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发帖数: 29846 | 1 Thursday, April 26, 2012 02:02 PM
By: John Bachman and Andra Varin
Dennis Prager thinks Americans are in danger of forgetting their core
principles, so he’s out to remind them what’s important.
“American values are the greatest single value system that has ever been
devised,” nationally syndicated radio host and columnist Prager told
Newsmax.TV.
In his new book, “Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values
to Triumph,” Prager argues the case for what he says are the three main
American tenets: “E pluribus unum, In God we trust, liberty.”
“The case needs to be rationally made as to why they are superior to the
two alternatives in the world today, leftism and Islamism,” he said.
Of the two, Prager says leftism is a much greater threat to the United
States than radical Islam.
“Leftism weakens the will to confront Islamism, as you can see in Western
Europe,” he said. “Leftism is paralyzing morally.”
While leftists have never perpetrated a terrorist attack on the United
States, “leftism has created a nonviolent attack on the schools, on the art
, on the economy, on the culture, so that’s why it’s more dangerous in the
final analysis,” he said.
Prager told Newsmax.TV that even though he has always considered himself a
staunch conservative, at one time he really wasn’t clear on what American
values are.
One night, while emptying change from his pockets, he looked at the mottos
on the coins. “Liberty, in God we trust, e pluribus unum – sure enough,
there it was.”
Prager says liberty necessarily means smaller government.
“The stronger the government, the weaker the individual. The more I am free
to do, the less the state is free to do,” he said. “The bigger the
government, the smaller the citizen.”
The Latin motto “E pluribus unum” – from many, one – means that
Americans of all backgrounds are united, he said.
“It doesn’t matter your race, it doesn’t matter your ethnicity. Americans
shattered the myth that blood and race are important,” he said. “We
obviously have become the least xenophobic, the least racist country in the
world.”
He said leftists seek to make race an issue in cases like the Trayvon Martin
shooting, where an unarmed black teenager was killed by a neighborhood
watch volunteer in Florida.
“Race is made an issue by the left because primarily it understands that if
America it perceived as it is, as the least racist country in the world and
black America ceases to regard the left as its savior, then blacks may in
fact start rethinking liberalism and leftism and start voting Republican.”
“In God we trust” is important, Prager said, because people need to feel
that they are accountable for their actions.
“People in order to be good have to feel morally accountable to something
above themselves,” he said. “If people are not god-fearing, they will be
government-earing.”
Prager blamed a lack of personal accountability for the Secret Service
prostitution scandal and revelations that the General Services
Administration spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a Las Vegas junket.
“There has been a belief since the ‘70s, the baby boomer belief has become
quite dominant. ‘I don’t owe anybody anything other than myself. I look
out for No. 1. I am what matters.’
“This me–centeredness is very bad for the United States” he said. “The
mindset is developing that ‘others will pay for me.’”
He said that’s a huge problem in the welfare states of Europe.
“Europeans are used to having the state take care of their parents, their
children, themselves, their community. Americans, until their large
entitlements, always took care of themselves, their parents, their children,
their community.”
Prager said Americans must be careful to maintain their sense of
independence and not give into a feeling of entitlement.
“That is what has been generated by the entitlement state. It’s leading us
into to massive debt; it’s leading us into moral debt,” he said. |
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