{"id":116046,"date":"2017-07-25T07:59:12","date_gmt":"2017-07-25T15:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=116046"},"modified":"2017-07-25T07:59:12","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T15:59:12","slug":"dennis-prager-vs-bret-stephens-all-about-good-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=116046","title":{"rendered":"Dennis Prager Vs Bret Stephens – All About Good & Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dennis Prager writes<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Bret Stephens devoted his New York Times column last week to admonishing me for my tweet from two weeks ago and critiquing my follow-up column last week explaining the tweet.
\nThe tweet reads, \u201cThe news media in the West pose a far greater danger to Western civilization than Russia does.\u201d
\nSince he wrote the column as a \u201cDear Dennis\u201d letter to me, I will respond in kind.
\nDear Bret: I\u2019ll try to respond to the most salient arguments you made. I\u2019ll begin with one of the most troubling.
\nYou wrote: \u201cWiser conservatives \u2014 and I count you among them, Dennis \u2014 also know that when we speak of \u2018the West,\u2019 what we\u2019re talking about is a particular strain within it. Marx and Lenin, after all, are also part of the Western tradition, as are Heidegger and Hitler.\u201d
\nI was taken aback that such a serious thinker could write that nihilist communists and nihilist Nazis are all \u201cpart of the Western tradition.\u201d
\nThat\u2019s what the vast majority of professors in the social sciences teach: There\u2019s nothing morally superior about Western civilization \u2014 it\u2019s as much about Hitler and Lenin as it is about Moses and Thomas Jefferson. And, anyway, Moses never existed and Jefferson was a slaveholding rapist. Among those professors\u2019 students are virtually all those who dominate the Western news media.
\nAm I wrong? Do you think your colleagues at the Times or the Washington Post or Le Monde or BBC believe in the moral superiority of the West?
\nOf course they don\u2019t. Most believe in multiculturalism \u2014 the doctrine that all cultures are equal \u2014 and it is therefore nothing more than white racism to hold that Western civilization is superior. Didn\u2019t nearly all of your (nonconservative) colleagues who commented on President Trump\u2019s speech in Warsaw call it a dog whistle to white supremacists?
\nOn those grounds alone, my tweet was accurate.
\nI am surprised that anyone \u2014 especially you \u2014 thinks Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia poses a greater threat to the survival of Western civilization than the Western left. No external force can destroy a civilization as effectively as an internal one \u2014 especially one as powerful and wealthy as the West. The Western left (not Western liberals) is such a force. Western liberals always adored the West.
\nI was also stunned by your saying, \u201cI\u2019m not sure that Justin Trudeau declaring there is \u2018no core identity, no mainstream in Canada\u2019 counts as a Spenglerian moment in the story of Western decline.\u201d
\nThe prime minister of Canada announces with pride that his country has no core identity and you don\u2019t think that counts as an example of a declining civilization?
\nAnd here\u2019s another upsetting sentence: \u201cTo suggest that Vladimir Putin is a distant nuisance but Maggie Haberman or David Sanger is an existential threat to our civilization isn\u2019t seeing things plain, to put it mildly.\u201d
\nThe reason I found that troubling is I never cited Haberman or Sanger, and you well know that no generalization includes every possible example \u2014 that\u2019s what makes it a generalization. But I did specifically cite the writers in The Atlantic who equated Western civilization with white supremacy, and your substitution of your New York Times colleagues for The Atlantic commentators allowed you to avoid dealing with The Atlantic writers\u2019 and others media attacks on Western civilization.
\nDespite the fact that neither my tweet nor my column said a word about Trump, you devoted almost half your column to denouncing the president. Yet, as I wrote in the column, my tweet would have been just as accurate had I sent it out during former President Obama\u2019s administration or Hillary Clinton\u2019s, if she were president.
\nBret, to your great credit, you are a lonely voice of strong support for Israel at your newspaper (your readers should see the videos on the Middle East you made for Prager University; they have eight million views for good reason). Doesn\u2019t the almost uniform hostility toward Israel in the media and academia trouble you? Does it trouble you that most Democrats in America hold a negative view of Israel? That Jewish students at many American, not to mention European, universities fear expressing support for Israel or just wearing a yarmulke on campus? That so many young American Jews, influenced by the media and their professors, loathe Israel? I am certain all of that greatly troubles you. Is any of that Putin\u2019s doing? Or is it all the result of the media and academia?
\nYou mentioned that you will be sending me a birthday gift, a book about Putin\u2019s Russia, \u201cNothing Is True and Everything Is Possible\u201d by Peter Pomerantsev. I promise to read it. And I request a promise in return: Read the book I am sending you, \u201cThe Strange Death of Europe\u201d by the eminent British thinker Douglas Murray. The book describes Europe\u2019s suicide at the hands of its progressive elites \u2014 in particular, its multiculturalism-affirming political leaders and mendacious news media. To the best of my recollection, in describing the death of European civilization, Murray doesn\u2019t mention Putin once. (Regarding the mendacious media, read the report published this week in Germany about the dishonesty in the German media, which routinely substitutes left-wing opinion for facts in reporting the immigrant crisis in Germany.)
\nPerhaps the most troubling part of your response was your penultimate line: \u201cDon\u2019t be a hater, Dennis.\u201d
\nWhere did that come from? You cite not a single hateful word in my column \u2014 because there are none to cite. And \u201chater\u201d has become the all-purpose left-wing epithet to dismiss all conservatives. Why would my friend Bret Stephens use it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dennis Prager writes: Bret Stephens devoted his New York Times column last week to admonishing me for my tweet from two weeks ago and critiquing my follow-up column last week explaining the tweet. The tweet reads, \u201cThe news media in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t