Dennis Prager Has A Funny Definition Of Freedom
Written by Jamison Foser
Published
Conservative columnist Dennis Prager offers up a truly nonsensical definition of freedom:
Through the use of public opprobrium, laws and lawsuits, Americans today are less free than at any time since the abolition of slavery (with the obvious exception of blacks under Jim Crow).
Public opprobrium is known as political correctness, and it has suppressed saying anything -- no matter how true and no matter how innocent -- that offends left-wing sensibilities.
“Merry Christmas” offends leftist views on multiculturalism. So, it's largely gone.
Note how, to Dennis Prager, Jim Crow is just a footnote in a discussion of the relative freedom enjoyed by Americans today and a hundred years ago. Sadly, that parenthetical was Prager's only concession to reality, as he quickly moved on to complaining that some people say “happy holidays.” Why, that's a greater infringement on freedom than the lack of women's suffrage was!
Prager has more examples, though they don't get much better:
High school and college teams with American Indian names must drop those names because by definition, according to the left, they offend American Indians.
Outrageous! But … maybe not quite as outrageous as denying Native American citizens the right to vote.
What Prager describes as an infringement on freedom is actually just the existence of criticism and disagreement. He says sports teams “must drop” their “American Indian names” -- but he doesn't really mean “must.” The Florida State University sports teams are still known as the “Seminoles,” and the high school I attended still calls its teams the “Chiefs,” to pick just two examples. Some people criticize Washington's NFL team for going by the name “Redskins” -- but nobody has prohibited them from doing so. Likewise, nobody is stopping Dennis Prager from saying “Merry Christmas.” They're just choosing to say “happy holidays.”
When Dennis Prager says Americans today lack freedom, what he means is that they lack freedom from disagreement and criticism. That's absurd.* Worse: Prager actually says such disagreement is a greater infringement on freedom than has occurred since the end of slavery -- greater than the denial of voting rights to women and Native Americans, or the internment of Japanese Americans.
If there is a dumber definition of “freedom,” I hope never to encounter it.
Oh. Wait. Prager isn't done yet:
A woman may reveal as much of her body as she wishes. But if a man is perceived by a woman as looking too long at what she reveals, or if he comments on what she reveals, he may be fired from his job and/or sued for “sexual harassment.” A woman may wear a miniskirt and crop-top, but a man may not have a calendar of women wearing miniskirts and crop-tops on his desk at work. That constitutes sexual harassment and a “hostile work environment.”
That's the kind of “freedom” Dennis Prager misses.
* Not included in Prager's rant about the lack of freedom in America today: Bans on gay marriage. Probably because those are actual infringements on freedom, which Prager doesn't seem to care about.