Easy to explain, hard to solve.

As he does with all topics, Dennis Prager brings clarity to the topic of the Israel-Arab conflict.

Once you understand the problem, it's easy to know what side to be on. If you misunderstand the problem then I can see why you might support Hamas. They have a lot of people on their side due to the underdog fallacy. Do the "have-nots" ever commit evils against the "haves"? If you answer "no", then I can understand why you might support Hamas and other Islamic terror groups.

Targeted Condemnations Wanted

Dennis Prager wants more condemnations with specified targets in the vein of Pope Francis's condemnation of the Mafia. Excerpt:

It is not enough for Muslim leaders to issue routine condemnations of violence and terrorism. Without specifying the Muslims who are the world’s premier practitioners of murder in God’s name, these condemnations of violence and terror are worthless.

Muslim religious leaders — from Al-Azhar in Cairo to local imams throughout the world – need to say exactly what Pope Francis said to the Catholic members of the Mafia: “Any Muslim who commits an act of terror — that is, deliberately murders civilians of any nationality or religion — goes to hell.”

This would be particularly effective given how many Muslim terrorists have been convinced by some religious leaders that blowing up, shooting, or slitting the throats of men, women and children guarantees that they will go straight to heaven (where, moreover, they will be attended to by dozens of virgin women).

Condemnations of actions in general mean nothing. Only when the perpetrators are specified and their actions are specified is there hope of having a moral impact. Pope Francis specified exactly whom he was addressing and for what sins.

Don't hold your breath, Dennis. Muslims fall mainly into two camps: violent murderers and moral cowards.

Prager responds to Dawkins

Whenever I'm listening to the radio at Noon and I notice that Rush Limbaugh is getting a bit repetitive, I always kick over to Dennis Prager's show. The man is really brilliant, and this article showcases his persuasive, bold and clear defense of the Truth against the serious error of the kind of modern, militant atheism espoused by Richard Dawkins. Excerpts:

Years ago, I interviewed Pearl and Sam Oliner, two professors of sociology at California State University at Humboldt and the authors of one of the most highly-regarded works on altruism, The Altruistic Personality. The book was the product of the Oliners' lifetime of study of non-Jewish rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust.

The Oliners, it should be noted, are secular, not religious, Jews; they had no religious agenda.

I asked Samuel Oliner, "Knowing all you now know about who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, if you had to return as a Jew to Poland and you could knock on the door of only one person in the hope that they would rescue you, would you knock on the door of a Polish lawyer, a Polish doctor, a Polish artist or a Polish priest?"

Without hesitation, he said, "a Polish priest." And his wife immediately added, "I would prefer a Polish nun."

That alone should be enough to negate the pernicious nonsense that God is not only unnecessary for a moral world, but is detrimental to one.

And:

Perhaps the most powerful proof of the moral decay that follows the death of God is the Western university and its secular intellectuals. Their moral record has been loathsome. Nowhere were Stalin and Mao as venerated as they were at the most anti-religious and secular institutions in Western society, the universities.

Nowhere in the West today is anti-Americanism and Israel-hatred as widespread as it is at universities. And Princeton University awarded its first tenured professorship in bioethics to Peter Singer, an atheist who has argued, among other things, that that "the life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog or a chimpanzee" and that bestiality is not immoral.

Dawkins and his supporters have a right to their atheism. They do not have a right to intellectual dishonesty about atheism.

I have debated the best known atheists, including the late Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Lawrence Krauss ("A Universe from Nothing") and Daniel Dennett. Only Richard Dawkins has refused to come on my radio show.

RTWT (Stands for read the whole thang.)

Dennis Prager: "There is great benefit to the liberal sinner in being a liberal."

I commend Dennis Prager for being able to write an article like this. No Weiner jokes, just straight-ahead wisdom and truth about the widespread evidence that liberalism enables bad behavior. (Of course I appreciate Weiner jokes as much as the next conservative male....) Excerpt:

Consider the example of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. He had been expelled from college for paying someone to take his exams. His role in the death of a woman with whom he spent an evening would have sent almost anyone without his family name to prison -- or would have at least resulted in prosecution for negligent homicide. And he spent decades using so many women in so public a way that stories about his sex life were routinely told in Washington. Read the 9,000-word 1990 article in GQ by Michael Kelly, who a few years later became the editor of the New Republic.

When this unimpressive man started espousing liberal positions, speaking passionately about the downtrodden in society, it recalled the unimpressive students who marched on behalf of civil rights, peace and love.

It is quite likely that Ted Kennedy came to believe in the positions that he took. But I also suspect that he found espousing those positions invaluable to his self-image and to his public image: "Look at what a moral man I am after all." And liberal positions were all that mattered to the left and to the liberal media that largely ignored such lecherous behavior as the "waitress sandwich" he made in a Washington, D.C. restaurant with another prominent liberal, former Senator Chris Dodd.

Columbus Ohio Salem Station is *LIVE*

Great news! Now Kathleen can't complain they don't have a good conservative talk station in Columbus.

Salem Communications is adding another NewsTalk radio station to its stable of talk stations around the country beginning 11/1. 98.9 FM The Answer is now born in Columbus, Ohio — the 34th largest market, with the LMA of WJKR-FM (Adult Hits/Hot AC) Jack-FM) from Radio One Licenses. The new talker will be the 25th NewsTalk radio station owned by Salem.

“Salem has enjoyed a fantastic relationship with the Columbus community. We’re excited to deepen our connection in this market with our acquisition of a strong FM signal where listeners can be informed by our faculty of nationally syndicated hosts,” said Dave Santrella, President of Salem’s Radio division.

“I can’t think of a better time to launch a NewsTalk station than right now, in Ohio the biggest of all battleground states,” said Tom Heyl, General Manager for Columbus. “Columbus is ready for a contemporary NewsTalk radio station relevant to today’s culture.”

“This will be the 5th ‘Answer’ station we have launched at Salem, along with New York, Los Angeles, Riverside and Dallas,” said Phil Boyce Salem’s VP/Director, Spoken Word Format. “Salem continues to be a leader in the NewsTalk format, and this new station will be the first FM NewsTalk station in the company fold. The Answer imaging voiced by legendary Lonnie Perkins will sound great coming out of an FM speaker.”

The station will feature the Salem staple lineup of Bill Bennett’s Morning In America 6-9am, Mike Gallagher 9am to Noon, Dennis Prager Noon to 3pm, Michael Medved 3pm to 6pm, Hugh Hewitt 6 to 9pm, Dial Global’s Dennis Miller 9pm to midnight with Compass Media’s Lars Larson Midnight to 3am.

And it's on the FM dial. Who'd have thunk it? "No static at all."

The Benefactor Factor

Dennis Prager writes about how government entitlement programs and increasing dependency of the populace on them don't destroy only the economy, but also the virtue of gratitude. Excerpt:

What entitlements do, and what the transformation of entitlements into rights does, is create a citizenry that increasingly lacks the most important character trait -- gratitude. Of all the characteristics needed for both a happy and morally decent life, none surpasses gratitude. Grateful people are happier, and grateful people are more morally decent. That is why we teach our children to say "thank you." But the welfare state undoes that. One does not express thanks for a right. So, instead of "thank you," the citizen of the welfare state is taught to say, "What more can I get?"

Yet, while producing increasingly selfish people, the mantra of the left, and therefore of the universities and the media, has been for generations that capitalism and the free market, not the welfare state, produces selfish people.

All too true.

In my opinion, another thing which sheds light on the dearth in gratitude among recipients is the impersonal nature of government assistance. At a soup kitchen you may see a smiling face presenting you with the gift of food, with many other volunteers scurrying about in the background to prepare the gift. But often the monetary assistance delivered to those being helped by Uncle Sam is in the form of mass-produced debit cards and checks chunked out by 3rd party processing centers. Some of these don't even say where they are from. They don't even have an official seal or an American flag on them. It's easy to see how this tends to engender an entitlement mentality. Actions speak louder than words, even Obama's applause lines.

But speaking of Obama's words, all this legislation he brags on seems to be moving entitlements to a new level of abstraction. Forcing insurance companies to cover "kids" up to 26 years old—and these companies will merely shrug and raise premiums—is an ingenious way to hide the entitlement and thus hide the fact that it is a gift from either parental guardians or taxpayers. Is as if liberal bureaucrats are saying "Don't thank us, just re-elect us and pay more taxes. We'll keep rigging the system for you."

Dennis Prager on the "inability to identify the religious beliefs of Islamic terrorists"

I post this with a sigh. Who is not blue in the face at this point? But it's worth reading because Prager has such a gift for clarity and conciseness. Excerpt:

The Left's inability to identify the religious beliefs of Islamic terrorists and instead ascribe their murders of Americans to the terrorists' psychological tensions and economic problems―while at the same time utterly certain that conservative white Americans have only the most vile motives―is an expression of the Left's failure to recognize and confront real evil.

Just remember this: If Shahzad had not been identified as the would-be bomber, the mainstream (i.e., liberal) news media and leading Democrats would have told us repeatedly that a white male―surely a conservative white male―was the Times Square terrorist, and that we should therefore be looking suspiciously at our fellow Americans on the Right, especially those attending tea parties. For while liberals claim not to know the motives of Muslim terrorists, they are always certain of conservatives' motives: racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia.

Prager's American Trinity