There’s a difference between thoughtful analysis and the hyperbole of a radio talk show host.
Spot the mistakes.
Speaking at the “Salute to GOP Governors” sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition Tuesday in Minneapolis, Jewish radio talk show host Dennis Prager said that though “Republican Jews don’t have a monopoly on nice people, we have a monopoly on wisdom - to discern the difference between good and evil, and how to fight it.
Expressing his support for the Republican ticket, Prager said “Auschwitz was not liberated by peace activists. Gandhi said to the Jews of Europe ‘do not resist Hitler.’ There’s a difference between wisdom and feeling good about yourself. I dare say that the American military brought more goodness on earth than all political science professors put together.”
1) Ghandi is often considered Lincolnesque, a bitter complaint made by the leader of the Untouchables, Ambedkar. To mistake Ghandi for a hippy is just plain silliness, despite this bizarre quote.
2) FDR was not–the last time I checked–a Republican.
3) Churchill was a true idealistic moderate conservative, certainly not some crazy Neocon or corrupt industrialist. To compare the Bush administration to this great man is wicked. To compare McCain to Churchill is risible.
4) The Iraq War is nothing like WWII.
14 comments
No, FDR was not a Republican, but as you know he could have done a lot more to end the Holocaust or to frustrate it, not to mention allowing more Jews onto our shores before the Holocaust…The Ghandhi quote is because Ghandi blamed the Jews for the Holocaust. He believed that by fighting back they lost the right to be innocent victims of the Nazis. And I can debate where the Iraq war is very much like WWII and how Churchill is like McCain - not so much like GWB. As you can tell, I respect Prager very much…
Prager. Feh.
What they do have in common (liberal Democrats and those who did nothing or advocated collaboration with the Nazis) is that they are not uneducated bumpkins without knowledge of the world but very much educated intellectual people, yet have a fanatic purposeful ignorance of reality in order to be right, not do right, and to win and get their way.
It is not different with their endless appeasement of Israel’s enemies. In the minds of the public who are not so specifically educated, Israel’s history jumps from Jesus to the Crusades to the mid 1960s. They know nothing of Ben-Gurion, know nothing of the Roman sacking of Jerusalem, the number of crusades, the initial movement of the Muslims against the various Arab, Persian, African, and Indian peoples which included conquering the area, they know nothing of the centuries in between Jesus and last week, really.
The liberal elite have zero excuses. The historical documentation sits collecting dust on university shelves where they schooled and is easily available. It makes clear that there was no coherent or even amorphous “Palestinian people” much less a state. The linguistic and cultural evidence is overwhelming that the majority of so-called Palestinians are at most just a few generations removed from ancestors who called everywhere EXCEPT Palestine their home from Egypt to where modern day Syria, Jordan, Qatar, and other places like that are. There are numerous first person historical accounts that the area was repeatedly sacked, let go to seed and pot, allowed to rot, and only when local economic considerations attracted people did they bother moving there. Not surprising when everyone from the Romans to Mohammed’s successors to Saladin to the Crusaders to the Ottomans traipsed through and beat the entire place into disaster like clockwork for almost two thousand years.
In the mind of the intellectuals who should know better, Israel was practically founded yesterday by a bunch of Jews from the USA who descended from Holocaust victims and done by displacing a rich and vibrant homogeneous Palestinian culture with two thousand years of history as victims of the above named people (but never the Muslims or even Romans, only the Crusaders, the Brits, and now the Jews). No such thing is true but that’s basically the insane picture these highly educated people with no excuse for not knowing history portray.
They similarly had a completely a-historical mindset of willful ignorance and self-chosen naivete towards southeast Asia, eastern Communism, and Viet Nam. They engaged in the same deceptive twaddle with Nazi Germany. They change names from one thing to another. We’ve called these airhead know-it-all intellectuals who give higher education a bad name by many epithets. Today we call them American liberals.
Prager is wrong about a monopoly on wisdom, but thanks to the anti-everything reactionary arrogant egomaniacal intellectual set, they’ve been set on the the right side of the issues more often than not. Yet again, there’s no excuse for the inane anti-reality blather from them, as they are well enough exposed and privileged enough to know better.
Worse yet, as educated as they are with such privilege they have in access to information, they do the entire human race a disservice to keep promoting disinformation on everything simply for their own selfish shallow superficial ends. They make the street clowns of the right wing look like geniuses and that just eliminates anyone being in the right and ensures wrong being done to all.
of course FDR was not a Republican…he was a socialist
why am i in moderation?
Not sure…maybe because when you used to post as Fran, I put you there, but I thought I took you out of moderation. If it happens again, I will figure out why. Stick with Shlomo though from now on, okay? One moniker per person, dude.
of course FDR was not a Republican…he was a socialist
Nah. He had definite social-democratic leanings, of course. Like me!
just figured to spice it up by changing the name every 6 months or so…didnt mean to break ne rules
No, he was a socialist, as many are today. The Democratic party is socialist, but they are loathed to admit it. The idea that the STATE should control our lives frightens me, and should frighten all Jews.
Jeff, if FDR was socialist, and if the Democratic party is socialist, how would you define the difference between a hardline socialist and a social-democrat?
Is Amsterdam socialist or social-democratic? Does Amsterdam seem a place where the government is placing undue burdens and restraints on the rights of the individual?
The Democratic party is socialist? I don’t think so! I wish it was still socialist (or at least quasi-).
Gore Vidal was once asked by one of the network news organizations to offer commentary on a Presidential debate. While on the air, he said something along the lines of, “There’s no longer any significant difference between the Democratic and Republican parties.” They never asked him back.
This was the Kennedy/Nixon debate in 1960!
I don’t understand this post. Where in the excerpt did Prager compare Ghandi to a hippie? What does FDR have to do with what Prager said? What are the essential differences between our present war and WWII that you think Prager doesn’t recognize?
Ichabod Chrain,
Ghandi was not merely a “peace activist.” He was a nationalist leader. There is a serious difference. That his methods were non-violent does not make him a “peace activist.” He sought victory against the British, not peace.
Prager is saying that Republicans only can be trusted. But Roosevelt was a Democrat, and so was Truman.
The differences between these wars? I see very few similarities. This war looks much more like Vietnam. A Civil War. Except we actually enabled it.
DK, you do harm to Prager’s ideas and words. He has often stated, like many former Democrats - that the Democrat party changed under LBJ and does not reflect what it once did. That is true. When he talks about the Democrats not being trusted, he is speaking of the current party - not history and many times he has bemoaned the fact that the left hijacked liberalism (notice small l) and no longer reflects the views of JFK and earlier Democrats. I believe he is correct and not the first to believe this.
DK,
Prager didn’t say that Ghandi was merely a peace activist. As I read what he said, he was addressing a comment Ghandi made. Say what you want about Ghadni, but Prager was right to criticize his comment.
Prager said Republicans know the difference between good and evil and how to fight it. Okay so maybe he should have said Republicans and Dems like Lieberman, Ed Koch, Zell Miller and a handful of others. But his point was the Dems now are the Moveon.org/peace activist crowd.
As far as the differences between WW2 and Iraq, the only thing Prager said was about who didn’t liberate Ausxchwitz. You didn’t address his point.
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