“The religious have a belief in God-based moral law, and the Left believes in man-made law as the moral law. [W]hereas they cannot change God’s laws, those on the Left can and do make many of society’s laws. In fact, the Left is intoxicated with law-making. It gives them the power to mold society just as Judeo-Christian values did in the past. Unless one understands that leftist ideals function as a religion, one cannot understand the Left. Laws are the Left’s vehicles to earthly salvation.” –Dennis Prager
13 thoughts on “Dennis Prager on religion, law, and the left”
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I don’t understand this quotation. Why the contrast between the “religious” and the “left?” There are religious people who are both to the left and the right, and likewise with non-religious folk. It’s like contrasting the religious against the left-handed.
Also, I don’t know anyone who is “left” or “liberal” who thinks that civil law somehow equates to or constitutes moral law. The Orthodox Christians are vitally interested in molding society (abortion, homosexual marriage, etc.) into a Judeo-Christian model through laws, yet the “left” are accused of that very thing. And again, I don’t know of anyone on the left for whom “leftist ideals function as a religion,” though I suppose that personal ideals are for all people a reflection of their worldviews.
“the Left is intoxicated with law-making”
They aren’t the only ones… We Republicans spend our days making plenty of needless, useless laws as well.
You guys are missing Prager’s point. He is arguing that the moral precepts of the Judeo/Christianity provided checks on behaviors apart from the law. Putting it another way, when the cultural concensus was Judeo/Christian, less moral confusion existed so less laws were necessary that impact and govern human behavior. The cultural left (think beyond just “Democrat” Dean), lacking this religious base seeks to construct a new concensus based on legal activism, which, Prager argues, also functions as a religion. It’s a philosophical point with political/cultural ramifications, not merely a political point alone.
“A day in the life of Joe Democrat”
Joe gets up at 6:00 AM and does all the stuff Joe Republican does, because armies of ignorant Republican jarheads, spurred on by evil Republican warlord politicians, defended America, her freedom, her values, and her interests from totalitarian despots who wouldn’t have cared if the Americans they tried to conquer and enslave were Democrats or Republicans… and did this by putting their lives on the line.
It’s “A Few Good Men” all over again.
Fr. Hans writes: “He is arguing that the moral precepts of the Judeo/Christianity provided checks on behaviors apart from the law.”
Then I don’t to which law he refers. In the “olden days” we had laws against homosexual activity, and against adultery. There were much stricter laws governing divorce. We had prohibition. We had laws banning birth control, and even a law defining contraceptive information as obscene. There were laws against obscenity, against abortion. The list goes on and on.
It seems to me that a more accurate description is that the Judeo/Christian tradition was enshrined in laws promoted by religious people.
Father Jacobse: I’m not sure I understand Parger’s argument. The only way “God-based moral law” could replace “man made law” is either if America became a theocracy, or we forcibly converted every member of society to a Judeo-Christian faith and were successful in persuading them to accept its values.
Hopefully, and ideally, the religious values of our citizenry will inform and guide our man-made laws. But because our society is diverse and herterogenous, man made law has to result from a process of consensus and agreement among people from various backgrounds with differing views.
Bottom line: I don’t think that there is a deliberate effort to set up a “secular-humanist” value system to compete with and challenge Judeo-Christian beliefs. Rather, the need to attain consensus means keeping laws neutral with respect to religion, and substituting an alternate value system that can apply to all members of society.
Dean presents us with an interesting world, in which, were it not for liberals we would eat poisoned food, drink poisoned water, breath poisoned air, bath with poisonous products, not get needed medication, …
Gee, I must be alive today because some liberal made it possible. Thanks, Mr. or Ms. Liberal 😉
[BTW, nice link Dean, especially that photoshoped picture showing a weather reporter being smashed in the head with a 2×4 while reporting a storm. Is that what passes for liberal humor?]
Come on folks, all this completely misses the point that Dennis Prager was raising, which Fr. Jacobse made clear above. Furthermore, I think moral law can also be referred to as Natural Law, which is very well described by J. Budziszewski in his book “What We Can’t Not Know” that one can read about here . Religious faith is not necessary to know these things, so we do not need to establish a theocracy to know that it is wrong to lie, cheat, steal, or murder.
Dean, you day “Bottom line: I don’t think that there is a deliberate effort to set up a “secular-humanist” value system to compete with and challenge Judeo-Christian beliefs.” you go on to say, “Rather, the need to attain consensus means keeping laws neutral with respect to religion, and substituting an alternate value system that can apply to all members of society”
Part I of your statement while it may not be as pervasive as many believe, does in fact exist and many groups such as the ACLU, many atheist organizations, homosexual activists and other left wing political groups have made it quite clear what their intent is,i.e., the force all people of faith out of the public arena, especially Christians.
Part II: Jesus said many times in many ways that we are either with Him or against Him, there is no neutral position. To ratify the truth of His statement, all I have to do is meditate on my own day and examine the choices I made and why.
Well, Dean, every now and then the warlords let the bleeding hearts have a go.
Michael writes: “many groups such as the ACLU, many atheist organizations, homosexual activists and other left wing political groups have made it quite clear what their intent is,i.e., the force all people of faith out of the public arena, especially Christians.”
I have a hard time understanding this viewpoint. No doubt there are such groups; I suppose for any point of view there are advocates. But in general I don’t think this is the case.
In fact, the opposite seems to be the current trend. Here are some examples drawn from my own experience and observation:
1) the existence of a large number of Christian radio stations, either fundamentalist or Catholic. I know of no liberal Christian stations.
2) both Catholic and fundamentalist TV networks. No liberal Christian network.
3) a cable access system that, here at least, is dominated by religious (translation: fundamentalist) programming.
4) uncountable Christian web sites and internet resources.
5) numerous Christian publishing companies.
6) a president whose favorite “political philosopher” is “Jesus Christ,” and a general who sees the war in Iraq as a battle between Allah and Yahweh. Obviously, I root for Yahweh, but would prefer that the issue not be framed in those terms in the first place.
7) a large portion of the Republican party that has been taken over by conservative Christians, mostly fundamentalists.
8) I get evangelized on the street all the time, and on my own doorstep on occasion.
9) the existence of large numbers of tax-exempt churches. I live in a fairly small city, and there are 5 large churches, a Christian bookstore, a Catholic social service agency, a Christian food distribution center, a Salvation Army, and a pizza restaurant that plays “Jesus music” within a mile of where I live.
10) billions of tax dollars going to support Israel, a large Israel lobby, and possibly government officials passing information to Israel.
11) on top of all that, the murderous Islamic folks for whom every atrocity is automatically approved by Allah.
12) even the liberal Christians have their own “causes.” Indeed, now in America it seems that one cannot in any sense be any kind of Christian without also having a political agenda that God approves of.
The net effect for me is that I end up getting sick of the whole idea of religion. My entire contact with anything religious at this point consists of reading a couple web sites, including this one. It is difficult even to read a book on Christing history without thinking mostly of what it has become. It becomes difficult even to think about Jesus without picturing him in the company of the vile George Bush, Pat Robertson holding an abortion protest sign, and some fundamentalist reminding me that I’m going to burn in hell forever.
At this point I honestly feel like something has been stolen from me. It’s like living in an abusive, but religious family, where the whole concept of religion becomes associated
with the abuse. On the other hand, I’m not interested in the ravings of the atheists, seeing Janet Jackson’s boob, or listening to Howard Stern.
I think that perhaps I have become that most rare of creatures — someone who simply wants a normal life that includes God but does not include most of his followers or his detractors. To that end, were religion to move from the public to the private realm, that would be fine with me.
So if more people were ethical, government would need to intrude less? This seems sensible enough: there would be no need for police officers if there were no thieves. So if everyone in the United States decided to hoard their money and even churches decided to stop providing assistance to those in need, would the government then have a greater responsibility to provide this? Many conservatives would argue otherwise, it seems.
I don’t think that liberals are trying to define a new morality through legislation. This would be insanity (jaywalking is immoral because it’s illegal but abortion is moral because it’s legal?). They do, however, wish to place restrictions on what areas of morality may properly be addressed by the government. I may think drug use or lying to one’s mother is immoral, but I’m not sure that the government has the right or duty to punish both (or either).
In general, it would be nice for all denominations to back off from politics and instructing their faithful how to better live the “Judeo-Christian” ethic as individuals. Right now, it seems we are being encouraged to believe in Christianity not because it’s true, but because it will serve our political ends.
I think Prager is viewing the Left as historically skeptical or non-believers, going back to the French Revolution. But it was clear that even though the great leftist intellectuals thought they had “freed” themselves from faith, they quickly substituted new ideologies that functioned the same way, such as socialism, anarchism, communism, fascism, Nazism. Even if these have all faded from the scene, that quasi-religious feeling drives liberals and radicals to be every bit as “irrational” as they accuse believers of being. And they always want the reins of government so they can tell us all how to live. Of course, this is what they accuse the religious right of doing. But I think that religious people long ago ceased trying to control anything but are merely engaged in moral self-defense at this point. The secularists have won.
Carol, the French Enlightenment thinkers did not even escape Christianity as thoroughly as they thought either. Check out this great book (one of my favorites): The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers by Carl Becker.