The low moral and intellectual state of the left

Dennis Prager recently wrote a column in the Jewish Journal expressing his concerns:

"... about the Torah and the current unprecedented attempt to blur male-female distinction in biology and society."

It ignited a firestorm of hatemail from the Jewish left.

To which Prager responded "The hate is all in one direction":

... Virtually every one of them is shameful. If you care about the moral nature and intellectual viability of American Jewish life, they are actually frightening.

... I am accused of cruelty, intolerance, bigotry, hate, publicly humiliating someone, ignorance and more.  Yet, there is not a hint of any one of these things in my column.

... Other letters and comments accuse me of intolerance, bigotry, ignorance, transphobia, maligning, defamation, slander, xenophobia, foolishness, mean-spiritedness, inflicting “spiritual violence,” lacking compassion, anti-knowledge and more — all without providing a single example.

... It is these letters and comments that are filled with hate; it is these writers who intend to humiliate; it is these people who are intolerant of any view but their own.

And, yesterday he followed up with: "The moral and intellectual state of the Jewish left."

First, the low intellectual state. ... Bret Stephens ... succinctly put it recently in his Wall Street Journal column, “American academia is, by and large, idiotic.”

... characteristic No. 2: Instead of intellectual discourse, what we have is the dismissal of the decency of the left’s opponents. If you oppose the left, you are rarely debated. Instead you are dismissed as sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted and spewing hatred.

Third, and finally, there is a willingness to make up falsehoods in the service of progressive ideals.

Of course this isn't a problem just with the American Jewish left on the issue of male-female blurring, but with the left throughout the entire West over a wide range of issues.


[Via Blazing Cat Fur]

Universities as institutions of "higher learning loopy indocrination"

Further to my post below on Cultural Marxism, comes this related video essay (via sda) on the death of the liberal arts at our institutions of  higher learning indoctrination in loopy ideas:

Where's the gratitude?

Dennis Prager: "Gratitude is not a distinguishing left-wing trait."

Dennis Prager: American Values

Still The Last Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph

Don't count on luck

America, "Home of the Wimp"

Dennis Prager on the cancellation of day one of the GOP Convention:

Whoever decided to cancel one-fourth of the convention two days before it started should appear publicly and offer a rational defense of this decision. But I doubt they will. Because there is no rational explanation.

This is no Monday-morning quarterbacking. I said this decision was indefensible when it was first taken.

It is part of the undoing of the American claim to be the Home of the Brave. We are becoming the Home of the Wimp. ...

Seconded by Mark Steyn:  Rain of Terror

... The symbolism is wretched: Digging America out of its multi-trillion-dollar hole requires boldness and bravery, not a compliant safety-first mentality that shuts down the town on the first drop of rain. ...

"... leftism is a form of moral poison"

Dennis Prager:

... [leftism] causes otherwise decent and kind people ... to say and/or do cruel and sometimes evil things.

...a major new scholarly book, "Pathological Altruism" (Oxford University Press), explores this phenomenon of people wanting to do good things yet ending up doing bad. It applies to The New York Times ... columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who has a deep altruistic urge to bring peace to the Middle East. But because he sees the world through the liberal/left prism, he says morally reprehensible things ...

... Leftism poisons everything it influences -- from journalism to the arts to universities to religion to government to male-female relations. And ultimately leftism poisons character. This does not mean that everyone with left-wing views becomes a bad person [or] that everyone with conservative views is a good person....

... But it does mean that leftism leads to pathologic altruism, ...  Just as Mahatma Gandhi's hatred of violence led him to tell the Jews of Europe not to resist Hitler, so too has leftism led decent people who would weep at Israel's destruction to mouth the very same lies about Israel as those who seek its annihilation.

Ok, that sort of fits with the idea that much, if not most, of what passes for "altruism" is narcissistic do-goodism, mainly a trait of the left. Perhaps that (plus the malign sentiments and consequences) is what makes it "pathological" (and leftist).