Does "Leftism" Destroy Everything It Touches? Or Is That Just Another Slogan from P.U.?

One of my moms friends on Facebook shared some Dennis Prager stuff today. Is that the target demographic? I haven't seen anyone rush to defend Prager. 6 even seemed luke-warm.

 

7. Race. Prager opens with the astonishing statement that "America has become the least racist multracial society in world history." "The most"--not even one of the most--and in all world history? Given the sorry history of slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings,and the Trail of Tears, Selma, and the "long hot summers" of the sixties, not to mention more recent events in Charleston, Ferguson, Chicago and other parts of the country Mass racial violence in the United States - Wikipedia , this statement certainly deserves further clarification, documentation, indicators, and measures, but Prager gives none at all. What other "multiracial societies" is he talking about? South Africa? Canada? Malaysia? Singapore? Brazil? Cuba? We just don't know. It's my impression that the United States has made significant progress in race relations, but the progress has encountered backlash recently and the road is still rocky.
Viewpoint: Why racism in US is worse than in Europe
America is still a deeply racist country | Chris Arnade
Yes, we elected an African-American president, which is an achievement not many (any?) countries could match for a racial minority. In 2008, he received 43% of the white vote, and in 2012 it was 40 %. Yet early on Obama encountered intense white opposition, fueled by Birtherism, and In 2016, Trump was able to play on white anxieties during his campaign.

Prager tells us that "The Left constantly poisons young minds with angry diatribes about systematic racism, microaggressions and white privilege." This strikes me as a modern day version of the antebellum nineteenth centruy southern myth of the "happy darkie" and the 1960s claim that unrest over civil rights was the work of "outside agitators". I have no doubt that some politicians, media figures and university professors on the left play up identity issues to advance their agendass against the establishment. On the other hand, it appears that white identity politics is an even more potent political force, largely explaining how Trump became President. The Rise of White Identity Politics https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/05/03/the-rise-of-white-identity-politics/ White identity politics is about more than racism
To ignore white identitarian politics, as Prager does, and to focus exclusively on progressive encouragement of non-white identity is to provide a distorted picture of racial politics in the United States.

 

Americans are not racist, the republican party is only lily white because black people don't appreciate the KKK. Its a cultural difference.

 

"It’s sole purpose is to convert young people to conservatism through short, easily sharable videos. The biggest issue with PragerU is that the videos present opinions (all of which are actually really old arguments that young people in particular-PragerU’s target audience-may not have heard yet) on provocative questions many people have, as if those opinions were facts."
https://www.quora.com/How-factual-are-the-videos-made-by-Prager-University
Prager U Will Make You Dumber — Dan From The Internet
Does Prager University Understand... Anything? - Paul McElligott Dot Com

 

Prager University is another example of a wealth sponsored con game, its rich people trying to buy the way people think.

Prager University is an exempt 501(c)(3) organization, so it is difficult to know who is funding it because it isn’t required to publicly name its donors.

But some have done the research and found that its largest sponsors are Dan and Farris Wilks, who are known for using the fortune they made from the fracking boom to fund extreme right-wing (and conservative Christian) causes. The two are reportedly worth an estimated $1.4 billion apiece.

Up to 2015 the Prager University had received some $6,550,000 from the Wilks family (so probably more by now)

And as someone has pointed out PragerU has produced many videos that “attack climate change and renewable energies while pushing dirty fuel with eye-rolling titles like Why You Should Love Fossil Fuels and Fossil Fuels: The Greenest Energy.)” as well as promote a very conservative Christian messages.

Other sponsors include a lot of right wing foundations and ‘charity’ organisations - the Lynde and Harry Bradley foundation, the Robert and Nina Rosenthal Foundation, the Milstein Family Foundation, the Sid and Carol Verdoorn Foundation, the Morgan Family Foundation along with a number of ‘dark money’ charity organisations like Donors Trust, which has been referred to as “the ATM of the Koch brothers,”

Those that pay the piper call the tune

We are talking about serious money here, been given with the serious intent of brainwashing the unwary and gullible.

It always amazes me that people can complain about the wealthy establishment and crony capitalism and in the very next breath praise something like Prager University which is a wealth sponsored tool of crony capitalism.

 

I'm pretty sure there are black politicians in the republican party.
They also get votes from black people. A minority i take it but still

 

They pay a few to stick around, so they can actually say they are not racist. Forty years of extensive studies concluded the republican party organizes like chickens, and these are almost universally white, including the KKK leaders. To even suggest that merely because these assholes call themselves Libertarians means their leaders are not all KKK Neo-Nazi Fundamentalists and lily white is about as lowbrow as it gets. The Libertarian party is the fucking KKK.

 

#8. The Boy Scouts. "The Left" is at it again, Prager tells us: destroying the Boy Scouts, which "shaped tens of millions of boys into independent, strong, good men." Now that the Boy Scouts admits girls, it isn't the Boy Scouts anymore--it's just the Scouts. And what does "the Left" put in its place? Nothing! "Here's the thing about the Left. It only destroys, it doesn't build." Here we see "the Left" once again portrayed as some kind of monolithic entity that goes about systematically pursuing an agenda of destruction. Prager wants us to believe, implausibly, that this is the same "Left" that was behind taking the picture of Shakespeare our of the hall at the University of Pennsylvania and making those sculptures of gold toilets for the Guggenheim was out to get the Boy Scouts. Of course, this is sloppy thinking. Note also a blurring of the distinction between "Liberals" and "the Left" that seemed to be so important earlier in the lecture. And we are supposed to believe that the Boy Scouts itself had nothing to do with the problems. I think instead that the Boy Scouts, like most other things, was caught in currents of cultural change. Like King Canute, it tried in vain to resist the tides, and then decided to join them. Whether the Scouts have been "destroyed" or strengthened by these changes is a matter of opinion.

Let me just say I think the Boy Scouts has been a wonderful organization, although I never got beyond an evening of Cub Scouting where I learned to tie a square knot. The Scouts instilled a code of strong traditional moral principles in its young charges, including a pledge "To do my duty to God and my country" and "To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight." Inevitably, the "God" part was challenged by atheist and agnostic parents wanting their kids to join, and the "straight" part became embroiled in the eligibility of homosexuals for membership. The Boy Scout Handbook says that "A Scout is Reverent" means that "A Scout is reverent towards God. He is faithful in his religious duties.." This was important to some of the organization's powerful constituencies: the Mormon Church, which until recently had a century-old relationship with BSA, accounting for about one-fifth of its membership,; the United Methodist church, the second largest scouting partner, which views the scouts as one of its ministries; and the Roman Catholic Church, which was concerned that the BSA might become an organization for Protestant proselytizing. The Scouts is a private organization and the courts have upheld its right to exclude whomever it pleases from membership. But in doing so, there are consequences. Major corporate sponsors withdrew or cut back funding; religious groups like the United Churches of Christ, Unitarian Universalists, and Reformed Judaism challenged its policies Eventually the organization came around, so now there are (gasp) girls in the Scouts, just as there are women in the Marines. Will scouting crumble? Wait and see.

As for "the Left" only destroying, not building, "The Left", an ideological construct, is incapable of destroying or building anything. But individuals whom Prager would undoubtedly have labelled "Leftists" (if he didn't use the "Liberal" loophole to exempt them) created much of our Civil Rights Legislation and case law on civil liberties, over the opposition of actors ordinarily classified with "the Right".

 

#9. Male-Female Relations. Prager tells us that "the Left is committed to ending male and female as distinct categories". This is supposedly a bad thing because "gender confusion ends up producing confused people and a confused society." Once again he wrongly portrays "The Left" as a monolith on the issue, when it is really a minority of culture warriors who are pushing "gender neutrality" and "gender fluidity" It is simply inaccurate to say that "the Left" as a whole wants to do this. Significant numbers of progressives are worried that gender neutrality is competing with the progressive goal of gender equality which requires recognition of gender differences and the particular situation of women. I'm relatively progressive on some issues and am willing to be a good sport about calling people what they want to be called, but I value masculinity and femininity as complementary, biologically based qualities. The issue isn't one of my priorities, and I'm afraid that pushing it will lead to more political correctness and backlash. Predictably, the gender neutrality movement has made headway mainly on the coasts, leaving Red States like Oklahoma largely unscathed. And of course there are different aspects of gender neutrality that present different issues and have different constituencies: gender neutral language; restrooms; documents like birth certificates, drivers licenses, and passports; school curricula; parenting, etc., each involving different levels of regulatory action . I doubt that this movement has legs.

 

To recap

(1) universities;

Prager is disingenuous and misleading

(2) the arts;

Subjective (and he prefers old art to new art)

(3) literature;

He is disingenuous and misleading (and should we still be enthralled to a poet that died 403 years ago?)

(4) late night TV;

Subjective (he prefers old conservative tv to modern and often edgy tv, and in the US it’s down to the market)

(5) religion;

He is disingenuous and misleading totally ignoring the Religious Right

(6) free speech;

He is disingenuous and misleading

(7) race;

He is disingenuous and misleading (seems blind to the racial problems facing the US, preferring myth to reality)

(8) the Boy Scouts;

He is disingenuous and misleading (and is being more inclusive by allowing girls and homosexuals into the scouts a bad thing?)

(9) male-female relations.

I think his position would best be summed up as –‘I don’t like it’ - and if tolerance, acceptance and understanding needs to be ditched to get things back the way he wants, then so be it.

*

Basically this is a well-paid propagandist for right wing conservative causes who rails against a changing world in favour of a story of a nice conservative past that never existed.

 

He is a man of his time, a time with no real government to keep the wolves at bay.

 

Thanks for the summary. I wonder why he stopped at nine. Seems to me he omitted the Left's war on Christmas. Anyhow, I undertook this dismal task in response to a challenge by TrudginAcrossTheTundra, who posted Prager's video on an unlikely thread about Lauren Southern's Borderless video as apparently the definitive answer to Leftism. "Really want to expose that "bad man" and his "false claims"? He said. "Go through the video (the left ruins everything) point by point and put together a counter point for each point of his. Without disparaging any person in the process, just the ideas. Let's see how well that turns out." Well, voila. I think I've made a prima facie case that the "bad Man's" arguments are vapid. If his defenders really want to defend his false claims, go through my refutations point by point and put together a counter argument for each point. Notice after his brief cameo appearance, TrudginAcrossTheTundra said: "Okay, we're done here", using the lame excuse that I apparently offended him when Isaid I'd prefer to be middle class than rich if people were in need. Typical.


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I was wondering why you made this whole thread about Prager, because who gives a shit about Prager. It's a small wonder to me how someone like this gains any social mobility in our society. He exists solely because people indoctrinated into the Republican party need to be told what to think. A complete sham.

 

Okie

Thanks again for putting in the work - and as usual the right wingers are too lazy to counter.

I read that these Prager videos have been purposely pitched at younger audiences it’s simplistic because it’s aimed at school kids.

But as I’ve said what amazes me is that adults fall for these types of unsophisticated even infantile arguments.

I think many on the right seem to think there is a right wing privilege, a private law, which dictates that they never have to back up what they say or believe in but their opponents do.

It’s led to a situation where they don’t think for themselves any more, they don’t have to study, they don’t have to question, and they don’t have to feel or seek understanding or wonder, they have become intellectually moribund.

It brings to mind a sci-fi story I once read in which people stopped procreating naturally and just cloned themselves, but as the clones took over it became clear they had no spark on imagination and no empathy. Progress stopped, nothing new was created, and things fell apart and got run down and the clones did nothing to stop it.

 

We have never had a real left in the US, and won’t till we get money out of politics period.
As long as those with wealth can buy the soul of our society, meaningful social programs will struggle. The hippies came as close as ever to living without the effect of corrosive wealth, and then came Ronald Regan who put the brakes on social progress. A number of years ago I heard a respected economist in Missoula, MT say take the right wing excess would ultimately lead to socialism. We are ready!!!

 

We have never had a real left in the US, and won’t till we get money out of politics period.
As long as those with wealth can buy the soul of our society, meaningful social programs will struggle. The hippies came as close as ever to living without the effect of corrosive wealth, and then came Ronald Regan who put the brakes on social progress. A number of years ago I heard a respected economist in Missoula, MT say take the right wing excess would ultimately lead to socialism. We are ready!!!

 

You can't get money out of politics, the best you can hope for is to limit its influence, and that's never going to happen until the American people actually start storming the palace with knives and pitch forks. That's what they call a "commie conspiracy".

 

Its CALLED BEING AMERICAN

 

Being American is a good name for it.

 

BTW i have nothing against the Americans and I know nothing about PragerU that was Just a JOKE.