Dennis Prager: Stupid, Crazy, or Both?
Our buddy Dennis Prager has written another classic column about Judeo-Christian values, and while I normally find Dennis’ rants against college lesbians amusing, this one is just frightening. Click below the fold, if you dare…
Ask believing Christians — probably from as young as 8 years of age — what their mission as Christians is, and it is overwhelmingly likely they will answer, “to bring people to Christ” or “spread the Gospel.”
Well, if you ask Evangelicals, sure- that’s their specific doctrine. But I’m pretty sure mainline Protestants and Catholics would say something different. Of course, it’s only the insane “convert now, yon Pagans” Christians that count, isn’t it?
Ask any non-Christian what the Christian mission is, and you will get the same answer. Just about everyone, Christian or non-Christian, knows the Christian mission.
“Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to convert five heathens living in the deadly jungles of the Congo…”
Now ask any Jew, religious or secular, “What is the Jewish mission?” and the most likely response will be: “What do you mean?”
Or as a Jewish Gary Coleman might say, “Oy, whatchu talkin’ ’bout, Dennis?”
Most religious Jews rarely talk about a Jewish mission.
Well, that’s because they’re normal people. But apparently, Dennis thinks Jews should run around wearing capes and spandex, using their super powers in the service of Justice League’s B’nai B’rith Division.
(Incidentally, am I the only one who thinks Dennis kinda looks like the Martian Manhunter? Take a look:
OK, maybe not so much. Their head shapes are kinda similar though…)
Rather, they are preoccupied with survival: of the Jewish religion (observance of religious laws) and of the Jewish people. Most non-religious Jews who identify as Jews are preoccupied with survival of the Jewish people. And most Jews with a weak or no Jewish identity identify with no Jewish mission or with a secular one.
In fact, the only large body of Jews with a mission are the Jews with the least Jewish religiosity. Such Jews have been disproportionately involved in secular ideologies such as Marxism, socialism, feminism, environmentalism, gay rights, animal rights and every other ideology of the Left.
So instead of wasting their time working for economic justice, women’s rights and environmental protection, Jews should concentrate on their True Mission (according to Dennis): helping their benevolent Christian Overlords convert the heathens.
The bottom line is that the less Jewish a Jew is, the more he is likely to feel he has a mission to humanity, and the more Jewish he is, the less likely he is to feel such a mission.
This is a tragedy of immeasurable proportions.
Yeah, it’s tragic that so many Jews have social consciences. The world would have been so much better off without commies like Albert Einstein, Tony Kushner, Stephen Jay Gould and Arthur Miller.
And when was the last time the Jews gave us a destructive religious fanatic like Jerry Falwell or Moqtada al Sadr, huh? Sure, there’s Dennis and the freaky Israeli settlers’ movement, but they’re relatively low-profile. I’m talkin’ about a gen-yoo-wine fire-breathing nutcase.
It is tragic for humanity because the people who brought the Bible and its Ten Commandments to the world are often the most active in seeking its removal from the world.
So I guess Dennis agrees with William Donahue that “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.”
The Jews’ mission is as it always has been — to bring the world to ethical monotheism.
I’m pretty sure my Jewish friends aren’t going to like this mission very much. Most of them have, you know, lives. Plus they’re, whaddyacall it, sane. And they probably think Dennis is full of… what’s that word?… oh, yeah: “shit.”
Ethical monotheism means there is one God and therefore one moral standard that He has revealed, and He holds all humans accountable to it.
And we all know what that means- vote Republican before God kills the first-born child of every Democratic household.
This is the point of Jewish chosenness. God chose a people — a particularly small undistinguished people (chosenness has never implied inherent superiority) — to make the world aware of the God of ethical demands and moral judgment. Jews have never been required to bring the world to Judaism, but they were chosen to bring the world to God and to the values found in the Torah and the rest of the Old Testament.
And since Jews aren’t required to convert people to Judaism, but Christians are required to convert people to Christianity, I think we know where this is heading…
Were Jews true to their mission, they would stand alongside Christians who work to bring the Torah’s values to the world.
“In other words, we should help our Christian Masters force other cultures to follow a religion founded by the guy they accuse us of killing.”
Jews should therefore be in the forefront of those spreading Judeo-Christian values. Some are, but most, religious and secular, are not.
Gee, I can’t imagine why the Jews aren’t more enthusiastic about spreading Christianity.
The Jews are like the biblical Jonah, the Jew asked by God to carry a message to the great city of Nineveh. Jonah had no desire to embark on this mission and ran away onto a ship of decent non-Jewish sailors. God brought a terrible storm, and Jonah realized that the storm was caused by his running away from his divine mission. He was thrown overboard, and the seas calmed.
“And if you secular Jews don’t stop making invaluable contributions to the sciences and humanities, God’s gonna get REALLY pissed off and send a Rush Limbaugh-sized whale to eat your sorry asses.”
Most Jews are still running away from their divine mission and causing storms in many places as a result. Only by bringing the ethical monotheist message to mankind, and working with like-minded Christians to do so, will the world’s seas ever calm down.
I may be crazy, but… wasn’t something like this tried in the 19th Century?
I don’t know what’s more mind-numbingly stupid: that he apparently has forgotten that Israel exists or that he really thinks the U.S. has a flawless records of Jewish rights and opportunities (maybe he should write a book on of our past Jewish presidents…).
I said it in my own blog, but working as an editor/fact-checker for Clownhall must be like George Costanza’s experiences under Mr. Kruger.
It boggles my fragile little secular Jew mind that anyone professing to be a Jew thinks that Jews should be bringing people to Christ. I mean, I know Orthodox Jews who won’t step into a church for fear of accidentally committing idolatry (Christ’s image on the cross being the idol in question).
Cyan-
Yeah, Dennis would probably say you’re self-loathing. After all, the only Jews who love themselves are the ones that bend over backward to please their Christian Overlords like Dennis.
Doesn’t bending over backward lead to Gomorrahdy?
Stupid or Crazy – that’s kind of unfair. After all, my cat’s stated opinions on Judeo-Christian values are equally incoherent, and Prager’s and my cat’s composition skills are about on par. It’s a consequence of having a brain the size of a walnut. As with my cat, it’s not really Prager’s fault, he was just born that way.
Only by bringing the ethical monotheist message to mankind, and working with like-minded Christians to do so, will the world’s seas ever calm down
I think this is known as the Iphigenia Option.
Oddly, Dennis leaves out several bits on the Jonah story.
See, God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and deliver a message. What was the message? Typical God stuff–Blah blah living in sin, blah blah repent now blah blah hellfire, love G-d. Jonah’s seen this film before (especially the Sodom edition), and knows that every time that God tells some town to repent, they rape the messenger, then kill him, and then God destroys the town.
So Jonah figures, No way, man! I fell for that last time. He lays low, and God punks him, so he goes to Nineveh, and delivers the message, and the Ninevites are all, “Whoa! That shit’s heavy, man. We’d better repent.”
So God spares Nineveh, and Jonah’s like, “I got swallowed by a whale for nothing? God damn them!” And God says, “No, they repented.”
I guess the tale of “Don’t torment them, it’s all water under the bridge now” doesn’t sit well with Prager.
Does this mean Prager’s going to begin evangelizing kosher restrictions? Is he agitating for the abolishment of the cheeseburger? Or even moreso, the EggMcMuffin?
I’m kind of curious as to how Dennis defines “ethical monotheism” to exclude Islam (which is far more similar to Judaism than Christianity is).
The Jews’ mission is as it always has been — to bring the world to ethical monotheism.
Yep. That’s what it has always been, as illustrated by this missionary training program from Deuteronomy:
“When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations?the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you- and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.”
Now that’s evangelism!
And you know where Nineveh was? (I was talking about this on Pandagon.) Present-day Mosul, Iraq.
Admittedly, I skipped over a lot of the bible, but I don’t remember in the Old Testament where it said that the Jews should go out to the ends of the earth baptizing people in the name of the Father (since they didn’t have the son or the holy ghost). Sure it said that in the New Testament, but I thought that part of the Bible was just for Christians.
I did notice Dennis admitted Islam’s been less murderous to Jews than European Christianity. Is this a first in the wingnut universe?
Sadly, No! definitely has a hard-on for Dennis the Menace. Or rather, for making Dennis look silly. This doesn’t take much and is always enjoyable.
Given this, I think readers might enjoy an actual email conversation I had with Bigus Dennis. It was so enjoyable, I had to collate it all and post it. Please check it out over at Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/14/223812/414
cheers!
On top of everything else, Dennis has lousy knowledge of Judaism. Jews have never had an obligation to spread The Word, in any form. We do have an obligation to “heal and repair the world.” This is what has put so many Jews in the forefront of fights for economic and social justice. But if Dennis wants to interpret it for himself as fighting for womb babies and against gay marriage, he’s free to do so.
BTW, Meir Kahane was a genuine nutcase, and his destructive ideology is still causing trouble today.
This is the most worthless peice of drivel I have ever read. I don’t think you made one cohesive argument as for why you dislike Mr. Prager so much. I am stupider for having read this.
Someone who believes in God and in spreading His love to the world should be doing all of the humanitarian acts that liberals are engaged in… and indeed they are. The problem is that over time, people are shifting their motives away from that of sharing God’s love. As a result, fewer people realize their creator is there and loves them. Arguments are then couched in terms of control, domination, and hatred, which is just one result of losing their sight of God… and the thing is, this is true of both the left and the right! Not only is the “God” dispute without God, it is consequently, without love. That, my friends, is the real tragedy.
What Prager calls judaism is more properly reffered to as pragerism? His ignorance of judaism is only exceeded by his desire to reinvent it. The idea of converting pagans is universally rejected in all classic jewish sources. And the idea that true jews should stand with the christians helping them change the pagans to “ethical monotheism” is ridiculous. Christianity is not monotheism it is tritheism, ask any christian. And we jews have receved our fair share of their “ethical” Crusades, pogroms and inquisitions. His idea of jewish missionaries was once floated by reform leader Rabbi Schindler, but there is one problem with that, one cannot convert a person to a religion that the convertor does not beleive it themselves. Prager is a strange equivocator about the truth of judaism and he wishes to be a christian truthfully but doesn’t want to break his mother’s heart. What a phony!!!!!!!!!!!
Prager is certifiably insane.