dennis prager | High Plains Skeptic

PC Police and Conservative Persecution Complex

A lot of conservatives are under the impression that they are a widely maligned, politically persecuted group in the United States. Read this delusional piece by professional fabulist Dennis Prager as a good for instance. If you’re partial to statistics, this might do the trick: Around 73% of Republicans think the FBI and Department of Justice are enacting partisan campaigns to undermine President Donald Trump. Remember, the people in charge of both organizations are Republicans appointed by Donald Trump. Watch any amount of Fox News or listen to any amount of conservative talk radio for similar results.

At the same time, there is a breed of intolerance blossoming on the far left. It has yet to take a shape even vaguely redolent of the sweeping anti-Republican pogrom some conservatives envision. Nevertheless, it is an unmistakable drive to build a sanctuary for a high-octane version of liberal orthodoxy. The clearest, most widely publicized front of this campaign has been college campuses. There, activist students and professors have sought to badger, ostracize, and silence the people they disagree with. But it is also visible online, where so-called social justice warriors* (better characterized as “virtue-signalers”) aim to fight white supremacy by harassing high school girls for their choice of prom dress. It’s not obvious what any of this is accomplishing, but it does lend support to the sense of persecution many conservatives share. This, in fact, might be the most salient consequence of far left social media and campus activism.

The conservative sense of persecution is largely imaginary. However, the political provincialism growing on the far left grants this sense of abuse real-world anchorage. It’s not that obvious instances of harassment and cruelty toward conservatives are particularly widespread or in any way comparable to the kinds insults faced by the truly oppressed. Rather, it’s that these instances – however frequent – represent both a sad betrayal of liberal values and an egregious tactical error. If someone is already prone to hearing voices, it’s probably not a good idea to start whispering in their ear.

A High Priest in the First Church of Anti-Liberalism

Let me tell you about a man named Dennis Prager. An extreme right-wing pundit, Dennis Prager is an idiot cloaked in a thin-veneer of intellect—a white-knuckle blowhard who has trouble telling the difference between loud voices and good arguments. But more to the point, he is also a High Priest in a new religious order: The First Church of Anti-Liberalism.

Normally, it’s considered bad form to fill an essay with ad hominem attacks, let alone start with them. And rightly so—that sort of thing rarely gets us out of the woods and into a place where we can begin to understand one another. Yet it would be perverse to ignore a history of shoddy reasoning and wild fanaticism in assessing the value someone’s work.

In that regard, Prager’s partisan hysteria and thoughtlessness is the core issue. This is a man who has made a career out of enthusiastically mistaking his feelings about how the world ought to be for facts about how the world really works. He even runs a “university” dedicated to the practice. Human as that is, it is also very foolish. Even, I dare say, idiotic. But more to the point, what makes Prager’s particular brand of proud idiocy dangerous is that his primary audience are citizens of a struggling representative democracy where massive social media companies funnel his nonsense into the laps of eager, credulous dupes.

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Dennis Prager is an Idiot and the Republican Party is a Cult