| 4-24-98
By Luke Ford
On KABC radio AM 790, Dennis Prager was disturbed by the custom
in some churches, at times, to allow parishioners to bring dogs.
The custom obliterates the distinction between human and animals
and retards the human rising to God. Prager discussed an Episcopal
church on the Upper East Side, a rich church, a high church, the
most ritualized of the Protestant churches, allowed the presence
of dogs in its services.
A caller said that this was not surprising as Christianity humanized
God through its divinizing of Jesus.
P pointed out all the anthropomorphic references to God in the
Hebrew Bible. God gets sad, gets angry…etc… P claimed
that Christians do not conceive of God as human anymore than Jews
or Muslims do.
In his second hour, DP talked about the death of James Ray, who
killed Martin Luther King. DP was disturbed that MLK's widow thought
the passing of Ray was a tragedy. Ray did not deserve to live says
DP. He does not buy that Ray may not have carried out the crime.
Ray maintained to his death that he was innocent.
Assassination is a particularly heinous form of murder.
P says that many Americans here, like with the Kennedy assassination,
have a hard time admitting that one man can wreak such havoc.
P recommended a book on the King assassination by Gerald Posner,
who wrote a similar work about the Kennedy assassination.
Prager referred to today's Wall Street Journal article on sentimentality.
By DIGBY ANDERSON
LONDON--When Pol Pot's death was reported at the end of last week,
it understandably made the front pages of newspapers around the
world. But in the Times of London and the Daily Mail, the leading
British tabloid, the dictator's death was pushed down the front
page to make room for something apparently more important. It was
a report from a modest think tank, written by 12 rather dry academics
and titled: "Faking It: The Sentimentalisation of Modern Society."
What on earth could they say to rate such attention?
They said, or rather, since I edited the book, we said that Britain
and modern societies in general were increasingly being driven by
sentimentalism. The "mob grief" at Princess Diana's funeral showed
just how sentimental the once famously reticent English had become.
At that funeral, wrote one of our contributors, philosopher Anthony
O'Hear, sentimentality was "personified and canonized, the elevation
of feelings above reason, reality and restraint."
If true, this is something new. We are, after all, meant to be
societies of the Enlightenment, of reason, reality and science.
Yet the evidence is all around us that we are rejecting this tradition.
...What people want is to feel good about the environment, about
animals, to feel concerned. They happily subscribe to myths about
the blissfulness of nature and the hazards of the man-made environment,
oblivious of the reality that raw nature has always been man's enemy.
But they are simultaneously unwilling to give up any of the comforts
of prosperity and development that taming nature has produced. Woe
betide any politician who actually inflicted a state of nature on
a high-income, long-living, microwaving, two-car, computerized population.
What the people expect is a display of concern, the unveiling of
initiatives that come to naught, or for someone else to pay for
environmental controls.
Luke:
A female caller agreed with Prager about not bringing dogs to
a house of worship. But what about rabbis who kick kids out for
being noisy. P agreed with such rabbis' behavior. Religious services
are to elevate the human. This is difficult. Crying children disturb
that process. You take a crying kid out of a movie theater. Religious
services are more important than movies.
Prager says his childhood talk radio hero was Gene Shepherd on
WOR. He took no calls and had no guests, and just talked for three
hours. P asked if he would be allowed to do that? P laughed.
P also laughed over the latest SUV which sold for $60K and is
equipped with an anti-aircraft gun.
P was annoyed with a 55-year old unmarried woman who used a sperm
donor (invitro fertilization) to get pregnant. P was particularly
annoyed that she was unmarried. The woman gave birth to four children
at once.
P thought that the following news, on page three of today's LA
TIMES was not news.
SACRAMENTO--Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jane Harman may
have broken the law by hiring an immigrant nanny in 1989 who had
no legal authority to work in the United States.
Harman says she thought at the time that her actions were legal
because the immigrant from England was pursuing work authorization,
with Harman as her U.S. sponsor.
"By continuing the sponsorship process, she felt that she was
proceeding appropriately," said Kam Kuwata, Harman's campaign manager.
"In all candor, I don't think she has given it a lot of thought
since then."
But federal authorities say Harman violated U.S. immigration laws
if she employed the nanny before the application process was complete.
Luke:
Prager thinks it is irrelevant if a candidate had an illegal nanny
or did not pay the Social Security tax for her nanny. P cares more
about her views on bilingual education, vouchers, taxes… How
many times would the LA TIMES feature an article on Harman's ideas?
Prager has an article in Sunday's LA TIMES. The paper asked him
to write an opinion piece on choosing who will live and who will
die. P sat up all Thursday night thinking about it and writing his
essay. P says the police say they saved wounded citizens before
a wounded bank robber at a shootout in North Hollywood last year.
Dennis lectured on happiness at LA TIMES books fair at UCLA on
Sunday at 11AM at the Barnes and Noble booth.
LA TIMES: Copyright
Sunday, April 26, 1998
PERSPECTIVE ON ETHICS
Whom Should We Save First?
Whether outside a bank robbery or on board a sinking ship, every
day we must
make judgments that affect lives.
By DENNIS PRAGER
Whom to save?
This seems to be the question of the moment as a result of two
well-known events, one recent and one 86 years ago.
The recent event was the Feb. 28, 1997, Los Angeles Police Department
killing of two bank robbers--one of whom, some charge, could have
been saved had the police desired to do so. The controversy revolves
around the official rescue policy that stipulates saving people
in order of severity of wound. Was this policy violated by first
saving less severely wounded innocent people before attempting to
save the mortally wounded bank robber?
The older event raised similar questions and has preoccupied millions
of people since the release of the film "Titanic." With a ship sinking
with far fewer life boats than passengers, whom do you save? Women
and children? The young? First-class passengers? Those chosen by
lots?
The questions raised by the North Hollywood shootout and the sinking
of the Titanic are disturbing because they force us to confront
a disturbing idea:
Some people's lives are more valuable than others'. But we cannot
turn away from these questions because increasingly we will have
to confront them. For example, should we spend the same amount of
money on health care for the very elderly as we should on the young?
The money supply is not endless. Thus we also have to determine
which diseases should receive more research money than others. Should
we spend more researching AIDS or cancer and heart disease? Those
who argue for AIDS say that unlike many cancers and heart disease,
AIDS is almost always a death sentence, and it is killing many millions
of people in the prime of their lives around the world. Those arguing
for more cancer and heart disease research say that AIDS is entirely
preventable, while cancer and heart disease are not.
Increasingly, we cannot avoid having to choose whom to save. As
much as we are repelled at having to do so--inasmuch as it seems
to imply the unspeakable, that we deem some people more worthy of
life than others--there will be times when we have to make this
choice.
While good people can differ as
to what criteria to use in making such choices, most people might
be able to sign on to at least four guiding principles:
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