Prager University’s second video in a five-part series on the differences between the left and right features radio host Dennis Prager explaining one of the key differences between the two sides. The left, argues Prager, tends to ask what feels good, while the right asks what does good. Prager examines the difference in three issues: the minimum wage, affirmative action, and pacifism.
On the minimum wage, Prager starts by pointing out that The New York Times editorial page came out completely against the minimum wage in 1987.
“The world is getting worse and worse, but many people are feeling better and better about themselves while it does.”
Dennis Prager
“There’s a consensus among economists that the minimum wage is an idea whose time has passed,” the editorial read at the time. “Raising the minimum wage would price working people out of the job market.”
The New York Times editorial page changed their tune in 2014, calling for a massive increase in the minimum wage. Prager explains that the Times stopped asking what actually did good and instead focused on what felt good.
The same logic applies to race-based affirmative action. Studies have shown that affirmative action has prevented numerous black students from graduating college because the policy allowed them to go to colleges that were more academically demanding than what they were prepared for.
On pacifism, Prager astutely notes that evil is guaranteed to win if nothing is done to fight it.
“Great evil is therefore never defeated by peace activists, but by superior military might,” Prager says.
Prager points to the withdrawal of American forces Iraq in 2011, which led to the rise of ISIS, and the withdrawal American forces from Vietnam in 1973, resulting in the communist takeover of South Vietnam. as examples of pacifism not doing any good. On the other hand, South Korea, Japan, and Germany all have become “prosperous and free countries” because American troops did not leave them.
“As society moves further and further to the left, so does the preoccupation with feeling good over doing good,” Prager says. “The world is getting worse and worse, but many people are feeling better and better about themselves while it does.”