Posted by
Doctor Demex on Monday, September 25, 2006 11:04:46 AM
Dennis Prager changed his radio show's format recently, initiating a
special hour every Tuesday focusing on the "big issues." He asked
his listeners what they thought, and this is what I told him:
"Your new Tuesday feature focusing on the 'big' issues is a needed
spoonful of medicine. The world works the way it does because most
folks go through the day preoccupied about whether their clothes are
color-coordinated, what they'll have for dinner, and where their next
dollar is coming from. Thinking about what's right and what's
wrong and why we exist and why we should care is an idle man's luxury
for most of them—for most of them, that is, who, for whatever reason,
do not think that life as they know it is being seriously threatened by
anything they might hear about on the news (unless it's global warming,
cigarette smoke, or Mel Gibson).
"'Sure, the Nazis were a threat back in the day,' I hear, 'but the
scimitar-rattling of a few Islamic primitives is not the same
thing! Today, everyone is entitled to his own opinion—even Bin
Laden and Ahmadinejad, if we truly believed
in the principles we were taught in school.' And therein lies the
root of the need for your new feature: If our school system had
been doing its job, the two most pressing questions consuming most
Westerners after 9/11 would not be 'Why do they hate us?' and 'What on earth do we do now?'"