For the Left, There Are No Sacred Texts
by Dennis Prager

A number of well-known spokesmen on the left have voiced reservations not only about the Republican decision to have members of Congress — both Republicans and Democrats — read the Constitution aloud at the opening of the latest session of Congress. They have also voiced reservations about the American veneration of the Constitution.

Three examples:

In a recent appearance on MSNBC, Washington Post staff writer Ezra Klein said: “The issue with the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago and what people believe it says differs from person to person.”

Joy Behar asked her guests on CNN’s Headline News, “Do you think this Constitution-loving is getting out of hand?”

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., complained that “They are reading it (the Constitution) like a sacred text.”

What troubles Klein, Behar and Nadler?

The answer is that for leftism — though not necessarily for every individual who considers himself a leftist — there are no sacred texts. The two major examples are the Constitution and the Bible.

One cannot understand the left without understanding this. The demotion of the sacred in general and of sacred texts specifically is at the center of leftist thinking.

The reason is that elevating any standard, any religion, any text to the level of the sacred means that that it is above any individual. Therefore, what any one individual or even society believes is of secondary importance to that which is deemed sacred. If, to cite the most obvious example, the Bible is sacred, then I have to revere it more than I revere my own feelings in assessing what is right and wrong.

But for the left, what is right and wrong is determined by every individual’s feelings, not by anything above the individual.

This is a major reason why the left, since Karl Marx, has been so opposed to Judeo-Christian religion. For Judaism and Christianity, God and the Bible are above the self. Indeed, Western civilization was built on the idea that the individual and society are morally accountable to God and to the moral demands of that book. That was the view, incidentally, of every one of the Founders including deists such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

This is entirely unacceptable to the left. As Marx and Engels said, “Man is God, and God is man.” Therefore, society must rid itself of the sacred, i.e., God and the Bible. Then each of us (or the society, party or judiciary) takes the place of God and the Bible.

Morality is then no longer a God-given objective fact; it becomes a human-created subjective opinion. And one no longer needs to consult an external source to know right and wrong, only one’s heart. We are then no longer accountable to God for transgressions, only to ourselves.

That is why when there is God-talk on the left, it is usually about “the God that is within each of us,” not a God external to, let alone above, us, as Judaism and Christianity have always taught.

This explains the belief that is universally held on the left that the Constitution is an “evolving text,” meaning that it says what anyone (on the left) wants it to say.

Conservatives, on the other hand, do not share this view. They do not believe the Constitution has something to say about everything they believe in. While the left sees the right to abortion in the Constitution (because the left believes in the right to abortion), those who oppose abortion do not believe that the Constitution prohibits abortion. They believe that the Constitution is silent on the issue. Precisely because the right does believe the Constitution is to be treated as sacred, it does not claim that whatever it supports is in the Constitution or that whatever it opposes is unconstitutional.

There are humble individuals and arrogant individuals on the right and on the left. But there is no arrogance like leftist arrogance. If you hold a Leftist position, you know that you are smarter, wiser and more moral not only than conservatives, but more so than the Bible, more so than the Constitution, indeed often more so than everyone who lived before you.

Same-sex marriage is a perfect example. The fact that neither Moses nor the Hebrew prophets, nor Jesus nor the Buddha nor any great secular humanist thinker ever advocated defining marriage as between members of the same sex does not cause the left to rethink its advocacy of same-sex marriage; it only proves to them how morally superior they are to Moses, Jesus, the prophets and everyone else who lived before them.

That is why we must to treat the Constitution as sacred text. Because the bottom line is this: If it is not regarded as sacred, it is nothing more than what anyone believes about any social issue. Which is precisely what the left wants it to be — providing, of course, that the “anyone” is a liberal.

For the left, there are no sacred texts. There are only sacred (liberal) feelings.

This Is a Referendum, Not an Election
by Dennis Prager

Next Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2010 is not Election Day. It is Referendum Day.

It may be commonplace for commentators to announce that every election is “the most important election in our lifetime” or something analogous. But having never said that of a presidential election, let alone an off-year election, this commentator cannot be accused of crying wolf when I say that this off-year election is not simply the most important of my lifetime. It is the most important since the Civil War.

The reason is that unlike all previous elections, this one is actually a referendum on the direction of the United States of America.

If the Democrats win:

– The American people have announced, consciously or not, that they support the Democratic Party’s “fundamental transformation” — those were President Obama’s words when he campaigned, and he has lived up to them — of America from a liberty-based state of limited government into an equality-based welfare state with an ever-expanding government.

– America will change from a country that emphasizes producing wealth to a country that emphasizes redistribution of wealth.

The left has never been primarily interested in creating wealth. Its primary goal always and everywhere has been to redistribute it. That so many businessmen and much of Wall Street are only now awakening to this fact is only a testament to the staggering lack of wisdom in big business.

– America will produce increasingly narcissistic citizens.

For proof, just look at the virtual shutdown of much of France and the ubiquitous rioting of vast numbers of its citizens over a tiny change in its welfare state — raising the age of retirement from 60 to 62. The idea that one will work two more years before receiving benefits until death so offends vast numbers of French — including young people who have every reason to believe they will live until the age of 100 — that they are fighting it as if their very lives were in jeopardy. That is the self-centeredness that all welfare states engender in their citizens.

– America will further reinforce the conviction that minorities are victims — who must be protected from their fellow Americans by the state.

Latinos, blacks, Muslims, gays and vast numbers of women have been told by the left and its political party that they are all persecuted by a country that is SIXHIRB — Sexist, Intolerant, Xenophobic, Homophobic, Islamophobic, Racist and Bigoted. That America is the least SIXHIRB country in the world is a fact that has been all but drowned out by the left-wing domination of television and print news media, all the entertainment media, and the high schools and universities.

– America will continue to undermine its unique ability to Americanize people of all ethnic, national, racial, and religious backgrounds.

With a Democratic victory the country’s very motto — E Pluribus Unum, “Out of Many One” — will continue to erode as ethnic and racial identities rather one American identity are increasingly celebrated. Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel has just announced that Germany’s experiment with multiculturalism has “utterly failed,” but the left and its political party, the Democrats, have redoubled their efforts to supplant E Pluribus Unum with multiculturalism.

– America will continue its economic slide.

With a Democratic victory, unsustainable debts will mount, wealth-producing companies will continue to flee from higher taxes and more regulations, energy use will be taxed in the name of environmentalist utopianism, and the government will continue to print dollars.

– America will become increasingly secular.

With a Democratic victory, the left’s goal of rendering America’s other motto, “In God We Trust,” an anachronism will come closer to fruition. Leftism is a jealous god. As in Western Europe, the Judeo-Christian roots of this country are ceasing to play the indispensible moral role they have played since before 1776.

And what would constitute a Democrat victory next Tuesday? Anything other than a Republican landslide. Any other result will be interpreted by the media and by the Democrats as solely a result of the economic recession and as the normal losses of the dominant party in off-year elections.

In other words, the only way to ensure that the electoral results are seen as a repudiation of the growth of the state and the other Democrat and leftist goals is through an enormous Republican victory.

Only then will America understand that this election was not first about jobs. It was above all about America.

Name One Difference Between World Opinion and Left-Wing Opinion
by Dennis Prager

Here’s a challenge: Can you name one difference between what the media refer to as “world opinion” and Left-wing opinion?

Take all the time you need. But no matter how much time you take, you probably won’t come up with any examples.

Here are examples of major world issues and what is deemed “world opinion.” They happen to all be Leftist views as well.

– hatred of President George W. Bush and admiration of President Barack Obama

– Manmade carbon emissions lead to global warming and devastation of the environment. Therefore, the world’s nations must tax carbon-based energy.

– The American invasion of Iraq was morally wrong, motivated by desire for oil.

– Israel is bad, as exemplified most recently by the Turkish flotilla incident.

– The American free-enterprise system is inferior to Europe’s welfare-state systems.

– The American health care system is inferior to that of all other wealthy countries (see last week’s column).

This list in no way differs from a list of Leftist positions. Nor would any other list of “world opinion” positions differ in any meaningful way from Leftist positions.

Why is that?

The most obvious answer would be that much of the world is Leftist in its views. Therefore, Leftist positions and world opinion are the same.

The truth is, for reasons to be explained, there is some validity to this explanation.

But there is a deeper and more accurate explanation: The world’s media and virtually all international organizations are Leftist in their politics, and they both define “world opinion” and in turn shape it.

Of course, there are other powerful institutions in the world that shape public opinion. But virtually none contravene the Left-wing views of the world’s media and world organizations on world issues.

Take Islam, for example. Islamic institutions shape the opinions of the majority of the world’s billion Muslims. But while the Left and Islam diverge on a great number of issues — women’s rights, gay rights, individual rights, press freedom, freedom of dissent, religious pluralism, just to name a few major ones — they coincide on international issues and views of America.

The Islamic world, Leftist media and the United Nations agree on virtually every international issue — on the villainy of Israel first and foremost, on support for the United Nations, on weakening American influence around the world, on opposition to the use of American force in Iraq and Afghanistan, on abolishing nuclear weapons, etc.

Another highly influential institution is the Roman Catholic Church. But its differences from Leftist positions are only on personal moral matters such as same-sex marriage and abortion. It is not a strong voice against the Left, and like the Left, it is largely silent on moral problems within the Muslim world. When the current pope did make a statement critical of Islam, the world press — and therefore “world opinion” — were united in condemning him. The world media, in keeping with its Left-wing agenda, is incomparably more critical of the Catholic Church than of Islam.

To better understand how the Left, the United Nations and most international institutions determine “world opinion,” take the issue of manmade global warming. The United Nations declared global warming a closed issue, the world’s media uncritically echo the U.N. report, and that’s it.

According to a BBC World Service poll of 22,000 people in 21 countries (as reported by WorldPublicOpinion.org, in 2007), “Large majorities around the world believe that human activity causes global warming and that strong action must be taken, sooner rather than later, in developing as well as developed countries.” It is remarkable how similar “world opinion” on global warming sounds to the Left’s position on global warming. The Left believes it is the vital environmental issue of our time, the United Nations announces it is, the media around the world report it as such, and lo and behold, the “world” demands immediate and drastic action to combat something that may happen (if at all) sometime in the distant future.

The great exception to all this is the United States. A vigorous conservative part of the American population has contempt for “world opinion,” rightly regarding it as useless against real evil and as a mere reflection of Leftist views. Equally important, and almost unique to America, there is a vigorous conservative news and opinion media. Compared to the Leftist domination of virtually all mass news media — newspapers, magazines and television — the conservative media are almost tiny. But talk radio, the Internet, Ronald Reagan and his ideological heirs in the Republican Party, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page have made an impact that belies their numbers.

But they are only powerful in America. And even there, it is often difficult to overcome the United Nations, the Left, the universities, the media and “world opinion.”

And conservative influence in America and everywhere else is in direct proportion to the public coming to understand that “world opinion” is a creation of the Left, reported by the Left.

John, Chuck, Kathleen, and … Mr. President
by Dennis Prager

There was something particularly annoying — even harmful to society — during the health care summit held last week between President Obama and leading members of the House and Senate.

It was the president’s calling all the congressmen and senators by their first names.

It is easy to appreciate just how demeaning this was of each House member and senator: Just imagine if any of them had called President Obama “Barack.”

However negative any conservatives deem this presidency, we would consider it scandalous if anyone publicly referred to this or any president by his first name. For America’s sake, I do not want the office of president or the president himself demeaned.

Likewise, for America’s sake, I do not want the office of representative or senator demeaned.

Yet that is exactly what Obama did. At perhaps one of the most widely watched dialogue between members of the United States Congress and a president in American history, Obama lowered the dignity of the men and women who serve in those capacities.

That this has largely gone unnoted — and, I presume, will be widely dismissed as trivial — is more a statement about the culture of our times than it is of the unwillingness of mainstream media to criticize this president.

Other presidents and members of Congress have on occasion publicly referred to members of Congress by their first names (though this, too, is relatively new and wrong), but rarely if ever in as formal, let alone prolonged and public, a setting as the health care summit.

Why did the president do this? Why did he choose to call the most prominent members of House of Representatives and Senate — and a member of his cabinet — by their first names while he was only referred to as “Mr. President”?

One reason was to place himself on a higher and qualitatively different plane than everyone else at the summit. It was effectively the president of the United States and the boys (and girls) showing him deference. Anyone who disputes this needs to explain why the president did not ask to be called “Barack” and why no one called by his or her first name did the same to the president.

A second reason, that only theoretically conflicts with the first, is that this president is a man of the left to the depth of his soul, and therefore has egalitarian instincts. Consequently, he likely thinks that there is something not quite right in sustaining class-based titles by referring to people by their honorific; and conversely, there is something charming in publicly calling senators, representatives, and members of his cabinet by their first names.

A third — related — reason, is the egalitarian spirit that has pervaded American society since the 1960s and ’70s. Obvious examples include students calling teachers by their first name, young people calling adults by their first name, congregants calling their clergymen by their first name, and the like. In almost every case, there has been a loss of prestige to the person and to the profession (yes, adulthood is a profession) and a corresponding loss to society.

In 28 years of radio, I have never called an interviewee who had a title by his or her first name. A psychiatrist who teaches at the UCLA School of Medicine has been on my show a number of times. Though he has been one of my closest friends for over 20 years, I have always addressed him as “Dr. Marmer” on the radio, never “Steve.” Likewise all the rabbis, priests and ministers with whom I am friends are all “Rabbi,” “Father” and “Pastor” when I address them in public.

Some will argue that this was precisely what Sen. Barbara Boxer was saying when she said to Brigadier General Michael Walsh, who was testifying before a Senate committee, “Could you say ’senator’ instead of ‘ma’am?’” And therefore, anyone who ridiculed her for that comment cannot now complain that President Obama did not call senators and congressmen by their titles.

But the argument has no merit. Walsh never called Boxer “Barbara.” If he had, it would have been scandalous. He called her “Ma’am,” which, along with addressing a man as “sir,” is how the military (and many others) show people respect.

The issue, in any event, is publicly addressing people with titles by their first name — especially when the one doing it must be addressed by his title. Even if President Obama had used “Mr.,” “Ms.” or “Mrs.,” it would have been acceptable.

Perhaps the president thought that Americans would appreciate that he is so friendly with all these congressmen and senators — even Republicans — that he calls them all by their first names. If so, he seriously miscalculated. If he did not object to “Mr. President,” he had no right to drop “senator” and “congressman.”

But, as noted, Mr. Obama is a man of the left. And the cultural left does not particularly like “Mr.,” “Mrs.,” “Pastor” or “Rabbi” — or “Senator” or “Congressman.” And if you don’t think this is a right-left distinction, read right and left reactions to this column.

Democrats Ensure America Will No Longer Be the Last Best Hope of Earth
by Dennis Prager

As the passage of the bill that will start the process of nationalizing health care in America becomes almost inevitable, so, too, the process of undoing America’s standing as The Last Best Hope of Earth will have begun.

That description of America was not, as more than a few Americans on the left believe, made by some right-wing chauvinist. It was made by President Abraham Lincoln in an address to Congress on Dec. 1, 1862.

The bigger the American government becomes, the more like other countries America becomes. Even a Democrat has to acknowledge the simple logic: America cannot at the same time be the last best hope of earth and increasingly similar to more and more countries.

Either America is unique, in which case it at least has the possibility of uniquely embodying hopes for mankind — or it is not unique, in which case it is by definition not capable of being the last best hope for humanity — certainly no more so than, let us say, Sweden or the Netherlands.

Indeed, President Obama acknowledged this in April, when asked by a European reporter if he believes in American exceptionalism. The president’s response: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

The president was honest. In his view, as in the view of today’s Democratic party, America is special only in the same way we parents regard our children as “special.” We all say it and we all believe it, but we know that it is meaningless except as an emotional expression of our love for our children. If every is child is equally special, none can be special, in fact. If every country is exceptional, then no country is exceptional, or at least no more so than any other.

With the largest expansion of the American government and state since the New Deal, the Democratic party — alone — is ending a key factor in America’s uniqueness and greatness: individualism, which is made possible only when there is limited government.

The formula here is not rocket science: The more the government/state does, the less the individual does.

America’s uniqueness and greatness has come from a number of sources, two of which are its moral and social value system, which is a unique combination of Enlightenment and Judeo-Christian values, and its emphasis on individual liberty and responsibility.

Just as the left has waged war on America’s Judeo-Christian roots, it has waged war on individual liberty and responsibility.

Hillel, the most important rabbi of the Talmud (which, alongside the Hebrew Bible, is Judaism’s most important book), summarized the human being’s obligations in these famous words: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

What does this mean in the present context? It means that before anything else, the human being must first take care of himself. When people who are capable of taking care of themselves start relying on the state to do so, they can easily become morally inferior beings. When people who could take care of their family start relying on the state to do so, they can easily become morally inferior. And when people who could help take care of fellow citizens start relying on the state to do so, the morally coarsening process continues.

There has always been something profoundly ennobling about American individualism and self-reliance. Nothing in life is as rewarding as leading a responsible life in which one has not to depend on others for sustenance. Little, if anything, in life is as rewarding as successfully taking care of oneself, one’s family and one’s community. That is why America has always had more voluntary associations than any other country.

But as the state and government have gotten bigger, voluntary associations have been dying. Why help others if the state will do it? Indeed, as in Scandinavia, the attitude gradually becomes: why even help myself when the state will do it?

Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are right about one thing — they are indeed making history. But their legacy will not be what they think. They will be known as the people who led to the end of America as the last best hope of earth.

Lincoln weeps.

Why President Obama Was Awarded the Nobel Prize
by Dennis Prager

The Nobel Peace Prize, already devalued, has sunk to a new low. This assessment has nothing to do with one’s estimation of this year’s recipient, President Barack Obama. Most of those on the left, with a few predictable exceptions such as the New York Times, regard giving the president the award as belittling him and the prize.

How did this happen? What was the Oslo Committee’s motive?

They may be moral idiots, but they are not stupid: I believe that they had two clear aims.

One is to undercut American exceptionalism — the notion that America has a superior moral value system to that of the “world” (specifically the United Nations and the European Union) and America’s willing to use its unique power, alone when necessary, in accordance with that value system. The other is to promote an essentially pacifist agenda.

Here is the entire announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize committee:

1. “The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Meaning: No more Lone Ranger America.

2. “The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

Meaning: The Nobel Committee wants no country to possess nuclear weapons. That an American president shares this dream and is working to achieve it excites the Nobel Committee — and the world’s left generally — beyond words.

Many people around the world — not just Americans — would characterize a world in which America and all other decent countries had no nuclear weapons not as a dream, but as a nightmare. But for the naive left-wing (a redundant phrase: If one is not naive about evil, one is not on the left) members of the Nobel Committee, the prospect of encouraging an American president to dismantle his country’s nuclear arsenal was too tempting to allow to pass — even at the price of appearing foolish.

3. “Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play.”

Meaning: To the international left, as embodied by the five members of the Nobel Prize Committee, the United Nations is the beacon of hope for mankind.

To many Americans and others, however, the United Nations is regarded as a moral wasteland that rewards some of world’s cruelest regimes with seats on its Human Rights Committee, does nothing to prevent genocides (some would way say the U.N. actually abets them), honoring tyrants, and mired in corruption.

4. “Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts.”

Meaning: As the pacifist bumper sticker puts it: “War is not the answer.”

Oslo’s approach echoes what the British government under Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain believed vis a vis Adolf Hitler. But had Hitler been confronted instead of “dialogued” with, perhaps tens of millions of innocent men and women’s lives would have been spared and the Holocaust averted. Europeans tend to believe that evil regimes will act responsibly because of dialogue, not threats of force.

5. “The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations.”

Meaning: We believe that a world in which no country possesses nuclear weapons will be a safer world. We believe that even though the technology to make nuclear weapons will still exist, no terrorist organization, nor any other bad people, will make such weapons.

The existence and deterrent power of nuclear weapons have probably saved as many lives as have antibiotics. As David Von Drehle writes in this week’s Time Magazine, “If the Nobel committee wants someday to honor the force that has done the most over the past 60 years to end industrial-scale war, they will award a peace prize to the bomb.”

6. “Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting.”

Meaning: To our delight, unlike the previous president, this one believes in global warming and in changing the American economy to combat it.

The “climate change” scare has become the most effective vehicle for compelling a transformation of Western economies along the lines that left-wing environmentalists have urged for decades.

7. “Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.”

This, unfortunately, has no meaning; it is nonsense. Under Barack Obama, the United States has not been the friend of democrats around the world. America has responded weakly to the democratic movement in Iran, ended the funding of the largest pro-Iranian human rights groups in America, pressured democratic Israel, made overtures to Hugo Chavez while denying American ally and pro-democratic Colombia a free trade agreement, abandoned Honduran anti-Chavez democrats, and has obsequiously deferred to Vladimir Putin.

8. “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.”

Meaning: Only very rarely does the European left have such a kindred spirit in the American presidency.

9. “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

Meaning: With Barack Obama, we in Europe finally have an opportunity to end American exceptionalism.

The Oslo committee’s view is, tragically, true. Thanks to Barack Obama, America is for the first time is aligning its values with those of “the majority of the world’s population.” If you think the world’s population has had better values than America, that it has made societies that are more open, free, and tolerant than American society, and that it has fought for others’ liberty more than America has, you should be delighted.

I Thought ‘Dissent Is Patriotic’
by Dennis Prager

Living in liberal Los Angeles, I am surrounded by people — and bumper stickers — I do not agree with.

One of the more popular liberal bumper stickers of the last decade tells us “Dissent is Patriotic.” Now, as it happens, it is impossible to truly disagree with that phrase, not because it is self-evidently true, but because it is self-evidently meaningless. As are most left-wing bumper stickers.

For example, another popular liberal bumper sticker proclaims, “War Is not the Answer.” It, too, is completely meaningless. If the question is, “What is the square root of 8?” war is not the answer. But if the question is “How do you stop genocidal regimes?” war probably is the answer.

As concerns “Dissent is Patriotic,” the fact is that dissent is neither patriotic nor unpatriotic. Sometimes it is one, sometimes the other, sometimes it has nothing to do with patriotism. The right to dissent is a basic American value. But that is not what the bumper sticker says.

Those who dissented when Alabama schools were racially integrated were not acting patriotically. Those who dissented against British rule in North America are considered our greatest patriots. Those who dissent against the doctrine that global warming caused by human beings is leading to worldwide catastrophe are courageous and probably right, but their dissent is neither patriotic nor unpatriotic.

The worst part of the liberal mantra, “Dissent is Patriotic,” however, is not that is meaningless. It is that it is apparently meant solely to defend liberal and left dissent. Dissent against the right is inherently patriotic.

Dissent against the left is another matter. To Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and to the New York Times Paul Krugman and every other left-wing commentator I have read on the issue, those who dissent against the Obama/Democratic Party health care plan are not only not patriotic; they are Nazis, mobs, white racists (according to Krugman’s non-sequitur thesis) and are always organized. They are activists sent by health insurance companies, the Republican Party, or by some other nefarious right-wing organization.

To the left, it is almost inconceivable that normal “hardworking” Americans, even Democrats, might find the idea of an immense increase in government intrusion into our lives frightening.

I wonder how Paul Krugman and Nancy Pelosi would explain my physician, Dr. Michael Richman. He is a thoracic-cardio surgeon in Santa Monica, Calif. who is liberal, who voted for Barack Obama, and who has disdain for most health insurance companies. Yet, he came on my radio show last week to announce that he deeply regrets having voted for Obama in light of the damage the president’s plan would do to American medicine.

Now, if Dr. Richman attends a Democratic congressman’s town hall meeting to protest the congressman’s support for the government taking over about 16 percent of the gross domestic product, will he, too, be dismissed as a neo-Nazi or health insurance company stooge?

The answer is, probably yes. In fact, that is exactly what happened — and captured on local Atlanta TV — in Georgia’s 13th Congressional District this past weekend. A local physician, Dr. Brian Hill, a urologist, went to a town hall meeting organized by Democratic Congressman David Scott. When Dr. Hill asked in a calm voice why the Congressman would support a government health plan in light of the failing government health plan in Massachusetts, Rep. Scott began yelling at him about people from outside the district coming to “hijack this event” and that those at his town hall meeting raising the health care issue should have had “the decency” to call the congressman’s office to set up a meeting to discuss the issue and not take over the town hall meeting.

As reported by WXIA-TV News, the local NBC affiliate, however, Dr. Hill does live and vote in the congressman’s district, had called the congressman’s office numerous times and got no response, and is not a Republican.

But such people as Dr. Richman in California and Dr. Hill in Georgia don’t exist in the Democratic Party’s or in Paul Krugman’s mind. Like most of the left since Marx, the American left today has created an image of the world to which reality is subservient. Left-wing theories define reality, not vice versa. And in that closed world, left-wing dissent is patriotic, while dissent against the left is fascistic at worst, or paid for by the greedy at best.

Why the Cairo Speech Was So Sad
by Dennis Prager

It appears that President Barack Obama decided not to incorporate any of the points on American-Muslim relations I included in my last column, a speech I suggested he give in Cairo to the Muslim world.

Nevertheless the president made some courageous points, and an honest appraisal of his speech needs to note them. For example, telling an audience in Cairo and presumably hundreds of millions of Muslims elsewhere that America’s “bond is unbreakable” with Israel was courageous and important.

So the speech was not bad.

But it was sad.

It was extremely sad that it was necessary for anyone, let alone an American president, to tell Muslims that the Holocaust occurred, that “6 million Jews were killed,” and that “denying that fact is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful.” There is no other audience on earth to whom that would have to be said.

Incidentally, wouldn’t one think that an American president feeling the need to condemn Holocaust-denial before a world Muslim audience would be worthy of comment? Yet, such is the soft bigotry of low expectations that dominates world news media views of the Muslim world, that I did not see one mainstream media comment on this extraordinary fact.

I did, however, see Tom Brokaw ask this incredible question of President Obama after the latter’s visit to the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald: “What can the Israelis learn from your visit to Buchenwald and what should they be thinking about their treatment of Palestinians?”

To his credit, President Obama immediately responded: “Well, look, there’s no equivalency here.”

Talk about sad. What other word can be used to describe one of the most famous journalists in America using the Holocaust to ask about Israeli policy toward Palestinians?

Returning to the president’s speech, it was also sad that the president had to condemn Muslim Jew-hatred and threats to annihilate Israel — “Threatening Israel with destruction or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews is deeply wrong.” This, too, needed to be said to a Muslim audience. Nazi-like depictions of Jews, regularly equating Jews with animals and calling for their destruction, are found in much of the Muslim media, many Islamic schools and many mosques.

It was likewise sad that an American president felt he had to go to Cairo and tell Muslims that Islam has a history of tolerance: “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. We see it in the history of Andalusia and Cordoba during the Inquisition. I saw it firsthand as a child in Indonesia, where devout Christians worshiped freely in an overwhelmingly Muslim country.”

It was as if the president had to persuade his audience that Islam has been or is, in essence, tolerant. Even President Obama’s examples were not convincing.

Muslim-governed Andalusia in southern Spain, of which Cordoba was the capital city, ceased being tolerant (relative to Christian Europe at the time) by about 1,000. In 1011, there was a Muslim pogrom against the Jews of Cordoba. And even earlier, between A.D. 850 and 859, 50 Christians were beheaded in Cordoba for blasphemy against Islam. As for the Indonesia in which the young Barack Obama saw Christians worshiping freely, that country was almost as secular under Suharto as Turkey was under Ataturk. So, the question remains: Are there examples in the last 1,000 years of a religious Islamic regime governing a society that was tolerant of non-Muslims or dissenting Muslims? The president provided none.

Right after the Indonesia citation, the president added: “That is the spirit we need today,” obviously implying that this spirit of religious tolerance is not present in the Muslim world today. That was quite a statement to make to hundreds of millions of Muslims.

Yet, despite many objectionable aspects of the president’s speech, it was very important for someone of President Obama’s stature to tell the Muslim world that there was a Holocaust, that anti-Semitism is evil, that Israel and America have an unbreakable bond, and that religious intolerance in the Muslim world is unacceptable. But for precisely those reasons his speech was so sad.

The Speech President Obama Won’t Give in Egypt
by Dennis Prager

This week, President Barack Obama is scheduled to give a major address in Cairo to the Muslim world. He is likely to reiterate what he has stated previously to Muslim audiences, that America has no battle with Islam, deeply respects Islam and the Muslim world, and apologizes for any anti-Muslim sentiment that any Americans may express.

Here is what an honest address would sound like:

“Thank you for the honor of addressing the Egyptian people and the wider Muslim world.

“I am here primarily to dispel some of the erroneous beliefs many Muslims have about America and to thereby reassure you that America has no desire to be at war with the Muslim world.

“To my great disappointment, many Muslims have come to believe that my country has declared war on Muslims and Islam.

“Because of this widespread belief, I said in an interview with al-Arabiya a few months ago, that we need to restore “the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago.”

“Lets’ look a little deeper at that relationship. For the truth is, as noted by the Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist for the American newspaper the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer, in the last 20-30 years America did not just respect Muslims, it bled for Muslims. We Americans engaged in five military campaigns on behalf of Muslims, each one resulting in the liberation of a Muslim people: Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as the failed 1992-93 Somalia intervention to feed starving African Muslims — in which] 43 Americans were killed — were all humanitarian exercises. In none of them was there a significant U.S. strategic interest at stake. So, in fact, in these 20 years, my country, the United States of America has done more for suffering and oppressed Muslims than any other nation, Muslim or non-Muslim.

“While I recognize that gratitude is the rarest positive human quality, I need to say — because candor is the highest form respect — that America has not only not received little gratitude from the Muslim world, it has been the object of hatred, mass murder, and economic attack from Muslim individuals, groups, and countries.

“Just to cite a few of many examples from the last 40 years:

“In 1973, Muslim terrorists attacked the American embassy in Sudan and murdered our country’s ambassador, Cleo Noel, and the chief deputy of the mission, George C. Moore. Later in 1973, the Arab oil embargo against America sent my country into a long and painful recession. In 1977, Muslim militants murdered the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, Frances E. Meloy, and Robert O.Waring, the U.S. economic counselor. In 1979 radical Muslims violently attacked my country’s embassy in Teheran, and for 14 months held American diplomats hostage, often in appalling conditions. In 1998, Muslim militants bombed the American embassy in Nairobi, killing 12 Americans and 280 Kenyans, and bombed our embassy in Tanzania, killing another 11 Americans. Then, on Sept. 11, 2001, 19 Muslims who had been living in America slit the throats of American pilots and flight attendants and then flew airplanes into civilian buildings in New York City, burning 3,000 innocent Americans to death.

“So, my friends here in Egypt, between America and the Muslim world, who exactly has been making war on whom?

“I have enormous differences with my predecessor, President George W. Bush. But please remember that less than a week after thousands of Americans were slaughtered in the name of your religion, President Bush went to the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., and announced that Islam was a religion of peace. Moreover, in a country of 300 million people, of whom only a few million are Muslim, there is virtually no recorded incident of anti-mosque or other anti-Muslim violence despite the butchery of 9/11 and the popular support for Osama Bin Laden that we saw in the Muslim world after 9/11.

“I ask you to please ask yourselves what Egypt’s reaction would have been had 19 Christians, in the name of Christianity, slaughtered 3,000 Egyptians. How would the Christians of Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East have fared?

“As it is, because of persecution by Muslim majorities, Christians have been leaving the Middle East in such great numbers that for the first time since Christ, there are large parts of the Middle East that have become empty of both Jews and Christians.

“Yet, at the same time, millions of Muslims have moved to Western countries and to America. It is fair to say that the freest, and often the safest, place in the world for a practicing Muslim is the United States of America.

“Muslim-Americans are treated exactly as other Americans are treated. It is exceedingly rare to hear any anti-Muslim bigotry in my country. And while there is some criticism of the Muslim world, but there is far more criticism of Christianity in America than of Islam.

“Unfortunately, in much of the Muslim world today anti-Jewish speeches and writing are frequently identical to the genocidal anti-Semitism one heard and read in Nazi Germany. This is a blight on your civilization. How can you seriously charge that America is at war with Islam when in fact it is much of the Islamic world that is at war with Jews and Christians?

“I know that you would like me to announce that America is abandoning its support for Israel. But every president since Harry Truman, Democrat and Republican, has been passionate about enabling Israel to defend itself from those who wish to destroy it. And that, dear Muslims, is the issue. America will continue to support a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli dispute, but the issue has never really been about two states. It has always been about Palestinians and other Arabs and Muslims recognizing Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

“As a friend of Egypt and of the Muslim world, I want to say something from the bottom of my heart: The day the Arab world ceases obsessing over the existence of a Jewish state the size of Belize will be a great day for the Arab and Muslim worlds. Your obsession with Israel has cost you dearly in every area of social development. This is easily demonstrated. If Israel were destroyed — and the so-called “right of return” of millions of third-generation Palestinian refugees would ensure that outcome as effectively as would a nuclear device from Iran — what difference would that make to the Egyptian economy, to Egyptian lack of freedoms, or anything else that matters to Egyptians? In my opinion, none whatsoever. Preoccupation with Israel has simply enabled the Arab world to not look within for 60 years.

“Finally, my fellow Americans would feel more confident in American-Muslim relations if they had ever seen a large demonstration of Muslims anywhere against all the terror committed by Muslims in the name of Islam — whether in London, Madrid, New York, Bali, Cairo, or Mumbai. The mark of a great civilization — and Arab civilization was indeed once great — is a willingness to criticize itself.

“Thank you again for this opportunity to address you. I could have patronized you by exaggerating American misdeeds and ignoring yours. But I have too much respect for you.

“Shukran jiddan.”

President Has “More Effective” Method to Get Intel from Terrorists – What Is It?
by Dennis Prager

In his latest address – on Guantanamo detainees – President Obama said something of extraordinary importance that seems to have been missed by the media:

“I know some have argued that brutal methods like water-boarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more…I reject the assertion that these are the most effective means of interrogation.”

As this President chooses his words carefully, these claims need to be understood.

Note that Mr. Obama did not say what nearly all opponents of water-boarding say – that water-boarding is not an effective method of extracting reliable, life-saving, information. He took no issue with former Vice-President Dick Cheney’s claims that water-boarding or “enhanced interrogation” saved American and other lives. Indeed, he clearly leaves open the possibility, even the likelihood, that this claim is accurate. Rather, what he says is that “methods like water-boarding were not necessary to keep us safe” – not necessary, not ineffective. And why does he believe this? Because they are not “the most effective means of interrogation.”

In other words, the President’s view seems to be that water-boarding the three terrorists did elicit vital, life-saving, information. However, he contends that we could have obtained all that information using means of interrogation that were both non-brutal and more effective.

I pray the President is right. I would love America to be able to say “America never uses brutal methods of interrogation, let alone tortures” while simultaneously obtaining information it needs from captured terrorists to save thousands of innocent people from death and maiming.

But if in fact, these methods exist, they have never been revealed. President Obama needs to share this discovery with the American people, or, if they must be state secrets, with a select few individuals from Congress and the intelligence community.

It is as if the President, or anyone else, announced that brutal methods of combating cancer like chemotherapy and radiation were “not the most effective means” of combating cancer – and then refused to say what non-brutal means were more effective.

This is the paramount issue in the water-boarding debate. As Democratic Senator Charles Schumer said five years ago, it is essentially a no-brainer that we must “do what you have to do” if we apprehend a terrorist who has the information that can prevent an imminent terrorist attack.

Most opponents of water-boarding terrorists rely on the belief that such a method is as unnecessary as it is illegal. Therefore, if it is shown that water-boarding did in fact provide information that saved many innocent lives, opponents have to argue one of two positions: that there was a better, non-brutal, method available; or that it is morally preferable to have innocent Americans and others killed, brain damaged, blinded, and paralyzed rather than water-board a single terrorist.

Given that just about all of us – proponents of rare water-boarding and opponents of all water-boarding – want both security and not to water-board – the President can do the country and the world an extraordinary service by revealing – if necessary, only to a select few – what those non-brutal methods are that he knows to be “more effective.”

This would end the debate, give America more security, and enable us to say we never water-boarding or torture.

I, for one, pray those methods exist. But I don’t believe they do or that the President has a clue what they are.

America Has a Naive President
by Dennis Prager

“The basic bargain is sound: countries with nuclear weapons will move toward disarmament, countries without nuclear weapons will not acquire them.” — President Barack Obama, Prague, April 6, 2009

As far as nuclear weapons are concerned, the President of the United States wants America to disarm: “Countries with nuclear weapons will move toward disarmament.”

It is hard to imagine a more destructive goal. A nuclear disarmed America would lead to massive and widespread killing, more genocide, and very possibly the nuclear holocaust worldwide nuclear disarmament is meant to prevent.

There is nothing moral, let alone realistic, about this goal.

Here is an analogy. Imagine that the mayor of a large American city announced that it was his goal to have all the citizens of his city disarm — what could be more beautiful than a city with no weapons? This would, of course, ultimately include the police, but with properly signed agreements, vigorously enforced, and violators of the agreement punished, it would remain an ideal to pursue.

One has to assume that most people would regard this idea as, at the very least, useless. There would be no way to ensure that bad people would disarm; and if the police disarmed, only bad people would have weapons.

The analogy is virtually precise — but only if you acknowledge that America is the world’s policeman. To idealists of the left, however, the notion of America as the world’s policeman is both arrogant and misguided. A strengthened “world community” — as embodied by the United Nations – should be the world’s policeman.

To the rest of us, however, the idea of the United Nations as the world’s policeman is absurd and frightening. The United Nations has proven itself a moral wasteland that gives genocidal tyrannies honored positions on human rights commissions. The weaker the U.N. and the stronger America, the greater the chances of preventing or stopping mass atrocities.

On the assumption that the left and the right both seek a world without genocide and tyranny, it is, then, the answer to this question that divides them: Are genocide and tyranny more or less likely if America is the strongest country on earth, i.e., the country with the greatest and most weapons, nuclear and otherwise?

Moreover even if you answer in the negative and think that the world would experience less evil with a nuclear disarmed America, the goal of worldwide nuclear disarmament is foolish because it is unattainable. And unattainable goals are a waste of precious time and resources.

For one thing, it is inconceivable that every nation would agree to it. Why would India give up its nuclear weapons? There aren’t a dozen Hindus who believe that Pakistan would give up every one of its nuclear weapons. And the same presumably holds true for Muslims in Pakistan with regard to India disarming.

And what about Israel? Would that country destroy all its nuclear weapons? Of course not. And it would be foolish to do so. Israel is surrounded by countries that wish not merely to vanquish it, but to destroy it. It regards nuclear weapons as life assurance. And it regards the United Nations (with good reason) as its enemy, not its protector.

As for states like Iran and North Korea, they have already violated agreements regarding nuclear weapons. What would prompt them to do otherwise in a world where America got weaker? United Nations sanctions? And why would Russia and China even agree to them?

Finally, there would be no way to prevent rogue scientists from selling materials and know-how to terrorists.

The result of this left-wing fantasy of worldwide nuclear disarmament would simply be that those who illegally acquired or made but one nuclear weapon would be able to blackmail any nation.

What any president of the United States should aspire to is: 1). to keep America the strongest country in the world militarily (as well as economically, but that is not the question on the table); 2) to destroy those individuals and organizations that seek nuclear weapons so as to kill as many innocent people as possible; and 3) remain the world’s policeman. These aims cannot be achieved if America aims to disarm.

President Obama said “I am not naïve” in his talk. That, unfortunately, is as accurate as his statement before the joint session of Congress that “I do not believe in bigger government.”