Reaction & Commentary
That you’re worse off than you think that you’re worse off than your grandparents I think there are different challenge do you think you’re worse off than your grandparents the argument I think is the individual responsibility does not change the climate does not fix the problem that needs global collective
Responsibility so I think that’s the core of the question do you have a theory about that well fundamentally I’m a psychologist and my experience has been that people can do a tremendous amount of good for themselves and for the people who are immediately around them by looking to their own
Inadequacies and their own flaws and the things that they’re not doing in their lives and starting to build themselves up as more powerful individuals and if they’re capable of doing that and then they’re capable of expanding their career and if they’re capable of expanding their career and their competence then they’re capable of
Taking their place in the community as effective leaders and then they’re capable of making wise decision instead of unwise decisions when it comes to making collective political decisions not suggesting in the least and have never suggested that there’s no domain for social action I’m suggesting that people who don’t have their own houses
In order should be very careful before they go about reorganizing the world which happens in many ways and I just just – if a young person believes that the client at the global warming problem on the climate is something that needs to be tackled quickly and they can’t wait until they
Grow up and become Prime Minister’s to do it do you think collective responsibility overrides individual responsibility in a huge issue like that no I think generally people I think generally people have things that are more within their personal purview that are more difficult to deal with and that
They’re avoiding and that generally the way they avoid them is by adopting pseudo moralistic stances on large-scale social issues so that they look good to their friends and their neighbors a major difference between the right and the left concerns the way each seeks to improve society conservatives believe
That the way to a better society is almost always through the moral improvement of the individual by each person doing battle with his or her own weaknesses and flaws it is true that in violent and evil society such as fascist communist or Islamist tyrannies the individual must be preoccupied with
Battling outside forces almost everywhere else though certainly in a free and decent country such as America the greatest battle of the individual must be with inner forces that is with his or her moral failings the left on the other hand believes that the way to a better society is almost always
Through doing battle with society’s moral failings thus in America the left concentrates its efforts on combating sexism racism intolerance xenophobia homophobia Islamophobia and the many other evils that the Left believes permeate American society one important consequence of this left-right distinction is that those on the left or far more preoccupied with
Politics than those on the right since the left is so much more interested in fixing society than in fixing the individual politics inevitably becomes the vehicle for societal improvement that’s why whenever the term activist is used we almost always assume that the term refers to someone on the left
Another consequence of this left-right difference is that since conservatives believe Society has changed one person at a time they accept that change happens gradually this isn’t fast enough for the left which is always and everywhere focused on social revolution an excellent example of this was a statement by the then presidential
Candidate Barack Obama just days before his first election in 2008 through a rapturous audience he declared we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America conservatives not only have no interest in fundamentally transforming the United States of America they are strongly opposed to doing so conservatives understand that
Fundamentally transforming any society that isn’t fundamentally bad not to mention transforming what is one of the most decent societies in history can only make the society worse conservatives believe that America can be improved but should not be transformed let alone fundamentally transformed the founders of the United States recognized that the
Transformation that every generation must work on is the moral transformation of each citizen thus character development was at the core of both child-rearing and of young people’s education from elementary school through college as John Adams the second president said our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people it is
Wholly inadequate to the government of any other and in the words of Benjamin Franklin only a virtuous people are capable of freedom why is that because freedom requires self-control the free are the society the more self-control is necessary if the majority of people don’t control themselves the state meaning and ever more powerful
Government will have to control them from the founding of the United States until the 1960s schools and parents concentrated on character education but with the assent of left-wing ideas character education has all but disappeared from American schools instead children are taught not to focus on their flaws but on America’s social
Issues have replaced character education an example is a new K through 12 science curriculum the next generation of science standards which will teach young Americans starting in kindergarten about global warming and when they get to college American young people will be taught about the need to fight economic inequality white privilege and the
Alleged rape culture on their campuses ironically if there really is a rape culture that permeates American college campuses the only reason would have to be that there were so little character education in our schools or for that matter at home fathers and religion historically the two primary conveyors of self
Control are non-existent in the lives of millions of American children we are now producing vast numbers of Americans who are passionate about fixing America while doing next to nothing about fixing their own character the problem however is that you can’t make society better unless you first make its people better I’m Dennis Prager
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