I listened intently to Dennis Prager speak on Saturday evening, July 10, 2010.   Of all the speakers at the Western Conservative Summit, I believe I learned the most from Dennis Prager.   Oh I enjoyed other speakers too but in large part because they mirrored attitudes or beliefs I already possess.   Some told stories I had not heard before but Mr. Prager did more for me.  Mr. Prager made me think in a different realm.   The clarity of his comments and the new information and his manner of presentation and interpretation of data I may have already had was perfectly astounding.  

Mr. Prager began by explaining that our largest problem today was not political and not even economic.  The largest problem we have today is that we are arguing with different sets of values.    Mr. Prager described there to be a hunger to understand what it is to be an American.   Here is where he drove one of his largest points home.   He described what he referred to as the Trinity.   The conservative believes in the following:

• In God We Trust

• Liberty

• E Pluribus Unum - Out of many come one.  The concept describes the strength of the melting pot that I have talked about on these pages before.   It is in my opinion, as a conservative, that diversity is no strength and provides no advantage.   Diversity is a problem.   The melting pot has for generations solved that problem because the cultures of the world were melted into a uniquely American culture.  When immigrants came to our shores they sought liberty, opportunity and they possessed an overwhelming desire to become Americans.  

The liberal or progressive philosophy is 180 degrees contrary to the conservative vision with regard to his or her values.  The progressive believes in the following:

• Secular Society

• Statist - The government maintains and the government provides for the progressive needs

• Multiculturalism - The progressive wishes to preserve multiple cultures and celebrate those cultures with the notion that America is stronger from a diversity of culture or a combination of cultures, not a consolidation of cultures.   

I find the concept of multiculturalism fine at the Olympics.   Share your cultures.  Study one another and learn from one another.   But, the American society is not a place for this study and experimentation.    What has made us strong is that despite all those different cultures that came to our nation, immigrants came with the knowledge they must learn the English language to survive and then to thrive.   As pointed out by another speaker during the day, without a common language how can these multiple cultures communicate with each other to tell us what they want?   

Mr. Prager spoke of today's universities which are bastions of liberalism.   He demonstrated his own intellect when he indicated that today's universities possess a great deal of knowledge but they lack wisdom.    This hits the nail on the head.   The diversity that the left emphasizes as important truly is important when we are speaking of ideas.   A university environment should foster the concept of placing all ideas on the table to allow the student to grow in how he/she deals with managing information and formulating opinion.   No wisdom can be gained when all points of view are not presented.  

With regard to the president, Mr. Prager did not directly criticize him for his leftist points of view.  In fact he offered his opinion that persons on the left love their country as much as those of us on the right.  I admit that I have a hard time believing this but he brought the issue home to me when he asked, "How can you love something you want to fundamentally transform?"  Barack Obama has indicated a desire to fundamentally transform America in his vision.   Given this goal, how can he love America?   He can't love it for what it is, not if he wants to change it in the material way he aggressively pursues.   

With regard to race relations Dennis offered the following statistic that I accept on face value:  "More black Americans have come to this country voluntarily than came to this country as slaves."  If this is true and I am certain that Mr. Prager had the data to back this up, then how can it be that Americans who are black are eager by such majorities to transform the country whose beacon they followed to these shores voluntarily?   As was pointed out by another speaker on that Saturday, for all our faults, this nation has been a consistent magnet for people in other countries who seek a better life.  How many times has anyone heard of an American family that left America to find a land of greater opportunity someplace else in the world?  

Prager stressed that liberals do not think.  They feel.   This was never more apparent than during an interview I witnessed on the O'Reilly Factor many months ago.  O'Reilly's guest and adversary in debate was Whoopi Goldberg.   O'Reilly kept asking her what she thought about the issue they had on the table and she eventually interrupted him to emphasize that she doesn't think, she feels.   This is so foreign to conservatives like me that I simply cannot comprehend.  Someone with resources who makes their decisions solely on the basis of feelings it would seem would end up with few resources.  

Prager spoke of a question he posed to an audience of children, "If you were placed in a circumstance where your pet was in a raging flood with a complete stranger, would you save the stranger or would you save the pet assuming you only had the time to save one?"  There was no doubt in a single mind in that meeting room or at least I don't believe there was.   I believe most of us reasoned that we would save the stranger.   We place a higher value on the life of another human being than we do on the life of an animal.   Prager explained this as a moral bearing that instinctively reasons that all men are created in God's image and His image is sacred.   Even those of us who are not religious still possess this morality, likely because at some point in time we had some religious training.   Those without the moral bearing which included most of the youth to whom he presented that question indicated they would save their pet first because they loved their pet and they didn't know the stranger.  

Children today are inculcated with the notion to be skeptical of all things except their government.   What they need to understand and what adults like myself and presumably those who read this blog need to teach young boys and girls is that the bigger the state, the smaller the citizen.   They need to remain skeptical of all things but they must be especially skeptical of government.   

Prager concluded by identifying this November election as the most important since the Lincoln era.   The tactic used by those in the current administration is to play on a sense of victimhood, to make people want to blame others for their personal situations and allow the government to protect them from this perceived sense of victimhood.    Prager identified as evil the most unforgiveable sin of the left.  They create victims of people and shackle them with this sense of victimhood when they could and should be free.   Today, the Democrat Party appears intent on creating blacks, women and Mexicans as victims.  These individuals then identify Democrats as the people who can protect them from the evil of Republicans.  Sadly, the description of evil is misplaced.  There is and there will always be evil in our world and as stated by Mr. Prager, nothing is more unforgiveable than those who would take advantage of people in the way it has been historically done because they assign a permanent status to people who could be taught to help themselves.