Philosophy from a Working Man: Their Moral Compass

Dennis Prager, our wise if secular rabbi for all America, has been explaining how the Left thinks in terms of having a moral compass or not. He has refined his concept of moral compass over the years, and I will take notes on two articles about Prager and the moral compass concept to follow his evolving definition over the last few years. I will then comment on these notes.

I heard him on talk radio a few days ago (late January, 2024), referring the Left and characterizing them through the lens of his moral compass analogy a few days ago. He seemed to state that moral people with a working moral compass are decent folk; sinners and the immoral still have a moral compass, though they are morally blameworthy in their actions, motives, choices and character. Still, they still act good occasionally.

I believe he claimed that the Left have no moral compass because of their corrupt, irrational, unrealistic beliefs like denying there are two genders, or that men can give birth.

If I can read between the lines and add my own framework of analysis here, I think I can make sense of what Prager is getting at, and perhaps make his categories better understandable.

Prager is a psychological egoist. He thinks humans are born fallen and selfish, and his moral theory is altruism-egoism. He likes individualism, but he thinks that egoism is selfish and undesirable, and that selflessness or self-sacrifice is noble, virtuous and the moral ideal, the duty of each individual.

I am a psychological altruist. I posit that people are born fallen, but my moral theory is egoism-altruism. I like individualism, but I state that egoism is unselfish and desirable, and the selfless and self-sacrifice—especially in the hands of a true believer working to grow his holy cause—is selfish and undesirable. Self-sacrifice is to waste one’s life and gifts; self-sacrifice is usually not noble, virtuous or the ideal. Self-realization is the duty of everyone.

The typical, average Jew or Christian is a moral individualist, so operating as an ethical being with an intact moral compass is to do what is good most of the time, and to avoid what is bad to do most of the time as an individual. When such a person sins and does evil more than not, but operates as an individualist, she still has a moral compass (Having a moral compass or conscience, whether one obeys it or not, is to make moral choices as an individual). One is a discontented individual, in Eric Hoffer’s terms, that could become contented (my term if one was a self-realizer.

Progressives or the woke are not moderate, rational, sensible individualists any longer (Liberals are individualists; conservatives and independents are individualists, but Leftists or alt-right fascists are mostly or solely collectivists). They are what Eric Hoffer described as frustrated true believers that have shed the spoiled despised self, and now exist as fanatic zealots mass-movementized, enthralled inside of and in service to their holy cause, their ism, their ideology.

Prager does not define Leftism as a mass movement, but I believe that title defines their immoral worldview nicely, completely, and accurately. Prager, if I heard right, assigns to Leftists the condemnation that they are without a moral compass at all. They claim that what is consistent with what they believe is moral, and absolutely true and binding (by force from the government if necessary, all will obey), and all ideas that conflict with or are inconsistent with what they belief are immoral, absolutely false, and vicious. Therefore, heretics and the unorthodox can be morally and legally purged—and should be—to force and intimidate universal compliance everywhere, by anyone that skews from Leftist thinking, or disagrees with their beliefs.

Yes, Prager is right that the Leftists are self-deprived of a moral compass, but they do not alack a moral compass completely, Instead, they are guided by an alternative values compass that is from the devil (It matters not if they believe in a devil or not, or are atheists; people without healthy moral compasses are devil worshipers, whether they intend to be or not.). I would label people like Leftists with no good moral compass as people that are guided by a values-compass that is actually an immoral compass.

Here is an aside that I will tie back into Prager’s moral compass analogy. This morning, 2/4/24, I read a short piece on Facebook where Mick Jagger was quoted. Let me paraphrase: He said most British like him do not believe in God He has read Richard Dawkins’ book and it made a lot of sense to him. Jagger offered that the greatest evil is done by killing in the name of ideas, and that in the name of religion and God, killing is done in the name of these ideas.

I agree that holy causes that are religious can be very evil, and its adherents lack a moral compass, but. Prager has counter-argued that the 100 million civilians murdered by totalitarian regimes in the 20^th century were under Marxist and Fascist governments that were atheistic and secular, not Christian, Jewish, or theistic. Prager is right about that, and the true believers killing in the name of their holy cause, be it ideological, political, secular, religious, nationalist, or racist, are wicked creatures guided by the immoral compass by which each cruel true believer makes value choices.

Atheists assume that it is religious believers that are murderers and butchers that kill for their ideas, but unbelievers and atheists are pseudo-religious murders and butcherers too, and they are to be condemned for living and choosing based on their immoral, personal compasses.

Even a moderate, benevolent reasonable moral philosophy can generate frustrated, true believing wicked followers, each guided by an immoral compass, if the means by which they spread the reach and influence of the cause is accomplished by applied terror, violence, intimidation and threat of force unless all opponents do immediately join the cause, obey it to the last spirit and letter of the law of this beloved holy cause and its doctrine.

In other words, a holy cause is born or morphed into when its doctrine is immoral and its means of enforcement and proselytizing turn violent, tyrannical, threatening and intolerant, or whether its doctrine is moderate and logical, but its means of proselytizing is violent, tyrannical, threatening and intolerant.

In Facts and Values, Leonard Peikoff uses Hoffer’s phrase, mass movement, to serve as a metaphor for spreading Objectivism across the world, and he did so approvingly. The dogmatism and refusal to morally sanction dissidents could lead to Objectivism being a holy cause with true-believing, frustrated adherents with immoral compasses. These brutal, coercive practices do contradict the basic principle of Objectivism: the rationality, the egoist ethics, the individualism and the cooperative capitalist trading and the refusal to use force to compel others, and Ayn Rand’s high regard for the tradition of classical liberalism.

Prager in 2021 noted that if you cannot call what is evil, evil your moral compass is broken. It should not be difficult to recognize and then condemn. The impulse to do evil is driven by rage for evildoers are angry people always fighting always motivated to seize more power for themselves. I agree.

I would say that the moral person should recognize and condemn ordinary evil committed by sinners as individuals that operate or should operate under the moral compass they were raised with, or whatever weak but trainable natural moral sense or conscience they were born with.

The moral agent should also recognize and condemn exceptional evil, acts and sins committed by mobs of fanatics and true believers, operating, functioning under their personal immoral compass, and making moral choices based upon the doctrinal beliefs put out by the gurus and demagogues and government functionaries that run and communicate the beliefs and values of the mass movement that they serve willingly.

Here is Prager’s weekly column from Prager’s Column, dated 9/15/2020. It appeared in TownhalI.com’ will quote it and then comment on it.

Prager (P after this): “All of my life I have said that the left’s moral compass is broken. And all of my life, I was wrong.

Why I was wrong explains both the left and the moral crisis we are in better than almost any other explanation.

I was wrong because in order to have a broken moral compass, you need to have a moral compass to begin with. But the left doesn’t have one.”

My response: Prager seems to believe that good or evil choices are a human existential condition of being a smart, rational being with free will, that God exists and offers praise and heaven for good living, and punishment and hell for evil choices. It is not a committee that will judge by God, but each individual member of that committee, clique, tribe, or nation.

Only an individual has a moral compass or a conscience, and only the individual is held accountable by the law, social sanction, and by God for where she allows her compass to direct her.

Leftists are true believers, and true believers are pure collectivists whose individualism has been wiped clean. If there are four million true believers in a movement, there is one voice, one will, one consciousness, one moral choice which all members of the group echo.

Leftist values are not moral values which revolve around individual identity, individual rights, individual responsibilities, individuating, individual choice, individual living, and individualist morality (either egoist-altruism or altruism-egoism). Leftist values revolve around group identity, group rights, group responsibility, group will, group-living, nonindividuating, group morality (Some groups are superior, and some groups are inferior; some groups are good, and some are evil, some are to rule and others are to be ruled).

Those advocating group morality believe the ontological substrata of reality is unending power struggles, socially constructed word games and contradictory, inconsistent stories clashing against each other.

Those advocating individual morality are most optimistic: that power struggles, contradictions and strife or war are part of life, but that a moral society of well-behaved cooperating adults of good will and good faith, that trust one another and keep their word, can coexist, trade and prosper in peace, harmony law and order, freedom, and happiness to keep the natural law of the human jungle from being social reality.

Prager denies the Left has a moral compass and I agree, but I refer to the compass they utilize as the immoral compass.

P: “This is not meant as an attack. It is a description of morality. The left regularly acknowledges that it doesn’t think in terms of good and evil. Most of us are so used to thinking in these terms—what we call ‘Judeo-Christian’—that it is very difficult for us to divide the world in any other way.

But since Karl Marx, the left (not liberalism; the two are different) has always divide the world, and, therefore, human actions, in ways other than good and evil. The left, in Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous world, has always operated ‘beyond good and evil.’”

My response: Those who insist that their actions are beyond good and evil definitions inevitably end up being evil.

P: “It all begin with Marx, who divided the world by economic class—worker and owner or exploited and exploiter. To Marx and to Marxism, there is no such thing as a good or an evil that transcends class. Good is defined as what is good for the working class; evil is what is bad for the working class.”

My response: Note that Leftists, Marxists, or adherents to any number of competing holy causes, see as good those people that belong to a class that they approve of, and evil are people that belong to a class they do not approve of. Group identity is everything. Belong to the right group, and you are good, period. Belong to the disfavored or foreign group, and you are irredeemably bad, to be destroyed.

Add to this true believer moral view of the world my contention that altruism and collectivism are evil, and that egoism and individualism are good, and, from my point of view, the Leftist proclivity for conflating group rights, group moral theory and group identity as their value system for categorizing human actions, and it is obvious that these are wicked people with an immoral compass.

P: “Therefore, to Marxists there is no such thing as a universal good or a universal evil. Those of us still in thrall to Judeo-Christian morality believe that good and evil are universal. In other words, whether an act is good or evil has nothing to do with who committed the act—rich, poor, male or female, religious or secular, member of one’s nation or of another nation. Stealing and murder are morally wrong, no matter who stole or who is murderer.”

My response: God is all-knowing and all-good, or close to both, the moral commands from on High are objectively and necessarily true, and universally applicable. And God’s judging the moral agent will be on an individual basis, praiseworthy or blameworthy. The action is individually produced and acted out, so each act is judged by God on the objective standard that any individual that steals is a thief, and anyone that does not steal is honest, and it matters not what group identities he is associated with. To judge a group-dweller’s actions based on his group identity is a subjective, socially constructive standard of relative, whimsical values evaluating, and is not to be taken seriously.

The evil-doing true believer may have convinced himself and the world that he is beyond categories of good and evil because his immoral compass and its mass movement doctrine creators claim that it is invulnerable and immune from criticism, but, they are all self-deceived; God the moral judger judges each true believer per action per incident, and God’s moral compass will be applied to these children of darkness that denied that the divine moral compass applied to them, though they deny that it exists.

P: “That is not the case for Marx and the left. In Marx’s words in ‘Capital’ (‘Das Kapital’): ‘Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and the cultural development thereby determined. We therefore reject every attempt to impose on us a moral dogma whatsoever as an eternal, ultimate and forever immutable law.’

Fifty-three year later, Marx’s foremost disciple, Vladimir Lenin, architect of the Russian Revolution, proclaimed: ‘We say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat . . . We do not believe in an eternal morality. . . . We repudiate all morality derived from non-human (i.e., God) and non-class concepts’ (Address to the Third Congress of the Russian Young Communist League, October 2, 1920).

As Professsor Willfred Cantwell Smith, director of Harvard University’s Center for the Study of World Religions, wrote in 1957: ‘For Marxism there is no reason (literally no reason: our universe, the movement posits is the kind of universe where there cannot conceivably be any reason) for not killing or torturing or exploiting a human person if his liquidation or torture or slave labor will advance the historical process.’”

My response: The Marxist end, advancing the historical process of the proletariat over the capitalists, can be achieved by any immoral means for the end always justifies to torturing or murderous means of getting from point A to point B. It requires a collectivist dialogue of no moral compass, an immoral compass, to live with this moral claim.

P: “This is how Marx’s ideological heirs, todays leftists, view the world—with one important difference: Morality is not determined only by class, but by race, power and sex as well.”

My response: Note that the intersectionality of group identities are like Marxism, the favored group is good and so are all of its players actions and the ill-favored enemy groups are only bad, and so are all the actions, good or evil, done by its acting players and doers.

P: “RACE

It is left-wing dogma that a black person cannot be a racist. Only whites can be racist. And, indeed, all whites are racists.

It is increasingly a left-wing position that when blacks loot, they are only taking what they deserve, or, as the looters often put it, looted good are ‘reparations.’ A Black Lives Matter organizer in Chicago, Ariel Atkins, recently put it this way: ‘I don’t care if somebody decides to loot a Gucci or a Macy’s or a Nike store because that makes sure that person eats. That makes sure the person has clothes. That is reparations. Anything they want to take, take it because those businesses have insurance.’ (Chicago Tribune, Aug. 17, 2020).

POWER

Another nonmoral left-wing compass concerns power. Just as right and wrong are determined by class (worker and owner/rich and poor) and race (white and people of color), good and evil are also determined by power (the strong and the weak).”

My response: Here Prager says it outright: the Left-wing moral compass is a nonmoral compass, which is synonymous with my term for the kind of moral compass (an immoral compass) as the values standard relied upon by Leftists or any other holy cause and its mass movement, to differentiate between right and wrong choices and actions. All of these true believers’ immoral compasses (race, sex, class, power) lead to a real sick world.

P: “That explains much of the left’s hatred for two countries in particular—America and Israel. America is wrong when it does almost anything in the world that involves weaker countries—assassinates the most important Iranian terrorists, builds a wall between itself and Mexico, opposes unlimited immigration. It is wrong because it is much stronger than those other countries.

The left’s antipathy towards Israel derives from both the power compass and the race compass. Because Israel is so much stronger than the Palestinians and because Israelis are classified as white (despite the fact than more than half of all Israelis are not white), the left deems Israel wrong. So, when Israel justifiably attacks Gaza for raining rockets over Israel, the world’s left vehemently attacks Israel—because it is so much stronger than the people of Gaza and because whites have attacked people of color.”

My response: I think there is a third and fourth nonmoral compasses applied by the Left to Israel and United States. The third is religious: Judaism and Christianity are bad, and Islam is good, so the Islamic peoples are always right and the Jews are always wrong. The fourth is political: US and Israel are rather free marketers, democratic, prosperous, and free while Hamas is socialist, totalitarian, and the people are enslaved, so only Hamas, the underdogs can do good, and only their violence against a neighbor is justified.

P: “SEX

When a woman accuses a man of sexually harassing her or raping her, the left’s reaction is not. ‘Let us try to determine the truth as best we can.’ It is, ‘Believe women.’ One must automatically ‘believe women’ because, on the left, it is not only morality that doesn’t transcend race, power, class or sex; truth doesn’t either. That’s why the leftists protest and riot whenever a confrontation between a police officer and a black person ends with the death of an unarmed black person. The police officer is automatically racist, and the death is automatically deemed murder. On the left, the concept of objective truth is increasingly deemed a form of white supremacy.

So then, it turns out I was mistaken all my life. The left’s moral compass is not broken. The left simply rejects such a compass.”

My response: There is no guilt or innocence based upon objective truth, which does not exist, according to the relativists, the totalistic true believers. Their moral compass is not broken but has been supplanted by a nonmoral compass, an immoral compass championing group ethics and group rights to further the holy cause.

Here is a second article on Dennis Prager, and it is from the Iowa Standard when Prager was on state at AmericanFest 2023. The article, which I will quote in full and then comment on, was written on 12/19/23 and was entitled: “Prager highlights ‘deliberately broke moral compass’ pf the Left in America.”

Journalist (J after this): “Dennis Prager took to the stage on Tuesday at AmericanFest 2023 in an effort to explain the current era in which we live.

‘There is no way of denying this is the darkest era in American history outside of the civil war,’ Prager said. ‘Once the Civil War was over, while there were terrible residues of anti-black legislation in the South, nevertheless the country ultimately reunited. But the country has never been disunited as it is today. We live in different moral universes.”

My response: We do live in different moral universes. Traditional Americans and those who are individuals and individualists and conservatives, believe in personal, Judeo-Christian morality, while the moral theory followed by Progressives is secular, ideological, based on group rights and group identity.

J: “Prager said if you know someone who believes men give birth or menstruate, it is likely every person in the auditorium would also know their position on Hamas.

‘Now isn’t that interesting,’ he said. ‘To be a little direct—what the hell does a man giving birth have to do with being pro-Hamas?’

Prager proclaimed the Left must be distinguished from liberals. But the ‘tragedy of America’ is the fact liberals vote for the Left.’”

My response: Amen.

J: “The moral compass of those on the Left, Prager said, is ‘deliberately broken.’ Their moral compass set for north is actually showing south and the same with east and west.’’

He ran through the list of examples’’

Women who object to men who say they are women competing in women’s sports are called haters.

‘Do you understand how that is north/south, east/west,’ he asked. ‘The idea that a man who says he is a woman can compete in women’s sports is a broken—deliberately broken—moral compass. And that’s an example again—if you say that men can compete in women’s sports if they say they’re a woman, you are overwhelmingly likely to be pro-Hamas.’

Adults who object to school allowing 5-year-olds to participate in drag queen performances are declared haters. The teachers who take children to drag events are considered ‘enlightened.’

‘Irrespective of what you think of drag queens—you may think they are the greatest thing existing—but a child doesn’t belong there,’ Prager said. ‘And, again if you believe that a child should be exposed to drag queen story hours, you are overwhelmingly likely to be pro-Hamas.’

The idea that there should be all-black dorms on college campuses and those are good for blacks and good for America and good for the value system of the country are also likely to believe Hamas is right and Israel is wrong.

‘An all-black dormitory is racism—pure undiluted racism,’ he said. ‘There are only two groups in America who believe in all-black dorms and all-black graduations—progressives/the Left and the Ku Klux Klan.

Anybody who believes open borders are moral and those wanting closed borders are xenophobic also display such a broken compass. These individuals also likely believe Hamas is a hero and Israel is a villain.

‘A country has to have borders just like a house has borders,’ Prager said.

He wondered why people on the Left never confront their own value system. We are for open borders, he said, but if these illegal immigrants are brought to their sanctuary city they cry.

‘New York City is a sanctuary city, but don’t you dare bring any of the people that we want to give sanctuary to into our city,’ Prager said. ‘You know who believes that makes sense? Professors.”

My response: Professors so educated and smart reach the most foolish, unworkable even cruel conclusions.

J: “That encompasses the problem with modern-day universities.

It also applies to the idea that America is systematically racist. Four million black people have moved to the US via legal immigration in the past few decades, Prager said.

‘Are these people stupid? Would you move to a country that you knew hated you because of your race, color or religion? Of course not, he said. ‘Did you Jews move to Germany in the 1930s? The question is absurd.’

Prager asked why Leftists don’t stand in airports and warn any black people arriving in America that the country is systematically racist and hates them.

‘This black African would look at the person and say, ‘Are you out of your mind? Do you know what in Africa we know how wonderful America is? You don’t know because you went to an American university.’

People who believe voter ID is racist likely support Hamas, even though every democracy on earth has voter ID, according to Prager.

“How on earth could that possibly be racist? ‘Sir, ma’am, before you vote we’d like to make sure that you are the person on this list.’ Why is that bad? Why is that wrong? Why is that racist? It’s racist to say it is racist. The implication is it’s too hard for a black to figure out how to get an ID,’ Prager said.

Believing that fewer police make a city safer likely indicates support for Hamas, which Prager said is only the latest and most grotesque example of the morally sick world of the Left.”

‘Fewer cops means more crime, not less crime,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that obvious in Portland and San Francisco and Chicago and Philadelphia. I mean, isn’t it obvious?’

Yet all these ideas are taught as truths at colleges. So too is a contempt for marriage. Prager said that men need women and women need men.

Had he said that a conference of Leftists, Prager said, he would’ve been booed.

‘You cheered, they would boo.’ he said. ‘Do you understand the gulf between the Left and the Right in United States?’”

My response: When rational people, moderate and sensible, encounter true believers, the gulf or degree of polarization is predictable because these fanatics pedal such lies, wicked points and nonsense as absolute truths.

J: “More young women in America are depressed today than at any time since they started to measure depression in women.”

My response: How are young women to be happy and fulfilled without wholesome, clean moral values and God in their lives?

J: “’It’s all thanks to left-wing, horrible advice,’ he said. Marriage is unnecessary, it is the creation of patriarchy. It’s a misogynist institution. Your happiness in life is going to come from a career.’”

My response: A woman’s happiness can come from a career and/or maverizing, but being a wife and mother is part of that potential for happiness for many maybe most women.

J: “He recalled a 50-60-year old woman who once called into his radio show. She said she had a Ph.D., a career and a dog, but she comes home to a house without a husband and without a child.

“I bought the feminist line and I deeply regret it,’ Prager said she said. ‘The feminist movement doesn’t give a damn about women and the proof, in case you need proof, is that they don’t come to bat for women in protecting women’s sports. They’re quiet.”

My response: All of the intersection of grievance minorities or groups have some legitimate complaints, but Leftists use them to gain power not because they care for these interest groups.

J: “The University of Penn’s Department of English removed a mural of William Shakespeare because he was a dead, white European male.

Not being able to tell the difference between Israel and Hamas would be like living in the 1930s and not be able to tell the difference between England and Germany, Prager said. But people can tell a difference, and here is how . . .

‘If Israel announced they are laying down their arms and they will fight no longer, what would happen,’ he asked. ‘And if Hamas and the Palestinians said they are laying down their arms and they will fight no more what would happen. Well, we know what would happen. The day after Israel would announce Israelis would be wiped off the face of the earth. And the day after Hamas would make that announcement there would be peace in the Middle East.’

It is imperative that patriots fight and refuse to get down, Prager said.”

My response: we conservatives must fight and win the cultural war against the cultural Marxists with their ideology as their immoral compass.