What the fight is really all about …
An awful lot of people are mistakenly under the impression that the great fight to save our country, our society, our culture is
Republican v. Democrat. Actually, it’s liberal v. conservative. Freedom v. statism. There are an awful lot of people in each of our two major parties who believe the government knows what’s best for you and your family.
One of our readers found this gem from Dennis Prager, which offers a very simple primer on how to tell which of these two camps — liberal or conservative, freedom-lover or statist — that you truly belong in:
Source of Human Rights
Left: government
Right: the Creator
Human Nature
Left: basically good (Therefore, society is primarily responsible for evil.)
Right: not basically good (Therefore, the individual is primarily responsible for evil.)
Economic Goal
Left: equality
Right: prosperity
Primary Role of the State
Left: increase and protect equality
Right: increase and protect liberty
Government
Left: as large as possible
Right: as small as possible
Family Ideal
Left: any loving unit of people
Right: a married father and mother, and children
Guiding Trinity
Left: race, gender and class
Right: liberty, In God We Trust and e pluribus unum
Good and Evil
Left: relative to individual and/or society
Right: based on universal absolutes
Humanity’s Primary Division(s)
Left: rich and poor; strong and weak
Right: good and evil
Ideal Primary Identity of an American
Left: world citizen
Right: American citizen
How to Make a Good Society
Left: abolish inequality
Right: develop each citizen’s moral character
View of America
Left: profoundly morally flawed; inferior to any number of European countries
Right: greatest force for good among nations in world history
Gender
Left: a social construct
Right: male and female
Most Important Trait to Cultivate in a Child
Left: self-esteem
Right: self-control
Worth of the Human Fetus
Left: determined by the mother
Right: determined by society rooted in Judeo-Christian values
Primary Source of Crime
Left: poverty, racism and other societal flaws
Right: the criminal’s malfunctioning conscience
Place of God and Religion in America
Left: secular government and secular society
Right: secular government and religious society
American Exceptionalism
Left: chauvinistic doctrine
Right: historical reality
Greatest Threat to the World
Left: environmental catastrophe (currently global warming)
Right: evil (currently radical Islamist violence)
International Ideal
Left: world governed by the United Nations, and no single country is dominant
Right: world in which America is the single strongest entity
Primary Reason for Lack of Peace in Middle East
Left: Israeli settlements in the West Bank
Right: Palestinian, Arab and Muslim denial of Jewish state’s right to exist
Purpose of Art
Left: challenge status quo and bourgeois sensibilities
Right: produce works of beauty and profundity to elevate the individual and society
Guns
Left: ideally universally abolished, except for use by police, the armed forces and registered sportsmen
Right: ideally widely owned by responsible individuals for self-protection and the protection of others
Race
Left: intrinsically significant
Right: intrinsically insignificant
Racial, Ethnic and Gender Diversity at Universities
Left: most important
Right: far less important than ideological diversity
Black America’s Primary Problem
Left: racism
Right: lack of fathers
Greatest Playwright
Left: entirely subjective; there is no greatest playwright
Right: Shakespeare
War
Left: not the answer
Right: sometimes the only answer
Hate
Left: wrong, except when directed at the political
Right: wrong, except when directed at evil
Cultures
Left: all equal
Right: some are better than others
America’s Founding Fathers
Left: rich white male slave owners
Right: great men who founded the greatest society
Purpose of Judges
Left: pursue social justice
Right: pursue justice
National Borders
Left: a relic of the past
Right: indispensable for national survival
View of Illegal Immigrants
Left: welcomed guests
Right: illegal immigrants
Nature
Left: intrinsically valuable
Right: made for man
Clarify believes of Right agree!
This Dennis Prager sure has a warped view of things, or at least presents the issue that way.
He has a radio show 870kral and takes calls of any topic the last hour Friday 2pm to 3 pm eastern I challenge you to call in and tell him that and debate him on that topic
maybe you want to also clarify your statement here with some facts/reasons to back up your opinion
His take is simplistic, not mutually exclusive divisions, and mostly outright wrong.
Just one corrected example:
View of Illegal Immigrants
Left: humans
Right: illegal immigrants Unless we can exploit them to do hard labor for peanuts.
your new argument is a failure once you changed things and brought business’s into the equation
business’s in general are neither left or right they are what ever they need to be at any given time to make the most PROFIT so yes business’s want illegals so they can have them do hard labor for peanuts
people doing hard labor for peanuts is not a value of the Left or the Right but a value of people that value profit over anything else
but if you want to talk wages and the left is fighting for say $15 a hour min wage but the people on the left look at the small picture say one person working at a fast food restaurant trying to make ends meat and get buy on say $9 an hour and oh how $15 would help them so much
BUT
While people in the Right wish people could be paid more they see the big picture that requiring a higher wage will loose these same jobs for many and slow down growth or in the case of fast food cause these same workers to have their jobs replaced by robots or automated kiosks that do not need health insurance of any other benefits
so if you call his article simplified
well it makes simple examples so people can see the root values of the two groups
if you wanted to add another
big or small picture thinking?
Left – Small Individual causes
Right- Big picture group causes
—————————————-
Here is another article for you to enjoy “America’s Second Civil War” http://www.dennisprager.com/americas-second-civil-war/
I did not change things. I used the same criteria as Prager. He used slavery in one of his responses which is a component of the business of exploitation for profit.
To expressly address the authors point, he is exactly right. Too few folks really understand what is at stake, that being, freedom v. Statism. Put another way BIG Gov’t CONTROL of American individual freedom.
Browny Douglas
Glad a few people here like you understand this. Most people do not want to even consider how bad things really are
The ease in which some people appear to be willing to give up their precious freedom is a clear statement on how ignorant these segments of our populace have become. Like the proverbial frog sitting in ever warming water until it is cooked, there will be a wake up call for those willing to allow “the government” – in whatever condition it happens to be at the moment (though history shows clearly the larger and more intrusive “the government” is the worse off the citizens are) – to control details of our everyday lives. Even if “the government” had the capacity and wisdom to be just and fair to its subjects (where that wisdom comes from is problematic because “the government” is people after all and people are flawed), the burden of paying the salaries, the vacations, the training programs, the holidays, the pensions, the health plans of the employees necessary to man the offices, agencies and general bureaucracy of “big government” along with its policemen and jailers would bankrupt any society eventually. It is economically impossible to support non-wealth generators (leeches) for long. A bankrupt society will fall into disrepair and eventually anarchy. So where are all those peachy leftist ideals when people are starving? Wake up. Look at Venezuela. The ideal government is written into our US Constitution. Defend it or suffer the consequences.