Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “God v. State: Steel Cage Death Match, Loser Leaves Town!”

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February 23, 2010

God v. State: Steel Cage Death Match, Loser Leaves Town!

Hatched by Dafydd

Dennis Prager has a wonderfully insightful -- and technically inciteful -- column in today's Town Hall schmeer. Do you recall that I recently contrasted Prager to Michael Medved by saying the former was sometimes profound? This is one of those times.

Profundity doesn't always mean enunciating a brand new revelation; it can also be found in expressing a well-known point in a particularly succinct, understandable, apt, illuminating way. In this case, that:

For the right, the primary moral authority is God (or, for secular conservatives, Judeo-Christian values), followed by parents. Of course, government must also play a role, but it is ultimately accountable to God and it should do nothing to undermine parental authority.

For the left, the state and its government are the supreme authorities, while parental and divine authority are seen as impediments to state authority.

Prager performs magnificently in this piece; it would be difficult for even a leftist to argue against his central point... where "argue" means saying more somewhat than, "You're wrong! And you're a racist!"

Really, who could argue anyway? Lefties would be better served by skipping the unbelievable denials and straightforwardly defending their de facto policy: "Of course we want to undermine the authority of your parents and your 'god'... parents represent old, bourgeois thinking, unsuited to the demands of modernity and the New Soviet Man. And your invisible king in the sky is a throwback to the caesars of antiquity, sitting on his cloud-throne and pronouncing so-called 'eternal' rules that are inflexible and unable to deal with the flowing, inconstant chaos of today!"

For all their faults -- and I admit they had a few here and there -- at least Nazis and Stalinists had the courage to enunciate their philosophy clearly.

But ever since the sixties, the New Left has operated from the shadow world of deceit, conspiracy, and code. Rather than forthrightly say, "We want to supplant your parents and raise you to think our way," they say that your Dad and Mum are too "uptight" to understand that today's kids live by different moral rules than previous generations; your folks are just packed full with envy-cheese, like an overstuffed manicotti, because their parents (Granny and Old Grand-Dad) never let them have any fun... so they don't want to let you have any.

Besides, your parents didn't have the advantages of a real education; when they were in school, universities were all run by Reaganites with Alzheimer's who made your parents stupid! You're much more intelligent; you should be telling them what to do, the retarded, ugly, old ingrates.

And rather than say "God is dead, long live the State," which would at least tell you where they really stood, they hide behind the First Amendment prohibition on the "establishment of religion." Certainly we all agree that allowing a Ten Commandments plaque to lurk somewhere on government land or keeping the phrase "In God we trust" on the coinage is perfectly equivalent to Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, butchering Catholics by the bushel. It's just a short skip from holding Bible study classes to banning all books but the Bible in schools and libraries.

If you guide your life by the divine principles of traditional Judeo-Christian thought, you're a religious fanatic who should be barred from public office, if not locked away where persons in white coats can take care of you (under ObamaCare). If you follow the wishes of your parents, you're positively Mediaeval!

It may seem as though I've wandered far afield, but no; this is the subject of Dennis Prager's column, though in less hysterical terms than I use. As that fellow blogger oft says, read the whole thing.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, February 23, 2010, at the time of 1:56 PM