Prager The Sage

I wish I was smart enough and had time enough to watch every Youtube video by this guy and listen to hundreds of hours of his radio show, but I do not. Still, I have the gist of what he is about.

8-15-2020: he has a short clip (more on that below) in which he points out two first principles that Jordan Peterson is advocating, and seems implied to me in Eric Hoffer's newsaper columns from the late 1960s.

Assumption 1: The core idea of the West is that the individual is sovereign, and collective needs are secondary in emphasis--Peterson declares this, as I do, and it is implied in Hoffer. Prager is the typical Jewish altruist but he is enough of a Westerner and individualist--much individualism is inherent to the Jehovah and to Jewish metaphysics--to not contradict this core assumption too much.

Assunption 2: all four of us conservative thinkers believe that we have a basically, flawed or wicked human nature. There is enough of innate goodness potential in our souls that we are perfectible if we try hard, confess to God that we are sinners, beg for divine forgiveness and divine grace, intervention and assistance. If God is central to our lives, then we may learn good habits, and then our hard work and good habits will allow our natures to become mostly good, as our wills and character transform as we grow in moral and spiritual goodness and love. Salvation and eternal reward then become a real possibility for us.

Assumption 3: the individual as pious individuator, that individual-lives, is loving and good, but the joiner or group-liver, each person as conformist non-individuator, is bad and hateful. Allowing children to pursue their enlightened self-interest is to rear them as unselfish, kind, smart, ambitious adults. To raise children not to self-actualize, to run in packs, and to be selfish is to bring them up as mean, selfish, destruction-loving adults. In short, the individual is generous, kind and religious as pursues his interest and happiness, but the individual as duped, Stinerian egoist, is selfish, greedy and cruel as he chases after fulfilling collective and social objectives.

Peterson may agree with me on Assumption 3 a bit, and perhaps Hoffer, but Prager would not.

Assumption 4: All four of us conservative thinkers would agree that revolution is desirable, but it cannot be Marxist, socialist, mandated by government ukase, violently implemented or forced upon anyone. Eric Hoffer in one of those columns mentioned above, clearly stipulates that only  a middle class revolution is revolutionary, but that a fascist or communist revolution is only a return to the totalitarian past which is the bulk of happenings and societies in human history. Revolution must be voluntarily undertaken, it must be middle class (individualist, capitalist, Western and a case of rugged individualism undertaken), and it occurs one person at a time, with free will choice to do so by each self-perfecting individual.

Let me return to Prager's video: our sage announces that, under religious education (Judeo-Christian training), students are taught that they are the problem not society. Now Prager is right, for the individual is the problem, so the individual is the solution, and must find the solution. I argue that Mavellonialist egoism is that solution. Prager and almost all conservatives--if Peterson knew of me he may agree with me--would offer the traditional moral solutions of self-restraint, altruistic self-denial and pursuit of the well-being of others before meeting one's personal needs. I am not against this altruistic end, but insist that chasing after altruistic goodness is of second-tier rank, deference given to pursuit of enlightened self-interest. This latter demand is  our ethical duty as well as best for the common good.

Prager goes on to teach us that children under secular education are taught that they as flawed children are not the problem, but that society is the problem. They need not discipline, restrain or perfect themselves: they are perfect as they are, innately good little angels, ruined by corrupt America and its rotten structures and institutions. Children are taught K-26 that America is putrid to the core--racist, classist, sexist, anti-Envirostatist, misogynist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, transphobic and homophobic--and must be battled, cast off and replaced by a postmodernist, socialist culture and concomitant political and economic institutions, Utopia has arrived!

Prager lambastes this view, arguing that children harm the world, when so lied to and brought up wrong, because they do damage because they grow up wicked and without learned self-restraint, and because they are Maoist legions of young people leading the fight to overthrow the culture, ethos and institutions of a basically decent society requiring support and preservation, not overthrowing and replacing.

If a society is evil, it is acceptable to teach the young to work to reform or overthrow it, peacefully or otherwise. Where a country is lovely like America is, it is to be preserved and protected as it is. I think that all four of us would agree about that.