Harry Reid

I think that Harry Reid would charge any Republican colleague with racism and ask for that person’s resignation if he or she said what Reid is reported to have said about Barack Obama’s color and accent.

I think that every liberal Democrat deserves to be hoisted on his own petard and stung by the race card that liberals invented and have used for decades against Republican conservatives. Given what Democrats and their allies in the media did to Sens. Trent Lott and George Allen — taking innocuous comments and declaring them racist — Republicans have every right to demand that Mr. Reid resign asSenate majority leader.

But to the extent that truth still matters in America, what Reid is reputed to have said is not racist, let alone renders him a racist. It seems to be nothing more than a private opinion about what type of black American had the best chance to be elected president.

But all this is not the issue. Here are the issues that matter:

The belief that the public has a right to know what people say privately.

The belief that one knows the “true nature” of people if one knows what they said in private.

The utter inability of Americans to speak with any honesty about anything to do with race.

Let’s deal with each.

The unearthing of the private lives and thoughts of public figures has become so normal as to be expected. What the media have done, however, is to render private conversations of anyone in public life almost as guarded as those of citizens in Communist countries. The news media have become a nonviolent form of the East German Stasi or the Soviet KGB. Just as citizens in those former totalitarian states needed to guard their speech in private, lest secret police informers snitch on them and ruin their lives, so, too, American public figures — from politics to entertainment — now need to guard their most private moments, lest a member of the media snitch on them and ruin their lives.

As Rhett Butler finally said to Scarlett O’Hara, I say to the media about the private speech of public figures, “Frankly, I don’t give a damn.”

Which brings us to the second point — the belief among many Americans that one knows “the real person” (public or private) if one knows what the person says in private, and therefore, we should know as much as possible about the private conversations of public figures.

This is as dangerous as it is nonsensical.

There is no truth to this belief.

We all say all sorts of things in private that reveal nothing about our true selves.

The very nature of private speech is that it enables us to be free to say anything. It is what we do that tells the world who we are. And as regards the speech of public figures, it is what public figures say of significance in public that matters.

It is, to my mind, another of the many examples of the lack of wisdom in the liberal world that liberals think that private speech reveals who people are, and that we therefore have a right, even a duty, to know as much about it as possible. Thus, liberals repeatedly speak of Richard Nixon’s private anti-Jewish remarks to make their case that the former president was an anti-Semite. Of course, this “anti-Semite” appointed the first Jewish secretary of state and saved Israel’s life during the Yom Kippur War. But to the foolish who believe that private speech is the real thing, little of that matters in assessing Nixon’s character insofar as it related to Jews.

To sharpen this point, contrast Nixon with another recent president, Jimmy Carter. I would be willing to wager that Mr. Carter has never said anything in private as derogatory about Jews as Nixon did. But to the vast majority of Jews and non-Jews who understand that the security of the Jewish state is the most pressing Jewish issue, Mr. Carter has been the Jews’ problem, not Mr. Nixon. Likewise, Harry Truman sometimes used the term “kike” in private conversation, but it was he who went against the advice of his entire State Department and recognized Israel’s existence as soon as Israel was declared a state.

Finally, we again come to the falsehood that Democrats and liberals regularly offer when they ask Americans to have honest dialogue on the race issue. Thanks to liberals, one can sooner swear in public or declare the world is flat than say the most innocuously valid things about racial matters. One cannot even oppose race-based affirmative action without liberals labeling the person “racist.”

Because I prize private speech and truth more than I prize humiliating Harry Reid — who, again, would not be nearly so decent to any Republican — I find the revelation of his private speech and especially the attention paid to it as if it signifies anything important about him to reflect only one more example of a downward moral spiral in my beloved country.

Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show and is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of four books, most recently “Happiness Is a Serious Problem” (HarperCollins). His website is www.dennisprager.com.

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Aside from a genetic incapacity to be directed by irrationality, I will make this protest on behalf of fellow passengers who are in pain because of this idiotic rule. What are diabetics, for example, supposed to do? And considering the fact that “the last hour of a flight” is always more than an hour, often considerably more — given the frequent delays in approaching airports and given the approximately 15-20 minutes between landing and passengers actually disembarking.

I am not prepared to obey rules that hurt the innocent while doing nothing to prevent terrorism.

When exactly will airline passengers be permitted to relieve themselves? Seatbelt signs are now illuminated — meaning passengers are not allowed out of their seats — for at least the half hour it takes to leave the gate and achieve optimum altitude. And on many planes, those signs are (often pointlessly) illuminated for much of the flight after that as well.

Therefore, if passengers are not allowed to get up during the last hour, that would mean that on a two-hour flight, passengers would be fortunate to have a total of 20 minutes when they could stand to stretch, get a book or go to the lavatory.

Furthermore, since passengers are also not allowed to “congregate” outside the lavatories, passengers will actually have to compete with one another in order to get to the bathroom. The slower ones, or the ones seated furthest from the lavatories, may not have any chance to go to the bathroom in a two-hour or longer flight.

These useless, dignity-robbing, rules could have been averted if available technologies and a more intelligent approach to catching terrorists had been adopted.

One such technology is full-body scanning.

According to Robert Poole, adviser to the White House and Congress on airport security following 9-11, the explosives “which the terrorist concealed in his underwear would have been detected had he been required to pass through one of the 15 millimeter-wave body-scanners now in use at Schiphol (Amsterdam Airport).”

And Charlotte Bryan, a former top TSA and FAA official, told CNN that a body scanner could have stopped Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, terror suspect on Northwest 253.

The major objection to the scanner comes from the ACLU and from libertarians on “privacy” grounds. This objection led the House of Representatives to ban full body scans. That the ban was led by a Republican, Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz, who continues to defend his opposition to body scanning, only shows that the left has no monopoly on foolishness.

But it was House Democrats who overwhelmingly voted to ban body scans. Only a fifth of the Democrats in the House voted against the ban while two-thirds of the Republicans voted against it.

The ACLU, which can almost always be depended on to say something foolish and advocate a position that harms society, calls the process “virtual strip search.” And Chaffetz declared, “I just think it’s too invasive. Nobody needs to see my kids — I have a son and two daughters — and see my wife naked in order to secure an airplane!”

So, the leftist and libertarian opposition centered on the issue of privacy. And the conservative opposition — to conservatives’ credit, the smallest of the opposing groups — centered on “nudity.”

It is difficult to say which one is more idiotic. Both illustrate what happens when dogma supersedes common sense.

What privacy are we even talking about? I cherish my privacy, but anyone who actually looks at the scans made by the whole body scanner cannot seriously talk of either privacy or nudity. They are indeed “virtual” images, meaning no skin is shown and the human figure looks metallic.

The ACLU and Rep. Chaffetz have read too many Superman comics — they imagine the superhero’s “X-ray vision.” But that is not possible. There is no skin shown. So how can there be “nudity”?

I willingly relinquish whatever “privacy” I lose by being scanned for the even more precious value of staying alive.

Those who think that TSA employees will be leering at naked bodies have a little too much sex on their minds. Same-sex TSA employees will be looking at metallic-like images of thousands of bodies that pass through airport security. Look on the Internet at those images and then tell me that they are “nude.” A necrophiliac would be bored.

As a conservative, I am embarrassed by people who put thousands of lives in danger under the guise of protecting their wives and daughters from appearing “naked.”

So until my government does something intelligent — like screening for dangerous people, not dangerous weapons (as Israel so successfully does) — to protect this frequent flyer, I will not play the pretend game of “do something” that prohibits me from relieving myself on the grounds that terrorists only blow up planes after going to the bathroom during the last hour of a flight.

I will surrender a lot of things to stay alive. But I will not surrender my intelligence. That and being told when to urinate are the real losses of dignity, not a full body scan.

Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show and is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of four books, most recently “Happiness Is a Serious Problem” (HarperCollins). His website is www.dennisprager.com.

COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM

Did you complain about an airline or about a flight attendant in the past year? No problem. But if you have never cited an airline or a flight attendant for stellar performance, that is a problem. We have all experienced some product or service worthy of praise.

In that spirit, I would like to cite companies, products and individuals that have given me outstanding performance. Needless to say, I am but one person and therefore can experience only a very limited number of products. There are surely thousands of individuals, companies and products that are worthy of citation. But, to set some example in this time when bad-mouthing business is part of the national vocabulary, here are some products, individuals and companies that have given me exemplary performance this year and in years past.

For years, I have been inordinately impressed with the service given by Verizon Wireless. No matter what day of the year or the time of day, I have reached someone in tech support to answer questions. I have never waited more than five minutes. I have never spoken to anyone who did not speak excellent English. And I have almost never had a problem go unresolved.

I have also found this true in person. Last week, the Verizon store in Burbank, Calif., worked with my wife and me for an incredible five hours in resolving transfer problems to new phones. The staff treated my wife and me as if they all worked for us. It was remarkable. Three cheers for Manuel, John, Aylin and Liz.

Service is a major goal at two other major retail chains — Best Buy and Nordstrom. As a typical male, I am more interested in electronic gadgets than in clothing, but both of these stores, in different ways, put the customer first. At Nordstrom, one gets the impression that one is dealing with salespeople who take pride in their work, not people who are counting the hours until they leave work. And as one who knows a fair amount about consumer electronics, I always found it depressing when I realized that I knew more about some of the products being sold than a salesman did. Not so at Best Buy, where the staff is usually as knowledgeable as they are friendly. That is a fine achievement for a chain in cutthroat competition with so many others.

My praise is not only for retail operations, as much as I want them to succeed in the age of Internet shopping.

Thus, I cannot omit Amazon.com. I have ordered hundreds, perhaps over a thousand, products from Amazon, and never once did an order arrive late, damaged or incorrectly packed. Moreover, I put more faith in many of the Amazon book reviewers than I do in most professional book reviewers. I am very impressed by the high level of knowledge and insights expressed by many “ordinary” people who review books at Amazon.

Being 6 feet, 4 inches tall, I have to buy “tall man” clothes and, frankly, most “big and tall man” stores either don’t have much quality or much variety (normal-sized stores like Brooks Brothers that have both quality and variety sell few or no shirts with 38-inch sleeves). Two online stores help solve that problem: Lands End and Jos. A. Bank. When Sears purchased Lands End, I was afraid that quality and service would deteriorate. If anything, they have gotten better.

Finally, a word about my great passion: music. I cannot find the words to effectively express my gratitude to the great composers and performers for all the joy they have given me since I was a teenager and discovered classical music at a $1 Handel concert at Carnegie Hall.

Given my love for music — I periodically conduct orchestras — I have always wanted the best possible music reproduction in my own home. In high school, I skipped lunches for months in order to pay for the best stereo system I could buy. I could never afford what I now own if I hadn’t been “trading up” for 40 years. But what I now hear in my home actually comes close to what I hear, and what I experience emotionally, when I am conducting.

So, a heartfelt thank you to all those in the high-end stereo industry who labor — usually for minimal profits, especially in this generation, which seems uninterested in hearing music as if it were live — to create magnificent reproducers of music. In particular, I want to cite MBL, the German company that makes the extraordinary electronics I own, and YG Acoustics, the Denver-based company that makes the finest speakers I have ever heard — and I have heard many in my home, at dealers and at audio shows. There are many excellent speakers, but YG’s transcend speakers; they are conduits of music. After 40 years, the veil over home music is almost gone.

This has also been made possible in part thanks to a dealer, Maier Shadi of The Audio Salon, whom I was fortunate enough to find a few years ago. His knowledge of home musical equipment is as great as his love of music, and he makes repeated house calls — even after a customer has purchased equipment — to ensure the best possible sound.

At a time when society is saturated with neo-Marxist rhetoric vilifying the words “companies” and “businessmen,” it is a joy to salute some of those companies and businessmen who have added so much to my life and that of so many others. Happy New Year to all of you.

Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show and is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of four books, most recently “Happiness Is a Serious Problem” (HarperCollins). His website is www.dennisprager.com.

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.

Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show and is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of four books, most recently “Happiness Is a Serious Problem” (HarperCollins). His website is www.dennisprager.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM

That is the question Judeo-Christian values have grappled with. There are many and profound theological and practical differences between Judaism and Christianity. But in the American incarnation of Judeo-Christian values — and America is really the one civilization that developed an amalgamation of Jewish and Christian values — the emphasis has been on individual character.

One cannot make a good society if one does not begin with the arduous task of making good individuals. Both Judaism and Christianity begin with the premise that man is not basically good and therefore regard man’s nature as the root of cause of evil.

This may sound basic and even obvious, but it is not. In the Western world since the Enlightenment, belief in the inherent goodness of human beings has taken over. This has resulted in an increasing neglect of character development because evil has come to be regarded not as emanating from human nature (which is essentially good) or from morally flawed individuals but from forces outside the individual — especially material ones. Thus, vast numbers of the best educated in the West have come to believe that “poverty causes crime.”

Now, while no one could possibly refute the argument that starving people will steal bread for their families (an act that is morally defensible), the argument that poverty causes crime posits that when poor people in America commit murder and other violent crimes, it is because they are poor.

This is irrational dogma, as much a matter of faith as any theological doctrine. Two simple facts illustrate this: First, the vast majority of poor people, in America and elsewhere, do not commit violent crimes. Second, a large amount of crime is committed by the middle class and even by the wealthy. Neither fact prompts the “poverty causes crime” believers to rethink their position.

They need to, however, not only because the poverty-causes-crime thesis is so demonstrably false, but because it prevents societies from making good people.

When society blames evil on forces outside the individual rather than on the individuals who perpetrate evil, society will work to change those forces rather than work to improve the character of individuals. That is a key to understanding why the left constantly attempts to radically change society — how else make a better world?

Conservatives, on the other hand, believe that the way to “repair the world,” in the oft-used Hebrew phrase of those most concerned with “social justice,” is far less dramatic, far less revolutionary and far less macro-oriented. It is the laborious process of raising every generation from scratch with good values and self-discipline. Without both of these, individual goodness and therefore societal goodness is impossible.

That is why the most important question a society can ask is how to raise young people to be good adults. American society, under the influence of the left, asks other questions: How do we make young people environmentally aware? How do we teach them to fight allegedly rampant racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia in society? How do we fight AIDS and breast cancer?

It is, of course, good to be environmentally aware, to fight AIDS and breast cancer, and to oppose bigotry. But before training young people to be social activists, they must first learn character traits — truth telling, financial honesty, humility, honoring parents and, above all, self-control. Before learning to fight society, people need to fight their own nature. The world is filled with activists of all varieties who are loathsome individuals.

In general, we would do well to be far more impressed with a young person who sits next to the less popular fat kid who is eating alone at lunch, who fights the class bully, who doesn’t cheat on tests and who refrains from drug use.

There is no federal budget, no Senate or House bill, no social policy, no health care fix that can do as much good as a society that is filled with decent people.

Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show and is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of four books, most recently “Happiness Is a Serious Problem” (HarperCollins). His website is www.dennisprager.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM

Mr. Blow, who is black, wrote of his despair that the election of Barack Obama will achieve anything positive for blacks or for black-white relations.

In fact, according to Mr. Blow, and one suspects the great majority of black and white liberals, things have not only not gotten better for blacks, racism — meaning, of course, white racism against blacks since no other form of racism is discussed in the New York Times — has actually increased.

His proof for this charge?

“We are now inundated with examples of overt racism on a scale to which we are unaccustomed.”

And what are his examples of “overt racism on a scale to which we are unaccustomed”? He provided two.

The first and presumably most important is that “Racially offensive images of the first couple are so prolific online that Google now runs an apologetic ad with the results of image searches of them.”

Having never seen a racially offensive image of the first couple, I was curious about what Mr. Blow was referring to. Though I spend hours a day researching on the Web, I had somehow overlooked how “inundated” the Web is with racist images. Luckily, Mr. Blow provides a URL — an Internet link — to make his case.

I clicked on the link, and sure enough, there is a statement by Google titled “An explanation of our search results,” in which Google notes that “Sometimes Google search results from the Internet can include disturbing content, even from innocuous queries. We assure you that the views expressed by such sites are not in any way endorsed by Google.”

The statement continues along those lines, but there is not a word about racism, blacks, the first couple, or anything related. It is a generic apology, one that I had never in fact encountered.

So not having had any luck corroborating Mr. Blow’s accusation of “overt racism on a scale to which we are unaccustomed” on the Internet, I searched “first couple,” clicked on “images,” even making sure that the Google filter was turned off, and all I saw were hundreds of beautiful images of the beautiful-looking first couple.

I then searched on “Michelle and Barack Obama pictures” and got similar results.

One must conclude that Mr. Blow wildly exaggerated, if not made it up, when he wrote that America is “inundated” with “overt racism” on the Internet (or anywhere else).

His second argument for an increasingly racist America is: “And it’s not all words and images (again, none of which I saw); it’s actions as well. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 2008 hate crimes data released last week, anti-black hate crimes rose 4 percent from 2007…”

Wow. A 4 percent increase in anti-black hate crime.

Is that an indication of a major increase in anti-black racism in America? You decide.

According to the FBI Hate Crime statistics, in 2007, 3,434 blacks were victims of a hate crime, and in 2008, the number increased to 3,596 — an increase of 162. Given that there are about 40 million blacks in America and about 260 million non-blacks, to charge America with increasing racism based on an increase of 162 incidents of racism is absurd and morally indefensible. To put it statistically, the increase, as a proportion of the black population, was .0004 percent.

Moreover, the number itself, 3,434, is incredibly small for such a large population. And bear in mind two additional factors: One has no way of knowing how many of those 3,434 incidents were committed by non-whites, such as Hispanics; and of those 3,434 hate crimes, a total of one was murder, not one was a rape, a tiny 386 were aggravated assaults, and 1,257 were “acts of intimidation,” not acts of violence.

Only to black and white liberals, including most New York Times readers, who e-mailed Mr. Blow’s column more than almost any article in the Times, do these statistics describe a racist, or increasingly racist, society.

The column is a fine example of liberal attitudes toward blacks and whites — the latter are largely racist, the former are largely victims. It is a picture that exists only in the liberal mind, but as long as so many blacks believe it, there is little hope for large-scale black progress at this time. There is no chance that black America’s economic or social problems will be solved until black America rejects the liberal narrative of endemic white racism and black victimization. That is why, though Mr. Blow’s column is a calumny against America, it mainly damages his fellow African-Americans.

Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show and is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of four books, most recently “Happiness Is a Serious Problem” (HarperCollins). His website is www.dennisprager.com.

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I first realized this as I watched the left — and here I sadly include the whole organized left from liberal to far left — do whatever it could to destroy one of the most wonderful organizations in American life, the Boy Scouts of America. From Democratic city governments to the New York Times and other liberal editorial pages to the most destructive organization on the left, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), there has been the most concerted effort to break the Boy Scouts.

When challenged about this, fellow Americans on the left respond that this is a false accusation, that they have no desire to destroy the Boy Scouts, only to coerce the organization into accepting as scouts and scout leaders boys and men who have announced they are gay.

This is not an honest response, however, because the left is in fact doing whatever it can to destroy the Boy Scouts until the Boy Scouts change their policy on gays. The left-wing position is that if the Boy Scouts do not change a policy that has been in place since the inception of the organization, they do not deserve to exist.

Therefore it is entirely accurate to state that the left wishes to destroy the Boy Scouts as that organization now exists. No matter how much good the Boy Scouts have done and continue to do for millions of boys, for the left, all this good amounts to nothing.

For the left in this instance, as in most instances, the attitude is: Destroy the imperfect in order to build the perfect.

There is no left-wing Boy Scouts. The left knows best how to crush the non-left Boy Scouts, but it has never made a boys organization of its own.

Likewise with individual lives devoted to the poor. Sure, there are secular and left-wing organizations devoted to the poor, but the individuals who give up their lives to the poorest in America and the world, like the members of Salvation Army at home and the Mother Teresas abroad, are overwhelmingly religious (and to be fair, Christian).

I just spent Thanksgiving week in Zambia and benighted Zimbabwe with my teenage son to help an organization give out mosquito nets and seed to the poorest of the poor.

The organization that brought us there, Rock of Africa, is a Christian organization that works with the destitute in Zimbabwe. As with a larger, also Christian-based, organization that I have worked with for nearly two years (full disclosure: It periodically sponsors my radio show), Cure International, all those affiliated with the organization get nothing or almost nothing for their work.

Why do the doctors who work at, and those who build, Cure International’s hospitals in places like Honduras, Uganda and Afghanistan and the volunteers of Rock of Africa do their work? Because they believe that their faith demands that they do (I have no religious agenda here, as I am Jewish, not Christian). The number of Christians and Christian organizations doing self-sacrificing work around the world is large and impressive. Now, there are also secular organizations doing magnificent work in the poorest parts of the world — Doctors Without Borders is a well-known example — but I would bet that the number of religious individuals who give their lives for virtually no pay to the worst off in America and around the world is far greater than the number of irreligious individuals.

And just as there is no left-wing Boy Scouts, there is no Salvation Army built and manned by people with left-wing values. Nor has there ever been a left-wing country as magnanimous, as willing to die for others, as opportunity-giving to people from all over the world, as America, whose greatness comes from its traditional secular values and its Judeo-Christian values. As with the Boy Scouts, the left can bring an America down, but it cannot build one.

Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show and is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of four books, most recently “Happiness Is a Serious Problem” (HarperCollins). His website is www.dennisprager.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM

So, it is with a heavy heart that I write that my mood on this Thanksgiving will not be the same as on any other I have ever experienced.

My gratitude will be marred by a dark cloud.

Not the cloud of economic crisis; Americans have lived through worse economic crises.

Not the cloud of war. America is at war in Afghanistan, and troops remain in Iraq in the war against Islamic terror; but Americans have fought far more bloody wars.

Not the cloud of politics; whatever an American’s political persuasion, every American has lived through political battles and political losses.

No, this is a new cloud. This is the cloud of “transformation.” This is what candidate Barack Obama promised; this is what President Barack Obama seeks to achieve — nothing less than the transformation of America.

But those of us who love America and its unique value system don’t want either America or its value system transformed. The former can always be improved , but should never be transformed . And the latter should always remain what it has been for centuries: the American Trinity — E Pluribus Unum, In God We Trust and Liberty — as well as limited government and individualism. It also includes an abiding belief in American exceptionalism, meaning that America has usually known better what is good for the world than any world body, that America’s moral compass is generally more accurate than that of other nations, let alone the United Nations. This is not because Americans are born better or any such nonsense, but because American values have produced a particularly uncynical, idealistic nation, more willing to die for others than any nation in recorded history.

Every element of this is being transformed, perhaps permanently. The American economy and/or its health system may be fatally damaged if either the House or Senate health care bill is passed. America will descend under a mountain of debt that may permanently undermine the power of the dollar.

If this happens, America will no longer be the preeminent economic power of the world. The terrible political and human consequences of this will be felt around the globe.
The abandonment of American exceptionalism — President Obama said recently that he believes in American exceptionalism just as Brits believe in British exceptionalism and Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism — will lead to America becoming just another nation. When you no longer consider yourself special, you cease doing much that is special.

Here is the bottom line: I take nothing good for granted. That includes the future of the blessed country in which I live. A country as good as America is an aberration. There is no reason to believe that it will always remain an aberration; and those in power on Thanksgiving 2009 loathe the idea of America being different from all other nations.

Every great civilization has declined. There is nothing that guarantees America will be any different. And those in power on Thanksgiving 2009 see America more as a pompous civilization than a great one. So its decline from its self-perceived greatness is not only not a tragedy, but it’s a welcome respite from arrogance.

The idea that people should first take care of themselves, then their family, then their neighbors and then other nations is also an American aberration. The norm, advocated by those in power on Thanksgiving 2009, is to want to be taken care of by the state, have the state take care of everyone else and abandon other countries (such as Afghanistan) to their fate, just as other nations are willing to do.

As it happens, I am in Africa this Thanksgiving, volunteering with my son to distribute mosquito nets and other lifesaving necessities to the poorest of the poor in Zambia and Zimbabwe. Not coincidentally, it is an American charity (Rock of Africa) that has organized this trip. While half a world away, my heart is in America this Thanksgiving. But for the first time, it is a worried and unsettled American heart.

Nevertheless, though my mood is dark, it is not pessimistic. The very narrow victories in the House and Senate on health care reform, despite Democrats’ overwhelming majorities in both Houses, tell me that Americans are not ready to abandon the values that make our country unique. And that is something to be thankful for on this troubled Thanksgiving 2009.

Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show and is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of four books, most recently “Happiness Is a Serious Problem” (HarperCollins). His website is www.dennisprager.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM

It is difficult to overstate how important this is. For decades, the left has largely controlled the news media, the arts, the universities and the entertainment media. And vast numbers of Americans have imbibed these leftist messages and the leftist critiques of conservatives. What these Americans have never been able to do is to see what the left would actually do if in power.

Of course, all one had to do was look at California and see how a left-wing legislature brought the country’s largest state economy to near insolvency and bankruptcy, chased away many of its most productive citizens, and wasted tens of billions of dollars thanks in large measure to union domination of the state’s politics.

But most Americans do not observe other states. Most Americans are preoccupied with their lives and, unfortunately, with what is on television.

Now, this has all changed. Americans are watching California enacted on the national stage.

And it is scaring all but the ideologically committed left — a rather small, if profoundly influential and powerful, minority. This is why last week, Gallup reported an extraordinarily dramatic and quick shift of independent voters’ electoral preferences. In the Gallup Poll’s words: “Over the course of the year, independents’ preference for the Republican candidate in their districts has grown, from a 1-point advantage in July to the current 22-point gap.”

In half a year, there has been a 23 percent shift from Democrats to Republicans among independent voters. And nothing particularly bad had occurred — no further economic meltdown, no terrorist attack from abroad (the Poll preceded the Fort Hood attack).

Now Americans see the left’s policies for what they are:

1. The left wants America to abandon its defining commitment to individualism and replace it with a European-style nanny, or welfare, state.

At most Americans’ core is an abiding belief that we are supposed to take care of ourselves, our families and our neighbors, and not rely on the state to do so.
2. The left is naive about evil. Most Americans deemed Communism evil; the left ridiculed President Ronald Reagan for calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and often undermined the fight against the Communist world. So, too, the left is naive about Islamic terror and undermines the fight against it.

The smoking gun was the nearly universal denial by the left that his Islamic beliefs had anything to do with Maj. Nidal Hasan’s mass murder of fellow servicemen at Fort Hood. One of many examples was this reaction to the shootings by Evan Thomas, Editor at Large at Newsweek: “I think he’s probably just a nut case. But with that label (Muslim) attached to him, it will get the right wing going…”

3. The left is more interested in redistributing wealth than in creating it. This should have been as obvious to Americans as the brightness of the sun. Finally, Americans are coming to realize that the left’s goal is now, as it always has been, equality, not prosperity.

4. The left is far more interested in power than the right is. This, too, should have been self-evident, but finally, people are realizing that those who are preoccupied with creating an ever-expanding state are obviously far more interested in amassing power than those who want a smaller state.

5. The left is preoccupied with America being loved, and in pursuit of that end, compromises some of America’s core values. Examples abound here, too. To cite a few: the Obama administration’s neglect of those in Iran risking their lives for freedom in that tyranny; the administration’s refusal to meet with the Dalai Lama when the Tibetan leader visited Washington, lest the president annoy China’s dictators; the American government siding with Hugo Chavez against the Honduran government, which had legally removed a Chavez clone from the Honduran presidency; and the president’s obsequious apologies for America wherever he goes.

A motto of my radio show and of my life is “Clarity is our friend.” It is certainly so here. Clarity about the left will be a blessing to America.

Dennis Prager hosts a nationally syndicated radio talk show and is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of four books, most recently “Happiness Is a Serious Problem” (HarperCollins). His website is www.dennisprager.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM