My Response to Bret
Stephens
Written by Dennis Prager
Your new colleagues' beliefs tell you all you
need to know about the real threat to the West
Bret Stephens devoted his New York Times column last week
to admonishing me for my tweet from two weeks ago and critiquing my follow-up
column last week explaining the tweet.
The tweet reads, "The news media in the West pose a
far greater danger to Western civilization than Russia does."
Since he wrote the column as a "Dear Dennis"
letter to me, I will respond in kind.
Dear Bret: I'll try to respond to the most salient
arguments you made. I'll begin with one of the most troubling.
You wrote: "Wiser conservatives — and I count you
among them, Dennis — also know that when we speak of 'the West,' what we're
talking about is a particular strain within it. Marx and Lenin, after all, are
also part of the Western tradition, as are Heidegger and Hitler."
I was taken aback that such a serious thinker could write
that nihilist communists and nihilist Nazis are all "part of the Western
tradition."
That's what the vast majority of professors in the social
sciences teach: There's nothing morally superior about Western civilization —
it's as much about Hitler and Lenin as it is about Moses and Thomas Jefferson.
And, anyway, Moses never existed and Jefferson was a slaveholding rapist. Among
those professors' students are virtually all those who dominate the Western
news media.
Am I
wrong? Do you think your colleagues at the Times or the Washington Post or Le
Monde or BBC believe in the moral superiority of the West?
Of course they don't. Most believe in multiculturalism —
the doctrine that all cultures are equal — and it is therefore nothing more
than white racism to hold that Western civilization is superior. Didn't nearly
all of your (nonconservative) colleagues who commented on President Trump's
speech in Warsaw call it a dog whistle to white supremacists?
On those grounds alone, my tweet was accurate.
I am surprised that anyone — especially you — thinks
Vladimir Putin's Russia poses a greater threat to the survival of Western
civilization than the Western left. No external force can destroy a
civilization as effectively as an internal one — especially one as powerful and
wealthy as the West. The Western left (not Western liberals) is such a force.
Western liberals always adored the West.
I was also stunned by your saying, "I'm not sure
that Justin Trudeau declaring there is 'no core identity, no mainstream in
Canada' counts as a Spenglerian moment in the story of Western decline."
The prime minister of Canada announces with pride that
his country has no core identity and you don't think that counts as an example
of a declining civilization?
And here's another upsetting sentence: "To suggest
that Vladimir Putin is a distant nuisance but Maggie Haberman or David Sanger
is an existential threat to our civilization isn't seeing things plain, to put
it mildly."
The reason I found that troubling is I never cited
Haberman or Sanger, and you well know that no generalization includes every
possible example — that's what makes it a generalization. But I did
specifically cite the writers in The Atlantic who equated Western civilization
with white supremacy, and your substitution of your New York Times colleagues
for The Atlantic commentators allowed you to avoid dealing with The Atlantic
writers' and others media attacks on Western civilization.
Despite the fact that neither my tweet nor my column said
a word about Trump, you devoted almost half your column to denouncing the
president. Yet, as I wrote in the column, my tweet would have been just as
accurate had I sent it out during former President Obama's administration or
Hillary Clinton's, if she were president.
Bret, to your great credit, you are a lonely voice of
strong support for Israel at your newspaper (your readers should see the videos
on the Middle East you made for Prager University; they have eight million
views for good reason). Doesn't the almost uniform hostility toward Israel in
the media and academia trouble you? Does it trouble you that most Democrats in
America hold a negative view of Israel? That Jewish students at many American,
not to mention European, universities fear expressing support for Israel or
just wearing a yarmulke on campus? That so many young American Jews, influenced
by the media and their professors, loathe Israel? I am certain all of that
greatly troubles you. Is any of that Putin's doing? Or is it all the result of
the media and academia?
You mentioned that you will be sending me a birthday
gift, a book about Putin's Russia, "Nothing Is True and Everything Is
Possible" by Peter Pomerantsev. I promise to read it. And I request a
promise in return: Read the book I am sending you, "The Strange Death of
Europe" by the eminent British thinker Douglas Murray. The book describes
Europe's suicide at the hands of its progressive elites — in particular, its
multiculturalism-affirming political leaders and mendacious news media. To the
best of my recollection, in describing the death of European civilization,
Murray doesn't mention Putin once. (Regarding the mendacious media, read the
report published this week in Germany about the dishonesty in the German media,
which routinely substitutes left-wing opinion for facts in reporting the
immigrant crisis in Germany.)
Perhaps the most troubling part of your response was your
penultimate line: "Don't be a hater, Dennis."
Where did that come from? You cite not a single hateful
word in my column — because there are none to cite. And "hater" has
become the all-purpose left-wing epithet to dismiss all conservatives. Why
would my friend Bret Stephens use it?
***
Indeed. Bret Stephens should read The Strange Death of
Europe. It is the only book
I’ve recently read which could change the course of European history. Bret Stephens should read the book first and
only then respond to Dennis Prager.
Bret Stephens's New York Times article:
Bret Stephens's New York Times article:
