Prager on Hamastan

I usually bring Dennis Prager up only to slam his foolishness du jour concerning secularism, which he consistently and deliberately conflates with leftism in order to make the former look ridiculous. But today, I will give the angels their due, so to speak. He is pretty much on the money in many respects makes a couple of good points today regarding the recent parliamentary elections in Hamastan.

Like some other commentators, he notes that the election will bring some moral clarity to the situation.

But for those of us who believe that clarity is the prerequisite to moral progress, the landslide victory of the terrorist organization Hamas in Palestine has a silver lining.

First and foremost, it proves what people who perceive reality have been saying for decades: The great majority of Palestinians -- like the majority of Arabs elsewhere and like vast numbers of non-Arab Muslims -- want Israel destroyed. Even granting legitimacy to the argument that the complete moral, financial and political corruption of Fatah was partly responsible for the Hamas victory, those who voted for Hamas did not find that organization's terror, religious celebration of murder or charter calling for Israel's destruction an impediment to their vote.

He notes further that the elections "[reveal] the falsity of the worldwide Left's view of the Palestinians as committed to peace [and] that Palestinian terror is supported by a small minority of the Palestinian population."

He makes his best point when he discusses the basic error made by many leftists: "On just about every issue, the Left lives in a childlike fantasy realm. Their views are expressions of what they wish for, not what actually is." (I would disagree only in that I think Prager is discussing better -- and almost entirely younger -- idealistic leftists. Other leftists who know better on some level cynically cultivate such views and manipulate those who hold them.)

But Prager says this after first revealing himself to be guilty of the same error with respect to Bush's foreign policy. Of the "forward strategy of freedom", he says, immediately after the block quote above:

That is one reason why the Bush doctrine -- we need to spread democracy everywhere possible, including, or even especially, in the Arab world -- is so valid. You cannot deal with any problem in life -- from the most personal to the most macro -- by engaging in wishful thinking and denying reality.

Two things are grossly wrong with this. First of all, democracy is unrestrained majority rule -- which all too often results in exactly what we saw in the Hamastani elections. The last thing we need to do is waste blood and treasure merely spreading democracy. We should instead work to promote the spread of governments that respect individual rights.

Second, while I support such a policy where that is possible, it is clearly not possible in Hamastan. When we cannot reasonably expect to establish a government that will respect individual rights, we should either govern those areas or mercilessly keep them downtrodden. As I said long ago:

The short list of ways to emasculate our Islamofascist enemy after the September 2001 atrocities would include (1) obliterating as many capitals, large cities, and military installations in hostile Islamic countries as deemed militarily necessary, or necessary to serve as an example of what any survivors could expect if they continued to tolerate Islamofascism in their midst; (2) military takeover of any important facilities, such as oil fields (and in the latter case auctioning them off to American companies whenever impossible to show ownership prior to their nationalization by these states); (3) total blockade (If they don't need "infidels", they don't need their wheat, either, do they?); (5) prohibition of travel into America by anyone from a hostile Moslem nation; and (6) deportation of anyone from such a nation. The proper way to deal with the suicide cult of Islamofascism is to give its followers what they would get without us in the world to shield them from their own irrationality: death. The infidel Atlas should shrug.

This hints at some better options with regards to Hamastan and some other parts of the Middle East. Prager apparently does not wish to consider any of them.

Prager is correct when he says, "You cannot deal with any problem in life ... by engaging in wishful thinking and denying reality," but he needs to practice what he preaches.

-- CAV