Hoover Institution: Video: Uncommon Knowledge: Peter Robinson Interviewing Dennis Prager: The New Left in America

Source:The New Democrat

I’m going to actually explain why I actually not just respect, but like Dennis Prager and if I actually met him I would shake his hand enthusiastically even if we spent an hour talking and disagree with ninety-percent of the points that we just made. Because he gets it unlike a lot of people on the Right. He understands the difference between Liberals who defend liberty like Jack Kennedy to use as an example and people on the New Left in America who are interested in equality at all costs through a collectivist state.

Liberals vs. Illiberal’s in America at least and perhaps the rest of the world. Liberals who believe in liberty and the individual. Socialists or collectivists who believe in equality and that the job of the central state is to provide equality for all of its people. The Liberal wants to see that everyone has the opportunity to live as free as they allow for themselves to base on their skills and production, character and everything else. The Socialist lets say says, “liberty is risky and if we allow individual freedom, some people will do very well and others won’t. So why don’t we just move forward together to see that everyone does well, even if that means subtracting freedom.”

Liberals built and created America and built liberal democracy the liberal free state that we all live in as Americans. And created things like Equal Justice Under Law, our Bill of Rights which all of its individual rights, Equal Opportunity Under Law. Created things like the 1964 Civil Rights Act that says no American can be discriminated against based on race, ethnicity or gender. That is the state that Socialists and other collectivists want to tear down or at the very least transform and create their collectivist state and perhaps a social democracy that looks like Scandinavia.

This is not just a battle between the Center-Left and the Far-Left. But a battle between Americans who believe in individual liberty in general and those who see individualism as dangerous and risky. I don’t say this to be insulting or to put people down. But to actually layout what a lot of our American political battles are. People who believe in freedom, between people who don’t essentially other than basic human rights relating to torture, cruel and unusual punishment, voting and anti-discrimination laws. What the New-Left believes in is what Rick Perlstein and others call welfare rights. The right for people to live well and be taken care. And is by the central government even if that means subtracting freedom.