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4-29-98 Dennis Prager referenced this Wasington Post opinion piece in today's show: Little Kids as Big Brother By Nat Hentoff
Saturday, April 25, 1998; Page A19
Here, on the Internet, is the Kid's Page of the Justice Department, with a friendly looking attorney general delivering a message:
"Kids like you have to deal with the prejudice of their family members. . . . When someone makes jokes about people, or labels people because of where they come from, the color of their skin, their religion or gender, it's both a hurtful act and a hateful act."
This message is directed to kids from kindergarten to the fifth grade. What is a child to do if he or she hears, at home, racism, antisemitism, anti-Catholicism or any of the other flourishing forms of bigotry? It can come from an uncle, a grandfather or one's very own parents.
Well, says Attorney General Janet Reno, "If this happens in your home, you might try talking to your parents, teacher, religious leader, counselor or some other adult with whom you feel comfortable."
And if at first your parents say you are making too much of just a joke, according to this directive, then tell your teacher or religious leader that there is hateful speech in your home. The Rev. Jesse Jackson might come by and set up a speech code for your parents.
Prager also referenced this NY TIMES article: And Liberty for Some: Switching Sides on the First Amendment
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON -- When a Chicago jury ruled last week that a group of abortion opponents had violated a federal anti-racketeering statute, officials of the National Organization for Women cheered: A law intended to hobble the mafia had been used successfully to punish aggressive protesters.
But officials at another group that, like NOW, supports the abortion rights movement were dismayed. The American Civil Liberties Union had argued that using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO, against abortion protesters set a dangerous precedent. "We have always been afraid of using the racketeering law this way," said ACLU president Nadine Strossen, a professor at New York Law School. "This now could theoretically be used against any kind of protest movement."
And the penalties are harsh. The winner may collect triple the amount of actual damages from the loser.
Subj: Prager-L: DP Fails to Take Offensive Again Date: 98-04-29 17:49:23 EDT From: Sgil46@aol.com (Sgil46) Sender: owner-prager-l@email.csun.edu Today, Wed 4/30/98, Dennis Prager took up the issue raised by the US Atty General's Web page as reported in the New York Times. Janet Reno had asked children to report their parents when they tell an ethnic joke. Among the arguments that DP used was [his read]: -"the Right cares how you vote, the Left cares how you think." -"the Left believes that they know best [others have no legitimate basis to object]" -"The totalitarian non-sense that it okay for kids to snitch on their parents [for crossing the PC line]" -He compared the practice to the Soviets making a national hero of a Ukraine kid who turned in his parents to be shot for withholding some wheat (to sustain their family whilst Stalin starved millions). It is my opinion (to the extent that there is any real meaning to the terms Left & Right) that the most obvious and sustainable charge is -"the Left believes that they know best" -- but DP failed to show in any significant way HOW they do this, and WHERE the Left is clearly incorrect in this hubris. The failure is not alone in DP -- it is a HUGE failure of the Right. Examples follow. The Left has continuously held the "moral" high ground on the death penalty through assorted asserted canards, the most assailable being "everybody knows there is no such thing as deterrence." The Right has CONSISTENTLY avoided proving the error in even this most errant extremist phrase. DP is no exception. The Left by commission (and the Right by dereliction ) have the blood of untold hundreds of thousands of ADDITIONAL innocent victims on their hands through denying the deterrent effect of capital punishment. The repeated phrase "Look at how many people have died in the name of God" implying religion is the problem. The antidote is "In this century alone, more have been killed in the name of 'isms' than all who died before." This phrase is only sometimes stated, while the former is heard all the time. The reality is the problem is neither with religion nor causes, but with humanity and its so-called leaders. This last helps no Establishment, so it is totally unstated. There are more examples to be found with personal gun ownership and crime deterrence, freedom of speech and freedom of access, creeping statism, propagation of cynicism. Social Engineering is made easier when extreme dichotomies are brought into focus. The cost of such comes in the form of eroded personal freedoms. When the "watch dogs" don't attack, the extremes are not tempered, and we lose. Gil from Echo Park Disgusted again Subj: Prager-L: utilitarian controlling stuff Date: 98-04-29 17:50:41 EDT From: Rodents2@aol.com (Rodents2) Sender: owner-prager-l@email.csun.edu
On Prager's radio broadcast today (4.29.98) he started the show with an article that greatly disturbed him in the Washington Post by Nat Hentoff. On the Kids Page of the Justice Department website the Attorney General instructs kids to "snitch on their parents for telling racial jokes" (a direct quote from D.P.). Dennis calls this "utilitarian controlling stuff " and then goes on to make the following statement: "The intact family is the greatest enemy of the left." Quite heady stuff! I looked up the Department of Justice website's "kidspage" and will quote you the disturbing section in full: <A message from the Attorney General: In these stories, kids like you have to deal with the prejudice of their family members. We all have relatives and friends that came to this country from other lands. Some chose to come, and some did not. Unfortunately, some people - - can forget how difficult it is to come to a new country, learn a new language and make new friends. When someone makes jokes about people, or labels people, because of where they come from, the color of their skin, their religion, or gender, it is both a hurtful act and a hateful act. If this happens in your home, you might try talking to your parents, teacher, religious leader, counselor, or other adult with whom you feel comfortable.> To Dennis, this is how we begin a journey down the road to totalitarianism. Dennis also stated that all totalitarian regimes (with the exception of the nazi's) arose from the left. Stephen Subj: Prager-L: utilitarian controlling stuff???? Date: 98-04-29 21:28:22 EDT From: ChrisDnld@aol.com (ChrisDnld) Sender: owner-prager-l@email.csun.edu
I just realized how much worse your post was than I had at first noticed. What a pack of lies and distortions you wrote. I have the tape... In a message dated 4/29/98 2:50:41 PM, you Stephen said: <<Dennis calls this "utilitarian controlling stuff " and then goes on to make the following statement: WRONG. He called it "totalitarian controlling stuff". I have it on tape. I listened to it twice, and heard NO MENTION of the word "utilitarian". Did you make that up?
>"The intact family is the greatest enemy of the left." >Quite heady stuff!
Before saying that, he FIRST explained (thus you quoted out of context): "This separation of children from parents is a powerful part of all doctrines left of center. So long as the family is strong, the left is weak. Parenthetically, if *only* married people with children voted, there would none or few Democrats in Congress, and certainly no Democratic President. " That is statistically true. Married people with kids vote OVERWHELMINGLY Republican. No one disputes that. Also he'd said, "Now, a lot of you, who are liberals, find this as frightening as I do."
...Dennis immediately then quoted the page as *GOING ON * to say that "What if your parents think you're making too much of "just a joke", according to the justice Dept, "the child should tell his teacher or religious leader that there is "hateful speech in my home." "Your parents are trying to kill you with secondary smoke at home, and now you should snitch on them for that and for filling you with hateful speech." Where do you stand on the 1st amendment, out of curiousity. The Soviet Union hero-ized kids who turned their parents in (who were often then killed). So does much of the American Left today, apparently. >Dennis also stated that all totalitarian regimes (with the >exception of the nazi's) arose from the left. You missed "..because they know what's good for you, and will shove it down your throat." He then went on to quote the NY TIMES, from it's NEWS section this Sunday, "Liberals, having used "freedom of expression" to achieve many of their goals over the last few decades, may no longer see the need for free speech as much as they once did. Univerisities, for example, where liberals have achieved supremacy, have become hotbeds of efforts to limit free expression with codes that prohibit racist comments or speech that could be construed as offensive to some group." Wednesday April 29, 1998
This was a powerful show. Dennis was fuming at the Department of Justice (DOJ) web site that has a childrens page in which they encourage children, as Dennis put it, to snitch on their parents. Basically the DOJ told the kids who visited their web site that if they hear a family using racial or hate- filled speech (including jokes) they should go to someone they trust such as a teacher, clergy, etc.. and tell on them. This site is dedicated to children between the ages of 5 and 11. Dennis had several thoughts on this. The three most prevalent is: 1) How the heck are such young children supposed to discern which is offensive and which is not offensive speech? Dennis said that ethnic humor can be quite funny at times. He loves ethnic humor about his own group (Jews), what is wrong is when that humor or speech is cruel. 2) What business is it of the DOJ and Janet Reno to be telling American children to monitor their parents speech? 3) Dennis said that the Soviet Union encouraged the children to snitch on their parents. Dennis said that people should worry that President Clinton, Janet Reno, and the DOJ feel no problem whatsoever encouraging American children monitor and snitch on their parents. Dennis was infuriated over this web page. |
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