When you cater to crazy people, you end up with a crazier country.
And you deserve to lose if you decide to cater to the crazy. That&#8217;s true on every side of the political aisle. All the American people want is some semblance of normalcy. That&#8217;s all they want. They&#8217;re begging for it. Some semblance of just being an adult with a normal set of values would be amazing from anyone.
But, instead, we&#8217;ve decided we&#8217;re going to elevate crazy on pretty much every side of the political aisle. It&#8217;s totally wild and insane. We&#8217;re tearing ourselves apart by elevating crazy.
I think there&#8217;s a reason why we are elevating crazy to this extent. And I think the real reason why we&#8217;re elevating crazy across the aisle is because we don&#8216;t have a centralizing set of values.
It used to be that the older generation would say to the younger generation, “Guys, you&#8217;re morons. You don&#8217;t know what you&#8217;re talking about. Let me give you some time-tested wisdom,” as Thomas Sowell has talked about in the realm of economics.
It’s true across all branches of knowledge. There are a few ways to gather data; controlled studies is one way, but even controlled studies are not going to be as good as time-tested wisdom used over the course of centuries.
This is why it is very important to transmit culture, rules, and values to your children. This is why religion has traditionally been an extremely useful preserve of actually maintaining cultural and systemic health.
When I teach my kids the rules and I say, “God says you should do X, Y, and Z,” I&#8217;m not just saying, “God says you should do X, Y, and Z because I read the Bible this morning.” I&#8217;m saying that God says, “Do X, Y, and Z because I have a transmitted history of cultural utility that is thousands of years long, and these rules have worked over the course of thousands of years, and I&#8217;m transmitting them to you.”
The proof of the godliness of the rules on a utilitarian level is that they work. The rules are useful; thus, it&#8217;s good proof that if God said them, He was right. And even on a utilitarian level, even if God didn&#8217;t say them, they would still be right.
But as religion has declined, as people are afraid, as parents fear inculcating values in their kids, a problem arises.
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There are some critiques that are made of classical liberalism along these lines, and those critiques are somewhat well-founded. There are conservatives who say the problem with classical liberalism — which suggests freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and so on — is that they can quickly lead to moral relativism if there is no centralizing, coherent set of values we all share.
That&#8217;s true. Liberalism can lead to moral relativism. The idea to “let a thousand flowers bloom” is fine as long as the flowers are within a certain set of parameters. To say all views are equivalent and thus liberalism is important, is wrong. Not all views are the same, and not all views are good. There are certainly very many bad views.
The rationale for liberalism is to restrict tyrants. Liberalism is a response to people who would shut down valuable speech.
But the roots of classical liberalism lie in a shared tradition of virtue. That&#8217;s true for any set of freedoms. Any set of freedoms has to exist within a set of broader rules.
Think about any game that you play. If you&#8217;re playing chess, you have the freedom to make any move that is within the rules on the board. If you just upturn the chessboard, that is no longer liberalism; you have taken the freedoms and extended them into a realm that defeats and destroys the freedoms.
There should be a shared set of rules and parameters in order for any of this to be upheld. What has happened in our culture is that religion and religious values, Judeo-Christian biblical values, used to be the shared basis for our culture, and then we could share a lot of freedom within those broad parameters. But as people have changed Judeo-Christian values, as fewer people go to a church or synagogue that actually teaches the Bible — some synagogues and churches are teaching the church of Karl Marx or the Church of John Dewey or the Church of FDR or the Church of Barack Obama or the Church of Joe Biden — religion has declined. As that happens, you let in the crazies, because once there&#8217;s no shared set of parameters, then any conspiracy theory at all gets through the door.
The only reason conspiracy theories end up getting a lot of traction is due to institutional distrust. Such institutional distrust has certainly been earned by, for example, the legacy media or the scientific community, which promote absolute lies on a fairly regular basis because they have a set of values and narratives that override the facts, such as the entire scientific community declaring that boys can be girls and girls can be boys. As this occurs, obviously institutional distrust is going to set in.
The converse of that is people who aren&#8217;t going to trust anything the government has to say when it is incompetent at so many tasks and also involves itself in your life in a myriad of ways. They have institutional distrust for the government and anything the government says they are not going to believe.
The major check on this used to be godly values. It used to be church. It used to be going out and touching grass, being with some real people, and discussing what&#8217;s rational and true. But as sources of truth and values decline, what fills the gap is a necessity to explain the world around you.
People have always wanted to explain the world around them, and they have historically had many tools to do so. One of those tools, the most important tool, was biblical religion in the West — the idea there is a God who stands above the creation of the universe, and there is a logic to His universe, and there is a set of moral rules that provide guidance for navigating through that universe. That is the basic religious principle of all biblical living.
But as that declines, people see a disconnected set of events so they immediately search for some sort of explanation for that disconnection.
This is why conspiracy theories thrive; when institutional trust declines and when biblical values — which offer an ultimate explanation for everything — decline, there&#8217;s nothing to fill the gap except for constant conspiratorialism.
That’s why there is this new push to explain everything through conspiracy. Everything is a conspiracy because the world’s a puzzling place and people need an explanation. And the easy explanation is to make one up in your own head about how there is a group of people in a back room somewhere who are manipulating all the systems.
It can&#8217;t just be that life is totally chaotic and that there are a lot of people who are morons out there doing stupid things. It can&#8217;t be that. It has to be that there is actually something deep and nefarious going on.
And it&#8217;s every single story.
When a bridge collapses in Baltimore, the Left makes the claim it has something to do with dirty fuel and the Right makes the claim it has something to do with DEI.
I don&#8217;t know because I don&#8217;t know the facts yet. The facts are still coming out. But when the facts come out, we&#8217;ll know exactly why that happened.
Then weird conspiracy theories about Princess Kate surface when she goes missing. Yet it&#8217;s fairly obvious when a rather prominent person goes missing, it&#8217;s probably a health problem. But instead, there are just tons of conspiracy theories on all sides of the aisle.
And then when Princess Kate says she is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer, a new slate of conspiracy theories arises. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/03/27/kate-middleton-video-cancer-ai/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">According</a> to the Washington Post, “Users on TikTok, X and Facebook shared videos pointing out alleged AI breadcrumbs, such as a ring disappearing and reappearing on Catherine’s hand. Others said her hair moves unnaturally, or that the bed of daffodils in the background is suspiciously still.”
The tendency of our society right now to buy into nearly every conspiracy theory and give them all a hearing without just saying, “Nope, that sounds stupid,” is a reflection of the complete decentralization of values — because now, you&#8217;ll be willing to hear pretty much anything.
“Is the CIA behind everything that you see and hear? Is it possible that the moon landing never happened?” These kinds of conspiracy theories are arising because of the vacuum of values. That vacuum of values is almost solely due to the decline of religion.
The decline of religious life in America is the single worst thing that&#8217;s happened to the United States since about 1950. It continues apace today. Yet all the secular institutions that were supposed to fill that gap have failed because, of course, they were always going to fail; no secular rationale can fill the explanation God plays in our lives.
So you end up with a bunch of fools running around suggesting their own supposedly plausible explanation for what is happening.
This is why the ultimate explanation, the most self-serving conspiracy theory of all and the one that has arisen on all sides of the political aisle, is a sense of victimization.
When you feel the world around you is chaotic and confused and discombobulated, when you feel like a victim, and then you look for an explanation as to why your failures are not your own fault, it must be because there’s someone who&#8217;s stopping you from succeeding.
And the hardest thing to understand in the world when you are failing is that perhaps it is your fault. Maybe you do need to change what you&#8217;re doing in your life. This is true for 90% of human problems, at least in a free West. There are certainly places in the world where tyranny abides, but that is not true in the United States of America.
Politicians always have a stake in engaging in a conspiracy theory because the beauty of being engaged in one is that the prophet is the person who promulgates it.
The person who promulgates the conspiracy theory is the person you&#8217;re supposed to listen to because they will guide you forward, they will help you, and they will alleviate all your problems. If you just give them enough power, they will fight it. They will destroy the Matrix. They will destroy all of what you&#8217;re seeing, and they will lead you free. It&#8217;ll be like Plato&#8217;s cave. They&#8217;ll come back from outside the cave, and they will lead you back toward the light.
But they never lead you toward the light because every failure can now be attributed to that same conspiracy. If they fail to lead you, if you buy into their conspiracy theory, and if you give them power and your life still does not get better, they just say it&#8217;s because the conspiracy is so damned powerful. There&#8217;s no way they can overcome it.
This is the danger of conspiratorial thinking, and it is filling up every cup that has been left empty by God, religion, and community. It&#8217;s filling up all the political cups right now.
It&#8217;s extremely dangerous.
The Left-wing brand is, of course, what Joe Biden is doing by suggesting that the system is rigged against a wide variety of people. But it&#8217;s also happening on the Right, where the suggestion is — without evidence in many cases — that the system is rigged.
Here&#8217;s the thing: There are situations in the United States where the system is rigged, but you can tell what they are — not because someone posited a conspiracy theory without any evidence whatsoever, just spitting out dumb conspiracy theories — but because people say it and they do it.
It is not a conspiracy theory, for example, to suggest that Asians are being discriminated against on college campuses. How do you know it? Because you can see it in the statistics, recruitment materials, documentation, and at all of the major colleges. That&#8217;s not a conspiracy theory.
What America needs to get back to normal is the same thing it always needed: church, community, and a fact-based, rational approach to politics. That&#8217;s all people need.
Maybe they don&#8217;t want it. Maybe it&#8217;s too easy in this day and age to jump immediately to some sort of narrative that explains why you&#8217;re a victim of the society in which you live in the freest, most prosperous society in the history of humanity.
But that&#8217;s not going to lead to a happy life.

Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapses After Being Struck By Cargo Ship

Conspiracy Theories And Returning To Normal

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Ben Shapiro

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Conspiracy Theory

Francis Scott Key Bridge

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Judeo-Christian Values

Readers Pass

It&#8217;s rare to see actual Biblical-level events taking place in normal, everyday life. But that is what is happening over at Burning Man.
According to the Associated Press: 
<blockquote>“An unusual late-summer storm turned a week-long counterculture fest into a sloppy mess with tens of thousands of partygoers stuck in foot-deep mud with no working toilets in the northern Nevada desert.”</blockquote>
When a hurricane hits Florida, the Left acts as though it&#8217;s because of the great sin that we have all committed in driving cars and running our air conditioners.
So now, I get to joke about how a bunch of morons decided they were going to jet-set into the desert, in the middle of nowhere — where it&#8217;s 115 degrees — to screw each other. Then there&#8217;s a giant, Biblical-style rainstorm and flood and no one bothered to bring enough wood to build an ark.
<blockquote>“Some Burning Man revelers said Sunday their spirits remain unbroken.” </blockquote>
Unfortunately, their toilets do remain broken. And so they are just sitting there in their own poop, screwing each other. It sounds like the height of human experience. 
The elites there treated it as though they escaped the beaches at Normandy. You wonder why people don&#8217;t trust the elite. You wonder why there&#8217;s a giant cultural gap between the Left Coast and the East Coast on one side and everybody in the middle of the country on the other.
These morons went out in the middle of the desert to worship their pagan selves and then got stuck in the mud? Well, that’s a rough ride for you. 
A lot of Americans have been dispossessed of the Judeo-Christian architecture that used to undergird the United States of America. They&#8217;ve been dispossessed by a bunch of pagan morons who believe that the actual value system is radical self-expression and individualism. The great capitalists, from Adam Smith to John D. Rockefeller, understood that undergirding capitalism was a Judeo-Christian value system. Rockefeller went to a church and sat in the pews next to people who were a fraction of his wealth.
What used to unify the country was a belief system that the elites held in common with the common man. It was the same belief system overall. It was the radicals who were proclaiming the creed of radical self-expression. But now it&#8217;s not the radicals — now it&#8217;s the most powerful people in the society who have basically decided the reason they became powerful is because they followed their star.
But it’s not true. They&#8217;re actually more likely to be married with kids than people who are not high earners in American society. But they promulgate the lowest values. When I say the lowest values, I mean like the hippies on the commune or burning giant nine-foot tall statues. 
One of the weird elements of the United States is that the counterculture is no longer the counterculture. It used to be that we called people who did things like Burning Man strange. But now, if you say they are weirdos who are participating in weird pagan mystic behavior, you are considered strange. You&#8217;re considered part of the problem. You are intolerant.
The counterculture is no longer the counterculture. It is, in fact, just the culture, which is why you see so many rich and famous people going to Burning Man.
It used to be that if you were a rich, famous person, you took yourself seriously enough that you didn&#8217;t show up in the middle of the desert with nothing but a hammer and then go to the Orgy Dome all day. It used to be that serious people in our culture were serious.
You get all of the tech billionaires who show up at Burning Man and then proclaim they have allegiance to these sorts of principles. Then others adopt the principles, and then it becomes the culture in which they swim.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-ben-shapiro-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
It used to be that if you showed up at Burning Man, you showed up with a bunch of plywood and a hammer; now, if you are a rich person, you show up at a turnkey camp. According to Mashable, the festival offered luxury amenities, cleaning staff and chefs, while reportedly wreaking havoc on the environment by chartering flights to get there.
You have an entire elite strata of our society that hates itself and that is constantly seeking to signal to everybody else how much it hates itself by doing things like going to Burning Man. They don’t seek to exemplify the behavior that everybody else should engage in. And if they do, they believe their behavior should be this hippie garbage and we should all just laugh and giggle along with them as they go to their Sodom and Gomorrah-style pleasure dome.
The principles of Burning Man look like a religion. Burning Man’s 10 principles declare:
<blockquote>“Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.”</blockquote>
That’s a lie. If you show up as a Bible thumper, I guarantee you you&#8217;re not going to be welcome over at Burning Man, where no one has a shower, but they&#8217;re all having sex with one another.
Burning Man’s principles also state: 
<blockquote>“Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.”</blockquote>
That is wildly untrue. It turns out that Burning Man has had a bad history over the past few years of leaving garbage strewn along the highways as people careen out of there as fast as possible. 
Contrast the Ten Commandments of Burning Man with the actual Ten Commandments, things like respect thy father and mother, remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, don&#8217;t commit murder, don&#8217;t commit adultery, don&#8217;t commit idolatry. One of these sets of rules has built a civilization that has lasted for literally thousands of years. The other set of rules lasted until a heavy rainstorm.
Perhaps that’s the real story of Noah&#8217;s Ark, that the rain wasn’t all that heavy. Maybe the society was just not durable. In the absence of God, paganism rules. It is not that there is no God, it’s that there are many gods. And these gods typically involve self- worship, which is where things currently stand. This idolatry is idolatry of the self.
We celebrate a holiday in Judaism that&#8217;s coming up shortly called Sukkot. You build a hut outside your house and you are supposed to live in it for a week. The purpose of it is to remind you that you are at the mercy of God. You&#8217;re supposed to build the hut so you can see the stars through the roof. It’s open to the rain. The whole purpose of it is to remind you that while you are a physical creature, there is something more spiritual to you than that.
The idea is that when you decorate all the physical surroundings around you, that&#8217;s not the essential you. So then, what is the essential you?
It&#8217;s unity with God. That&#8217;s the part that matters.
Disconnect that and all you end up with is a bunch of morons rolling around in the mud and then being mad at each other when they have to poop in a bucket. 

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Elites, Burning Man, Paganism, The Flood — And The Need For God

Bible

Coastal Elites

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*Warning: the following article links to images containing nudity*
&#8220;Public crotches good, public crosses bad,&#8221; goes the Leftist worldview today. That mantra has actually summed up the Left for quite some time now, but it was on full frontal display — literally — this past Pride month.
In cities from coast-to-coast last weekend, grown men, women, and everything in between  — their argument, not mine — <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/naked-men-in-front-of-children-pride-parades-in-u-s-canada" target="_blank" rel="noopener">practically bared it all in fountains</a>, on bikes, and at dance parties in the street.
Children, of course, were present for and subjected to appalling scenes. Normal-minded Americans condemned this sort of behavior as depraved. Others like Ron Filipkowski <a href="https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1673107271633764352?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> the real problem with these sorts of scenes is that they will be used by the GOP for political fodder. He apparently wasn&#8217;t so concerned with the destruction of childhood innocence.
Of course, pride parades have always included lewdness. In 2001, The Onion <a href="https://www.theonion.com/gay-pride-parade-sets-mainstream-acceptance-of-gays-bac-1819566014" target="_blank" rel="noopener">even lampooned the events</a> with a column titled, &#8220;Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance Of Gays Back 50 Years.&#8221;
But it is no longer that the LGBTQ+ agenda seeks mere acceptance — if that was ever its goal. The Left wants to replace Judeo-Christian values. It always has.
As Daily Wire Editor emeritus Ben Shapiro <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-revolution-at-the-heart-of-pride" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>, &#8220;Pride Month is not a call for equality, but a call for revolution. The Pride movement was always a call for a replacement of historic, tried and true cultural norms with new, untried, and risky cultural norms.&#8221;
Indeed, from our <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/theyre-liars-ben-shapiros-not-buying-wh-shock-over-topless-trans-person-at-pride-event" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Executive Branch</a> to your <a href="https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C5GCEM_enUS998US998&amp;q=library+drag+show&amp;tbm=nws&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwifjcyMpuv_AhWmtokEHe3jDnMQ0pQJegQICRAB&amp;biw=1775&amp;bih=995&amp;dpr=1.6" target="_blank" rel="noopener">local library</a>, and even in &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/talking-to-kids-about-gay-stuff-is-actually-crucial-meet-the-lgbtq-content-creators-and-companies-indoctrinating-your-kids" target="_blank" rel="noopener">kid-friendly entertainment</a>,&#8221; the message is simple: In order to be a good person, you have to accept the LGBTQ+ agenda wholeheartedly. Judeo-Christian values which put forth the traditional concept of family, sex, and gender are to be shunned, or somehow twisted into supporting the LGBTQ+ agenda (Jesus says to love everybody! No judgment!). 
That sort of tolerance leads to events such as naked weirdos marching down the street under the rainbow flag.
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Americans who disagree with that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/parental-rights-groups-now-on-hate-map-with-kkk-southern-poverty-law-center-decides" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wind up on hate lists</a>, are effectively <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/catholic-group-sues-doj-fbi-over-failure-to-comply-with-foia-request-detailing-anti-catholic-memo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">targeted by the Department of Justice</a>, and are treated as extremists.
Meanwhile, several federally-funded <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-republicans-blast-texas-va-hospital-removal-cross-shaped-remember-our-veterans-display" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Veterans Affairs</a> clinics have <a href="https://ffrf.org/news/news-releases/item/42253-va-center-in-w-va-removes-cross-after-ffrf-objects">removed</a> cross-shaped designs in what Congressman Chip Roy (R-TX) said are &#8220;attempts to sterilize the public square &#8230; of all symbols of Christianity.&#8221;
In professional sports, a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/blue-jays-cut-pitcher-who-apologized-for-sharing-video-on-bud-light-target-boycotts" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Christian athlete</a> was cut in part due to his performance as well as &#8220;distraction,&#8221; after he voiced support for boycotts of companies that promote the LGBTQ religion — despite apologizing.  The Los Angeles Dodgers infamously chose to honor a blatantly anti-Catholic &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/boycott-the-dodgers-catholic-bishops-finally-fighting-back-against-anti-catholic-hate-group" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hate group</a>,&#8221; as described by Catholic Bishop Robert Barron. Members of that group openly perform sexual dances in a mockery of some of the Catholic Church&#8217;s core beliefs, sacraments, and matters of faith.
And last weekend, a man <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/news/pro-lgbtq-mayor-says-freedom-of-speech-doesnt-apply-to-man-arrested-after-trying-to-quote-bible-at-pride-rally?utm_source=dlvr.it&amp;utm_medium=twitter" target="_blank" rel="noopener">protesting</a> a gay pride parade while shouting Bible verses was arrested and condemned by his local mayor. His charges were dropped, but legal experts say that the arrest was clearly politically motivated — not grounded in the law. The local government soon changed its mind, as a Facebook post from the Berks County District Attorney, where the man resides, reads, &#8220;After a review of the incident which took place on June 3, 2023, in the 800 block of Washington Street in the City of Reading, the District Attorney’s Office has withdrawn the charges of disorderly conduct filed against Damon Atkins.&#8221;
So it is not that liberals do not believe that the public square should be neutral and devoid of religion. They wrongly believe that having America&#8217;s guiding principles since its inception, Judeo-Christian values, in public life is damaging to our moral fabric — oppressive even.
They believe that public celebration and promotion of LGBTQ+ values is a good thing. The &#8220;new religion&#8221; of LGBTQ+  is not only a net positive for society but a prerequisite for true liberation, Leftists claim.
This column barely scratches the surface of this issue, but, remember, for the Left, &#8220;Public crotches good, public crosses bad.&#8221;
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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Leftism Summed Up: Public Crotches Good, Public Crosses Bad.

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The traditional Judeo-Christian values that once formed the bedrock of American culture have been replaced by a new “cultish religion” that seeks to destroy Western civilization, Daily Wire Editor Emeritus <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/author/ben-shapiro" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ben Shapiro</a> warned Friday.
Shapiro made the comments while <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jeopardy-fans-react-to-contestants-missing-easy-clue-about-lords-prayer-pathetic" target="_blank" rel="noopener">discussing the recent &#8220;Jeopardy!&#8221; episode</a> in which none of the contestants were able to complete a portion of the Lord’s Prayer. He said this illustrated how little Americans today knew of the religious tradition that had held American society together. 
“But you know what this says?&#8221; Shapiro said on his <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1748-fox-news-just-betrayed-every-conservative5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">podcast</a>. &#8220;It really says that the level of biblical Judeo-Christian knowledge in this country has absolutely plummeted through the floor. And you want to know why America&#8217;s collapsing socially? That would be the reason. The reason is there used to be a natural backdrop in the United States of particularly Christian values that everybody sort of understood.”
On the episode Shapiro was referencing, host Mayim Bialik read a clue that said, “Matthew 6:9 says, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, [THIS] be thy name.’” The camera cut to contestants Laura, Joe, and returning champion Suresh, but not one of them buzzed in with a response.  
“Now I&#8217;m a Jew. Okay. We don&#8217;t do the Lord&#8217;s Prayer. That&#8217;s not a thing for us. Okay. But I also have watched movies and TV shows, and I live in America, so I know that the answer is ‘hallowed,’” Shapiro said. 
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The Daily Wire co-founder added that people of faith, particularly Christians, Jews, and Muslims, all held some traditional values that starkly contrasted with the new values being pushed at schools and by corporations across the country. 
“There is a common set of values shared by Jews and Christians and Muslims, actually,&#8221; Shapiro said. &#8220;And that set of values actually makes a difference in American public life. It&#8217;s why the notion that we should be posting &#8216;Pride&#8217; progress flags in classrooms, but not the Ten Commandments is so absurd on its face.”
Judeo-Christian values had been “supplanted” by a newer toxic religion that sought to take down Western civilization, the best-selling author added.
“We have supplanted one religion for another religion, and the new religion is bad. It is a bad religion. It is a cultish religion that requires not just acceptance and tolerance, but destruction of the traditional forms of morality that used to undergird all of Western civilization,” Shapiro explained.

Sydney Makes History As 50,000 People March For Global Equality In Pride March

Judeo-Christian Values Have Been Replaced In The West By New ‘Cultish’ Religion, Ben Shapiro Says

Jeopardy

June 1 marked the advent of Pride Month – the most important sacrament of the American secular religious calendar. During Pride Month, public schools across the nation teach small children the joys of alternative sexual practices and orientations; corporations plaster their stores in rainbow accoutrements of all sorts; and the federal government of the United States proclaims its fidelity to the LGBTQ+*&amp;^% ideology.
The American public, for the most part, has historically taken Pride Month not for what it is but for what it sometimes purports to be: a call for tolerance of the marginalized. But that, of course, is not what Pride Month is or ever was. Pride Month is not a call for equality, but a call for revolution. The Pride movement was always a call for a replacement of historic, tried and true cultural norms with new, untried and risky cultural norms.
Heteronormativity is one such tried and true norm: the correct belief that any durable society rests on the basis of male-female dyads producing children. Such a norm ought to be promoted. But Pride suggests the opposite: that heteronormativity is an authoritarian and discriminatory standard that places artificial limits on the full flowering of human sexuality. Explode the norm, and maximize human happiness!
This, of course, was precisely the case made by the original exponents of the sexual revolution. Herbert Marcuse, author of Eros and Civilization (1955) called for a rewriting of all sexual norms in order to tear down the capitalist structure. He sought “a non-repressive civilization, based on a fundamentally different experience of being, a fundamentally different relation between man and nature, and fundamentally different existential relations.” Such a civilization could only be birthed by treating “the body in its entirety [as] an object of cathexis, a thing to be enjoyed — an instrument of pleasure.” Sex would be unmoored from marriage and parenthood; Marcuse argued, “the barriers against absolute gratification would become elements of human freedom…This sensuous rationality contains its own moral laws.”
By 1970, feminist Shulamith Firestone argued that sexual revolution would bring about “not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.” Happiness would now be found in a “reversion to an unobstructed pansexuality — Freud&#8217;s &#8216;polymorphous perversity&#8217; — would probably supersede hetero/homo/bi-sexuality.”
We have now reached the dystopia sought by Marcuse and Firestone: a world in which all the elites in our society participate in the rewriting of durable societal norms in favor of unending sexual gratification. In order to maintain that dystopia, however, our societal elites require one more element: repression of the traditional norms. A fair fight might leave traditional Judeo-Christian norms in place; they’ve proven rather durable over time. Marcuse had a solution for just such a problem: repression. Promotion of the new morality would require quashing the old. “[L]iberation of the Damned of the Earth presupposes suppression not only of their old but also of their new masters,” Marcuse wrote.
And so the culture war rages. Because, after all, old norms don’t die easily. They must be killed in order to achieve “Pride” in the alternative. And that revolution requires the exercise of cultural, governmental, and corporate power from sea to shining sea.

Ben Shapiro 10

The Revolution At The Heart Of ‘Pride’

The Revolution At The Heart Of 'Pride'

LGBTQ

Pride Month

Sexuality

“Everyone has heard the expression: let your conscience be your guide,” Dennis Prager, founder of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/prager-university" target="_blank" rel="noopener">PragerU</a>, noted. But Prager argues that accepting that aphorism does more harm than good.
Prager argued that throughout most of Western history, the consensus view was that the conscience was not a sufficient guide and that God and instruction in a system of religious values were required for people to behave morally. Prager said that the idea that the conscience is all people need to act morally is a peculiarity and product of modern secular society.
Prager compared this notion to the idea that gender is a social construct, as well as the notion that all cultures are of equal value and that equal treatment for all people was a form of racism.
“None of these beliefs is more irrational than that the conscience is all you need, that it can replace God, the Bible, and Judeo-Christian values as a producer of moral behavior.”
Prager noted that people are exceptionally good at rationalizing their own actions and intuitions and have been known to justify everything from murder to torture to genocide on moral grounds.
“Virtually every individual who has committed or supported evil has had a clear conscience,” Prager said. “Peoples’ feelings and behavior produce their conscience — their conscience doesn’t produce their feelings and behavior.”
Prager also argued that appeals to the conscience were insufficient in public debates, even (or especially) on morally loaded topics such as abortion or transgender surgeries, because opponents from all perspectives are acting on their own diametrically opposed moral intuitions. “People on the opposite sides of every conflict are equally convinced they are listening to their conscience.”
“Given the frequent uselessness of the conscience, how is one to be morally guided? … By building a conscience.”
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-describedby="sk-tooltip-9096" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://onelink.to/dwapp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1681313451267000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3nO3EKGAEUHbjXmJbALLTd">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP</a>
Prager argued that truth, courage, God and reason are the fundamental elements of conscience — stating that God without reason led to fanaticism and that reason without God leads inevitably to “the death of reason.” A person’s conscience has to be developed and trained before it can be trusted.
WATCH:
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WATCH: Don’t Trust Your Conscience

WATCH: Don't Trust Your Conscience

Morality

PragerU

Religion

What is conservatism? Ask 10 people and you’ll get 10 different answers. In our confused American moment, knowing what conservatism is and what it isn’t will help us find clarity, invite sanity back into the public square, and give us a better chance to cure what ills our United States.
If you’re hungry as you read this, all the better. Because I’m not here to lecture you on the definition of conservatism. I’m inviting you to actually taste it. On a recent road trip to California, I stopped for dinner at the most northern In-N-Out Burger restaurant in America in Keizer, Oregon. As I ate, I realized I was experiencing a living, breathing, intensely popular American conservatism in action. It wasn’t just a meal – it was a primer in what it looks like to conserve worthy goals, methods, and values. Order some food, pull up a chair, and let me show you how.
First, In-N-Out Burger conserves worthy goals. When Harry and Esther Snyder created the first In-N-Out Burger in 1948, they combined the innovative new idea of a drive-thru with the old-fashioned ideas of superior quality and service. In doing this they were catering to two conditions American thinker Russell Kirk considers necessary for the healthy functioning of any society: the impulse to improve as well as the impulse to conserve. In-N-Out’s singular priority has always been the customer. New managers receive consistent training in this philosophy at the company’s headquarters, ensuring that all 385 In-N-Out locations have the same goal: a satisfying dining experience for every customer.
To that end, one of the first things you notice about In-N-Out restaurants is a clean, bright, inviting environment outside and inside. The second thing you notice is a simple, straightforward menu. There’s no reason for decision fatigue and little possibility that the number of your favorite combo has changed since your last visit.
You’ll also notice the friendliness and helpfulness of the associates. Dressed to impress in distinctive red and white, team members demonstrate unity in their uniform appearance. You won’t be distracted by statement-making t-shirts, inappropriate tattoos, or unkempt hair, for example. You’re also highly likely to enjoy a smile when you step up to the counter, as well as when you’re served your food and perhaps even during your meal. In today’s screen-saturated age, good customer service has become somewhat of a rarity, so it’s especially appealing to interact with young workers who have an attitude of gratefulness and cheerfulness as they go about their work.
While other fast food restaurants may have sacrificed superior quality and service in the name of profits, In-N-Out Burger leads the way in conserving those goals. It’s one reason they were <a href="https://www.rd.com/article/best-fast-food-burger/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">voted makers of &#8216;the best fast-food burger in America&#8217;</a> in a 2022 restaurant survey, leading in almost every category including food quality, staff friendliness, cleanliness, atmosphere, and healthy food options.
The second thing In-N-Out Burger successfully conserves are worthy methods. While some competitors perfect their fries in a science lab and take advantage of the latest artificial methods of cooking and processing, In-N-Out takes pride in being different. Burgers are made from fresh beef. Buns are made the old-fashioned way from real sponge dough with no preservatives. Associates hand-leaf lettuce every day and cook fries the same way they did in the 1940s: with fresh potatoes in 100% sunflower oil.
In-N-Out Burger is so committed to freshness, they won’t build a restaurant more than a day’s journey away from their own family-owned facilities. And being conservative does not have to mean being tone-deaf to current needs. For example, many restaurants today find ways to cater to common allergens, and In-N-Out Burger is no exception. Those with a gluten sensitivity, or who wish to reduce the overall calories of their meal, can order their burger “protein-style” – sandwiched between fresh leaves of lettuce.
In-N-Out’s embrace of traditional methods is not a lack of imagination or an unwillingness to keep up with modernity. It’s merely the recognition that these traditional techniques of making food are, in fact, the best ways.
A third thing In-N-Out Burger conserves are good values. Underneath their cups, fry boats, and wrappers, the company prints scripture references. Not the whole text of verses — simply the book, chapter, and verse. On the soda cup you’ll find John 3:16: “For God so loved the world…” On the wrapper for their famous Double-Double burger, you’ll notice Nahum 1:7 and the reminder that the Lord is “a stronghold in the day of trouble.” The subtle family touch began in the 1980s with Richard Snyder, son of the founders, and has been expanded by granddaughter and current CEO Lynsi Snyder.
The practice is a nod to the Judeo-Christian faith tradition that undergirds America’s founding. It’s a rare acknowledgment from a successful American company that there’s something even greater than profit or even a tasty hamburger, something we can trust even in difficult or confused times. Conservatism has been described as an inclination to cherish the permanent things. Timeless Bible verses printed on disposable cups and wrappers bound for the garbage can are a small but effective reminder of such lasting ideas. They remind us that the grass withers and the flowers fade, but some things endure.
In today’s charged political climate, the definition of conservatism is up for grabs. “What do self-described conservatives stand for in 2023?” asks NPR in a recent headline, while Bloomberg declares “American and British Conservatives Are Frozen in Failure.” Although many of our political and cultural battles are rooted in the current moment, conservatism calls us to go deeper: to be stewards of our inheritance and builders of a better future. With its conservation of worthy goals, methods, and values, In-N-Out Burger shows us what a vibrant American conservatism looks like, and it’s delicious!
Andrew McDiarmid is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. His writing has recently appeared in The New York Post, Houston Chronicle, RealClearPolitics and The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at @AMcDiarmid and read more of his work at www.andrewmcdiarmid.org.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Hollywood Exteriors And Landmarks – 2021

Why In-N-Out Burger Is What Vibrant Conservatism Tastes Like

Conservatism

Food

Restaurant

California megachurch Saddleback Church, founded by prominent Christian leader and best-selling author Rick Warren, was disfellowshipped from the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/southern-baptists" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Southern Baptist Convention</a> (SBC) on Tuesday over having a female pastor.
Officials on the Executive Committee voted out one of the largest churches in the United States less than a year after Warren delivered his final sermon as Saddleback&#8217;s senior pastor and ushered in lead pastor Andy Wood and his wife, Stacie, who serves as a teaching pastor.
Due to the church continuing to have a female functioning in the office of pastor, SBC Executive Committee Chairman Jared Wellman told The Daily Wire in a statement that the convention ousted the 43-year-old megachurch, as it is &#8220;not in friendly cooperation&#8221; with the denomination.
Wood told <a href="https://apnews.com/article/baptist-church-us-news-california-religion-7970970aef44935329cd0fa4d3feceee?utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&amp;utm_medium=AP&amp;utm_source=Twitter" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Associated Press</a> last year that the Bible “teaches that men and women were given spiritual gifts by God.”
“The church should be a place where both men and women can exercise those spiritual gifts,” Wood said. “My wife has the spiritual gift of teaching and she is really good. People often tell me she’s better than me when it comes to preaching, and I’m really glad to hear that.”
The move from the convention also comes after Warren ordained three women as pastors in May 2021, sparking the initial discussion to remove the church from the SBC, arguing it defied Biblical principles and Article VI in the Baptist Faith and Message.
&#8220;While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of the pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture,&#8221; the article reads.
Warren responded to Saddleback&#8217;s disfellowship in a tweet on Tuesday, thanking his supporters.
&#8220;Friends worldwide: I&#8217;m so touched by your love!&#8221; Warren said. &#8220;We&#8217;ll respond to #SBC in OUR time &amp; way thru direct channels.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Friends worldwide: I&#39;m so touched by your love! Kay &amp; I love you back! We&#39;ll respond to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SBC?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SBC</a> in OUR time &amp; way thru direct channels: Our newsletters to 600,000 ch leaders Daily Hope radio broadcast 1 million PDC alumni pastors list 11 million social media followers Luke 23:43
&mdash; Rick Warren (@RickWarren) <a href="https://twitter.com/RickWarren/status/1628178253373657088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 21, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
At an SBC convention in June 2022, Warren responded to officials calling to sever the relationship with Saddleback.
&#8220;Are we going to keep bickering over secondary issues?&#8221; Warren said. &#8220;Or are we going to keep the main thing the main thing?&#8221;
Warren also reportedly said at the same meeting that he believes there is a difference between the office of pastor and the gift of pastor.
Traditional Christians believe the Bible makes it clear from a Complementarian viewpoint that women have a place in ministry under a male leader&#8217;s authority, arguing that primary leadership roles for females are unhealthy, counter to biblical standards, and place the congregation on a slippery slope away from fundamental scripture teachings and on a path toward more liberalism.
&#8220;They are on that path — anybody can see this by following their social media pages,&#8221; a source, who requested anonymity, told The Daily Wire.
The Executive Committee also ousted five other churches from the convention — four of which have a woman serving as a lead or senior pastor.
Those churches include New Faith Mission Ministry in Griffin, Georgia, St. Timothy&#8217;s Christian Baptist in Baltimore, Maryland, Calvary Baptist Church in Jackson, Mississippi, and Fern Creek Baptist Church, in Louisville, Kentucky.
SBC officials also disfellowshipped Freedom Church in Vero Beach, Florida, over a sex abuse-related issue, which <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/religion/2023/02/21/southern-baptist-convention-disfellowships-saddleback-church/69927465007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Tennessean</a> reported executive committee chairman Wellman said the church exhibited &#8220;a lack of intent to cooperate in resolving concerns regarding a sexual abuse allegation.&#8221;
&#8220;These churches have been valued, cooperating churches for many years, and this decision was not made lightly,&#8221; Wellman told The Daily Wire. &#8220;However, we remain committed to upholding the theological convictions of the SBC and maintaining unity among its cooperating churches.&#8221;
Pastor Richard Demsick of Freedom Church said in an interview with The Tennessean, &#8220;we are deeply saddened by the false allegations, which are slanderous.&#8221;
&#8220;There are no sexual abuse allegations,&#8221; he added. &#8220;There have been false reports based on gossip.&#8221;
The Southern Baptist Convention leaders said last year the nation&#8217;s largest Protestant denomination, which has almost 14 million members and more than 47,000 churches in all 50 states, was under investigation by the Justice Department for sexual abuse allegations.
An outside consultant reported that women and children were abused by male pastors, church employees, and officials from 2000 to the present, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/12/us/southern-baptist-convention-sexual-abuse.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CFor%20almost%20two%20decades%2C%20survivors,or%20employed%20as%20church%20staff.%E2%80%9D" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The New York Times</a> reported.
&#8220;For almost two decades, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention,&#8221; the consultant&#8217;s <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6108172d83d55d3c9db4dd67/t/628a9326312a4216a3c0679d/1653248810253/Guidepost+Solutions+Independent+Investigation+Report.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> said, &#8220;to report child molesters and other abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church staff.&#8221;
Victims said they made several attempts via phone, mail, and email, showed up at meetings, and held rallies, &#8220;only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling and even outright hostility.&#8221;
SBC officials said the convention would &#8220;fully and completely cooperate&#8221; with the investigation, and the church continues to &#8220;grieve and lament past mistakes.&#8221;
All six churches can appeal the decision made by SBC officials at the convention&#8217;s next annual meeting, which is set to take place in New Orleans in June.

USA – Religion – Purpose Driven Network Summit at Saddleback Church

Southern Baptists Boot Saddleback Church Over Female Pastor

California

Southern Baptists

As we survey our rotting cultural and political landscape, it is tempting, from a worldly perspective, to lose hope for our way of life and our nation. As Christians, we have a greater Hope, one that transcends these worldly problems.
We must always train our focus on Jesus Christ, especially during this holiest of weeks, but let&#8217;s not in the meantime abandon our earthly duties — our responsibilities to family, friends, country, and values.
While we must guard against making politics and patriotism our idols, we don&#8217;t have to accept the notion that worshiping God requires neglecting what is true, great, and good in our earthly lives. A spiritual war is raging before our eyes, and we must suit up against it — unless our lives on this side of eternity are utterly pointless. I&#8217;ll never believe God placed us on Earth to be indifferent to life here, to surrender the reins to forces of evil because a better world awaits us. Our Founding Fathers certainly didn&#8217;t believe that either.
But to properly and competently fight for our values, we must do more than just mouth the observation that we&#8217;re in a spiritual war. We must embrace it in our very souls, because it is true as any concrete reality we can verify with our five senses. We must embrace it because we are going to need other-worldly courage to face the whirlwind forces of evil and untruth that have possessed our culture; that have brainwashed half our nation; and that threaten to finally destroy America as we know and love it, and as it was founded — a land of unsurpassed religious and political liberty.
Warriors of evil are cleverly disguised as warriors for truth, justice, harmony, and love, their immoral causes masked as noble. They stir unrest and provoke disharmony in our society in the name of peace and unity. They actively sour race and gender relations while pretending to heal us. They promote hate in the cause of eradicating it. And they silence and suppress all opposing views and &#8220;unwoke&#8221; behavior in their self-appointed yet deceitful role as guardians of an enlightened culture.
These forces have monopolistic control over our cultural, academic, and social media institutions, and competing views are not just censored but actively demonized. Their sociopolitical message is monolithic and permits no dissent. Our universities are indoctrination factories, and Hollywood is a propaganda machine for the leftist worldview. The social media oligarchy actively promotes that worldview and attempts to erase any competing ideas it perceives as a threat to its message.
Just when you think things couldn&#8217;t get crazier, you read that teachers from San Diego Unified School District are now allowed to teach migrant children from Central America in person in the classroom while denying American children that privilege. And that students and faculty at the University of Vermont&#8217;s College of Education and Social Services targeted Dr. Aaron Kindsvatter, a counseling professor, for posting a video lamenting the growth of what he describes as a dangerous and discriminatory ideology that blames society&#8217;s ills on &#8220;whiteness.&#8221;
The prevailing narrative spewing from our toxic cultural spigots is that America is systemically racist, that the concept of racial colorblindness as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned is a tool to further &#8220;white supremacy,&#8221; and that all members of certain races are irredeemably racist, irrespective of their individual hearts and conduct. Conveniently, the proposed solutions for these problems are perpetual, unquenchable acts of atonement and radical redistributions of wealth through a transformation of our capitalistic system into a central planner&#8217;s dream.
Even certain promising politicians disappoint — those you trust will fight back against such noxious ideas as allowing biological men identifying as women to destroy women&#8217;s athletics and the hopes and dreams of women athletes to accommodate woke culture&#8217;s demand that one&#8217;s right to identify as a certain sex must trump everything, no matter the personal and societal causalities.
At a time when the integrity of our electoral system is under dire threat from undemocratic forces, self-styled champions of &#8220;democracy&#8221; press for federal legislation to unconstitutionally impose uniform rules on the states that would forever compromise our democratic processes and election integrity. The level of deceit, here as in so many other areas, is staggering.
Isn&#8217;t it sobering and surreal that we even have a debate over whether we have a right — and duty — to protect our borders against invasion from migrants, traffickers, and cartels? That we have powerful people arguing that the border enforcement officials and the police need to be defunded?
Meanwhile, our political class has become the chief enemy of fiscal sanity and economic reality. Washington menaces are proposing multitrillion-dollar programs with Monopoly money and imperiling our kids&#8217; financial future to allegedly stimulate an economy they are forcefully smothering with their draconian lockdown rules.
If all this weren&#8217;t bad enough and incontrovertible evidence of this nation&#8217;s death wish, we see half of our society glorifying the killing of unborn babies, and we witness rapper Lil Nas X&#8217;s &#8220;Satan Shoes&#8221; being sold out in less than a minute precisely because of, not despite, their satanic imagery.
Let us worship God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. But let&#8217;s not abdicate our duty to fight those who would usher in hell on Earth.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is &#8220;Guilty by Reason of Insanity: Why the Democrats Must Not Win.&#8221; Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Praying

LIMBAUGH: Americans Must Never Throw In The Towel

Leftism

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.

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

Secularism

Question: What book is the opposite of the Left?
Answer: the Torah.
The Torah is the Hebrew name of the first five books of the Bible, the &#8220;Five Books of Moses.&#8221; The Torah is the foundation of the rest of the Bible and the rock on which both Judaism and Christianity stand. No Torah, no Judaism. No Torah, no Christianity. No Torah, no God, no divine creation, no Exodus, no Ten Commandments, no &#8220;love your neighbor as yourself,&#8221; no Judeo-Christian values, no Western civilization and no America.
As I am about to finish the third volume of my five-volume commentary on the Torah (&#8220;The Rational Bible&#8221;), I can say with some authority that the Torah is the antithesis of left-wing ideas and values. It is not the antithesis of liberal ideas and values; it is the antithesis of left-wing values and ideas. A serious and committed Jew or Christian can be a liberal or a conservative; he or she cannot be a leftist. Left-wing Jews and Christians use Judaism and Christianity as covers for their real values — left-wing values.
Here are examples of basic laws and values in the Torah that are the opposite of what the Left advocates:
No. 1: &#8220;Do not show favoritism to a poor person in passing judgment&#8221; (Exodus 23:3). &#8220;Do not pervert justice. Do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly&#8221; (Leviticus 19:15).
The Left advocates judging the poor differently. A poor man who commits almost any crime, including a violent crime, is not to be held to the same legal or moral standard as other people. As reported last week in the City Journal:
&#8220;In October, the Seattle City Council floated legislation to provide an exemption from prosecution for misdemeanor crimes for any citizen who suffers from poverty, homelessness, addiction, or mental illness. Under the proposed ordinance, courts would have to dismiss all so-called &#8216;crimes of poverty&#8217; — which, according to the city&#8217;s former public-safety advisor, would cover more than 90 percent of all misdemeanor cases citywide.&#8221;
Since Karl Marx, the Left has not divided the world between right and wrong, as the Torah, Judaism and Christianity do, but between rich and poor.
No. 2: &#8220;Honor your father and mother&#8221; (the fifth of the Ten Commandments — Exodus 20:12 and Deuteronomy 5:16).
Parental authority (as much as divine authority) is probably the greatest single obstacle to the Left attaining control over a society. Therefore, the Left, like all totalitarian movements and like all cults, has always sought to undermine parental authority. That is precisely what has been taking place in America over the past few generations. In every case, the diminution of parents&#8217; authority over their children is portrayed as reasonable and even morally necessary, but the end is clear: Allow left-wing laws and institutions to direct your children.
Your 9-year-old daughter says she is a boy? Your 9-year-old son says he is a girl? Neither you nor any therapist has a right to tell him or her otherwise. Your minor-age daughter says she is a boy and wants to start hormone therapy and even have her breasts surgically removed? You are in no position to stop her.
Parents who allow their young children to take walks by themselves are increasingly reported to child protective services. The authorities — not you, the parents — will determine at what age your children can take walks unaccompanied by an adult.
Even school breakfasts undermine parents&#8217; authority. One of the most fundamental things parents do for their children is feed them. But increasingly, progressive cities provide not only lunch but also breakfast for your child. The message is clear: We, not your parent(s), will take care of your needs.
No. 3: &#8220;Male and female He created them&#8221; (Genesis 5:2).
The distinction among human beings between male and female is built into creation. It is the only human distinction other than good and evil that matters. In the Torah, there is no built-in ethnic or racial distinction among human beings; God couldn&#8217;t care less about race. But the male-female distinction is a fundamental part of the divine order.
No. 4: Race means nothing.
The creation of one human being, Adam, whose race is unknown, made it impossible to argue that race matters. This is another major conflict between the Left and the Torah, given how important race is to the Left. Adam, and therefore every human being, is created in the image of God — and, of course, God has no color.
No. 5: Distinctions.
Distinctions lie at the very heart of creation. The Left’s war on the Judeo-Christian religions is rooted in its war against distinctions.
Male-Female: The Left seeks to destroy this fundamental human distinction. The issue is not trans rights. If a person of majority age seeks to change his or her sex, the Torah is silent on that issue. The issue is the blurring of the male-female distinction — forcing people to lie about reality and say, &#8220;Men give birth&#8221; and, &#8220;Men menstruate&#8221; or having men who identify as men, look like men and have a man&#8217;s name publicly wear women&#8217;s clothing, as Harry Styles did on the cover of Vogue.
Man-God: Karl Marx wrote, &#8220;Man is God.&#8221; The Left has always sought to displace God with man. The desire to be a god — meaning the one who, rather than God, determines good and evil — has tempted human beings since Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Good-Evil: On the Left, good and evil are subjective. In the Torah, they have an objective reality. Moreover, the Left’s moral compass does not divide human beings and their actions between good and evil but between rich and poor, white and nonwhite, strong and weak.
God-Nature: The opening verse of the Torah ushered in one of the most radical innovations in history: God created nature; God is not part of nature. On the Left, however, nature is God.
Human-Animal: On the Left, human beings are just another animal. In the Torah, only man is created in God&#8217;s image.
The Left knows the Bible and the Judeo-Christian values that emanate from it are its enemy. The rest of us should, too.
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.

Torah

PRAGER: The Torah Versus The Left

As long ago as the 1970s, I came to a major realization. While watching fellow students at Columbia University demonstrate not just against the war in Vietnam but against America — &#8220;Amerika,&#8221; as many spelled it, the &#8220;imperialist,&#8221; &#8220;colonialist,&#8221; &#8220;mass-murdering&#8221; country — I kept wondering what made these people so hostile to the freest country in human history.
Then, one day, as a result of my having attended a yeshiva (an Orthodox Jewish day school) through high school, the reason became clear. Half of each school day was devoted to religious studies in Hebrew, and the other half was devoted to secular studies in English. This meant that I had been immersed in a religious worldview until college.
Though it was Jewish, this worldview could also be called &#8220;Judeo-Christian.&#8221; Students at traditionally Christian schools were immersed in essentially the same worldview. We were all taught that the most important battle we need to wage in life was with our own nature. Jews and Christians learned from the same Scripture that &#8220;the will of man&#8217;s heart is evil from his youth&#8221; (Genesis 8:21).
Therefore, being a good person involved a constant battle with our flawed human nature: our urges, appetites and innate weaknesses. This battle was also the only real route to a better world. Every individual had to work on him or herself to be decent, strong, courageous and self-controlled, and every parent had to work, first and foremost, on raising such people.
One day, I came to realize that this was not how the vast majority of my fellow students were raised. They were raised to believe that the great battle in life was not with one&#8217;s nature but with outside forces — with parents, in many cases, but most of all with society, i.e., America.
All of us, whatever our political outlook, have to confront personal failure, loss, disappointment and unhappiness. When confronted with these challenges, religious Jews and Christians are taught to look inward for both the primary source of their problems and the primary solutions to those problems: What have I done wrong? What can I change in my life to solve my problems?
Of course, some nonreligious liberals and conservatives also have this attitude. But most of them likely inherited it from religious parents or, at the very least, from parents who were raised in a religious home or a home that retained the remnants of such an upbringing, which was common in pre-1960s America. (It is therefore questionable how many secular parents will succeed in passing this attitude on to their children.)
The Left, which proudly rejects Judeo-Christian values, has adopted the opposite of the Judeo-Christian view regarding pain in life. Leftists (as opposed to liberals) hold outside forces responsible for their pain. That is the reason for the litany of left-wing enemies: capitalism, patriarchy, misogyny, systemic racism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, sexism, xenophobia.
So, then, if you are an unhappy American woman, you can work on yourself and your nature, or you can blame sexism and patriarchy, i.e., men, for your pained state.
If you are an unhappy gay American, you can work on yourself, or you can blame society&#8217;s homophobia for your unhappiness.
And, most significantly, if you are an unhappy black American, you can work on yourself and your life, or you can blame systemic racism and whites for your anger and unfulfilled life.
All this explains why the Left encourages every group except for white, Christian, heterosexual males to regard themselves as oppressed. The more oppressed women, gays, blacks, etc., see themselves, the more they are alienated from America and its values, and the more they gravitate Left. In light of this, I came up with a riddle:
Q: What do you call a happy black person?
A: A Republican.
Without an exception I can recall, over the course of decades, I have guessed the political affiliation of every black caller to my radio show within a minute of talking to them. If they sounded happy, I knew they were a Republican; if they were angry, I knew they were a Democrat. This has held true for male and female callers.
America has been a great country because it was built on the belief that we must all fight against our natures (and fight for our country). It is difficult to overstate the damage the Left is doing to this country by abandoning the fundamental Judeo-Christian teaching that we must fight our natures in order to lead a more decent and happy life and replacing it with the belief that we must battle America instead. This replacement inevitably leads to a population of unhappy, ungrateful and mean-spirited human beings — precisely the type of individuals you see rioting and looting, the type of elected officials who do nothing to stop rioters and looters, the columnists and academics who devote their lives to spewing hate-filled lies about America, and the Twitter mobs who comprise the toxic cancel culture.
It will lead to what the Left acknowledges it seeks: the end of America as we have known it.
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; will be released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

PRAGER: Leftists Blame America. Decent People Blame Themselves.

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