Why let Chicago, Detroit and New York have all the fun? Hawaii corruption by the party of crime also deserves <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ex-hawaii-senator-sentenced-to-40-months-for-taking-bribes/ar-AAZeUqu">a little attention</a>.


	English announced he was retiring last year due to health issues. His retirement will have to take place behind bars.

<blockquote>
	
		Former Senate Majority Leader J. Kalani English, 55, pleaded guilty to honest services wire fraud in February, admitting he accepted bribes from a Hawaii business owner in exchange for shaping legislation that would benefit a company involved in publicly financed cesspool conversion projects...

	
		English “peddled the power and influence of his position as a Hawaii State Senator and Majority Leader to enrich himself and betray the trust bestowed upon him by those he was elected to serve,” U.S. prosecutors said in a sentencing memo urging the judge to send him to prison for three-and-a-half years.

	
		The sentence, a little more than three years, must send a “stern and lasting message” that corruption of elected officials will be punished, the memo said.
</blockquote>


	Not all that long ago, English was <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/news/hawaii-obamas-birthplace-and-refuge/">praising</a> Obama.

<blockquote>
	
		“Hawaiians love Obama,” says J. Kalani English, a Democratic state senator. “He is one of us — he understands what aloha is, he understand what mana is.”&nbsp;
</blockquote>


	Obama and English both understand<a href="https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/07/feds-want-former-hawaii-lawmaker-who-took-bribes-to-spend-more-than-3-years-in-prison/"> "mana"</a> really well.

<blockquote>
	
		English pleaded guilty in February and&nbsp;admitted to accepting cash and other payments&nbsp;totaling more than $18,000 from Honolulu businessman Milton Choy. English leaked documents related to a wastewater working group to Choy in exchange for cash payments. He also accepted more money to first introduce, and then kill a bill that could have benefitted Choy’s business.

	
		“As the investigation progressed it became astoundingly clear that no matter the legislative ask, the answer from English would almost certainly be ‘yes.’ English’s behavior signaled that it was systemically normal for him to accept, and indeed expect, financial benefits in return for legislative favors,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Sorenson wrote in a sentencing memorandum Friday.
</blockquote>


	And the party may just be<a href="https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/02/honolulu-businessman-milton-choy-had-been-working-for-years-with-feds-on-legislative-bribery-case/"> getting started</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		Choy is a prolific donor, as are his immediate family members and business associates. Choy, his family members, and his employees from various companies have donated more than $356,000 to political campaigns since 2014, according to campaign finance data. Of that, Choy has contributed more than $160,000 to the elections and reelections of numerous Democrats.

	
		Choy himself has donated to 55 campaigns — including 29 sitting lawmakers — since 2014. Money has gone to former Gov. Neil Abercrombie and current Gov. David Ige. He has most recently contributed to former Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s campaign for governor, and to Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s campaign.
</blockquote>


	Culture of corruption.

Hawaii Senate Dem Majority Leader Gets 3 Years in Prison for Bribery

Why let Chicago, Detroit and New York have all the fun? Hawaii corruption by the party of crime also deserves a little attention.


	English announced he

Hawaii Senate Dem Majority Leader Gets 3 Years in Prison for Bribery

Dumping the country's oil reserves was the only strategy to lower energy prices that Biden would accept. He continues blocking domestic drilling and taxes remain high. The practical impact&nbsp;of the reserve releases was negligible and, worse still, 5 million barrels of oil from the reserve were actually <a href="https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/oil-from-u.s.-reserves-sent-overseas-as-gasoline-prices-stay-high">exported abroad</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		More than 5 million barrels of oil that were part of a historic U.S. emergency reserves release to lower domestic fuel prices were exported to Europe and Asia last month, according to data and sources, even as U.S. gasoline and diesel prices hit record highs.

	
		About 1 million barrels per day is being released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) through October. The flow is draining the SPR, which last month fell to the lowest since 1986.&nbsp;
</blockquote>


	Considering the scale of even the national use, 20 million a day, there was never going to be much of an impact here.

<blockquote>
	
		U.S. officials have said oil prices could be higher if the SPR had not been tapped.
</blockquote>


	Ah, the hypothetical.&nbsp;


	Anyway the oil went all over.

<blockquote>
	
		The fourth-largest U.S. oil refiner, Phillips 66&nbsp;PSX.N, shipped about 470,000 barrels of sour crude from the Big Hill SPR storage site in Texas to Trieste, Italy, according to U.S. Customs data. Trieste is home to a pipeline that sends oil to refineries in central Europe.

	
		Atlantic Trading &amp; Marketing (ATMI), an arm of French oil major TotalEnergies&nbsp;TTEF.PA, exported 2 cargoes of 560,000 barrels each, the data showed.

	
		Cargoes of SPR crude were also headed to the Netherlands and to a Reliance&nbsp;RELI.NS&nbsp;refinery in India, an industry source said. A third cargo headed to China, another source said.
</blockquote>


	Yes, the story wouldn't be complete without China. Much like the PPP disaster, the government efforts invariably only punish Americans and reward Communist China.

Barrels of Oil Released by Biden From Reserve Were Sent to China

Dumping the country's oil reserves was the only strategy to lower energy prices that Biden would accept. He continues blocking domestic drilling and taxes

Barrels of Oil Released by Biden From Reserve Were Sent to China

Racist DOJ official&nbsp;Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke announced that the Biden administration is targeting Arizona for trying to prevent non-citizens from voting.


	At issue is an Arizona law asking voters to show proof of citizenship. What should be an elementary and common sense requirement is being opposed by the Biden administration, officially on technical grounds, but as a practical matter because it is trying to protect voter fraud.


	Why fight against asking voters to show a legal right to vote unless...


	1. They are your voters


	2. You believe that they don't have a legal right to vote


	“The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona is dedicated to protecting voters in the state,” said U.S. Attorney Gary M. Restaino for the District of Arizona. “We are proud to join the Civil Rights Division in bringing this lawsuit to ensure that all eligible citizens in Arizona have the opportunity to register to vote and exercise their fundamental right to participate in our elections.”&nbsp;


	Voters have the right to vote. And they have the right to protect the legitimacy of their vote by passing common sense voter tests to fight fraud.

Biden Administration's Racist DOJ Official Seeks to Protect Non-Citizen Voting in Arizona

Racist DOJ official&nbsp;Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke announced that the Biden administration is targeting Arizona for trying to prevent non-

Biden Administration's Racist DOJ Official Seeks to Protect Non-Citizen Voting in Arizona

Democrats want to make the midterms about abortion. There's one big problem. Americans are upset about the economy and don't care about abortion.&nbsp;


	In the latest <a href="https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/MonmouthPoll_US_070522/">Monmouth poll</a>,&nbsp;33% of Americans rank inflation as their top concern while 15% list gas prices. 9% mention the economy and 6% grocery prices. And only 5% list abortion.


	Over 70% list various economic concerns. Social hot button issues are on the back burner. So is national security. And the second amendment.


	57% also say that the actions of the federal government have hurt them, only 8% say that they have helped them.


	So much for the abortion or BLM or gender identity midterms. When people can't afford to eat or drive, they don't care about the hot button issues.

33% of Americans Worry About Inflation, 15% Gas Prices, 5% Abortion

Democrats want to make the midterms about abortion. There's one big problem. Americans are upset about the economy and don't care about abortion.&nbsp;

33% of Americans Worry About Inflation, 15% Gas Prices, 5% Abortion

For the past few years, the entertainment industry inhabited a strange world in which massive amounts of streaming programming were unleashed on an unprecedented level. Led by Netflix, Amazon&nbsp;and followed by tradiitional&nbsp;industry competitors like Disney&nbsp;and HBO Max, the sheer amount of money being spent was astronomical, in the billions, and the hours of programming, the number of shows made it Peak TV.


	And then Netflix and its business model crashed.


	In the familiar Dot Com pattern, a whole lot of money was chasing the promise of endless growth that would usher in its own business model. Now the crash <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-07-04/the-age-of-peak-tv-is-ending-an-age-of-austerity-is-beginning">has ended Peak TV.</a>

<blockquote>
	
		The sudden decline in Netflix’s share price&nbsp;and the&nbsp;growing fear of a recession&nbsp;have forced&nbsp;Hollywood into a new period of fiscal austerity. This manifests in ways big and small. A TV director who made&nbsp;$4 million a year is now getting $750,000. Mid-budget movies are being shelved. Broadcast TV budgets have dropped more than 30%...

	
		This is a significant departure from&nbsp;the last few years when&nbsp;media companies tripped over themselves to produce any halfway decent idea. The industry made 559 scripted shows last year, up more than 200 since 2013, the year “House of Cards” debuted...

	
		But the age of peak TV is coming&nbsp;to a close, and that will impact&nbsp;almost every sector of an industry where budgets, valuations and strategic plans were predicated on a booming&nbsp;market for new programming.&nbsp;

	
		Just a few months ago, any production company with a few credits to its name was suddenly worth&nbsp;hundreds of millions of dollars. (It helped if you were aligned with a celebrity like&nbsp;Reese Witherspoon&nbsp;or LeBron James.) Now many of the companies looking to raise capital or sell themselves are&nbsp;having a harder time.
</blockquote>


	Did Hollywood nuke its own business model?


	Streaming was supposed to be the future. Hollywood cannibalized its theatrical business for streaming. Every studio either tried to become Netflix or market to it. Or both.


	What's the future now? The plan to have every studio sell membership to its gated subscription service looks increasingly shaky especially in a troubled economy. Amazon and Netflix still want to be the dominant platform. Hollywood tried to compete with them and the result broke everyone.&nbsp;


	The entertainment industry can't grow further without China. And China wants to grow its own industry. And investors will now be skeptical of dot com promises of infinite growth.&nbsp;


	 
	&nbsp;

Hollywood Nuked Itself

For the past few years, the entertainment industry inhabited a strange world in which massive amounts of streaming programming were unleashed on an

Hollywood Nuked Itself

Thanks to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, young women are confronting some basic truths about men and women that feminism has denied for the last half-century.


	Like other left-wing movements, feminism is based on a denial of reality (or, if you prefer, on lies). The best-known example is the feminist insistence that, except for physical differences, men and women are basically the same. This includes the central feminist belief about men's and women's sexual natures. For half a century, women have been told that their sexual nature is no different from male sexual nature — just as men can enjoy sex with no commitment and even anonymous sex, so can women. Women, feminism insisted, have been socialized into believing such sex does not accord with their nature.


	Who'd have predicted that a Supreme Court decision would force young women to confront sexual reality?


	But it seems that the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has done just that.


	For example, some women have called for a sex strike against men. According to the New York Post, "Calls for a nationwide sex strike were also gathering momentum on social media and, at one point, 'abstinence' was trending on Twitter with more than 26,900 tweets as of Saturday afternoon."


	Some tweets:


	"Women of America: Take the pledge. Because SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade, we cannot take the risk of an unintended pregnancy, therefore, we will not have sex with any man — including our husbands — unless we are trying to become pregnant."


	"Perhaps a #sexstrike (also known as #abstinence) would help the men folk to be all in on this #womensrights issue."


	Likewise, some young women have called for an end to hookups (casual sexual encounters). In the view of some young women, abortion being banned in some states will lead to the end of the hookup culture.


	After the Supreme Court decision was leaked, TikToker Bridget Gwyn wrote in an overlay text to a video she made: "What woman would have mediocre s*x with a drunk rando if he could potentially father their child?" At the time (May 2022), the video garnered some 325,000 views.


	"I'm entering my celibacy era," @rebecky69420 posted.


	"Deleting all dating apps as we speak," @ghbsthbh commented.


	"I already told my sneaky link, no more meet up's cause of fears of pregnancy," @confusedlobsters wrote.


	The obvious implication of all this is that men want sex — with or without commitment — more than women do.


	Which is, of course, true. Feminism has lied to young women for more than 50 years.


	Have men ever called for a sex strike — even on college campuses, where a hookup gone wrong can result in a sexual assault allegation and punishment with no due process? The idea is preposterous.


	The only men in America who call on themselves and other men not to participate in the hookup culture (which is male nature's dream environment) are religious Jews and Christians — the very men most likely to be pro-life.


	All this notwithstanding, I am certain that most women calling for, or sympathizing with, calls for a sex strike and an end to the hookup culture will not put two and two together.


	Ask these women whether men and women have different sexual natures — that is, have built-in differences with regard to their sex drives — and most will deny that they do. In fact, the more college-educated they are, the more likely they are to deny bult-in sex differences


	The whole issue is saturated with irony. With regard to men and women, most of what feminism fought for has hurt women and benefited men.


	Brainwashing women into believing that their sexual nature is no different from men's only benefited men.


	The hookup culture only benefited men.


	And men have benefited from abortion becoming a form of birth control. Abortion on demand meant that men impregnating women to whom they were not married came with no consequences. Abortion meant that men didn't have to marry the woman they impregnated. Abortion meant that men didn't have to raise the child they conceived. And abortion meant that men didn't have to pay child support.


	Turns out that abortion is many men's best friend.

Will the Supreme Court Decision Force Young Women to Confront Sexual Reality?

Thanks to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, young women are confronting some basic truths about men and women that feminism has denied for the last half-century

Unless you are brainwashed, you regard the statements "men give birth" and "defund the police" as absurd.


	Why, then, do leftists (as opposed to liberals and conservatives) say these things and even believe them?


	I think there are two — related — explanations.


	One is that the Left seeks to tear down every normative institution. If men give birth, "man" and "woman" no longer mean anything. "Men give birth" means the end of the male-female distinction, the most basic distinction in the human race. Racial distinctions pale in comparison. So do national distinctions.


	Marxists support the obliteration of the male-female distinction because the only distinction that matters to Marxists is that of class.


	The other explanation is that the endgame of leftism is chaos. It is related to the first explanation, since the obliteration of all distinctions is chaos. Distinctions mean order. Having no distinctions means chaos.


	I came to realize the significance of distinctions when writing my commentary on the first five books of the Bible ("The Rational Bible"). The Bible's moral order is dependent on distinctions. Among them are:


	Man and God


	Good and evil


	Human and animal


	Holy and profane


	Parent and child


	Man and woman


	Beautiful and ugly


	Distinctions are so important to the Judeo-Christian moral order and&nbsp;weltanschauung&nbsp;that making distinctions is what God did for the Six Days. While they are known as the Six Days of Creation, the fact is that after creating the "heavens and the earth," God does little creating. After Genesis 1:1 the only things God creates are the animals listed in 1:21 and the human being (1:27).


	So, then, what did God do for the remainder of the Six Days? He created order out of chaos.


	That's why the second verse of Genesis may well be the second-most important verse in the Bible (Genesis 1:1 is the most important because if you don't accept its premise, none of what follows matters): "And all was null and void," meaning all was chaos.


	Chaos is the natural state of the world. The transformation of chaos into order necessitated God.


	Order is composed of distinctions. Natural order was dependent on the distinction between night and day and land and sea, and moral and social order was dependent upon the distinctions listed above. And while they are all dependent upon God, the Bible describes only one of them as "created" by God — the human being as male and female.


	The Left seeks to obliterate these biblical distinctions:


	The Left denies the distinction between man and God. As Marx said, "Man is God." The idea that there is a transcendent Being to which man owes moral obedience is anathema to the Left. Man is to answer only to himself (and ultimately to a left-wing state).


	The Left denies the distinction between good and evil. On the Left, there is no objective morality. Good and evil are subjective, determined by the individual and the community.


	The Left denies the distinction between human and animal. According to the largest animal rights organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), for example, there is no moral difference between a chicken and a human being. They are equally valuable — so much so that, according to PETA, there is no moral difference between a barbecued chicken in America and a cremated Jew in the Holocaust.


	The Left denies the difference between the beautiful and the ugly in art. That explains the ugly music and architecture and the meaningless art the art world, led by the Left, has produced for a century.


	And now the Left denies the difference between man and woman.


	What is this all about? It is all about rejecting the divine order which made civilization possible and returning to chaos. That why "men give birth" is related to "defund the police." Both lead to chaos.


	If you ask those who claim that men give birth or who seek to defund the police, "Do you believe in chaos?" most won't know what you're talking about. On a conscious level, chaos is not what the Left seeks.


	But it is what the Left creates. The war against Western civilization is a war against distinctions and order. That's why the Left loathes talk about Judeo-Christian and biblical values. These values represent the divine moral and social distinctions and subsequent order that constitute Western civilization.


	That's why "men give birth" and "defund the police" are related. Both represent disorder.

What Do 'Men Give Birth' and 'Defund the Police' Have in Common?

Unless you are brainwashed, you regard the statements "men give birth" and "defund the police" as absurd.


	Why, then, do leftists (as opposed to liberals

Here's a joke:


	"Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it's polar or sexual."


	This joke was retweeted last week by Dave Weigel, a Washington Post reporter.


	He retweeted it because he thought it was funny.


	He thought it was funny because it is.


	But, of course, unless a joke is at the expense of straight, white males, such humor is banned by the Left.


	A real brouhaha at the newspaper started when a colleague of Weigel's, Felicia Sonmez, complained that the tweet was misogynistic. On The Washington Post's internal website, she wrote that Weigel's retweet sent "a confusing message about what the Post's values are."


	The Post's chief spokesperson, Kris Coratti, then issued a statement condemning Weigel: "Editors have made clear to the staff that the tweet was reprehensible and demeaning language or actions like that will not be tolerated."


	The newspaper's national editor, Matea Gold, wrote, "I just want to assure all of you that The Post is committed to maintaining a respectful workplace for everyone. We do not tolerate demeaning language or actions."


	The Post's executive editor, Sally Buzbee, added: "The Washington Post is committed to an inclusive and respectful environment free of harassment, discrimination or bias of any sort."


	Post video technician Breanna Muir supported Sonmez for "speaking out against harassment, discrimination and sexism... These tweets/rts not only hurt women in our newsroom but make it extremely difficult to do our best work. Ultimately, it creates a toxic work environment."


	Another Post reporter, Jose A. Del Real, tweeted that Weigel's retweet was "terrible and unacceptable." However, Del Real added that because Weigel apologized — Weigel had immediately tweeted, "I just removed a retweet of an offensive joke. I apologize and did not mean to cause any harm" — Sonmez and others should stop attacking him. As a result, Del Real was attacked — so much so that he temporarily deactivated his Twitter account. When he reactivated it, he posted a statement saying he had faced "an unrelenting series of attacks intended to tarnish my professional and personal reputation." He also accused Sonmez of "repeated and targeted public harassment of a colleague (Weigel)."


	Apparently, additional Post employees began criticizing one another over the issue, and according to CNN, "By Monday morning, tension at The Post was still high." Another left-wing site, the Daily Beast, put it this way: "a multi-front war within WaPo is raging."


	Sonmez, who had previously sued the Washington Post for sexism — a suit she lost — has been let go by the paper. (The Post had suspended Weigel for a month without pay.)


	In addition to providing the nation with another example of the Left's meanness, hypersensitivity and war on humor (unless directed at white males), this episode also reveals something important about feminism.


	In the true Orwellian spirit of the Left, the overriding claim of feminists that feminism empowers women is the opposite of the truth. Over the past half-century, modern feminism has not strengthened women, but weakened them.


	It is worthy to note that, except for Del Real, who called for civility and compassion toward Weigel, every Washington Post actor named in this story — Felicia Sonmez, Matea Gold, Kris Coratti, Breanna Muir — is a woman.


	That's why they were horrified by the joke. Few men — despite the fact that feminist activism has also rendered a great many American men weak — would find a similar joke about men offensive. Most men would find it funny.


	For the record, every man I know is married to a strong woman. The notion that men are not attracted to (or are threatened or intimidated by) strong women is a feminist myth. While undoubtedly some men seek weak women, most men find weakness in women (as in men) unappealing.


	In feminist Newspeak (Orwell's term for the totalitarian redefining of language), when applied to women, "strong" means "easily offended," and "perceiving oneself as a victim."


	Tragically, many women, especially young women, have come to accept those definitions of "strong."


	No wonder the depression rates among young American women are the highest ever measured.

Feminism Has Weakened Women

Here's a joke:


	"Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it's polar or sexual."


	This joke was retweeted last week by Dave Weigel, a

There is a reason nearly everyone is familiar with the saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."


	The reason is, of course, that it is true and therefore it helps explain why there is so much evil.


	Take the 20th century, the bloodiest century on record, in which about 100 million people — all noncombatants — were murdered by despotic regimes, nearly all of them communist. Many of the people who supported communism — both outside and inside communist countries — thought they were doing good.


	The Soviet Communist Party's Gulag Archipelago; the Holodomor (the communists' deliberate starvation of 5 million-plus Ukrainians); the Cambodian killing fields (the communist massacre of about a quarter of the Cambodian people); the Chinese communist government's mass starvation and other forms of killing of more than 60 million of its own people; and the creation of the world's largest prison camp, communist North Korea — the roads to all these communist hells were paved by many people who had (or believed themselves to have had) good intentions.


	Were it not for many well-intentioned people who believed in communism, the truly evil people who implemented these genocides might not have come to power. To cite but one example, it was Western men and women (primarily Americans and Brits), presumably with good intentions, who delivered to Stalin the secrets to making an atom bomb.


	But what about the Nazis' rise to power in Germany?


	Not every German who voted for the Nazis in 1932, in Germany's last free elections until after World War II, had evil intentions, let alone the aim of murdering all Jews. In fact, in campaigning that year, Hitler toned down his antisemitism in order to appeal to a broader base of German voters. The Nazis won only a third of German voters in that election, and the primary reason they voted for that party was not antisemitism. The primary reasons were the Great Depression and Germany's hyperinflation, fear of communism, widespread political violence and resentment of the Versailles Treaty. In other words, even many of the minority of Germans who voted for Hitler did so with the good intention of solving Germany's economic and political crises.


	I use the Nazi example only to show that even those Germans who voted for the man and party that unleashed the greatest documented evil in history were not all motivated by bad intentions.


	Thank God there is no mainstream movement in America with genocidal aims. But the road to lesser hells in this country is almost always motivated by people with good intentions.


	I am sure that most of the many teachers who are robbing young children of their sexual innocence are motivated, certainly on a conscious level, by good intentions. Most of the Americans who vote for politicians who seek to defund the police — a true recipe for increased evil — do so with good intentions. The great majority of those who stormed (not to mention those who merely saw open doors and strolled into) the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, had good intentions. Most of the vast number of Americans who believe that free speech does not apply to anything they deem "hate speech" have good intentions — the elimination of hate speech; yet they comprise the first mass movement against free speech in American history. They pose a mortal threat to liberty in this country. But they believe they mean well.


	The truth is that, on a conscious level, only a small minority of people wake up on any given day with an intent to do bad. The 51 heads of intelligence agencies who signed a statement a month before the 2020 presidential election declaring the Hunter Biden laptop story "Russian disinformation" lied. Yet, they probably believed that their mendacious assertion was morally justified because, in their view, the larger good was to ensure that then-President Donald Trump not be reelected.


	The road to hell is paved by good intentions because most people who do harm, even many who do evil, are motivated by good intentions.


	So, then, given that good intentions are almost always morally worthless, what are we to do if we wish to see good triumph over evil? Or, to pose the question another way, if good intentions are morally useless or, worse, actually pave the road to hell on Earth, with what should we pave the road to heaven on Earth?


	The answer is wisdom. Good intentions without wisdom leads to evil.


	The reason to worry about the future of America and Western civilization is not that its elites are composed of people with bad intentions; it is that the elites are composed of people devoid of wisdom.


	The word for those who lack wisdom is "fool." Most college professors, deans and presidents and, increasingly, most teachers in high schools and elementary schools; most editors and other journalists; most of the businesspeople who run big companies; most "experts"; and most of the rest of the elite (including, frighteningly, in the medical profession) are fools.


	Why are they fools? Why are these men and women devoid of wisdom?


	Because they were never taught wisdom. One must study wisdom to know how to do good, just as much as one must study physics to know how to do physics. If you are taught wisdom, there's a good chance you will become wise. If not, there's a good chance you will be a fool. And fools do a great deal of harm.


	But wisdom is no longer taught by most parents and nearly all schools.


	Until the early decades of the 20th century, American students were expected to know the greatest sources of wisdom — the ancient Greek and Roman writers, Shakespeare and, most important of all, the Bible.


	But about 100 years ago, America embarked on the road to hell when it stopped teaching wisdom — and what wisdom is all about, moral virtue — when it secularized all education. First the universities and then the lower grades decided that knowledge could substitute for wisdom. Now American young people get no wisdom and, for that matter, little knowledge.


	It is not a coincidence that the most foolish institutions in America and the rest of the West are the universities. They are the most radically secular.


	You don't have to be religious to realize that the most secular institutions are also the most foolish institutions. You just need not to be a fool.


	The road to a good world is paved with wisdom.

If the Road to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions, With What Do We Pave the Road to Heaven?

There is a reason nearly everyone is familiar with the saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."


	The reason is, of course, that it is

If an American president has ever given as mendacious, anti-American and hate-filled a speech as President Joe Biden did in Buffalo, New York, last week, I am not familiar with it. Nor are you.


	Biden used the terrible mass shooting of black people in a Buffalo grocery store to smear America, divide Americans and foment race-based hatred. A decent man would have given an entirely different speech.


	A decent man would have gone to Buffalo and said something like this:


	"My fellow Americans, what happened here in Buffalo was pure evil. Let there be no equivocating about this moral fact. If evil exists, what happened here was evil. But, my fellow Americans, this young man and his race-based homicidal hatred represents an infinitesimally small number of Americans, white or otherwise. The overwhelming majority of Americans of every race, ethnicity, and religion get along with each other beautifully. We work alongside each other, date each other, socialize with one another and marry one another. We are the most successful experiment in creating a multiracial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious country in world history. The actions of a deranged teenager do not change this fact."


	Instead, the hater-in-chief went to Buffalo and said:


	"What happened here is simple and straightforward: terrorism. Terrorism. Domestic terrorism. Violence inflicted in the service of hate and the vicious thirst for power that defines one group of people being inherently inferior to any other group. A hate that, through the media and politics, the internet, has radicalized angry, alienated and lost individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced. That's the word. Replaced by 'the other.' By people who don't look like them.


	"Look, we've seen the mass shootings in Charleston, South Carolina; El Paso, Texas; in Pittsburgh. Last year, in Atlanta. This week, in Dallas, Texas, and now in Buffalo. In Buffalo, New York. White supremacy is a poison. It's a poison. It really is. Running through our body politic. And it's been allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes. No more. I mean, no more. We need to say as clearly and forcefully as we can that the ideology of white supremacy has no place in America. None ...


	"Look, the American experiment in democracy is in a danger like it hasn't been in my lifetime. It's in danger this hour. Hate and fear are being given too much oxygen by those who pretend to love America, but who don't understand America. ...


	"Now is the time for the people of all races, from every background, to speak up as a majority in America and reject white supremacy ...


	"We have to refuse to live in a country where black people going about a weekly grocery shopping can be gunned down by weapons of war deployed in a racist cause ..."


	As noted earlier, this was not only a hate-filled speech; it was a speech of the Big Lie. The Big Lie of white supremacy as a major threat to America generally and to black America specifically.


	Let's examine each of the examples of white supremacist mass shootings he gave:


	"Charleston, South Carolina"


	Seven years ago, Dylann Roof killed nine black worshippers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.


	"El Paso, Texas"


	In 2019, a 21-year-old white racist, Patrick Wood Crusius, killed 23 people and wounded 21 others at a Walmart store. The great majority of his victims were Hispanic.


	"Pittsburgh"


	In 2018, a white antisemite, Robert Gregory Bowers, murdered 11 Jews attending Sabbath services at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. As was the case with the Buffalo shooter, Bowers was a deeply troubled man. His father, while on trial for rape, committed suicide when Bowers was 7 years old, and like all the examples Biden cited, he was a troubled loner. Neither he nor any of these other shooters worked in concert with any hate group or co-conspirators.


	"Last year in Atlanta"


	In 2021, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long killed eight people at three massage parlors. The killings were motivated by his sex addiction and his religious conviction that those who tempted him should be killed. Race had nothing to do with it.


	"This week in Dallas, Texas"


	Last week in Dallas, Jeremy Smith shot and wounded three women of Asian descent.


	Jeremy Smith is a black man.


	Why Biden included this shooting as an example of white supremacy is a puzzle. Why no mainstream media I could find noted and condemned this lie is not puzzling.


	So, then, our hate-fomenting president mentioned six examples of "white supremacist" shootings. A total of two, one of them seven years ago, involved a white racist shooting black people. One involved a sex addict killing sex workers. One involved a black man shooting Asian people. One involved an antisemite targeting Jews. And one was a black man who shot Asian-Americans.


	With these examples, Biden went to a grieving black community to lie to them in order to stir up anger in them about the alleged scourge of white supremacist violence in this country.


	At least half of this country knows why Biden did this:


	First, to focus Americans' attention on "white supremacy" rather than on the inflation, looming recession, food crisis and energy crisis he and his party have created with their policies.


	Second, to keep black Americans voting Democrat by saying to them, in effect: "You need protection from your fellow hate-filled Americans; we Democrats are your protectors."


	Meanwhile, 9,941 black Americans were killed in 2020. Nearly all were killed by other black people. But to Joe Biden, his party, and the mainstream, i.e., left-wing, media, those black lives don't matter. At all. Why not? Because they weren't killed by white supremacists, and they therefore don't serve the Democrats' deliberately divisive narrative.

Joe Biden's Buffalo Speech Was the Speech of an Indecent Man

If an American president has ever given as mendacious, anti-American and hate-filled a speech as President Joe Biden did in Buffalo, New York, last week, I am

During a recent broadcast, I said that once Elon Musk takes control of Twitter, "Twitter will be flooded with hate, and a lot of it will come from people on the Left who want to show how hate-filled it is. It's like their race-hoax industry. If you see a noose on a college dorm of a black student, the odds are overwhelming that the noose was put there by a black student. If you see the N-word on a dormitory building, the odds are overwhelming that a black student actually did that. We're filled with race hoaxes."


	One of the better-known self-proclaimed fact-checkers, PolitiFact, declared my claim "false."


	They offered no refutation of what I said and provided no examples of nooses or the N-word on campuses perpetrated by white supremacists. Instead, they made a self-defeating argument: "Experts who track hate crimes told PolitiFact that there isn't even a nationwide data source that Prager could have used to pin down the number of incidents — real or fake — that specifically involved hanging a noose or scrawling the racist insult on college buildings or grounds."


	So, if there is no such database, how could PolitiFact declare what I said "false"? At most, they could say "maybe true, maybe false."


	Then they quote a man who devotes his professional life to lying about how racist America is: Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. "Mr. Prager is long on hyperbole and bigotry and short on facts," said Levin. "What Prager claimed 'is a lie.'"


	The very fact that PolitiFact cites Levin proves how unserious PolitiFact is about pursuing truth.


	PolitiFact cites FBI statistics — about "all hate crimes," not about campus nooses or N-word graffiti on dormitories, which is specifically what I spoke about. That was another dishonest ploy on PolitiFact's part. Moreover, if you look up all the examples of "hate crimes" on the FBI list, the list is completely irrelevant to what I said — it lists hate crimes regarding "gender," "gender identity," "disability," "commerce violations," "drug offenses," "gambling offenses," and many more examples of hate crimes having nothing to do with racism, let alone racism on campuses. It was fraudulent of PolitiFact to cite the FBI stats.


	So, then, here are just a few examples of race hoaxes concerning graffiti and nooses on campuses over the last 15 years. If PolitiFact can show that these examples are not in fact hoaxes or, alternatively, provide an equal number of verified examples, PolitiFact's assessment of my claim may be valid. If PolitiFact cannot do so, it lied.


	In 2007, Madonna G. Constantine, a psychology and education professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, claimed she found a noose at her door. ABC News described her as "a respected professor at Columbia University Teachers College... This incident is the latest in a growing number of noose incidents in the United States, since the one that punctuated the racially charged controversy in Jena, LA."


	The subsequent investigation revealed that Constantine made it all up. And it also turned out that the racial controversy about a "noose incident" in Jena, Louisiana, had nothing to do with a noose.


	In 2013, Oberlin College shut down classes after a series of purported hate crimes. According to The Oberlin Review... anti-black and anti-gay vandalism/"hate speech" have plagued the campus. "Whites Only" was written above a water fountain, "N——- Oven" was written inside the elevator, and "No N——-s" was written on a dormitory bathroom door. Activists implied the incidents were tied to Black History Month, as was a menacing person on campus who allegedly donned a "KKK hood and robe" near a black dormitory known as "Afrikan Heritage House."


	It was all a hoax. No one wore a KKK hood and robe. It was a woman wearing a coat. Cornell University law professor William Jacobson, who tracked the Oberlin story on his blog, Legal Insurrection, said the fraudulent incidents "may be the greatest race hoax since Tawana Brawley."


	In 2013, at Vassar College, messages such as "Avoid Being B——-s," "F—- N——-s," and "Hey Tranny. Know Your Place" were all a hoax carried out by the left-wing leader of the school's official "Bias Incident Response Team."


	In 2013, at the University of Iowa, a black student claimed he was beaten up at a bar, prompting massive campus outrage. But police later determined the alleged victim was actually "an active participant and even an instigator" in the bar brawl.


	In 2013, at Clemson University, administrators accused white students of a "hate-crime" — banana peels hanging from a tree branch — they knew was a hoax. The incident was dubbed "bananagate."


	"Why are phony 'hate crimes' so common, especially on college campuses?" James Taranto asked in The Wall Street Journal on May 2, 2013. Why didn't PolitiFact, which has been around since 2007, rate Taranto?

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			In 2014, a University of Chicago student who claimed his Facebook page was hacked and filled with racist and violent messages against him and another student faked the attack. He was a white leftist.</div>
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	In 2015, a Muslim University of Texas student claimed she was stalked and threatened by an anti-Muslim man with a gun. She later confessed she made up the incident.


	In 2015, University of Delaware students discovered three "nooses" near the hall where the Black Lives Matter group had protested conservative commentator Katie Pavlich the day before. It turned out the objects were "remnants of paper lanterns" leftover from a previous event.


	In 2015, a bag of poop was found on the doorstep of Vanderbilt University's Black Cultural Center. Most of the school initially believed it was put there due to racism. It turned out that a blind female student walking her dog could not find a trash can to throw away the guide dog's excrement.

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			In 2015, at Kean University, the person behind the "i will kill every black male and female at kean university" tweet and other similar ones was a black female activist, a former president of its Pan-African Student Union.</div>
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	In 2015, at Delta College in Michigan, a social media post read, "I'm going to shoot every black person I can on campus. Starting tomorrow morning." It was posted by a black student.


	In 2014, a Grand Valley State University student who found racist graffiti — "black b—— die" and "f—- black history month" — on her dorm room door's whiteboard in mid-February was the person who put it there, the Grand Valley Police Department announced.


	In 2016, at Elon University in North Carolina, a scribbled "Bye Bye Latinos Hasta La Vista" after the 2016 election turned out to be written by a Latino student.

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			In 2016, three black SUNY-Albany students fabricated a racial hate crime. They alleged they were the targets of racial slurs and attacked by a group of white men on a bus. But video evidence and 911 audio showed the women were the instigators.</div>
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	In 2016, ABC News reported that Bowling Green University "police say student lied about politically driven attack." Eleesha Long (a black student) said she was assaulted and called a racial slur, but she made the story up."


	In 2016, a female Muslim Baruch College student who claimed she was assaulted on a New York subway train by "three drunk white men" shouting "Donald Trump!" was arrested for making up the whole thing.


	In 2017, The College Fix chronicled 17 race hoaxes on campuses.

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			One example: "The University of Southern California's Department of Public Safety confirmed that the person who had adhered a sign reading 'No Black People Allowed' that featured a makeshift confederate flag and '#MAGA' on a gate of a campus residence was African American."</div>
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	Another example: "Some black Air Force Academy cadets discovered racial slurs written on their dorm doors, including 'Go home n——-.'" Two months later, a black student was determined to have written the slurs.


	In 2017, a black man filed a false police report about graffiti containing the N-word and a threat he painted on his own car near Kansas State University.


	In 2018, The College Fix determined the student responsible for racially charged graffiti found at the University of Maryland was black.


	In 2018, a threat on social media that had targeted African American students at Chesapeake High School in Maryland was written by a black student.

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			In 2018, a black student at Goucher College was charged with malicious destruction of property after investigators determined he was responsible for graffiti that targeted specific individuals — including himself.</div>
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	In 2021, The College Fix "identified eleven confirmed hoaxes (and) six likely hoaxes."


	In 2022, Illinois law enforcement announced that a black female student at Southern Illinois University would be charged with filing a false police report claiming she received notes saying, "DIE B——" and "BLACK PEOPLE DON'T BELONG."


	PolitiFact is owned by the Poynter Institute, a left-wing organization funded in part by George Soros. The primary purpose of Poynter and PolitiFact is to malign conservatives, just as they did me. But the real punk in this story is Brian Levin, director of the hate center known by its Orwellian name, the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. Let him provide an equal or greater number of true examples of N-word graffiti and nooses on campuses placed by white supremacists. If he doesn't, he is lying. Which would not be surprising. As I've said all of my life, truth is a liberal value and it is a conservative value. It is not a left-wing value.

PolitiFact Is to Fact What Pravda Was to Truth

During a recent broadcast, I said that once Elon Musk takes control of Twitter, "Twitter will be flooded with hate, and a lot of it will come from people on

The West has gone through many eras — the so-called Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Age and the Post-Modern. The present era is the Age of the Absurd.


	In terms of the absurdities the cultural elites believe, and have convinced masses of people to believe, there has never been a time like today.


	Here is a list of the most ridiculous that immediately come to mind.


	No. 1: Men give birth.


	Heading the list has to be the radical redefinition — indeed, denial of — sex and gender, leading to such reality-defying statements as "men give birth," "men menstruate," "birthing person" instead of "mother," and to the Disney theme parks no longer greeting visitors as "ladies and gentlemen" or "boys and girls."


	No. 2: It is fair to allow biological men to compete in women's sports.


	We are supposed to believe that biological men do not have an innate physical advantage in competing against women. This is asserted as truth by every Ivy League university, virtually every other university, most high schools and by virtually all the elite media.


	No. 3: Defund police and crime will decrease.


	We are supposed to believe that with fewer police we will have less violent crime. Any 10-year-old recognizes the sentiment as absurd.


	No. 4: Racial segregation is antiracist. Opposition to racial segregation is racist.


	Columbia University and many other universities have all-black dormitories and all-black graduations. They maintain that race-based segregation is not racist. Opposition to it is.


	No. 5: "Latinx."


	Because human sexuality is "not binary," languages with gendered nouns must be neutered, leading to labeling Latinos "Latinx." That virtually no one from or living in Latin America uses this absurd word does not faze the New York Times or your local university.


	No. 6: Your race matters.


	One of the least important aspects of human beings is the color of their skin. It is no more important than the color of their shoes.


	Its insignificance is easily demonstrated. If you know the color of a person's skin, do you know anything about the person? The answer, of course, is, no. If I know your race, I know nothing else about you. And if I think I can determine anything about you on the basis of your race, I am a racist.


	No. 7: Diversity is strength — and the happiest countries in the world are Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland.


	It is an axiom of the woke, the home of the absurd, that "diversity is our greatest strength." Yet, The New York Times, the leading media voice of the Age of the Absurd, featured an opinion piece about the happiest countries in the world. The second paragraph began, "Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland led the 2018 ranking of the World Happiness Report."


	Not once did the Times or the writer note that the four "happiest" countries in the world are not at all diverse. In fact, they are among the least diverse countries in the Western world. They are almost entirely white, almost entirely Protestant Christian (or from a Protestant Christian background) and all their citizens speak the same language. America, on the other hand, is by far the most radical experiment in racial, religious and ethnic diversity.


	No. 8: Free speech does not allow for hate speech.


	"I'm for free speech, but not for hate speech" is the view of almost half of America's young people and virtually all its elites. So widespread is belief in the absurd that these people do not understand that the statement is self-contradictory. It renders the words "free speech" meaningless. By definition, free speech allows for hate speech. If it doesn't, "free speech" means nothing more than speech with which one agrees.


	No. 9: You're not a human being until you're born.


	There is no need to believe in God or in any religion to understand the absurdity of this assertion. If we are not human beings until birth, what are we five minutes — or five months — prior to birth, when we have a heartbeat and brain waves? Nonhuman?


	No. 10: Capitalism is evil.


	Abject poverty has been the norm for nearly all people throughout history. Yet, in the last century alone, billions of people have been lifted out of poverty. And there is only one reason: capitalism.


	No. 11: America is systemically racist.


	The manifest absurdity of this claim is easily demonstrated. In the past decades, more than three million black people have immigrated to America from Africa and the Caribbean. And probably tens of millions more would like to. Are all these people fools — choosing to move to a systemically racist country? Are they ignorant — unaware that America is systemically racist?


	The non-absurd know the answers: all these blacks are neither fools nor ignorant. They know how lucky they are to move to America — because this country is so tolerant and so overwhelmingly non-racist. People don't move to countries that hate them. No Jews moved to Germany in the 1930s.


	We live in the Age of the Absurd. The only question is, why? I think I know the answer and will discuss it in a future column. In the meantime, share these 11 absurdities with friends and relatives, especially with those who actually think they make sense.


	Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist.

The Age of the Absurd

The West has gone through many eras — the so-called Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Age and the Post-Modern.

As I have documented on a number of occasions, the Left ruins everything it touches. There is no exception. From universities to high schools and now including even elementary schools, to late-night TV, to sports, to the arts and, increasingly, science, the Left is a destruction machine.


	And nowhere is this damage more evident or tragic than with regard to women.


	In fact, nothing demonstrates the power of left-wing ideology as much as what this ideology has done to women. So powerful is leftist ideology, it is more powerful than women's nature.


	Here are five examples:


	No. 1: The Desire to Bond with a Man


	For all of recorded history, virtually all women sought a man with whom to bond. Of course, a progressive would argue that this was true only because all societies implanted this desire in women or because societal pressure gave women little choice about the matter. It is not, progressives would argue, innate to female nature to yearn for a man.


	But whatever the reason — innate nature or societal expectation — it is a fact that women desiring a man was virtually universal.


	Then along came modern left-wing feminism, which communicated to generations of young women through almost every influence in their lives — most especially teachers and the media — that a woman doesn't need a man. In the witty words of one feminist aphorism, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."


	Unfortunately, however, the reality is most women need a man just as most men need a woman. Most men don't fully grow up without a woman, and most women don't fully grow up without a man (I am, of course, referring to heterosexual women and men). If you need proof, ask almost any married person, man or woman, if marriage matured them.


	No. 2: The Desire to Marry


	Along with wanting a man, the vast majority of women wanted to marry. It was assumed that wanting that public commitment to and from a man was part of female nature. Yet, the Left has successfully undone that part of women's nature, too.


	As a result of feminist and other left-wing indoctrination, the belief that a woman doesn't need a man led to the inevitable upshot: marriage isn't necessary. And it might even be a tool of oppression. And as a result of that, a smaller percentage of American women are marrying than ever before.


	This has serious social consequences. We have long known that single men perpetrate most of the violent crime in society. Single men are a societal problem. What we have not acknowledged — and perhaps not even known — are the deleterious effects of women not marrying.


	While single women don't commit nearly as much violent crime as single men do (though they may be starting to catch up), single women are increasingly a societal problem. The most obvious problem is that women who have children without ever marrying their children's father — or another man — produce a highly disproportionate percentage of social misfits. But many women who never give birth nor marry also constitute a societal problem. They are more likely to be angry and to express that anger in support of radical causes that undermine society. As Barron's reported, while overall a mere 14.2% of the population contributed to "racial justice causes" such as Black Lives Matter in 2020, "nearly half of single women in the U.S. — a larger percentage than single men or married couples — supported or were actively involved in racial justice protests."


	As reported by one women's activist organization, Women's Voices Women Vote, already in the 2012 election, "the marriage gap dwarfed the gender gap..."


	No. 3: The Desire to Have Children


	At least as much as wanting to bond with a man and wanting to get married were deemed a part of women's nature, the desire to have children was regarded as even more embedded in female nature. Yet, incredibly, leftist ideology is even succeeding in eliminating that part of women's makeup. More women than ever before — abroad as well as in America — are choosing not to have children. See, for example, the article, "More women like me are choosing to be childfree. Is this the age of opting out?" published, appropriately, in The Guardian. The author ends her piece this way: "I'll say it plain: I don't want children, I never have, and it doesn't feel like any kind of lack. To me, it just feels like being alive." She speaks for an increasing number of women.


	No. 4: The Desire to Have Sex with Commitment


	Another part of women's nature that the Left has undermined is the desire of women to have sexual relations with a man who might commit to her. Or, at the very least, to have sex only with a man to whom she has some emotional attachment. Left-wing feminist ideology has even been able to undermine that. Three generations of American women have been indoctrinated into believing that their sexual nature is the same as that of a man. Therefore, she can have "hookups," i.e., non-emotional, non-committal sex, just like men can with no emotional fallout. And so, many young women do. But a far greater percentage of them experience regret or even depression than do young men who engage in "hookup" sex, a form of sex that is indeed part of male nature.


	No. 5: The Desire to Protect Children's Innocence


	Perhaps the most amazing thing progressive ideology has done to women is to subvert the innate female desire to protect children, specifically children's sexual innocence. The movement to teach very young children about sex, about "gender fluidity," expose them to "Drag Queen Story Hours," etc., is overwhelmingly led by and composed of women.


	Leftism would appear to demonstrate that ideology can trump human nature. Such is the power of social indoctrination. One inevitable result is a generation of more depressed young women and more regretful middle-aged women than ever before in American history.


	The Left ruins everything it touches. You can add women to the list.

What the Left Has Done to Women

As I have documented on a number of occasions, the Left ruins everything it touches. There is no exception. From universities to high schools and now including

The second of my two sons got married last week, and it prompted me to consider the question: What brings parents more joy: their child getting into a prestigious college or their child getting married (presumably to a good person)?


	Three things prompted this question: my joy and pride, the joy of those who attended the wedding and the number of people who attended.


	First, my joy and pride.


	From a very early age, using a happiness scale of one to 10, I have never aimed to be a 10. I always assumed that those who experience 10s are also likely to experience threes. So, I have hoped and aimed to be a constant 7.5. That I have achieved this has been an enormous source of emotional stability in my life — and much appreciated by my wife, friends and colleagues. Someone who is a consistent 7.5 is generally a pleasure to be around.


	So, it was with some surprise when I realized, on the day of my son's wedding, that I was as close to a 10 as I've ever experienced.


	It prompted me to review the epic days of my life.


	With regard to one's children, for most people those days are:


	The birth of one's child(ren).


	The marriage of one's child(ren).


	The birth of one's grandchild(ren).


	As a traditional Jew, two days should be added to the list:


	The bris (ritual circumcision of a baby boy on his eighth day of life) — a day of unique religious and communal significance in Jewish life — and the bar/bat mitzvah of one's son or daughter.


	For me — and many people I have since spoken to — the marriage of one's child is the happiest of all these days. And I have experienced all of them.


	As for pride, that, too, was extraordinary. I was never as proud of my two boys as I was on the days they were married. They chose to be men. They chose not to remain what most single men remain — boys.


	Second, the joy of the guests.


	I am quite certain that the guests — most of whom I knew well — were also experiencing more joy than they would at any of the other milestone events of someone other than their own child. For example, many, perhaps even most, of those who attend a bar- or bat-mitzvah celebration of a friend or relative's child do so more out of obligation than out of joy.


	Third, the number of attendees.


	With the possible exception of one's funeral (which is not on the milestones list because it doesn't happen during one's lifetime), more people attend weddings than any other event in life. In other words, one will likely spend the wedding day with more friends and relatives than on any other day of one's life. That alone provides ample evidence of the unique significance of marriage.


	These observations are what prompted me to ask the question of this essay. Given how uniquely important people consider marriage to be, as illustrated by the unique significance of weddings, would most parents derive more joy from their child's wedding or from their child's acceptance to (or graduation from) Harvard or some other prestigious college? Or, to put the question another way, do most parents deem their child getting married or getting into a good (or perhaps even any) college more significant?


	Every parent should ask themselves these questions. But I suspect few do because far more parents, in raising their children, emphasize college over marriage.


	Even parents who answer that they think both are equally important and would provide them with equal joy have to answer this question: Did (or do) you make it clear to your child that you consider getting married as important as getting into a good college?


	I have no doubt that few parents — whether they consider the two equally important or even if they consider marriage more important — emphasize marriage nearly as much as they emphasize getting into a good college.


	The proof is the number of young people who think career is more important than marriage and the relatively low number of Americans getting married — the lowest percentage in American history.


	Therefore, for your sake as well that of your children, you might want to regularly tell your children that as much as you value their getting into a good college, you value their getting married even more (or, if you prefer, just as much). Tell them that as happy and proud as you will be on the day they graduate college, you will be even happier and more proud of them on the day they marry. For most people, that is a fact.

What Brings You More Joy: Your Child Getting into a Prestigious College or Getting Married?

The second of my two sons got married last week, and it prompted me to consider the question: What brings parents more joy: their child getting into a

America is caught between an external and an internal threat. The external is an economically aggressive and America-hating China and a nuclear-equipped, America-hating Russia; the internal is a non-nuclear, America-hating Left. (As I always note, "Left" is not the same as "liberal"; in fact, leftism poses a mortal threat to liberalism. The greatest contemporary tragedy in American life is that most liberals are unwilling to acknowledge this and continue to vote for the Left.)


	To use one of the Left's favorite terms, the Left poses an existential threat to America. Russia, unless it starts a nuclear war, does not. I should add that I do not discount the latter possibility. I was a high school freshman during the Cuban missile crisis, but I do not remember anyone my age or among my parents' peers who believed the Cuban crisis would lead to nuclear war. I am less certain today. Russian President Vladimir Putin does not seem to be as rational as Nikita Khrushchev was, and Khrushchev had nowhere near the passion about Cuba that Putin has regarding Ukraine.


	The Left may hate Putin, but hatred of America unites the Left and Putin. Again, this is not the case with liberals, most of whom love America. To illustrate this point, take the example of Superman. It was liberals, in 1938, who created Superman, an America-loving, American values-affirming ("Truth, Justice, and the American Way") superhero. And it was leftists who destroyed Superman as an American hero. In 2011, they ended his American identity: Standing in front of the United Nations, Superman announced that he was renouncing his American citizenship to become a "citizen of the world." "I'm tired of having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy," he announced. Ten years later, DC comics announced that Superman's motto would no longer be "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" but "Truth, Justice and a Better Tomorrow."


	Every left-wing movement in the world despises America — and for good reason. America has stood for everything the Left opposes. It is the most capitalist, most religious, and most nationalistic major democracy. America's unique success has been the greatest possible rebuke to left-wing ideology. America must therefore be brought down. Specifically, it must abandon its capitalist economy, its Judeo-Christian values and its nationalism (as expressed, for example, in Americans' celebration of the flag and national anthem; in Americans' celebration of national holidays such as the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving; in Americans' opposition to anything hinting of world government; and in Americans' belief that their country is "the greatest country in the world").


	So, then, America finds itself today attacked by three anti-American forces: Putin and China externally and the American Left internally.


	If there is no nuclear war with Russia, by far the greatest of these threats emanates from the American Left. It has successfully de-Americanized and ruined every major institution it has touched: nearly all educational institutions from elementary schools through universities; virtually all major mainstream news media; the intelligence agencies (51 heads of intelligence agencies declared revelations of Biden family corruption emanating from Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop "Russian disinformation"); the economy (the worst inflation rate in nearly half a century is the result of the cavalier spending of trillions of dollars and the Left's energy policies which, within a few months, transformed America from energy-exporting to energy-importing); and even medicine (the American Medical Association and more and more medical schools are fully "woke").


	The only way to save America from its internal existential threat is for liberals to understand that the threat to their core values emanates from the Left, not the Right. Just to cite two examples, it is not the Right that opposes liberalism's commitment to free speech; it is the Left that cancels people for saying anything the Left differs with — including stating obvious scientific and moral truths, such as that it is unfair to women to allow biological males to compete in women's sports. And it is not the Right that opposes liberalism's commitment to racial integration; it is the Left (holding the same position as the Ku Klux Klan) that calls for all-black dormitories on college campuses and all-black graduations.


	America cannot defeat Russia and China without the help of other nations. And America cannot defeat the Left without the help of liberals. To put it in political terms, if America's liberals voted their values, the Democratic Party would not win another major election — and it would either become irrelevant or decide to return to its liberal roots. Only America's liberals, working in common cause with conservatives, can save America. Then America can deal with any threat — internal or external.

America Caught Between Russia and China Externally

America is caught between an external and an internal threat. The external is an economically aggressive and America-hating China and a nuclear-equipped,

For more than 40 years, the environmentalist movement has been warning that global warming is the result of mankind's burning of fossil fuels and poses an "existential threat" to human and other biological life.


	This is one of the many grandiose lies the Left uses to reshape, if not destroy, Western civilization. Other grandiose lies used to achieve that result include America being systemically racist; that violent crime is the result of racism and poverty; men give birth; sex and gender are "nonbinary"; and that former President Donald Trump was a Russian asset.


	It should now be obvious that the "Greens," the environmentalist movement — not global warming — poses an existential threat to humanity. For the first time since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the world faces the possibility of a nuclear war. Russia is explicitly threatening use of nuclear weapons should the West come to the defense of Ukraine and has put its military on nuclear alert. Given the possibility that Russian President Vladimir Putin is deranged, the threat is far more real than it was in 1962 when Nikita Khrushchev was the leader of the Soviet Union. Putin believes he embodies Russia (just as Hitler believed he embodied Germany). Khrushchev did not believe he embodied Russia.


	Were it not for the green movement, Putin would not have been confident that he could get away with invading Ukraine. During Trump's presidency, and due to his policies, the United States became independent of foreign oil for the first time. Within months of assuming power, the Democratic Party, an extension of the environmentalist movement, forced America to revert to dependence on foreign oil, including Russian oil. Beholden to the environmentalists, candidate Joe Biden made promise after promise to curtail oil and gas production: no new fracking on government land, no drilling in the Alaskan Arctic, and shutting down the Keystone pipeline.


	Putin got the message.


	So, thanks to environmentalists, not only is America once again dependent on foreign oil, Germany is dependent on Russian oil. Angela Merkel, another in a long line of foolish Germans, even shut down Germany's nuclear reactors — which the greens in Germany applauded. They applauded it — despite the fact that nuclear energy is the only viable non-carbon energy that can sustain a country — because the environmentalist movement is not nearly as interested in the environment as it is in restructuring society. The environmentalist movement is as interested in protecting the environment as the communist movement was in protecting workers or the defund-the-police movement is in protecting blacks.


	The Democrats came into power in 2021. The average closing price of oil in 2020 was $39.68 a barrel; the closing price of oil in 2019 was $56.99 a barrel. As of this writing it is $138.00 a barrel. The extremely high price of energy — a direct result of the environmentalist policies of the Democratic Party and the liberal and Left parties in Europe — is one of the two primary reasons for the ever-increasing rate of inflation. (The other reason is the result of another Democrat policy: the printing of trillions of dollars.)


	Serious inflation leads to very bad things. The Nazis did not come to power because of their antisemitism or even because of the Versailles Treaty as much as they did because of the terrible inflation under the Weimar Republic.


	And any day now, the Biden administration will announce an agreement with Iran that will enable Iran to take in billions of dollars for its oil. Yet another victory for Biden, the Democrats and the environmentalists. This agreement, brokered — incredibly — by Russian diplomats, will enable Iran to sponsor worldwide terror, resuscitate Iran's economy and continue its quest for nuclear bombs.


	But none of this matters to Biden, the Democratic Party, The New York Times or any other left-wing institution — so strong is the grip of the environmentalist cult and so influential are the uber-wealthy environmentalists who support the Left. They would rather see Ukraine destroyed, the potential for a nuclear war and the decimation of the world economy than allow fracking, drilling or even an oil pipeline between Canada and the United States.


	Concern for the environment is a good thing, but the environmentalist movement is not.


	Environmentalists use the environment to create a social revolution just as communists used workers to create a social revolution.


	Its activists are fanatics.


	Its consequences are nihilism.


	Environmentalists are, intentionally or not, in collusion with Putin to undermine America and the West.

This Invasion Is Brought to You by ... Western Environmentalists

For more than 40 years, the environmentalist movement has been warning that global warming is the result of mankind's burning of fossil fuels and poses an "

Canada is leaving the Western world.


	In terms of all-encompassing government, suppression of dissent and the denial of fundamental human rights to many of its citizens, Canada is now more similar to Cuba than to any free country. Canada may eventually return to Western civilization, but as of this writing, the majority of Canadians appear to have no interest in it doing so. According to Maru Public Opinion, "two-thirds (66%) of Canadians support Prime Minister Justin Trudeau bringing in the Emergencies Act ... A majority (56%) of Canadians do not support the truckers who are protesting in any way, shape, or form ... This is a majority view held in every province/region across the country."


	I suspect that most Americans — and certainly most people outside of America or Canada — do not know precisely what Canada's Marxist prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is doing to his country.


	So, allow me to review.


	Last week, for only the second time in Canadian history other than wartime — the first time was under Justin Trudeau's father, Pierre Trudeau, the other Marxist to govern Canada — Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act. This statute enables a Canadian prime minister to suspend fundamental human rights and rule as a dictator.


	The CBC described in detail how Trudeau is using the Emergencies Act to destroy the lives of Canadian dissidents. This should be read carefully. Such policies have never been enacted by a Western country against its own citizens (with the extremely rare exceptions of those actively engaged in terrorism):


	"Using powers granted under the Emergencies Act, the federal government has directed banks and other financial institutions to stop doing business with people associated with the anti-vaccine mandate convoy occupying the nation's capital.


	"The government's new directive, called the 'emergency economic measures order,' goes beyond asking banks to simply stop transferring funds to protest organizers. The government wants banks to stop doing business with some people altogether.


	"The order says that banks and other financial entities (like credit unions, co-ops, loan companies, trusts and cryptocurrency platforms) must stop 'providing any financial or related services' to people associated with the protests — a move that will result in frozen accounts, stranded money and cancelled credit cards.


	"The Emergencies Act gives authorities the power to freeze the finances of those connected to blockades and protests, and the consequences could last long after the demonstrations end...


	"The regulation's definition of a "designated person" also includes ... anyone sending funds to support these protests...


	"Mark Blumberg is a lawyer at Blumberg Segal LLP who specializes in non-profit and charity law. In an interview, he said that while the Emergencies Act gives banks time-limited powers, these institutions 'may just decide to shut the person's account down' because there could be 'huge risks' for banks servicing these customers in the future. Banks will be working with law enforcement to decide who should be 'de-banked.'


	"A senior government official said ... police could gather the names and license plate numbers of people participating in a protest or an unlawful assembly and share that information with FINTRAC (Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada) ...


	"Former CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) senior strategic analyst Jessica Davis (said) 'the people who are participating in the protest aren't going to be able to do things like pay bills, pay their hotel bills. They will eventually run out of supplies as well...


	"With access to bank accounts and credit cards and other financial instruments suspended, protesters won't be able to pay for things like hotel and fuel bills...


	"Over the longer term, Davis said, it may be hard for some of the truckers participating to ever find work again because they could lack the necessary insurance to operate a big rig. 'Paying bills, paying rent and any kind of day-to-day financial transaction can be stopped for people who are part of the protest movement,' she said. There may also be some 'unintended consequences' from frozen accounts, such as suspended alimony and child support payments, Davis said. 'It's going to be very difficult for them.'


	"Banks have been granted immunity against legal action in the event of disputes over whether someone should have been denied financial services. 'No proceedings under the Emergencies Act and no civil proceedings lie against an entity for complying with this Order,' the regulations read."


	None of these life-ruining, due-process defying measures is necessary. The truckers' demonstrations could have been ended by arresting drivers who would not move their trucks or simply just towing their trucks. The purpose of these regulations is to destroy dissenters and deter future dissent. In a word, it is to ruin the lives of those who disobey Justin Trudeau.


	As one who has followed Canadian life over the decades — I have lectured in nine of Canada's 10 provinces — the moral descent of Canada is depressing but not especially surprising. Since I was in college in the 1970s, I traveled abroad every year of my life except in 2020 — to some 130 countries. I not only took interest in the countries I visited but in the tourists who visited them. I recall well that when I was young, many young Canadians stitched a Canadian flag onto their backpacks. As almost no tourists from other nations did that, I asked Canadians why they did. Their reason was to identify themselves as Canadian rather than as American.


	I am not the first observer of Canadians to note that a major part of Canadian identity — especially among Canadian elites — is being a not-American. Many Canadians were and remain first and foremost not-Americans. Other than that, not much defines Canadians. And when a nation stands essentially for nothing, bad things eventually happen — because nothingness is eventually filled or replaced by bad.


	On my radio show, I once asked the late Charles Krauthammer, one of the most insightful commentators of this era, what he saw as the greatest difference between his native Canada and his adopted country, the United States. Without hesitation, he said that in America the national motto is "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," and in Canada it is "Peace, Order, and Good Government."


	The first inspires a nation. The second doesn't.


	Upon the death of Fidel Castro, Justin Trudeau gave the most positive assessment of the Cuban tyrant of any Western leader. It is worth quoting in full because it demonstrates Trudeau's affection for communism and because Trudeau is transforming Canada into Cuba:


	"It is with deep sorrow that I learned today of the death of Cuba's longest serving President. Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation.


	"While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro's supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for 'el Comandante.'


	"I know my father was very proud to call him a friend and I had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away. It was also a real honor to meet his three sons and his brother, President Raul Castro, during my recent visit to Cuba.


	"On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to the family, friends and many, many supporters of Mr. Castro. We join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader."


	There does remain one major difference between Canada and Cuba. Few Cubans support their Marxist leaders, but most Canadians support theirs. They don't know what they're in for.


	Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist.

Is Canada Becoming North America's Cuba?

Canada is leaving the Western world.


	In terms of all-encompassing government, suppression of dissent and the denial of fundamental human rights to many

How individuals and institutions react to Lia Thomas, the biological male who is allowed to compete in women's college swim competitions, is a good indicator of people's values and level of rationality.


	To recap, Will Thomas, a man who until two years ago was a member of the University of Pennsylvania's men's swim team, announced he was female and then joined the University of Pennsylvania's women's swim team.


	Now named Lia, Thomas has set national records in women's swimming, such as in the 200 and 500 freestyle. Women who have trained nearly all their lives to be competitive swimmers were cheated out of wins.


	The obvious question is: Is this fair? Is it fair for a biological male to compete as a female against females? Or is Thomas cheating?


	To most Americans the answer is clear: Thomas is cheating.


	As I recently wrote a column arguing that Thomas is a cheat, I will not belabor the point.


	Instead, I will discuss others' reactions, for, as I wrote, they reveal a great deal about those people and institutions.


	We will begin with the New York Times. Rather than as a cheat, the New York Times regards Thomas as heroic. When the Times finally got around to covering the story — weeks after the non-Left media began covering the story did any of the "mainstream media" cover it — the Times' writer on college sports, Billy Witz, wrote about the Thomas affair.


	He ended his column with an ode to Thomas:


	"And so if there was something enduring about Saturday('s swim competition between Penn and Harvard), it was not the two races that Thomas comfortably won or the two relays where she gamely tried. It was the way she carried herself in the water — head down, with grace and ease."


	That is how "woke" — a term that includes amorality and irrationality — The New York Times has become.


	Now let's proceed to the college whose women's team Thomas swims for, the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), and the colleges which have competed against Penn — Cornell and Harvard.


	Like virtually every other university in America, and every other Ivy League college, the University of Pennsylvania threw its women swimmers under the bus. Not only did it not side with the women swimmers, nearly all of whom, according to reports, felt cheated when Thomas beat them in every race they competed, but it had no reaction to Thomas displaying male genitals in the women's locker room.


	As reported in the Daily Mail:


	"'We're uncomfortable in our own locker room.' Lia Thomas' UPenn teammate tells how the trans swimmer doesn't always cover up her male genitals when changing and their concerns go ignored by their coach...


	"'It's definitely awkward because Lia still has male body parts and is still attracted to women,' one swimmer on the team told Daily Mail ... Lia has told her teammates that she dates women.


	"'While Lia covers herself with a towel sometimes, there's a decent amount of nudity,' the swimmer said. She and others have had a glimpse at her private parts.


	"She stated that team members have raised their concern with the coach, trying to get Thomas ousted from the female locker room, but got nowhere.


	"'Multiple swimmers have raised it, multiple different times,' the UPenn swimmer said. 'But we were basically told that we could not ostracize Lia by not having her in the locker room and that there's nothing we can do about it, that we basically have to roll over and accept it, or we cannot use our own locker room.'


	'It's really upsetting because Lia doesn't seem to care how it makes anyone else feel,' the swimmer continued. 'The 35 of us are just supposed to accept being uncomfortable in our own space and locker room for, like, the feelings of one.'"


	UPenn's reaction:


	"The school released a terse statement last month that it was offering mental health services to student-athletes."


	Of course, neither Cornell nor Harvard defended their women either.


	And those women dare not speak out. They know their futures could be destroyed if they did. As one Penn swimmer told the Daily Mail, "I might go on the record, but I'm definitely a little afraid. What I'm afraid of is that potential employers will Google my name and see commentary about things I said and think, oh, this person's transphobic."


	However, just in case some brave women were considering speaking out, the Daily Mail reported that the University of Pennsylvania is "prohibiting students from talking to the media." One assumes Harvard and Cornell did the same.


	In the meantime, the woke cowards of the Ivy League released this statement:


	"The Ivy League reaffirms its unwavering commitment to providing an inclusive environment for all student-athletes while condemning transphobia and discrimination in any form."


	Ironically, Lia Thomas has rendered us a service. She has helped clarify the moral and intellectual state of the Ivy League and the New York Times, two formerly respected institutions. But, of course, that was a long time ago.


	Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist.

Trans Athletes, The New York Times, and the Ivy League

How individuals and institutions react to Lia Thomas, the biological male who is allowed to compete in women's college swim competitions, is a good indicator

Among the many unbridgeable divides between Americans is a completely antithetical view of mask wearing. On one side are those who wear masks almost everywhere outside their homes and who demand that others do so, including young children in class and on outdoor playgrounds, and 2-year-olds on airplanes.


	On the other side are those who only wear a mask where they are punished for not doing so (most obviously, airplanes). They regard masks as essentially pacifiers for adults.


	Generally speaking, these two groups have disdain for each other.


	Why the pro-mask half of America holds the anti-mask half in contempt needs little explanation. They believe anti-mask Americans are putting others in grave danger. Pro-maskers believe that even children who do not wear masks put their own lives and the lives of other children and teachers at risk.


	Consequently, pro-mask Americans regard those who do not wear masks, let alone those who actively oppose mask-wearing, as selfish, anti-science potential killers.


	What may be less obvious is why anti-maskers hold pro-maskers in equal contempt. So, this needs explaining in greater detail. After all, anti-maskers don't believe that maskers are putting people in hospitals.


	First, anti-maskers regard the charges made against them by pro-maskers as baseless. Therefore, as odd as it sounds, anti-maskers have contempt for the pro-maskers' contempt. To wrongly charge people with causing mass death is, to understate the case, immoral. And if this charge is demonstrably wrong, the people who level it are the ones who are anti-science.


	Since each side regards the other as anti-science, what is the science?


	Nearly all public health authorities claim that masks are absolutely necessary to save lives. But they have virtually no science to back up the claim.


	There is, however, abundant scientific evidence that masks are worthless vis-a-vis viruses and do great harm to society.


	Here is a fraction of the examples I could give:


	In February 2020, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams tweeted: "Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus."


	In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) Health Emergencies Program executive director, Mike Ryan, wrote: "There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any particular benefit."


	A 2010 study in France led by Laetitia Canini (Ph.D. in epidemiology and biostatistics) concluded: "We did not identify any trend in the results suggesting effectiveness of facemasks."


	A 2009 study of Japanese health workers led by epidemiologist Dr. Joshua L. Jacobs, of the University of Hawaii Medical School, concluded: "Face mask use in health care workers has not been demonstrated to provide benefit in terms of cold symptoms or getting colds."


	As far as I could determine, the only randomized controlled trial (RCT) to test the effectiveness of masks against COVID-19 was a 2020 study led by Henning Bundgaard of the Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark. Published in the March 2021 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, it found that 1.8% of those in the masked group and 2.1% of those in the control group became infected with COVID-19 within a month. The 0.3-point difference is statistically insignificant.


	MD and epidemiologist Vinay Prasad of the University of California at San Francisco buried the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's child masking recommendation in one sentence: "The CDC cannot 'follow the science' because there is no relevant science."


	And what about surgical masks? They are not designed to prevent the spread of viruses, but to prevent medical personnel from accidentally infecting the open wounds of patients on the operating table, and to prevent body fluids from patients spraying up into the mouths and noses of the surgical team. Dr. Colin Axon, a COVID-19 advisor to the British government, made this point clear: Medics were "unable to comprehend" the miniscule elements involved: "A Covid viral particle is around 100 nanometers, material gaps in blue surgical masks are up to 1,000 times that size, cloth mask gaps can be 5,000 times the size."


	While most studies conclude that masks are essentially useless against COVID-19, not all do. Probably the most widely cited study on behalf of mask efficacy was published in the British Medical Journal in October 2021. But it's hardly a ringing endorsement. As the authors note, "The quality of current evidence would be graded as low or very low, as it consists of observational studies with poor methods."


	If the only problem with the pro-mask position were that it negates science, it would only be harmless nonsense.


	But while it is nonsense, it is not harmless.


	Take children, for example. Only time will tell how affected children have been by not seeing other children's faces and seeing few adult faces for two years. In July 2021, an article published under the auspices of the USC Center for Health Policy and Economics addressed this issue:


	"Masking is a psychological stressor for children and disrupts learning. Covering the lower half of the face of both teacher and pupil reduces the ability to communicate. In particular, children lose the experience of mimicking expressions, an essential tool of nonverbal communication. Positive emotions such as laughing and smiling become less recognizable, and negative emotions get amplified. Bonding between teachers and students takes a hit. Overall, it is likely that masking exacerbates the chances that a child will experience anxiety and depression, which are already at pandemic levels themselves."


	Yet, just this past week, the enemies of children known as teachers unions — in this case, the one that controls the Los Angeles Unified School District — issued a directive that all children must wear N95-type masks all day, including during outdoor recess, with a wire over their noses to keep the masks at maximum tightness.


	The social damage of masks is not confined to children. All human interaction has suffered as a result of two years of masking. For example, people are less kind when they are anonymous.


	All of that harm is more than sufficient to justify contempt for mask advocacy.


	Now let's add to that the irrationality of the pro-mask position.


	Health authorities demand that people wear masks when entering restaurants, when seated on an airplane, and when walking through airports. However, an exception is made for eating and drinking. So, then, one regularly sees people on airplanes seated less than 12 inches from one another eating without masks on; people seated at airport cafes and restaurants with no masks on; and people spending about an hour eating in restaurants with no masks on.


	And while on the subject of airplanes: Do pro-mask advocates think that pilots keep their masks on while flying? Do they even want them to? Does any rational person want their pilots to breathe their own carbon dioxide for six hours while flying across the country?


	The utter irrationality of mask advocacy is the single greatest reason the anti-mask people hold mask advocates in contempt. How else should one regard adults who believe that two-year-olds on airplanes and five-year-olds in schools should be masked?


	Watching half of our fellow Americans accept and engage in such irrational behavior (not to mention sometimes hysterically enforce it, as myriad social media videos attest) not only depresses the rest of us; it frightens us. That more than half of our country willingly obeys completely irrational orders raises the question: What irrational orders from the state would they not obey?

Why the Masked and the Unmasked Have Disdain for Each Other

Among the many unbridgeable divides between Americans is a completely antithetical view of mask wearing. On one side are those who wear masks almost everywhere

The Algemeiner, a Jewish publication I highly respect, published a column about Judaism that is not merely wrong; it actually advances a thesis that is the opposite of what Judaism teaches.


	That fact alone would not have prompted me to write a rebuttal. What prompts me is that the column was written by an Orthodox rabbi. It is sad enough that many non-Orthodox rabbis have been influenced more by their secular/Left educations than by the Torah. But when a rabbi identified as “centrist Orthodox” distorts one of the most important and normative ideas in Judaism, and is published in a major Jewish journal, we might be in trouble. Of course, he might be an outlier. But I don’t think he is unique. Though certainly not yet dominant, secular values have entered parts of modern Orthodox life just as they have traditional Catholic and Protestant Christian life.


	With regard to mainstream Christianity — both Catholicism and Protestantism — and non-Orthodox Judaism, we are indeed in trouble. The secular and leftist influence on these denominations has been disastrous.


	I should note that I am not mentioning the rabbi’s name as I have no desire to make this issue personal, let alone engage in an ad hominem attack. I know that the curious can identify the rabbi by searching the internet, but I cannot control that. I can only control what I write. And since I assume that this rabbi is a sincere individual, I want to restrict my response to what he wrote.


	The rabbi wrote that Judaism posits that people are basically good, that human nature is good.


	This is one of the most foolish and dangerous ideas of the secular world. No Abrahamic religion — not Judaism, not Christianity, not Islam — asserts that people are basically good. This notion is a product of the secular age and a major reason for the moral confusion that characterizes our era.


	With regard to Judaism, the Torah completely rejects the notion that man is basically good. God Himself states that “the will of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21) and that “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5).


	For a rabbi to assert that man is basically good is to assert that God was wrong. I am used to secular people saying that, not Orthodox rabbis.


	In addition, the Torah — and the rest of the Bible — repeatedly warns us not to follow our hearts. In fact, Orthodox Jews cite this admonition from the Torah three times every day: “Do not follow your hearts and your eyes after which you prostitute yourselves” (Numbers 15:39).


	If the human heart is basically good, why does the Bible repeatedly warn us not to follow it?


	The rabbi never cites any of these verses. For good reason: They would simply invalidate his argument. This secular belief in the inherent goodness of man is not only not Jewish; as noted, it is foolish and dangerous.


	How foolish? It is not possible to be aware of human history and to rationally maintain that people are basically good. For a Jew to believe such nonsense after the Holocaust is simply breathtaking. Apparently, basically good people murdered six million Jews.


	But we don’t need references to the Holocaust to make our case.


	In the 20th century alone, more than a hundred million people — civilians, not soldiers — were murdered by vile regimes and their vile followers. These include the approximately 20 million killed in the Gulag Archipelago; the slaughter of the Tutsis in Rwanda; the genocidal murder of Armenians; the deliberate starvation of about 60 million Chinese; the Japanese mass rape of Korean “comfort women” and hideous medical experiments on Chinese civilians; and the torture and murder of approximately one out of four Cambodians.


	And that is only a partial list.


	Virtually every serious thinker in history knew people were not basically good. They knew about the universality of slavery and the tortures and rapes that accompanied slavery. They knew how men behaved in wartime.


	Were all the people who engaged in these evils aberrations? In fact, most were quite normal. The aberrations in history have been the truly good individuals. To cite the Holocaust, the Germans, French, Poles, Hungarians, Lithuanians and others who aided the Holocaust, let alone those who did nothing, were normal people. The handful who aided Jews were the aberrations.


	And what about childhood bullying? Are fat, or slow, or unattractive boys and girls generally treated with kindness and empathy? The question is rhetorical.


	And what about child sexual abuse? The WHO in 2002 estimated that 73 million boys and 150 million girls under the age of 18 years had experienced various forms of sexual violence. Quite remarkable for a world of basically good people.


	So much for the foolishness of the belief that people are basically good. Now let’s deal with why it is dangerous.


	One reason is that the most important, and most difficult, task of parents and of society is to raise good human beings. Yet, those who believe we are born good will not concentrate on making good people. Why bother if we’re already good?


	A second reason the belief is dangerous is that those who believe it blame the evil that people do on outside forces, not on the individual who committed the evil. Belief in the basic goodness of human nature is the major reason people claim that poverty, or guns, or racism causes crime. Anything except the perpetrator.


	The rabbi cites a Yale study that purports to show that babies are not only moral agents but are actually moral beings. Such studies are one reason so many Americans have come to hold universities in increasing contempt. The idea that babies know right and wrong is preposterous. The idea that babies are moral is even more preposterous. Babies are neither moral nor immoral since they have no more free will than your family dog.


	Babies are selfish — as they have to be to survive. And babies are innocent. But innocent is not the same as good. The rabbi conflates “innocent” with “good.”


	He also conflates “in God’s image” with “good.” He writes: “the Torah stating that human beings are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) (is) a statement that underscored humanity’s inherent goodness.”


	Not so. Created “in God’s image” has never meant man is basically good. Rather, it means that human beings, like God (and unlike animals), know good from evil and have moral free will. In Genesis 1:27, Rashi, author of the most influential Jewish Bible commentary ever written, explains “in God’s image” as “the power to comprehend and to discern.” Second, it means that human life (again, unlike animal life) is infinitely precious.


	Finally, if people are basically good, what is the Torah for? What are all the commandments for? If people are basically good, why would God need to command us not to murder? Don’t basically good creatures know this?


	It is very troubling that an Orthodox rabbi would teach the opposite of what the Torah and Judaism teach concerning one of the most fundamental issues of life. As more and more modern Orthodox Jews attend college and graduate school, it is imperative that Jewish schools teach the distinctiveness of Jewish values.


	Increasingly, they do not.

An Orthodox Rabbi Writes That People Are Basically Good

The Algemeiner, a Jewish publication I highly respect, published a column about Judaism that is not merely wrong; it actually advances a thesis that is the

Under the pretext of public health, the soul of what is known as the Free West has left most Western countries. Looking at the government overreach and abuses of power in virtually every other Western nation, one can only conclude that America truly is the last free man standing.


	Here is a rundown of the suppression of liberty in major Western countries.


	CANADA


	Let's start with our neighbor to the north.


	Canada is one of the least free countries in the Western world. In some ways it is the least free. In every area of life, including freedom of speech, Canada severely restricts its citizens' rights. Canada is one of the only countries in the world that bans the unvaccinated from all public transportation — airplanes, trains and buses. And no Canadian home can entertain more than three non-household visitors — a ban that prevented families and friends from getting together for Christmas.


	Canada is a moral embarrassment. But apparently most Canadians are perfectly content to live in a country moving toward dictatorship.


	They should replace the maple leaf on the Canadian flag with a sheep.


	EUROPE


	In the summer of 2021, most European countries introduced the so-called health pass or "European COVID-19 Pass." This digital pass, in the form of a QR code, is a prerequisite to access cafes, bars, restaurants, theaters and even long-distance transport. Only the naive can now deny that the real goal of the EU has long been a digital identity system for all European citizens.


	NETHERLANDS


	The Netherlands is among the least free countries in the West.


	From Dec. 19 "until at least" Jan. 14, 2022, the Dutch must:


	Stay at home as much as possible; receive no more than two visitors per day; be with no more than one other person outdoors; and work from home.


	In addition, restaurants, cafes and bars and nonessential shops are all closed.


	Nor do the Dutch have the right to protest these draconian restrictions. Two days ago, an anti-lockdown protest was banned by the leftist mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, because people would "not be adhering to social distancing rules." Thousands of people nevertheless showed up. They were met with drones, water cannons and huge numbers of police. Footage capturing a police dog biting down on a peaceful protester's arm has gone viral.


	FRANCE


	Starting next week, working from home will become compulsory for those who can.


	French Prime Minister Jean Castex said, "Even if we do not yet see hospitals as overloaded by omicron, the contagiousness of the variant and the speed at which it is spreading require us to go further."


	And the country has had a "health pass" since last summer, which only allows the vaccinated, those who have a negative COVID-19 test result from within 24 hours, or who had COVID-19 to enter cafes, restaurants, museums, cinemas and other public places. So, too, wearing a mask is compulsory throughout the country for everyone aged 11 and over in enclosed spaces and on public transport, on pain of a fine. Accordingly, consumption of food and drink is banned on public transport — including long-distance trains.


	In schools, wearing a mask is compulsory from the age of 6, including in outdoor areas of the school.


	AUSTRIA


	Austria competes with the Netherlands for the title of Western Europe's least free country.


	From Nov. 22 to Dec. 12 no one was allowed to leave their home except for specific reasons such as buying groceries, going to the doctor or exercising. The lockdown has continued for the more than 30% of Austrians who remain unvaccinated.


	In other words, nearly a third of all Austrians have not been allowed to leave their homes since Nov. 22 and will not be allowed to do so for the foreseeable future.


	It is about to get much worse. Austria is about to become the first country in the world that will make the COVID-19 vaccine compulsory. It will be illegal to be unvaccinated. Beginning Feb. 1, unvaccinated Austrians will be fined 200 euros every month, and the fine will be increased every time they are caught in any activity outside of their house. Germany has already stated it wants to follow suit.


	AUSTRALIA


	Australia placed most of its citizens under house arrest for much of 2021. Sydney, Australia's most populous city, was locked down for 106 days, ending only on Nov. 15. And Melbourne, the country's second largest city, described by the Voice of America on Oct. 21 as "officially the world's most locked down city," was locked down 260 days. Residents were prohibited from traveling more than five kilometers from their homes, visiting family or friends, entering supermarkets except for pickup, and attending funerals. Schools were, and remain, still closed, and international travel was, and remains, prohibited. Needless to say, all shops, bars, and restaurants were closed. Essentially, people were prohibited from leaving their homes for a third of a year.


	NEW ZEALAND


	The lockdowns in New Zealand rendered that formerly free country essentially a totalitarian state in 2021. Befitting a totalitarian state, New Zealand's prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, actually said at one point regarding COVID-19 information, "Unless you hear it from the government, it is not true." The woman, a bona fide fanatic, locked down her entire country because one person had the delta variant. Even pro-lockdown CNN seemed to find this a bit over-the-top. It headlined on Aug. 17: "New Zealand announces it's locking down the entire country ... over one Covid case".


	GERMANY


	At the beginning of December, Germany announced a lockdown on the unvaccinated. They were banned from restaurants and bars, movie theaters, gyms, nonessential shops, and Christmas markets. About a quarter of all Germans are unvaccinated.


	UNITED KINGDOM


	Scotland has banned spectators, even if vaccinated, from attending sporting events. Masks must be worn indoors at public venues such as nightclubs, and one must show a health pass to enter nightclubs and other venues.


	Wales went even further, allowing a maximum of six people to meet in pubs, cinemas and restaurants. Nightclubs were simply closed as of Dec. 27. Mandatory six-feet social distancing came into effect in offices from the same date. People must work from home unless it is impossible to do so.


	While England does not yet have the same lockdown rules as Wales and Scotland, throughout the U.K. one must show a health pass certifying vaccination — or had a negative COVID-19 test within the past 72 hours or had COVID-19 under six months earlier — in order to enter most public locations.


	THE UNITED STATES


	And then there is the United States of America. With states like Florida and most other Republican-governed states, we have the freest places in the Western world. Going from Canada or Western Europe to Florida is like going from Romania or Poland to Western Europe during the Cold War. Indeed, going from most Democrat-run cities to most Republican-run cities is also like passing through the Iron Curtain.


	Thanks to its conservative half and thanks to the Founders' genius of defanging the national government by giving states great power, America remains the beacon of liberty it was when Lincoln said, "America is the last best hope of Earth" and when France gave us the Statue of Liberty. If it were up to the Left, America would be as unfree as Canada or Austria. That's why fighting the Left is the most important thing any American who cherishes liberty can do.


	Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is "The Rational Bible," a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, "No Safe Spaces," was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

As of This Moment, America Is Still a Beacon of Liberty

Under the pretext of public health, the soul of what is known as the Free West has left most Western countries. Looking at the government overreach and abuses

As this is my last column of 2021, I thought it would be worthwhile to review some of the most important observations I made over the course of an awful year. I hope you agree, and wish you — and our country — a happier New Year.


	JAN. 5: These past few years have taught me not to so quickly judge the quiet Germans, Russians, etc. Of course, I still judge Germans who helped the Nazis and Germans who in any way hurt Jews. But the Germans who did nothing? Not so fast.


	What has changed my thinking has been watching what is happening in America (and Canada and Australia and elsewhere, for that matter). The ease with which tens of millions of Americans have accepted irrational, unconstitutional and unprecedented police-state-type restrictions on their freedoms, including even the freedom to make a living, has been, to understate the case, sobering.


	JAN. 12: We are faced with a lockdown on speech the likes of which have never been seen in America. And the parallels with Germany are even more stark. What the Left is doing is announcing — and enforcing — that conservatives "do not belong" in our society. The parallels to 1933 are precise. And most good Americans are keeping silent, just as did most Germans. Though they do not risk being beaten up, are Americans in 2021 as afraid of the American Left as Germans in 1933 were of the German fascists? We're about to find out.


	JAN. 19: Why does the Left need to crush all dissent? This is a question made all the more stark because there is no parallel on the right: Conservatives do not shut down dissent or debate.


	The answer is the Left fears dissent. And they do so for good reason. Leftism is essentially a giant balloon filled with nothing but hot air. Therefore, no matter how big the balloon — the Democratic Party, The New York Times, Yale University — all it takes is a mere pin to burst it.


	FEB. 9: The American medical profession as a whole and many individual doctors are responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans — very possibly, more than that. Along with the media — from The New York Times to Google/YouTube, Facebook and Twitter — Americans have been denied both life-saving information and life-saving drugs.


	FEB. 23: If you don't hate communism, you don't care about, much less love, people.


	MARCH 2: The great tragedy of our time is that liberals vote Left. Virtually every value liberals have held for a century is now held by conservatives and scorned by leftists.


	MARCH 9: Schools teach children to hate reason, tradition, America, Christianity, white people, excellence, freedom and masculinity. Parents must either find a school that teaches reading, writing and arithmetic rather than America-hatred, or they should home-school their child.


	MARCH 16: The bigger the government, the fewer the institutions in which people can feel important. Therefore, given the deep human need to feel important, people will look elsewhere for their importance — like fighting systemic racism, heteronormativity, capitalism, patriarchy and transphobia. And, most of all, global warming — because you cannot feel more important than when you believe you are saving the world.


	MARCH 30: When Christianity died in Europe, we got communism, fascism and Nazism. What will we get in America if Christianity and Judeo-Christian values die?


	APRIL 6: Mask-wearing represents fear and blind obedience, not science.


	APRIL 20: Whites aren't hated for slavery. They are hated for making America and for making Western civilization.


	APRIL 27: Affluence plus secularism equals boredom equals leftism.


	MAY 18: The Left demands we believe and announce that men menstruate and give birth and that it is in no way unfair to girls and women when biological men compete in girls' and women's sports. In tens of thousands of American schools, students are brainwashed to believe that America was not founded in 1776, but in 1619. The world's Left demands that we believe Israel is the villain and Hamas is the victim.


	JUNE 8: The single best thing Americans can do to counter the left-wing attack on America — against its freedoms, its schools, its families, its children, its governmental institutions, its sports, its news and entertainment media, its medical establishment, the CIA, the FBI, the State Department and the military — is to take their children out of America's schools.


	Sending your child(ren) to most American schools is playing Russian roulette with their values — but unlike the gun in Russian roulette, which has a bullet in only one of its six chambers, the schools' guns hold four or five bullets.


	JUNE 15: Unconditional love is neither biblical nor rational nor moral. Can you name anything good that is or should be given with no moral or ethical conditions?


	JUNE 22: If America is racist, why have millions of blacks emigrated here? Did Jews emigrate to Germany in the 1930s?


	JUNE 29: "Safetyism," like all religions, places what it values — in this case, being safe — above other values. Safetyism explains the willingness of Americans to give up their most cherished values — including liberty — in the name of safety.


	The desire to lead as safe a life as possible is a major factor that explains why fewer and fewer young Americans are getting married and even fewer are having children. Neither marriage nor having children is safe. Both are filled with risks.


	You can live a safe life. Or you can live a full life. You can't live both.


	JULY 20: You have a right to be transgender. You don't have a right to expose your penis to women.


	JULY 27: It is hard to imagine greater proof of the power of mass media and of the Left than a normal woman celebrating her daughter's choice not to be a mother and not to make her a grandmother because of climate change.


	AUG. 24: Imagine if some of the biggest cities in America seceded from their states. Imagine Illinois without Chicago, Pennsylvania without Philadelphia, California without Los Angeles or San Francisco, New York state without New York City, or Texas without Houston, Dallas or San Antonio. Those states would lose a major tax base and some of their best orchestras and other artistic institutions. But the gains in quality of life would completely offset any financial or artistic losses.


	Big cities have been and continue to be centers of destructive ideas, and the people living in them are generally coarser and often just plain meaner.


	SEPT. 7: Colorblind means one does not believe a person's color is in any way significant. There is little that reveals the immorality, dishonesty and racism of the Left more than its war on colorblindness.


	SEPT. 14: Will the Left succeed? Unless Americans fight the Left as hard as the Union fought the slave states, the answer is yes.


	SEPT. 21: As America has become more secular, it has become less free. Individuals can differ as to whether these two facts are correlated, but no honest person can deny they are facts.


	OCT. 5: There is almost nothing Democrats can do to damage America, or Israel, that would change most American Jews' political leanings. The latest example took place just last week. A college student speaking to the vice president of the United States, a Democrat, condemned America for supporting Israel, and charged Israel with committing "ethnic genocide" against Palestinians.


	Harris' response?


	"Your voice, your perspective, your experience, your truth cannot be suppressed, and it must be heard."


	OCT. 19: The fate of America and the West lies largely in the hands of liberals. There are simply not enough leftists to destroy our most revered institutions. They need liberals to serve as fellow travelers to accomplish their ends.


	OCT. 26: If no one goes to prison for actor Alec Baldwin's accidental killing of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, our society will have failed a crucial moral test. We will be saying human life is not sacred; that it, in effect, is of little or no consequence.


	NOV. 2: As incredible as this assertion is to just about all religious people and virtually all conservatives, most leftists do not believe stealing is wrong.


	NOV. 9: Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, confirmed an Israeli study: "In Israel, vaccinated individuals had 27 times higher risk of symptomatic COVID infection compared to those with natural immunity from prior COVID disease."


	The denial of the efficacy of natural immunity is among the many reasons so many Americans no longer trust the American medical establishment.


	NOV. 23: All my life, I thought love and hate were the two most powerful human emotions. But owing to recent events, I have changed my mind. I now understand that for most people, fear is the strongest emotion.


	DEC. 7: If you are a conservative, why should you come out of the closet?


	First, you will sleep better. Staying in the closet exacts a serious mental price. Second, kindred spirits, all quality people, will reach out to you, some of whom will undoubtedly become close friends. Third, you will respect yourself more. Fourth, you will help save this country from tyranny. For some, that is reason enough.


	DEC. 21: Trans swimmer Lia Thomas is a cheat. As far as sports are concerned, one's biology, not one's gender identity, is all that matters.


	Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist.

The (Crappy) Year We Just Lived Through

As this is my last column of 2021, I thought it would be worthwhile to review some of the most important observations I made over the course of an awful year.

If you want one exemplar of the moral and intellectual chaos that characterizes the age in which we live, there are a number of candidates:


	"Having fewer police leads to a decrease in violent crime" is one.


	"Men give birth" is another.


	But perhaps the most obvious moral and intellectual absurdity of all is the notion that Lia Thomas, a member of the University of Pennsylvania's women's swim team, won fairly in the team's recent meet against the Cornell University women's swim team.


	You see, Lia Thomas was a man until two years ago, when he announced that she is really a woman.


	Now, neither I nor most fair-minded people care if Lia Thomas considers herself a woman. Many of us are even prepared to refer to Lia as "she" — especially if she dresses, acts and looks like a woman. (For the record, most people who watch Lia's interview online and did not know that Lia claims to be a woman would assume that they are watching a man.)


	But no fair-minded person can accept that Lia should be allowed to join a women's swim team and compete against female teammates and against other women's swim teams.


	That Lia wishes to be considered a woman is entirely irrelevant to the question of whether it is at all fair for this individual to compete against women. As far as sports are concerned, one's biology, not one's gender identity, is all that matters.


	If Lia or any other biological male is allowed to compete against biological women, women's sports are rendered pointless and therefore unnecessary. The entire reason women's sports exist is to enable women to compete only against other women — because males have innate physical advantages in virtually every sport.


	Needless to say, Lia Thomas has broken numerous University of Pennsylvania women's swim records. In her 1650-meter freestyle win, Thomas beat second-place finisher and teammate Anna Kalandadze by more than 38 seconds.


	That means that the women who had held those records no longer hold them. They have been stripped of their records because the University of Pennsylvania, like other universities, allows biological men to join women's swim teams. That is the ruling of the woke cowards of the NCAA, who have decreed that all women's teams, in all sports, must allow men to compete in women's sports. All a man has to do to compete against women is announce that he is a woman and take testosterone suppressors for a year.


	It is revolting that LGBTQ activists, virtually all sports writers (a band of sheep, if there ever was one) and just about the entire Left claim this is fair.


	Headline in the left-wing Independent:


	"Lia Thomas: LGBT-plus rights campaigners defend swimming champion amid transphobic abuse."


	The left-wing activists who run the Human Rights Campaign defended Thomas:


	"Living your truth is an incredible and powerful feeling ... We're in solidarity with Lia and all athletes who compete in the sports they love and on teams consistent with their gender identity."


	Headline of an article by The Hill left-wing staff-writer, Brooke Migdon: "College swimming champion Lia Thomas targeted by transphobic rhetoric."


	"The assumption that being born with a male body automatically gives transgender women a leg up when competing against cisgender women is not well founded," Migdon writes, quoting the NCAA.


	The ability of people to lie to themselves is a depressing fact of life.


	The fact is this issue has nothing to do with trans acceptance or "transphobia." It is purely a moral question: Is it fair?


	As John Lohn, the rare honest editor of Swimming World magazine, wrote on Sunday:


	"Despite the hormone suppressants she has taken, in accordance with NCAA guidelines, Thomas' male-puberty advantage has not been rolled back an adequate amount...


	"The fact is, for nearly 20 years, she built muscle and benefited from the testosterone naturally produced by her body. That strength does not disappear overnight, nor with a year's worth of suppressants...


	"What we are stating is this: The effects of being born a biological male, as they relate to the sport of swimming, offer Thomas a clear-cut edge over the biological females against whom she is competing. She is stronger. It is that simple. And this strength is beneficial to her stroke, on turns and to her endurance. Doping has the same effect."


	"Doping has the same effect." Read that a few times and let the unfairness sink in.


	Because of the Left, we are living — no, drowning — in an ocean of lies.


	If you ever wonder why your kind, sweet friends on the Left differ with you, here is a big part of the answer: They do not know what we know. Google "Lia Thomas" and you will not find a single result in any mainstream media. For example, no reader of The New York Times or The Washington Post knows about this.


	But those who know understand that Lia Thomas is a cheat.


	Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist.


	<a href="https://www.creators.com/read/dennis-prager/12/21/trans-swimmer-lia-thomas-is-a-cheat-period">Originally published at Creators.com</a>

Trans Swimmer Lia Thomas Is a Cheat — Period

If you want one exemplar of the moral and intellectual chaos that characterizes the age in which we live, there are a number of candidates:


	"Having fewer

I received a phone call on my radio show from a man who said, "Dennis, I'm a gay conservative actor in Hollywood, and it is far easier to come out of the closet as gay than as a conservative."


	That call was in the 1980s.


	While the current cancel culture — the firing, humiliation, disparagement and smearing — of conservatives is exponentially worse today than 30 years ago, it is not new.


	As a result, the great majority of Americans who are conservative — that is, about half the country — hide their true beliefs. They fear saying anything that differs with the Left. This would include such reprehensible sentiments as:


	With all its flaws, America is the finest country ever made.


	Men do not give birth.


	There are only two sexes.


	A person's color is the least important thing about them.


	The greatest problem in black life is not whites but a lack of fathers.


	A man who becomes a woman and then competes in women's sports is cheating.


	Posting to social media a video by a renowned epidemiologist, virologist or medical doctor who asserts that ivermectin and/or hydroxychloroquine with zinc, when used early enough, almost always prevents hospitalization for COVID-19.


	The list is far longer than this. But if you think even this list overstates the problem, put any of these statements on any mainstream social media platform and see what happens. See if any relatives drop you from Facebook or even from their lives. See what your employer says or does. See what Twitter or Facebook does to your account.


	There are valid reasons to fear publicly differing with the Left.


	So, then, what arguments can be offered on behalf of coming out of the closet?


	The first is this: For every person you alienate, you will likely bring at least one new, wonderful person into your life.


	Putting aside issues of courage, of standing for what is right, of saving America from those working to destroy it, there is a great selfish reason to come out of the closet: kindred spirits, i.e., good people, will discover you.


	In 2020, I received an email from a young woman in her second year at Harvard who told me that my book that explains the Left and America, "Still the Best Hope," had changed her from liberal to conservative. Needless to say, I was intrigued to learn more about her and, as it happened, she lives — as I do — in Los Angeles. So, I invited her to sit in on my radio show.


	While speaking to her during commercial breaks, I was impressed enough to ask if she would be willing to describe her political and moral metamorphosis on the radio. I warned her that appearing on "The Dennis Prager Show" and talking about her conservative views would likely lead to some lost friends, angry, if not alienated, relatives, and attacks back at Harvard. I made that case persuasively enough to give her pause and ask, "May I call my mother?"


	She stepped out to make the call. When she returned to the studio, she announced, "I'm coming on."


	About half a year later, she made another appearance on my show, and I asked her what happened after her initial appearance.


	"I went through two weeks of hell," she responded.


	As predicted, she lost friends she had had since elementary school, some relatives limited their contact with her, and some students back at Harvard regarded her as an indecipherable sellout.


	"Then what happened?" I asked.


	"Then I entered heaven," she responded.


	She offered two big reasons.


	One was that she began to sleep better than she had in years. The other was the number of kindred spirits, all quality people, who reached out to her, some of whom became friends.


	Regarding reason one — sleeping better — staying in the closet exacts a serious mental price on a person. One should not think only coming out of the closet exacts a price.


	As for the second reason, virtually no price paid for coming out of the closet is comparable to the rewards of doing so. There is little as happiness-inducing as having kindred spirits in your life.


	Now, is that worth losing one's job? If you are sure you will lose your job and no other job paying a comparable salary will be available, only you can answer that question. Similarly, if one of your children will stop talking to you because you are not "woke," it is not for me to advise you what to do. But there are no other compelling arguments not to come out of the closet.


	And there are at least two other arguments for coming out.


	One is that you will respect yourself more. And so will others — including, quite possibly, one or more of your children (and your grandchildren, if you have any).


	And two: You will help save this country from tyranny. For some, that should suffice.


	Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist.


	<a href="https://www.creators.com/read/dennis-prager/12/21/why-you-should-come-out-of-the-closet-with-your-conservative-values">Originally published at Creators.com</a>

Why You Should Come Out of the Closet With Your Conservative Values

I received a phone call on my radio show from a man who said, "Dennis, I'm a gay conservative actor in Hollywood, and it is far easier to come out of the

To understand the modern world, perhaps the most important rule one needs to know is this: Everything the Left touches it ruins.


	This first became clear to me years ago during my radio show. I was talking about the Left's war on the Boy Scouts (for not accepting announced gay people). It was becoming clear that this would ultimately lead to the decline of the Boy Scouts, which led me to ask: "Will the left replace the Boy Scouts with a left-wing Boy Scouts?"


	Then I answered my own question: Of course not. Because the Left only destroys; it doesn't build anything (other than government).


	In support of that observation, here is a list of many of the things the Left ruins and often destroys.


	No. 1: Art.


	The Left long ago conquered the art world. Consequently, since the 20th century, most modern art has been ugly, meaningless and nihilistic — the opposite of what Western art had always been.


	No. 2: Music.


	What the Left did to the eyes in art, it did to the ears in music. As a part-time conductor, I can say with some knowledge that since the invention of atonal music (an oxymoron if there ever was one), most contemporary classical music is also ugly, meaningless and uninspiring. The people who like such music are almost all music critics and, of course, music professors. Most lovers of classical music never listen to the stuff.


	No. 3: Journalism.


	Journalists were once highly respected. Unless a piece was listed as "opinion," people generally believed they were getting, to the best of a journalist's ability, as truthful a report as possible — "just the facts." Today, on virtually any controversial issue, they are getting opinion, not truth. The purpose of nearly every major newspaper and other "news" outlet is the same purpose Pravda had in the Soviet Union: to transmit the party line.


	No. 4: Colleges and universities.


	The Left has destroyed universities as places of learning devoted to seeking truth and therefore welcoming, even cultivating, diverse opinions. Virtually every left-wing idea was born at a university.


	No. 5: High schools and elementary schools.


	Most schools in America — private as much as public — teach children that America is systemically racist and that they are not born male or female, but at a later age will choose whether to be one or the other — or neither. And increasingly, American educational institutions deny objective truth exists, even in mathematics.


	No. 6: Happiness.


	You can meet happy and unhappy liberals and happy and unhappy conservatives, but you are unlikely to ever meet a happy leftist. The only question is whether the unhappy gravitate to leftism or whether leftism makes people unhappy. Both are probably true.


	No. 7: The family.


	People on the Left increasingly choose not to get married and not to have children — in other words, not to make families. And their welfare policies serve to disincentivize the creation of families.


	No. 8: Women.


	The rates of depression among young people, especially young women, are higher than ever recorded in American history. One reason is that for half a century, women have been told, as one famous feminist saw put it, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." But the fact is that the vast majority of (heterosexual) women need a man to be fulfilled, just as the vast majority of (heterosexual) men need a woman to be fulfilled.


	No. 9: Childhood.


	One reason young people on the Left don't want children is that the Left doesn't particularly like children. The teachers unions' adamant refusal to open schools for over a year has opened many Americans' eyes to this fact. So has the war on children's innocence - like prematurely talking to them about sex and having schools introduce them to drag queens from the age of five.


	No. 10: Black life.


	Like the Democratic Party historically, the left is racist. And it is so in precisely the way the word was always used — the Left believes in black inferiority. That is why leftists advocate lowering standards for blacks. That is why they advocate policies that always result in more blacks dying at the hands of other blacks. That is why they believe the state must take care of blacks more than any other group. That is why left-wing policies, from the Great Society to today, have destroyed so much of black life, especially its family life — and they don't care.


	No. 11: Black-white relations.


	According to polls and according to just about every American who remembers life from about a decade ago, black-white relations were far superior then and both groups were optimistic about relations continuing to improve. The Left shattered that with its anti-white, "America is systemically racist" propaganda shouted from almost every major media and relentlessly pushed in almost every school and big business. The Left knows that when blacks and whites feel good about one another, the Left loses its appeal and loses elections.


	No. 12: The military.


	As the military gets more and more woke — recall the testimony of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testifying before Congress about the need to teach the military about white racism — soldier morale declines. Add to this the utterly gratuitous and cruel mandate that every member of the military get vaccinated or be discharged and you understand why military morale is in steep decline.


	No. 13: Late-night television.


	Americans who remember the titans of late-night comedy — Johnny Carson and Jay Leno — remember how their sole aim was to bring some smiles and laughter to Americans before they went to sleep. Few people had any inkling of the political views of either host. That is now history. The Left has destroyed late-night comedy. It now consists of little more than angry rants against conservatives.


	No. 14: Superman.


	Superman was an iconic American hero. Thanks to the Left, he is no more. About a decade ago, Superman stood in front of the United Nations to announce he was renouncing his American citizenship to become a "citizen of the world." And the Left has now changed his motto from "Truth, Justice, and the American way" to "Truth, Justice, and a Better Tomorrow."


	No. 15: Free speech.


	Never before has freedom of speech been threatened as it is today. As has been true since the communist revolution in Russia, everywhere the Left has gained power — from Russia in 1917 to the university and social media today — it has suppressed free speech. There is no exception.


	No. 16: Sports.


	Until last year, sport was a great American unifier. It was one place Americans could go and, leaving politics behind, Left and Right, Democrat and Republican could root for the same team. No longer. The Left has ruined it by radically politicizing baseball, football and basketball.


	The great American tragedy is just about every liberal knows the above is true, but nearly every one will still vote for the Left.


	Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist.

A Brief Guide to Leftist Destruction

To understand the modern world, perhaps the most important rule one needs to know is this: Everything the Left touches it ruins.


	This first became clear

Frontpage Mag

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Why You Should Come Out of the Closet With Your Conservative Values

A Brief Guide to Leftist Destruction

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