This blog posting is primarily
the words of SRN (Salem Radio Network) host Dennis Prager. I found them so helpful in clarifying the
difference between liberals and conservatives.
It might well help you to identify where you stand and help you to
explain your position or the position you oppose. Prager asks: “If you can’t explain both
sides, how do you know you’re right?”
“Left-of-center doctrines hold that people are basically good. On the other side, conservative doctrines hold
that man is born morally flawed – not necessarily born evil, but surely not
born good. Yes, we are born innocent – babies
don’t commit crimes, after all – but we are not born good. Whether it is the Christian belief in ‘original
sin’ or the Jewish belief that we are all born with a ‘yetzer tov’ (good
inclination) and a ‘yetzer ra’ (bad inclination) that are in constant conflict,
the root value systems of the West never held that we are naturally good” says
Prager.
To those who argue that
we all have goodness within us, Prager offers two responses:
“First, no religion or ideology denies that we
have goodness within us; the problem is with denying that we have badness
within us.
Second, it is often very challenging to express
that goodness. Human goodness is like
gold. It needs to be mined – and like
gold mining, mining for our goodness can be very difficult.”
This is so important to
understanding the left-right divide because so many fundamental left-right
differences emanate from this divide, says Prager.
Perhaps the most obvious one is that conservatives blame those who
engage in violent criminal activity for their behavior more than liberals do. Liberals argue that poverty, despair, and
hopelessness cause poor people, especially poor blacks – in which case racism
is added to the list – to riot and commit violent crimes.
Here is President Barack
Obama on May 18, 2015:
“In some communities, that sense of unfairness
and powerlessness has contributed to dysfunction in those communities. ...
Where people don’t feel a sense of hope and opportunity, then a lot of times
that can fuel crime and that can fuel unrest. We’ve seen it in places like Baltimore and
Ferguson and New York. And it has many
causes – from a basic lack of opportunity to some groups feeling unfairly
targeted by their police forces.”
So, says Prager, “Poor
blacks who riot and commit other acts of violence do so largely because they
feel neglected and suffer from deprivations.
Since people are basically good [liberal view], their acts of evil must
be explained by factors beyond their control. Their behavior is not really their fault; and
when conservatives blame blacks for rioting and other criminal behavior,
liberals accuse them of ‘blaming the victim.’ ”
“In the conservative
view,” says Prager, “people who do evil are to be blamed because they made bad
choices – and they did so because they either have little self-control or a
dysfunctional conscience. In either
case, they are to blame. That’s why the
vast majority of equally poor people – black or white – do not riot or commit
violent crimes.”
Likewise, many liberals
believe that most of the Muslims who engage in terror do so because of the
poverty and especially because of the high unemployment rate for young men in
the Arab world. Yet, it turns out that
most terrorists come from middle class homes. All the 9/11 terrorists came from middle and
upper-class homes. [Osama bin Laden was a billionaire.]
Therefore, Prager
concludes, “Material poverty doesn’t cause murder, rape or terror. Moral poverty does. That’s one of the great divides between left
and right. And it largely emanates from
their differing views about whether human nature is innately good.
Rev.
Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor,
Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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