Dennis Prager: the defining characteristic of most people on the Left is naivete about evil

Christie's Auction House has sold John Lennon's handwritten lyrics to Give Peace A Chance for $833,654 dollars. Yes, it is hard to think of more stupidity in as few words, no matter what you said. If you said the Earth is flat, it would be less foolish than the lyrics to that line. First of all, as I have always felt, from the time that it was popular, is that is all they are saying. That is exactly right. They have nothing profound to say, give peace a chance. That's right. Well, you give peace a chance by using the military. That's why Ingrid Betancourt and thirteen others were liberated.

Just to let you know, and they have not revealed one third of what, and they say we're not telling. It's too humiliating, too degrading, too nightmarish. But just as one example, Ingrid Betancourt, remember this is a woman in her 40s who was running for president, by the way, on the left, a woman on the left running for president of Colombia. She went into areas where the FARC monsters had been strong to campaign, was kidnapped, and never let out. It is good to know, though, that she was a very big deal in Europe, who loved her. She was an attractive, intelligent woman who was married to a Frenchman, and so she was a French-Colombian, or a Colombian-French. And she had run for president, she was on the Green Party ticket, among other tickets. And she was just a cause celebre, a celebrated cause in Europe.

For whatever reason, that did not move the FARC monsters. It did not. The resolutions passed in Paris did not seem to move them. However, when the military showed up in a brilliant plan, brilliant, concocted over months with Americans and other help, that worked. That worked. People with weapons got her out. The military got her out. Now they got her out, by the way, without even killing anybody, which is wonderful. If the military can win without killing, I'm all for it...

I want to read to you some of the comments that she made when she got out. It was not treatment you can give to a living being. I won't even speak of the human being, Betancourt said. I wouldn't have given the treatment I had to an animal, perhaps not even to a plant. Pretty powerful, huh? When I say that they were chained, this is from CNN Carl Penhall. When I say they were chained by the neck for 24 hours a day, it wasn't just for a few days. It was for two and three years.

But here is the line that I most wanted to isolate from one of the reports. But the worst thing that happened to her, she said, was "realizing that mankind, that human beings can be so horrible to other human beings." Well, given that she was a woman of the moderate left, I mean, obviously not the far left like them, but on the left, I knew by definition she was naive about evil. That is the defining characteristic of almost everyone left of center, is naivete about evil. And that's why they caused so much trouble, even when many of them are very sweet people, as I'm sure she is. She was shocked that people cold be so cruel...

They think George Bush is evil. That's how sick, how sick the left mind is about real evil. It is. On the issue of good and evil, the leftist mind is perverse. Yeah, she just couldn't realize, she never realized that mankind, that human beings could be so horrible to other beings. Why not? Did she never read any history of the Communists in China? Of the Gulag Archipelago? Of the Holocaust? I just don't know. How did she not realize this? Well, part of the reason is that for people on the left, it has to happen to them to be real. Everything has to be personalized. Well, I never experienced it. That's why there's no wisdom on the left. You can't be wise if you don't learn from others.

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McCain sees himself in Teddy Roosevelt mold

And he's right about that. TR was a patriot but he was also the founder of the "Progressive" party, a Greenie and an enemy of business

Senator John McCain, in a wide-ranging interview, called for a government that was frugal but more active than many conservatives might prefer. He said government should play an important role in areas like addressing climate change, regulating campaign finance and taking care of "those in America who cannot take care of themselves." "I count myself as a conservative Republican, yet I view it to a large degree in the Theodore Roosevelt mold," the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said, referring to Roosevelt's reputation for reform, environmentalism and tough foreign policy.

The views expressed by McCain in the 45-minute interview here Friday illustrate the challenge he faces as he tries to navigate the sensibilities of his party's conservative base and those of the moderate and independent voters he needs to defeat Senator Barack Obama, his Democratic rival.

His responses suggested that he was basically in sync with his party's conservative core but was not always willing to use the power of the U.S. government to impose those values. He also expressed a willingness to deploy government power and influence where free-market purists might hesitate to do so, and to consider unleashing military force for moral reasons.

In recent weeks, McCain has left many Republicans unsettled about his ideological bearings by toggling between reliably conservative issues, like support for gun owners' rights, and an emphasis on centrist messages, like his willingness to tackle global warming and to provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

McCain, who with his wife, Cindy, has an adopted daughter, said flatly that he opposed allowing gay couples to adopt. "I think that we've proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no, I don't believe in gay adoption," he said.

But he declined to take a specific position when asked whether only evolution should be taught in public schools. "It's up to the school boards," he said. "That's why we have local control over education." McCain has said he believes in evolution.

Many social conservatives strenuously oppose California's decision to allow same-sex marriage. But McCain, who also opposes same-sex marriage, has always said that the issue is up to the states, and in the interview he said he would stick to that position as president even if California chose to continue allowing gay marriage after putting the matter to a statewide vote in November. "I respect the right of the states to make those decisions," he said.

Asked whether he considered himself an evangelical Christian, McCain responded, "I consider myself a Christian." "I attend church," he said. "My faith has sustained me in very difficult times." Asked how often he attended, he responded: "Not as often as I should." He has recently been photographed going to church as his campaign has begun to make public the times he attends services.

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ELSEWHERE

Stalinist (crooked) statistics live on in Britain: "Ministers will defy public concern over gang violence by claiming today that crime is falling at a record rate. Even before the final figures for the British Crime Survey (BCS) were in, Whitehall officials had already begun drawing up plans to trumpet the reduction in offences, The Times has learnt. The survey, published today, will state that crime is falling in all 43 police forces in England and Wales and that the Government has exceeded its key target of cutting offences by more than 15 per cent since 2003. Its release comes at a time when the credibility of official statistics is being questioned. Senior police are worried about shortcomings in recording two major areas: knife and gun crime. Despite a recent series of stabbings, the survey will conclude that knife crime is stable. The researchers interview 47,000 people aged 16 and over about their experience of crime over the previous 12 months. They cannot capture the extent of knife crime because they do not interview under16s."

Pigs do Fly... AP Announces Iraq War Basically Over : "Spc. Grover Gebhart has spent nine months at a small post on a Sunni-Shiite fault line in western Baghdad. But the 21-year-old soldier on his first tour in Iraq feels he's missing the real war - in Afghanistan, where his brother is fighting the Taliban. With violence in Iraq at its lowest level in four years and the war in Afghanistan at a peak, the soldiers serving at patrol station Maverick say Gebhart's view is increasingly common, especially among younger soldiers looking to prove themselves in battle. "I've heard it a lot since I got here," said 2nd Lt. Karl Kuechenmeister, a 2007 West Point graduate who arrived in Iraq about a week ago."

US, Afghan Troops Repel Attack from Taliban Invaders With 8:1 Advantage: "What the media didn't bother reporting. They reported, accurately, that the attack resulted in the highest number of US casualties since a helicopter was downed and all 16 lives aboard lost. They lost interest in the story when the US won, in an engagement Jeff Emmanuel calls an Alamo with a better ending."

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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