Thursday, December 20, 2007

Dennis Prager Meetup


Ok, if I haven’t said it enough, I thoroughly enjoy listening to Dennis Prager, a conservative talk show host based at the LA radio station KRLA. On 9:00 AM to 12:00 Monday through Friday.

I discovered Dennis when my work moved me away from a rural town in central California up to Sacramento where Dennis was played over the air by tape delay. Out of all the excitable voices on the air, this voice sounded reasonable and generally calm and yet, even when exasperated, he is able to bring clarity to the topic, be it a current event or a news article or an authors politically correct book. Dennis invites the politicians, news authors and editors, the book authors, whoever he would criticize on the air to defend their work or their stance on his show. Often, the invitation is rejected because they see what he has done with previous interviews in his most respectful and humble way. Simply by asking pointed questions, he forces them to either admit they are wrong or that they have not given the issue its due examination, or that they simply don’t agree with Dennis (when it is down to a matter of opinion.) He doesn’t let them get away with calling a difference on the facts a difference of opinion.

The thing that sets Dennis apart from other talk show hosts is found in his motto: I prefer clarity to agreement. Clarity of thought and the ability to communicate thought out, concise ideas and to challenge guests and callers to do the same have earned him a listenership and followers who desire to emulate him in their personal thought life. There are now groups around the country and in varied places around the world who meet for the express purpose of discussing the topics and writings Dennis has covered.

I had the good fortune to meet one of these groups here in Orange County, California last week. I sought them out because Dennis was advertising his meetup groups and because, having attended a Town Hall meeting in Glendale, featuring Laura Ingrahm, Michael Medved, and Dennis Prager, I met some great people. So, I expected to meet good people, but I was pleasantly surprised to find 5 people who were not only nice and like minded, but also engaged in current events. Everybody had something to contribute worth listening to, and everybody appreciated others’ input. I tip my hat to the Orange County Dennis Prager Meetup group. I had a fantastic time with you and look forward to the next meeting.

I came away with an idea that truth alone will not curb the onslaught of the politically correct torrent against Judeo-Christian values and common sense. It has to be a love of truth above self interest. The vast majority of the politically motivated on the left are motivated by self interest, but with limited insight/foresight. Whether its Social Security benefits, Welfare benefits, universal health care benefits, advancing the legalization of recreational drug use, limiting the governments use of laws to instill accountability for criminal behavior, having the government not only keep legal, but to pay for abortions with tax dollars, keep themselves or their children from having to serve in the military during a shooting war, whatever it is for each individual.

Like Dennis does, let me include a qualifier; not every individual on the left is selfish, of course not, but in general, this is who makes up the liberal agenda. There are some few true believers, (like Jimmy Carter) some politicians who sell the agenda for power, (the Clintons) some are hold overs from the 1950’s era Democratic party, (Zell Miller) some who vote the way their family always has with no real thought on history and consequence, but most vote for their personal self interest.

Until the real world invades our little universe, our little self involved microcosm, real world threats and real values issues are not going to have the weight our self interest does at the ballot box. I pray God does something, something only He can imagine or do to call us out of our slumber, our daydream that we have nothing more threatening than our own government and Christians and Jews to fear.

Ever the case the messenger with bad news is killed before the bad news is dealt with? It is the church who has cried out against the destruction of our culture from within, it is the Jews who cried out against the threat of Islamo-fascists, and now the government is facing the very real threat of world domination by the radical extremist factions of Islam. These are the three worst enemies of the liberals, progressives, or Democrats. Not the destruction of our culture, not the Islamo-fascists, not the threat of domination by a foreign power, much less a violent religion, but the Christians, Jews, and our own governmental role in world politics.

The case being made against the Christians by the left is that they are morally equivalent to any other religion, including Islamo-Nazis. The case made against the Jews is that they are morally equivalent to the Islamo-Nazis. The case against the government is that they are morally equivalent to the enemies they are preventing from world domination, Islamo-Nazis.

The church has to be morally equivalent because they are just another religion like any other religion with a bloody history and plenty of bad leaders who take advantage of their congregates. Never mind that the church does not condone violence in the name of God anywhere today but because of a thousand year old event we are no different than the Islamo-Nazis who literally roam around their lands like Nazi Brown Shirts enforcing Sharia law by beheading, caning, and raping. What church leader sanctions anything remotely comparable?

The tiny little country of Israel has to be morally equivalent because they stole the land from the poor Palestinian dirt farmers. If anybody on the left would bother to look past the convenience of blaming the Jews for every evil since the dawn of time, they’d learn the land was purchased, that the Palestinians were never Palestinians until the tiny country of Israel was invaded by all its comparatively giant neighbors simultaneously and survived by miracle after miracle and that the non-Jewish residents picked up and moved out of the way so they could move back in after the attack and claim the land of the defeated Jews. Only it didn’t work out that way. The refugees were rejected by their attacking neighbors and forced into refugee camps. They were obviously aligned with the enemies of Israel so they could not be re-assimilated back into Jewish culture, only then did they take the name Palestine for the purpose of sending a message to the Jews that they were taking on the role of their greatest enemies, the Philistines.

The U.S. government must be morally equivalent because after all we have invaded their homeland and we use torture methods and we don’t hold to the Geneva Convention. Never mind that the Geneva convention only holds for countries that have signed it and that our enemy has not signed it and certainly don’t hold to any of its standards. When they capture one of our soldiers, they have no qualms about castrating, beheading, and dragging through the streets the dead bodies, going so far as to video tape these events and posting them on the web for all the world to see. But hey, if we hood a guy and make him pose in his underwear with a girl soldier, (for which convictions were handed out and resignations were signed) or if we scare a guy into giving up information that will save the lives of many of our troops or innocent civilians of his own country, then we must be becoming the same as they are.

With the theme being so single pointed, you’d expect the Islamic coalition to be the root of the Democratic party, but it isn’t. The Islamic coalition would like to be, I’m sure. The truth is, it’s a conspiracy of self interested parties. If there is no more common sense on the left side of politics than this, then there has to be ulterior motives for their agenda. While it is not criminal to advance a political agenda for self interests, it certainly is amoral. I cannot believe that the vast majority of the American left are that ignorant, that unreachable by teaching the facts of history and the consequences of former political activism. It has to be self concern on the micro level sacrificing the good of the macro level political arena.

Eventually, this will either kill the society we know and love and give control over to the tyrants of the next generation or it will kill the party that feeds on it. For now, its even money whether the Looney left will further this agenda down the road to self destruction or the right gains full control of the House and the Senate and the Presidency to re-establish the importance and the role of traditional Judeo-Christian values in our society and the teetering balance America maintains in the jostling field of macro self interests known as world politics.

The Democratic party has chosen, for its monogram, the outline of a jackass which is relevant to this day. Is this just a quirk, or is it really the attitude they want to continue to identify the party by? The party who identifies with being an irritating, insulting jackass? When I was a Democrat, I didn’t like the idea. The Republican party chose the elephant because it represented a long memory, also relevant to this day. We pride ourselves on remembering the consequences of past choices and on trying to make better choices for the future. Will a relevant party please step up to the plate and put common sense back on the debate table?

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