Free Republic

Only a fool believes that all those with whom he differs are bad people. Moreover, just about all of us live the reality -- often within our own family -- of knowing good and loving people with whom we strongly differ on political, religious, social and economic issues. That said, I have come to believe that the more committed one is to leftism, the more likely one is to become meaner. Two examples in just the past week offer compelling evidence. Prominent left-wing commentators used the way in which Rick Santorum and his wife handled the death of one of...

Only a fool believes that all those with whom he differs are bad people. Moreover, just about all of us live the reality—often within our own family—of knowing good and loving people with whom we strongly differ on political, religious, social and economic issues. That said, I have come to believe that the more committed one is to leftism, the more likely one is to become meaner. Two examples in just the past week offer compelling evidence. Prominent left-wing commentators used the way in which Rick Santorum and his wife handled the death of one of their children to attack—make...

Adultery is indeed a serious sin, often with terrible consequences. But I can think of at least two more serious sins. One is character assassination. And the other is electing people who ruin the greatest country in history.

The governor of Oregon, John Kitzhaber, announced last week that he would not allow any more executions in his state during his time in office. Kitzhaber, a Democrat, gave five reasons for his decision. My response follows each one. 1. "I refuse to be part of this compromised and inequitable system any longer." This has become one of the most frequently offered reasons for objecting to capital punishment -- that because the system is not equitable, no murderer should be put to death. This is a reason that is devoid of reason. If a system is not equitable, you don't...

I periodically write and regularly broadcast about male-female issues because I want to help men and women, especially husbands and wives, get along better. But I have developed a secondary reason: to elicit left-wing reactions. They reveal an enormous amount about how the left thinks. For example, one of the biggest left-wing websites (Daily Kos) wrote that "Dennis Prager advocates marital rape." Why? Because I wrote a column in which I suggested that if a woman loves her husband, and if he is a loving and good man, she might not want to be guided solely by "mood" in deciding...

Family life can just as intellectually unrewarding than work. I periodically write, and regularly broadcast, about male–female issues because I want to help men and women, especially husbands and wives, to get along better. But I have developed a secondary reason: to elicit left-wing reactions. They reveal an enormous amount about how the Left thinks. For example, one of the biggest left-wing websites (Daily Kos) wrote that “Dennis Prager advocates marital rape.” Why? Because I wrote a column in which I suggested that if a woman loves her husband, and if he is a loving and good man, she might...

I periodically write and regularly broadcast about male-female issues because I want to help men and women, especially husbands and wives, get along better. But I have developed a secondary reason: to elicit left-wing reactions. They reveal an enormous amount about how the left thinks. For example, one of the biggest left-wing websites (Daily Kos) wrote that "Dennis Prager advocates marital rape." Why? Because I wrote a column in which I suggested that if a woman loves her husband, and if he is a loving and good man, she might not want to be guided solely by "mood" in deciding...

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s feminist magnum opus, The Feminine Mystique, we can have a perspective on feminism that was largely unavailable heretofore. And that perspective doesn’t make feminism look good. Yes, women have more opportunities to achieve career success; they are now members of most Jewish and Christian clergy; women’s college sports teams are given huge amounts of money; and there are far more women in political positions of power. But the prices paid for these changes — four in particular — have been great, and outweigh the gains for women, let...

Last week, the New York Times published an opinion piece by Karl W. Giberson and Randall J. Stephens — a physics professor and a history professor at Eastern Nazarene College — that takes evangelicals to task for being anti-intellectual, anti-reason, and anti-science. Their evidence: Evangelicals doubt man-made global warming. Evangelicals believe that gays can “pray away” their homosexuality. Evangelicals believe the earth is only thousands of years old and that men lived alongside dinosaurs. Evangelicals oppose same-sex marriage. It is worth analyzing these charges, given how often they are made. With regard to man-made global warming, the charge that all...

The major difference between Hitler and the Communist genocidal murderers –Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot –was what groups they chose for extermination. For Hitler, first Jews and ultimately Slavs and other "non-Aryans" were declared the enemy and unworthy of life. For the Communists, the rich –the bourgeoisie, landowners and capitalists –were labeled the enemy and regarded as unworthy of life. Hitler mass-murdered on the basis of race, the Communists on the basis of class. Because the Holocaust was unique in its industrialization of death and in its targeting of every Jew, including babies, for death, the post-World War II world...

Dennis Prager does an excellent job in exposing the bias in the New York Times headline about non-news... but takes the reader to the last paragraph of the article to uncover the real news the headline misses. Take note I am a very conservative Evangelical who has written a stinging critique on Mormonism (http://www.scribd.com/doc/34407703/Infinitely-Finite-Mormon-Materialism), and I would vote for Romney if he were our nominee without a second thought! For more clear thinking like this from Dennis Prager... I invite you to visit: http://www.dennisprager.com/

Last week, David Brooks of the New York Times wrote a column on an academic study concerning the nearly complete lack of a moral vocabulary among most American young people. Here are excerpts from Brooks’s summary of the study of Americans aged 18 to 23. It was led by “the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith”: � “Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.” � “When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral...

Last week, David Brooks of The New York Times wrote a column on an academic study concerning the nearly complete lack of a moral vocabulary among most American young people. Below are some excerpts from Brooks' summary of the study of Americans aged 18 to 23. (It was led by "the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith.") "Smith and company asked about the young people's moral lives, and the results are depressing … "When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn't answer the question or described problems that are not moral...

With the exception of the United States, nearly all the world's nations; newspapers, radio and TV news stations; the United Nations; and the world's Leftist academics and organizations have condemned Israel over the Gaza flotilla incident. The characterizations of the Jewish state range from a society so evil that it should not be allowed to exist to a villainous nation that is responsible for a) the suffering of millions of innocent Palestinian men, women and children; b) the lack of Mideast peace; therefore c) the Muslim world's anger at the West; and therefore d) Islamic terrorism itself. Let's hope the...

South Korea has joined with only two other countries in the world in dropping the name of the forthcoming film "Captain America" and using the subtitle, "The First Avenger." The other two countries are Russia and Ukraine. According to the New York Times report, "Although that country (South Korea) is one of Hollywood's top-performing territories, resentment about the continued presence of the United States military runs deep." For years now, I have intended to write a column about the most glaring case of international ingratitude of which I am aware. The "Captain America" story has finally pushed me over the...

Four years ago, I wrote a column titled "America Needs a July Fourth Seder." In it, I explained that "national memory dies without national ritual. And without a national memory, a nation dies." Many readers and listeners to my radio show responded by creating their own rituals to make the day far more meaningful than watching fireworks and eating hot dogs. I now present a simple 10-minute ceremony that every American can easily use on July Fourth. It is a product of the Internet-based Prager University that I founded nearly two years ago. We call it the Fourth of July...

To their credit, most Democratic Party leaders have (finally) called for New York Rep. Anthony Weiner's resignation. But among liberal commentators and millions of other Americans, there is a great deal of flawed thinking about whether Weiner should resign.The two most common arguments offered against his resigning have been that (1) what Weiner did was not illegal and (2) it was not even as bad as an extramarital affair because he never met, let alone had physical contact with, any of the women to whom he sent naked and semi-naked photos of himself.The argument's entirely beside the point. The point...

It appears that The Rapture leading to the end of the world predicted by a Christian radio broadcaster for this past Saturday, May 21, did not take place. And the failure was covered worldwide. A Google search on Saturday evening yielded over 32,000 articles — in English alone — in the world media. The secular, especially the anti-religious, Left enjoys these spectacles of religious foolishness. They seem to confirm not only how absurd these end-of-days predictions are, but how absurd religion is in general. But the Left should not laugh too loudly. The religious world has far fewer doomsday predictions...

Yes, Jews Are the Chosen People For good or ill I assume that the type of person who reads columns such as this one has wondered at one time or another why, for thousands of years, there has been so much attention paid to Jews; and why, today, so much attention is paid to Israel, the lone Jewish state. How do most people explain this preoccupation? There is no fully rational explanation for the amount of attention paid to the Jews and the Jewish state. And there is no fully rational explanation for the amount of hatred directed at them....

If your sister were among the nearly 3,000 people murdered in the World Trade Center on 9/11, how would you react to Osama Bin Laden's death? More specifically, if you were to write an opinion piece on the subject for a major newspaper, what would you most want to communicate?One would think that anyone who had lost a loved one on 9/11 would write about bin Laden's guilt, about evil and about experiencing some degree of moral and emotional satisfaction that the loved one's murderer had been killed by American forces.But not Robert Klitzman, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia...

In my previous column, I offered an answer to the question: What do men want? I made the case that what men most want from the woman they love is to be admired. If my answer is correct, and if we presume that the natures of men and women are complementary (a presumption many men and women understandably doubt given how often men and women do not get along), what women most want must be related to that which men most want. I believe it is. What a woman most wants is to be loved by a man she admires....

It was difficult to control my emotions -- specifically, my anger -- during my visit to Vietnam last week. The more I came to admire the Vietnamese people -- their intelligence, love of life, dignity and hard work -- the more rage I felt for the communists who brought them (and, of course, us Americans) so much suffering in the second half of the 20th century. Unfortunately, communists still rule the country. Yet, Vietnam today has embraced the only way that exists to escape poverty, let alone to produce prosperity: capitalism and the free market. So what exactly did the...

Last week, following the murder of six people and the attempted murder of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, the American people were given a vivid display of the single most important tactic of the left: libeling opponents. Most Americans have been naively and blissfully unaware of this aspect of the left's arsenal against the right. But now, just as more Americans than ever before understand the left's limitless appetite for political power in an ever-expanding state, more Americans than ever before understand that a key to the left's success is defaming the right. I do not recall any major American...

HotAir is reporting an aid saying that the death threats to Palin have increased dramatically: "An aide close to Sarah Palin says death threats and security threats have increased to an unprecedented level since the shooting in Arizona, and the former Alaska governor’s team has been talking to security professionals. Since the shooting in Tucson, Palin has taken much heat for her “crosshairs” map that targeted 20 congressional Democrats in the 2010 mid-term election, including that of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was the main target of Saturday’s attack." [....] Is the Left responsible for this spike in hatred? What is...

According to polls — Pew Research Center, the National Science Foundation — and studies such as Arthur Brooks’s Gross National Happiness, conservative Americans are happier than liberal Americans. Liberals respond this way: “If we’re unhappier, it’s because we are more upset than conservatives over the plight of those less fortunate than ourselves.” But common sense and data suggest other explanations. For one thing, conservatives on the same socioeconomic level as liberals give more charity and volunteer more time than do liberals. And as regards the suffering of non-Americans, for at least half a century conservatives have been far more willing...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- In his new book, Pope Benedict XVI strongly reaffirmed church teaching that homosexual acts are "disordered" and said homosexuality itself is "incompatible" with the priesthood. The pope's comments came in his new book-interview, "Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times," which was published Nov. 23. The interviewer, German journalist Peter Seewald, asked the pope whether the church's teaching that homosexuals deserve respect isn't contradicted by its position that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disordered." The pope answered: "No. It is one thing to say that they are human beings with...

DOWNTOWN — This year's November election kicked off a hard-hitting town hall discussion Sunday night by conservative radio talk show hosts on issues ranging from the "tea party" movement to California's business environment. About 1,300 people attended 870 AM KRLA radio's "Town hall 2010" forum at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, where radio hosts Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Mike Gallagher and Kevin James took on some of the state's and nation's most pressing issues, including the upcoming Nov. 2 election. Republicans could gain 20 to 90 Democratic seats in the House of Representatives and the Senate in this year's election,...

My Dear Hispanic Friends: I am writing to you as a concerned and sympathetic American who is a Republican. My sentiments do not represent those of every American — that would be impossible. But I believe the following represents what most Americans believe. First, a message to those of you here illegally: You may be very surprised to hear this, but in your position, millions of Americans, including me, would have done what you did. If I lived in a poor country with a largely corrupt government, a country in which I had little or no hope for an improved...

I just came across this video of Dennis Prager this morning and it’s fantastic. Dennis is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host and best-selling author. Within the video he asks a very important question: what happens to the citizens of a country when the government gets bigger and bigger?

There was one thing more than any other that turned this New York, liberal, Jewish, Columbia University graduate student away from modern liberalism: its use of moral equivalence to avoid confronting evil during the Cold War. There was a time when liberalism was identified with anti-Communism. But the Vietnam War led liberals into the arms of the Left, which had been morally confused about Communism since its inception and had become essentially pacifist following the carnage of World War I. After the Vietnam War, even liberals who continued to describe Communism as evil were labeled “right-wingers” and “Cold Warriors.” And...

I recently wrote about leftists’ hatred for conservatives as people, not merely for conservative ideas. Demonization of opponents is a fundamental characteristic of the left. It is not merely tactical; they believe people on the right are bad. (Here’s a test: Ask someone on the left if active support of California Proposition 8 — retaining the man-woman definition of marriage — was an act of hate.) A related defining characteristic of the left is the ascribing of nefarious motives to conservatives. For the left, a dismissal of conservatives’ motives is as important as is dismissal of the conservatives as people....

The left passionately supports the most remarkable and radical change in modern social history -- the redefinition of marriage from male-female to include male-male and female-female. Marriage is the building block of society. Changing its nature will therefore change society. Among other things, same-sex marriage means that because sex (now called "gender") no longer matters for society's most important institution, it no longer matters in general. Men and women as distinct entities no longer have significance. Which is exactly what the cultural left and the gay rights movement advocate -- even though the vast majority of Americans who support same-sex...

Friday August 13, 2010 First Rush, then Coulter, and Now Glenn Beck ... What’s Happening? Commentary by John-Henry Westen NEW YORK, August 12, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Appearing on The O’Reilly Factor yesterday, famed conservative Fox News host Glenn Beck may have shocked many Americans by noting that he was not very concerned about homosexual 'marriage.'O’Reilly asked Beck, “Do you believe that gay marriage is a threat to the country in any way?” Beck replied, “No, I don't,” adding sarcastically, “Will the gays come and get us?”  After being pressed again on the question, Beck said, “I believe -- I...

Jewish liberals, like other liberals, believe that there are three positive traits that describe liberals far more accurately than they describe conservatives — compassionate, intellectual and open-minded. Though I am a Jewish conservative, I don’t believe that either side has anything close to a monopoly on compassion. There are compassionate Jews who are conservative and compassionate Jews who are liberal. As regards being intellectual, I acknowledge that there are more Jewish intellectuals who are liberal — since there are a lot more Jewish liberals, there will be a lot more liberal Jewish intellectuals. But I doubt that the percentage of...

Of all the recent revelations to come out of JournoList, an e-mail list consisting of about 400 liberal/left journalists, perhaps the most telling is the depth of their hatred for conservatives. That these journalists would consult with one another in order to protect candidate and then President Obama and in order to hurt Republicans is unfortunate and ugly. What is jolting is the hatred of conservatives on display, as exemplified by the e-mail from a public-radio reporter expressing her wish to personally see Rush Limbaugh die a painful death — and the apparent absence of any objection from her fellow...

Click here to find out more! Perhaps the most telling of the recent revelations of the liberal/left Journolist, a list consisting of about 400 major liberal/left journalists, is the depth of their hatred of conservatives. That they would consult with one another in order to protect candidate and then President Obama and in order to hurt Republicans is unfortunate and ugly. But what is jolting is the hatred of conservatives, as exemplified by the e-mail from an NPR reporter expressing her wish to personally see Rush Limbaugh die a painful death -- and the apparent absence of any objection from...

Here's a challenge: Can you name one difference between what the media refer to as "world opinion" and Left-wing opinion? Take all the time you need. But no matter how much time you take, you probably won't come up with any examples. The world's media and virtually all international organizations are Leftist in their politics, and they both define "world opinion" and in turn shape it. Of course, there are other powerful institutions in the world that shape public opinion. But virtually none contravene the Left-wing views of the world's media and world organizations on world issues. Take Islam, for...

Dennis Prager Q&A at the University of Denver. Watch the video.

"Even more about McChrystal: now it can be told. The story about him voting for Obama is not contrived. He is a political liberal. He is a social liberal. He banned Fox News from the television sets in his headquarters. Yes, really. This puts to rest another false rumor: that McChrystal deliberately precipitated his firing because he wants to run for President."

Once Again, the Responsibility to Tell the Truth Falls to El Rushbo June 22, 2010 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, as I said at the top of the program, it seems like it's always left to me to say these things, the obvious that nobody else wants to talk about.Well, certainly nobody in the State-Controlled Media. The dirty little secret that's not really a secret if you have your eyes open: our president is not respected by the commander in Afghanistan.It's patently obvious.But he's also not respected by our allies in the UK, Germany, France, and Israel, among...

Dennis Prager explains what is the greatest threat that America faces today: “We have not passed on what it means to be an American to this generation.” (see video and partial transcript) [...] I would just add that I -- I have never said this, so I have good credentials to say this now -- it's common for commentators to say every election this is the most important election in American history or in our time.

A highlight reel of Dennis Prager’s remarks from a panel (with Sarah Palin and Hugh Hewitt) put together May 24 at the University of Denver. He talks about the most fundamental threat to America in existence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNUc8nuo7HI&feature=player_embedded

Most Americans are aware that gay activism rarely presents itself as a movement solely for the rights of gays. For example, the acronym for the gay rights movement is "GLBT," meaning Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender. Interestingly, few people ever ask about the "T." What do transgendered have to do with gays? How and why are they connected by activists, gay and straight, on the Left? Strictly speaking, gays have no more in common with transgendered people than straights do. To understand the answer is to understand much of what animates the Sexual Left. The aim of GLBT is not...

CBS News Live is streaming live tonights 710 KNUS Evening with Sarah Palin, Hugh Hewitt and Dennis Prager appearance in Denver . It is streaming right now. http://wcbstv.com/cbsnewslive

Dennis Prager, syndicated radio talk show host, best selling author and long-time resident of Los Angeles, has called for the rest of the United States to boycott his own city after the Los Angeles City Council voted to cut ties with Arizona business in response the just passed immigration enforcement law, this as the city finances continue to meltdown. Prager was apoplectic about such a dumb move by a City Council whose liberal Democrat policies have devastated the city of Los Angeles by driving businesses away, discouraging further investment, soaking the population with taxes that discourage economic growth and passing...

...There is a perfectly clear pattern on the left – the normative left, not just the "far" left – that denies the obvious when it comes to Islamic terrorism. Take, for example, Maj. Nidal Hasan, who murdered 13 fellow soldiers and tried to murder the 30 others whom he wounded at Fort Hood, Texas. For days after the murders, liberal-left commentators and mainstream media reports attributed Hasan's mass murders to everything but his Islamic beliefs – even though it was known that he yelled out "Allahu Akbar" ("Allah is the Greatest") just as he began his shooting. As "Hardball's" Chris...

Conservative public figures almost never compare liberals to Nazis, while public figures on the Left often compare conservatives to Nazis. When liberal Jewish columnist Frank Rich of the New York Times wrote recently that tea partiers had engaged a "small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht," he meant it. Kristallnacht ("Night of the Broken Glass") was the opening act of the Hollocaust. Jewish liberal, Rep. Alan Grayson, in attacking the tea partiers, specified "white conservative Christians" as comparable to Nazis. This not only smears decent Americans - who, as it happens, are far more pro-Jewish and pro-Israel than most on the Left -...

Opponents of the popular expression of conservative opposition to big government, the tea party, regularly note that tea partiers are overwhelmingly white. This is intended to disqualify the tea parties from serious moral consideration. But there are two other facts that are far more troubling: The first is the observation itself. The fact that the Left believes that the preponderance of whites among tea partiers invalidates the tea party movement tells us much more about the Left than it does about the tea partiers. It confirms that the Left really does see the world through the prism of race, gender...

Reading the onslaught of angry denunciations of Burger King by mental health organizations and mainstream media reporters this past week reminded me of a characteristic of the Left not often commented on: a certain joylessness, even an antipathy to the little joys that contribute more than almost anything else to most people's ability to endure the difficulties of life. These characteristics further reinforce the view that Leftism functions as a (secular) religion. Like medieval Christians who wore hair shirts and Puritans who thought dancing was sacrilegious, the Left, consciously or not, is uncomfortable with many of the joys -- with...

Many Americans find it difficult to understand why Jews on the Left -- including many who would call themselves "liberal" rather than "Left" -- continued to enthusiastically support President Obama after the revelations about the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish views of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the religious mentor and close friend of Obama. This confusion is all the greater now that Obama has humiliated the prime minister of Israel and created the most tense moment in American-Israeli relations in memory. Likewise, many Americans wonder how Democratic congressmen who claim to be faithful Catholics and are pro-life could vote for the health...