Dennis Prager: How The Left Sees The World

Dennis posted one of his videos on 5/12/21 entitled: "How The Left Sees The World: Power, Race and Class, Presented by Dennis Prager: The left evaluates people and nations on the basis of weak and strong, rather than right and wrong or good and evil. If you are weak, you're good. If you're strong, you're bad. Israel is strong. Therefore, it is bad. The Palestinians are regarded as weak. Therefore, they are good." My response: People and nations can only be truthfully evaluated based upon their being right or wrong, or good or evil. To evaluate them as good because they are weak, or bad because they are strong are illogical values. Often the weak are weak because they indulge themselves and are selfless. Often the strong are strong because they discipline themselves and learn to defend themselves against hostile enemies. The Leftist categories for classifying people are not useful, fair, honest or moral. I took notes on this 5-minute video, and then I will list my response to excerpts. From Dennis: "Why does the left hate Israel? On the surface it does not make sense. Israel is a full democracy with full rights for women, gays and Arab citizens. Like all countries, Israel is made up of flawed people. But, compared to its neighbors, it is a rights' paradise. My response: The Jews are successful, and that makes Marxists and many Arabs jealous, because they find it hard or next to impossible to compete with Jewish excellence, hard work and success and wealth accumulatio, both earned not grabbed or given as a gift. That Israel is a democracy with all kinds of human rights is to pour hot coals upon their heads. From Dennis: "So, why does the Left hate Israel? The reason is the Left (not liberals) is not guided by a moral compass. It is guided by other compasses, a power compass, a race compass and a class compass." My response: this is brilliant. When secular Leftists, atheistic or at least irreligious, transform themselves into true believers that worship their Communist ideology. They have abandoned religion and objective moral truth claims. They have lost their moral compass, replacing it with amoral or immoral obsessions--race, power and class--as legitimate replacements for moral compassing. I worry since it is likely that is one's traditional, normative values are good from God, both spiritually and morally good, there is a disturbing possibility that these secularized moral compasses, these replacements, are really immoral and diabolical. From Dennis: "The Power Compass--when guided by a moral compass, you do not ask who is strong or weak but who is good or evil, who is morally right or wrong. Now Israel is strong, so it is bad, according to Leftists, and the Palestinians are weak, so they are good. These Palestinians are the people that inflict terrorism, bombings, hijackings, and murder upon Israeli civilians." My response: this concept of the Power Compass is so brilliant, appropriate and originally true. Jordan Peterson and Stephen Hicks refer to the postmodernists as identifying certain weak, poor or oppressed identity groups, the enslaved have-nots, as all good, all right and to be praised. Those that are strong, rich or on top are automatically identified as corrupt oppressors, without redeeming virtue, always wrong, always to be attacked. Peterson and Hicks both agree that right-wingers, fascists, Nietzschean admirers of the strong and the oppressors, as playing the same game the other way around. People that are strong and on top are good, and people that are weak and oppressed are bad. Dennis Prager is unique in insisting that people are good or bad, based on personal values--reflected in personal choices made and actions takes accordingly--of right and wrong behavior, not their place in the hierarchy. From Dennis: US is bad because it is strong, and Cuba is weak, so it is good. Thus, the Left hates US and Israel. My response: The Leftist values here, the power compass, lies about good strong Americans and Israelis, and favors corrupt and vicious enemies of America, Israel and the West. Also, we cannot judge people as good or evil, based upon their identity group, and that is what the Left does under identity group politics, a fourth compass both cruel and demonic and racist. From Dennis: The Race Compass--Non-White is good, and White is evil. We are not to judge people by their actions but by their race. A black person can't be a racist. Only a white person is considered a racist. Israelis are considered white, even though Israelis are over 50% non-white. Palestinians are considered non-white, and their terrorism is ignored by the Left. Israeli responses to Palestinian terror is considered evil.' My response: Non-whites and whites are both good and evil as individuals, and it is reverse-racism to allow anyone a pass or complete ethnic or racial group condemnation solely based on the color of someone's skin. That is vicious, immoral and profoundly untrue and unfair. All are born racist and can be condemned for their inbuilt racism, as individuals, but, if they treat themselves and others with courtesy, fairness and respect, their inherent racism is made neutral and irrelevant, as their earned "non-racist" personality and behavior, on an individual’s basis, is what allows them to habitually act as a loving, respectful, tolerantly, peaceful and civilized human being. From Dennis: "The Class Compass replaces traditional, Western Judeo-Christian values of good and evil. The Left urges that we judge peoples' actions not by the yardstick of good and evil, but by class identity. Rich people and rich nations are bad. Poor people and poor nations are good." My response: Western and Judeo-Christians values are not perfect or above criticism, but they are the best, values, most approximating objective moral truth of any value system anywhere, including secular Leftism. Marxist class values are collectivist values, so people are good or bad, guilty or innocent, based upon being rich or poor. This is absurd, for there are good people that are rich, and there are poor people that are bad. Each must be judged as good or bad, guilty or innocent, based solely on his personal character and actions, not collective affiliation or disaffiliation. Indeed, individualists are generally good and better, and joiners or collectivist like Leftists and other tribal affiliates are altruistic and self-loathing, which makes them hate themselves and all others, and to abuse and hurt themselves and all others, so these altruists are bad and inferior, based upon their merited actions and characters that they are responsible for creating. The willingness to take responsibility, to work hard and apply oneself is an individual attribute and will generally make one richer and better, and to be dependent, lazy and fatalistic will make one poor, keep one poor without wealth or prospect, and then one has become a lesser, nastier person. so, it is the Left and their moral compass is completely off base and will bring no one prosperity, goodness, liberty or happiness--indeed quite the opposite on all counts. From Dennis: Marx divided the world by economic class. Good and evil are not moral categories for Marx. (I add: To be rich or affluent is to be evil, and to be poor or dispossessed is to be good.) Good are the workers and evil are the owners. US and Israel are wealthy, so they are evil. The Palestinians and the Cubans are poor, so they are good. These new moral compasses lead to more evil, and more hatred of the good. They hate Israel, America and Western civilization. My response: Marx paints people will a class brush. All owners are evil, and all poor people are good. We can only assign moral praise to one individual at a time when he acts good, and when he is wicked, he is evil, and we must announce it to him and about him openly for the truth must be told. Marx's economic class ethical assignations are a denial of individual worth, are replacing moral considerations with amoral or immoral categorizations. Indeed, if an alternative set of moral compasses, outside of and competing with the Western Judeo-Christian moral values, those compasses are from Lucifer, and those immoral values are what are being promoted to bring tyranny, suffering, poverty and mass murder to bear as hell on earth is unleashed in America and Israel.