Recognizing both the lack of substance and assault on the U.S. Constitution that are embedded in Dennis Prager’s evolving argument about holy books and swearing-in ceremonies, I once promised to let the subject go. Unfortunately, Mr. Prager declines to reciprocate, compelling me to bring the subject out of retirement.
He’s at it again today, claiming that the “culture war� in this country boils down to a fight between those who accept the authority of the first five books of the Old Testament, also known as the Torah or Pentateuch, and those who don’t …
That a belief or lack of belief in the divinity of a book dating back over 2,500 years is at the center of the Culture War in America and between religious America and secular Europe is almost unbelievable. But it not only explains these divisions; it also explains the hatred that much of the Left has for Jewish, Protestant, Catholic and Mormon Bible-believers.
Prager then concludes …
This divide explains why the wrath of the Left has fallen on those of us who lament the exclusion of the Bible at a ceremonial swearing-in of an American congressman. The Left wants to see that book dethroned. And that, in a nutshell, is what the present civil war is about.
Three points jump out from these excerpts.
- Before self-validating his own argument, Prager labels it “almost unbelievable.�
- He dismisses “the wrath� of the Right and Center voices that have chided him for ignoring the Constitution-encoded separation of Church and State, and attributes all dissenting voices to “the Left.�
- He upgrades the “culture war� to a “civil war.�
That last point is the only point on which Prager may have a point.
Though it is being fought with words rather than guns, I suspect there is a civil war in this country – a war over priorities, a war over which is the more important, more critical set of issues: abortion/sexuality vs. social justice/caring for the unfortunate.
A minority of voices (primarily on the extreme Right) believe abortion and sexuality should be the focus of our social debates; while a growing majority of voices (from the Right, Left, and Center) disagree, preferring we invest our limited resources and finite energy in the latter category of social justice issues.
It is this growing majority who cheer both President Bush and the Democratic leaders of the next Congress when they pledge reforms to wasteful earmarks that build $223 million bridges to islands of 50 inhabitants. They cheer this talk of reform because they recognize that if even a third of the $67.1 billion in earmarks in the 2006 budget were shown to be the equivalent of a “Bridge to Nowhere,� those funds might have been saved for more noble, more moral purposes: such as providing thousands of dollars in aid to each of the millions of Americans who suffer from rare diseases and can’t afford the medicines or treatments they require to lead productive lives.
I challenge Mr. Prager to spend a few hours with these and other disadvantaged citizens. If he does, I suspect he will be compelled to re-visit his claim that the cause of our civil war is a tug-and-pull between believers and non-believers in the Torah – that such a claim is not “almost unbelievable,� it is “entirely unbelievable� – that instead, the essence of the current civil war is between mean-spirited debates over peripheral matters versus compassion for living, breathing people who are caught in the middle of matters of life-and-death.