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Jewish World Review Jan. 11, 2011 / 6 Shevat, 5771 For the Left, There Are No Sacred Texts By Dennis Prager
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?" Congressman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., complained that "They are reading it (the Constitution) like a sacred text." What troubles Klein, Behar and 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 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, G0d and the Bible are above the self. Indeed, Western civilization was built on the idea that the individual and society are morally accountable to G0d 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 G0d, and G0d is man." Therefore, society must rid itself of the sacred, i.e., G0d and the Bible. Then each of us (or the society, party or judiciary) takes the place of G0d and the Bible. Morality is then no longer a G0d-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 G0d for transgressions, only to ourselves. That is why when there is G0d-talk on the left, it is usually about "the G0d that is within each of us," not a G0d 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. For the left, there are no sacred texts. There are only sacred (liberal) feelings.
JWR contributor Dennis Prager hosts a national daily radio show based in Los Angeles. Click here to comment on this column.
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