Nothing sacred

I swear I didn't go looking for this article - it just fell into my lap. I
don't know of Dennis Prager and wouldn't be able to pick him out of a
line-up.

For the record, I agree with 50% of Prager says in this article. I believe
we do need sacred texts, I just don't believe man should be the one to
decide when texts get to be elevated to the level of the sacred. I believe
they are given by God (and God alone) and all that's left to us to do is
accept them as such. (And by use all of these plurals, I really mean
singular, the Word, the Bible.)

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/256814

January 11, 2011 12:00 A.M.
Nothing Sacred
For the Left, every text is ‘living’

 A number of well-known spokesmen on the left have voiced reservations, not
> only about the Republican decision to have members of Congress — both
> Republicans and Democrats — read the Constitution aloud at the opening of
> the latest session of Congress, but also about Americans’ veneration of the
> Constitution.
>
> Three examples:
>
> In a recent appearance on MSNBC, *Washington Post* staff writer Ezra Klein
> said: “The issue with the Constitution is that the text is confusing because
> it was written more than a hundred years ago and what people believe it says
> differs from person to person.”
>
> Joy Behar asked her guests on CNN’s *Headline News*, “Do you think this
> Constitution-loving is getting out of hand?”
>
> Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.) complained that “they are reading it [the
> Constitution] like a sacred text.”
>
> What troubles Mr. Klein, Ms. Behar, and Congressman Nadler?
>
> The answer is that for leftism — though not necessarily for every
> individual who considers himself a leftist — there are no sacred texts. The
> two major examples are the Constitution and the Bible.
>
> One cannot understand the Left without understanding this. The demotion of
> the sacred in general and of sacred texts specifically is at the center of
> leftist thinking.
>
> The reason is that elevating any standard, any religion, any text to the
> level of the sacred means that it is above any individual. Therefore, what
> any one individual or even society believes is of secondary importance to
> that which is deemed sacred. If, to cite the most obvious example, the Bible
> is sacred, then I have to revere it more than I revere my own feelings in
> assessing what is right and wrong.
>
> But for the Left, what is right and wrong is determined by every
> individual’s feelings, not by anything above the individual.
>
> This is a major reason why the Left, since Karl Marx, has been so opposed
> to Judeo-Christian religion. For Judaism and Christianity, God and the Bible
> are above the self. Indeed, Western civilization was built on the idea that
> the individual and society are morally accountable to God and to the moral
> demands of that book. That was the view, incidentally, of every one of the
> Founders, including deists such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.
>
> This is entirely unacceptable to the Left. As Marx and Engels said, “Man is
> God and God is man.” Therefore, society must rid itself of the sacred, i.e.,
> God and the Bible. Then each of us (or the society or the party or the
> judiciary) takes the place of God and the Bible.
>
> Morality is then no longer a God-given objective fact; it becomes a
> human-created subjective opinion. And one no longer needs to consult an
> external source to know right and wrong, only one’s heart. We are then no
> longer accountable to God for transgressions, only to ourselves.
>
> That is why, when there is God-talk on the Left, it is usually about “the
> God that is within each of us,” not a God external to, let alone above, us,
> as Judaism and Christianity have always taught.
>
> This explains the belief that is universally held on the Left that the
> Constitution is an “evolving text,” meaning that it says what anyone (on the
> Left) wants it to say. Conservatives, on the other hand, do not share this
> view. They do not believe the Constitution has something to say about
> everything they believe in. While the Left sees the right to abortion in the
> Constitution (because the Left believes in the right to abortion), those who
> oppose abortion do not believe that the Constitution prohibits abortion.
> They believe that the Constitution is silent on the issue. Precisely because
> the Right does believe the Constitution is to be treated as sacred, it does
> not claim that whatever it supports is in the Constitution or that whatever
> it opposes is unconstitutional.
>
> There are humble individuals and arrogant individuals on the right and on
> the left. But there is no arrogance like leftist arrogance. If you hold a
> leftist position, you know that you are smarter, wiser, and more moral not
> only than conservatives, but more so than the Bible, more so than the
> Constitution, indeed often more so than everyone who lived before you.
>
> Same-sex marriage is a perfect example. The fact that neither Moses nor the
> Hebrew Prophets, nor Jesus nor the Buddha nor any great secular humanist
> thinker, ever advocated defining marriage as between members of the same sex
> does not cause the Left to rethink its advocacy of same-sex marriage; it
> only proves to them how morally superior they are to Moses, Jesus, the
> Prophets, and everyone else who lived before them.
>
> That is why we must to treat the Constitution as a sacred text. Because the
> bottom line is this: If it is not regarded as sacred, it is nothing more
> than what anyone believes about any social issue. Which is precisely what
> the Left wants it to be — providing, of course, that the “anyone” is a
> liberal.
>
> For the Left, there are no sacred texts. There are only sacred (liberal)
> feelings.
>
 *— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and
columnist. He may be contacted through his website, dennisprager.com.*


Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |

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