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July 05, 2006

Now I Know Prager is an Idiot

Dennis Prager, moral philosopher and Jewish radio talk show host who routinely sides with evangelical "born again" Christians and theocrats, says that because of "the left," people aren't as upset anymore about things like "oppression," "genocide," "racism," "torture" or "rape." He says "the left" has so broadened their meanings that people no longer "recoil" as they once did when they hear of such crimes.

For example, the liberal press' unending preoccupation with American abuses of Iraqi detainees had a number of deleterious consequences. One was a further undermining of Arab and Muslim support for America's liberation of Iraq. But the longest-lasting negative effect was probably the cheapening of the word "torture." … Labeling abuses as "torture" filled me with pity for all the people around the world who had experienced real torture

I don't know. Maybe Prager missed the whole sodomy-with-a-lightstick, rape-of-children, men-beaten-to-death, pouring-chemicals-on-skin thing. What we did perhaps wasn't as bad as the pulling-fingernails-out and burning tortures done by other regimes. But it was certainly torture.

A second example is "rape." … the feminist left has redefined the word "rape" to the point where, unless you know the specifics, you don't know if a woman was violently forced into sexual intercourse or had engaged in sex that she regretted the following morning.

Maybe he's right. Maybe we ought to keep looking the other way at all those women who wake up after having had too much to drink or having been slipped a mickey and find some pig doing his business on them. I guess if he didn't beat her up, it doesn't count, right?

No term is more often used by the left than "oppressed." American women are routinely described as "oppressed," as are America's blacks, Hispanics and all poor people. But if American women, the freest women in human history, are oppressed, what term is left to describe the treatment of women in Arab and some other Muslim countries?

Hmm. Something tells me Prager hasn't ever been black, Hispanic, poor, or female. I could be wrong about the poor thing, but I'm pretty sure I'm right about the rest. As a woman, I have come to believe that oppressors rarely realize the extent of their oppression. Yes, it's far better here than probably anywhere else in the world – but that doesn't mean people aren't still being oppressed by men who take advantage of those in a weaker position to advance their own interests. It happens every day.

The left regularly charges America's conservative Christians with wanting to make America a "theocracy," being "fascists" and/or being "anti-Semites." They are none of those things, and as a result, the battle against real theocrats (Muslim fundamentalists), real fascists and real anti-Semites is compromised.

I can only conclude that Prager is entirely ignorant of the theocratic dominionist Christian movement and the Christian Identity movement (overtly anti-Semitic and growing rapidly). This article lays out the characteristics of fascism and shows how, under the leadership of conservative Christians, we are most certainly stepping closer to that form of government.

The tragedy of all this is that when evils are defined down, good people are left verbally unarmed when the real evils present themselves. It is yet another way in which the left, intentionally or not, undermines the battle against evil.

I have to disagree. The fact that the evils we battle in this country are to some extent less overt or severe than those battled in other countries where our Constitution and Bill of Rights do not apply does not mean the evils perpetrated here are somehow less evil. And good Americans have a duty to continue to press for an improved society in which none of these evils can even flicker. What we are not duty-bound to do is pussy-foot around the evil that people do in this country by using nicer terminology that will allow those people to avoid consequences by pointing to others who are doing worse.

America is better than that.

Posted by Becky at July 5, 2006 03:13 PM