities in St. Petersburg, Munich, London and Geneva; Stalin, born in Georgia, rose to prominence in Georgia&#8217;s largest city, its capital, Tbilisi, and spent the rest of his life in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
The idea that the city is a source of evil is ancient. The first city ever built is attributed to Cain, the first murderer in the Bible (Genesis 4:17). The Book of Genesis contains the famous story of the Tower of Babel, a tower built to reach as high as the heavens in order, Genesis tells us, &#8220;to make the builders famous.&#8221; What is less well known is that every time the Bible mentions the Tower, it mentions &#8220;the city&#8221; built alongside it: &#8220;And they said, &#8216;Come let us build a city and a tower with its top in the sky.'&#8221; (Genesis 11:4).
The biblical scholar Patrick D. Miller, Professor Emeritus of Old Testament Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, wrote that the story should more properly be captioned &#8220;The City of Babel,&#8221; not &#8220;The Tower of Babel.&#8221; Another scholar, professor Robert Alter of the University of California, Berkeley, wrote: &#8220;The polemic thrust of the story is against urbanism &#8230; &#8221;
And the paradigmatic biblical places of evil are cities: Sodom and Gomorrah.
Why are cities dens of iniquity and incubators of destructive ideas?
One answer to the first question is anonymity: the bigger the city, the more anonymous the individual. People behave much better when they are known to their neighbors. Just think how much better people act when they wear an ID, as they do, for example, when attending a convention.
And just as we are more anonymous in a city, so is everyone else. People feel responsible to treat those they know better than they do anonymous strangers.
As for moronic ideas, rural people get meaning out of working with their hands and interacting with nature, which grounds them in reality and imposes pragmatism, while urban people are far more likely to get meaning, along with no consequences, from working with abstract ideas. Hence, the urban intellectual is so often a fool. Had Karl Marx been a farmer, the world might have been spared the unprecedented mass persecution and murder brought about by Marxist ideas. But Marx was the classic urban intellectual, never doing a day&#8217;s worth of labor while writing about the proletariat.
It makes perfect sense, then, that our states would be far better without their biggest cities. I didn&#8217;t say it was practical. But it&#8217;s worth imagining.
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>.

Aerial shot of Chicago waterfront at sunrise

PRAGER: Imagine No Big Cities

In my last column, I published comments written by New York Times subscribers about how proud they were of their children for deciding not to have children of their own. Though they acknowledged how much they ached to be grandparents, they nevertheless reveled in the fact that this would never happen.
Why did these parents take so much pride in their children&#8217;s decision not to give them grandchildren?
Because of climate change.
You read that right. Better not to have grandchildren than to have grandchildren who will suffer and quite possibly die because of global warming.
I described these people as deranged because it takes a deranged person to think climate change is a reason to celebrate never being a grandparent.
And who, I asked, produced these deranged parents?
The media and the universities.
What could better prove the power of the media and the universities to pervert the mind than their having convinced people to be proud of the fact that they would never be grandparents?
Just a few days later, The New York Times and their subscribers (you have to be a subscriber to comment) provided more proof of the psychopathology that pervades the Left.
New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote a column titled &#8220;What&#8217;s Ripping American Families Apart?&#8221; Though Brooks offered no answers to his question — &#8220;I confess, I don&#8217;t understand what&#8217;s causing this,&#8221; he wrote — he did cite important data. For example, he linked to a 2015 study in the Journal of Psychology and Behavioral Science, which reported that at least 27% of Americans are estranged from a member of their family. Having addressed this subject regularly on my national radio show for 20 years, in print (&#8220;Adults who do not speak to a parent,&#8221; Jewish Journal, July 19, 2011) and on video (PragerU Fireside Chat No. 72, March 6, 2019), I can attest to the prevalence of the catastrophe of an adult child who has chosen to sever all contact with a parent. Men as well as women have wept on my show when talking about their alienated son or daughter.
Moreover, given that the statistic Brooks cites comes from a 2015 study, there is no question things have gotten a lot worse (because of the Trump presidency and, now, wokeness).
Why has this been happening?
In a nutshell, and in no order of importance, I would posit the following causes:
Narcissism: Many Americans were raised to believe they have innumerable rights but few obligations.
Radical secularism: The belief that one is commanded to &#8220;Honor your father and mother&#8221; has died along with other core Judeo-Christian values.
Naivete about life: Many Americans — especially among the religion-free and the well-educated — think life is supposed to be pain-free. And when it isn&#8217;t, it is someone else&#8217;s fault (usually parents or white people).
Incompetent psychotherapists: If most psychotherapists were ineffectual, their patients would only be wasting their money. But many are not merely ineffectual; they do harm. Every time I speak to a parent whose child refuses to communicate with them, I ask the parent if their child discussed this issue with his or her therapist. Nearly always, the answer is yes. And nearly always, the therapist encouraged the patient in their decision to sever relations with their parents.
Now, back to Brooks&#8217; article. I once again read what New York Times subscribers had to say, this time about &#8220;What&#8217;s Ripping American Families Apart?&#8221;
Like the Times readers who wrote about their pride in not becoming grandparents — their child having decided not to have children because of climate change — I again encountered derangement among New York Times readers.
That virtually no Times reader took issue — let alone judged — the sons and daughters who removed themselves from their parents&#8217; lives was bad enough. What pushed the responses into the mentally unbalanced category was that many readers actually explained these life-crushing decisions by blaming capitalism, poverty, former President Donald Trump and, believe it or not, climate change.
Of the scores of examples, here are a few:
Peter, Chicago: &#8220;That&#8217;s what global capitalism does best. Social destruction.&#8221;
Boone, Wild West: &#8220;My wife is estranged from four of her five siblings, and it&#8217;s totally due to Trump, who they continue to support, which is simply inexcusable. I totally agree.&#8221;
Susan T., Brooklyn, New York: &#8220;Fox and Trump are the main reasons for estrangement at this time.&#8221;
Mike, Fort Smith, Arkansas: &#8220;Trump and Fox News created an entire generation of crazy people who nobody can relate to.&#8221;
Yog_Sothoth, USA: &#8220;Poverty is ripping families apart. It isn&#8217;t complicated.&#8221;
SB, New York: &#8220;If my mother or father became a murderer, terrorist, (or a) Republican &#8230; would I still love my parent. Here the answer is less sure.&#8221;
Tubbercurry, USA: &#8220;Please Mr. Brooks, educate yourself about this climate crisis.&#8221;
GBR, New England: &#8220;In the past several years, my view of them (my parents) as people dramatically changed. Can you guess what did it? His initials are DJT. Sometimes one can have loving parents who treated you well, advocated for you, gave you opportunities, encouragement, and support &#8230; but who are just not good people when viewed with an adult &#8230; &#8221;
Thomas Zaslavsky, Binghamton, New York: &#8220;What&#8217;s Ripping American Families Apart? Lack of decent jobs, or any jobs. The correlation is too strong to ignore.&#8221;
RP, California: &#8220;Feminism freed women from being dependent on men, and we celebrate that &#8230; Let&#8217;s celebrate that no one is bound to anyone who causes them pain.&#8221;
If you want to know how the Left has screwed with people&#8217;s minds, hearts, and consciences, just read the comments sections accompanying New York Times articles. Then read comments accompanying Wall Street Journal articles. You may not agree with them, but you will encounter nothing so comparably irrational or mean, let alone deranged.
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.

New York Times

PRAGER: What’s Ripping American Families Apart? Responses From The Bizarre World Of New York Times Readers

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>.

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

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.

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Dennis Prager