Dennis Prager, in an essay about how evil the left is, writes:
The same holds true for the greatest character-building institution in American life: Judeo-Christian religions. Once again, the left knows how to destroy. Everywhere possible the left works to inhibit religious institutions and values — from substituting “Happy Holidays” for “Merry Christmas” to removing the tiny cross from the Los Angeles County Seal to arguing that religious people must not bring their values into the political arena.
Because nothing is more “Judeo” than saying “Merry Christmas” and putting a cross on all documents carrying a government seal. How included I feel!
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The implication that non-Judeo-Christians are lest likly to successfully build character is also lovely. (Although perhaps by “greatest” he meant “largest,” not “most effective.”)
The rest of his essay is nonsense, as well. In a discussion of California’s economic crisis, Prager claims that “California’s Democratic legislature has been more or less able to do whatever it wants with California.” But that’s not true; California law lets voters pass unfunded mandates through ballot measures, and gives the Republican minority in the legislature an effective veto of tax increases. The problem is structural.
Prager also spends a great deal of time blaming the left for the Boy Scout’s troubles. Apparently the Scout organization itself isn’t at all responsible for the predictable consequences of its own decisions.
Curtsy: Dissenting Justice. (He also claims that the Boy Scouts biggest problem isn’t anti-homophobia activism, but liability lawsuits from parents of injured kids. That seems odd to me, if that’s so; don’t parents have to sign waivers when their boys join up? Do you know anything about that aspect of things, Ron?)
The statement about the biggest damage to BSA is not odd. As I said in my post, the Supreme Court held in 2000 that the BSA could lawfully exclude gays and lesbians. The lawsuits on that issue have ended. Even before that time, no one had won a sexual orientation case against the organization (or maybe one did – not sure), and the remedy would likely have been an injunction, not damages (because it’s a voluntary position).
By contrast, the BSA is a leading advocate of tort reform. Why? Because of all the lawsuits, which range from physical injuries from recreation, car accidents, and molestation. In 2002, the BSA paid a 6.5 million damage award for starting a forest fire. The gay litigation is nothing in comparison. And I have not seen any documentation that efforts to keep the BSA out of school, parks, etc., have become anything other than a nuisance, rather than an extreme financial burden. If I’m wrong, I welcome evidence to the contrary. Thanks.
PS: In a lot of states, parents cannot “waive” their children’s rights to sue for negligence.
Judeo-Christian is an oxymoron.
Amp, by “Judeo”-Christian the author is referring to Judeo converts to Christianity. Duh. Makes PERFECT sense now. ;)
For this, though:
Waivers don’t work well, especially for kids. You can still get sued under the basic theories that the waiver was imperfect/not explained correctly/didn’t apply/is against public policy/was modified by something else/etc.
Also, the BSA can get sued for thing the kids do to other people, whether or not they’re scouts. So if your son gets beaten up at Boy Scout camp, there’s no waiver for that. etc.
I hold so much contempt for Dennis Prager, it’s unbelievable. I’m not sure I can think of a more damaging (and idiotic) Jewish contributor to the public discourse.
Sailorman and Darren, thanks for the info — I stand better-informed.
Darren, there have been a couple of cases of the Scouts having significant losses due to their anti-gay stance; they’ve lost contributions, and in Philadelphia they lost a historically and financially significant building. And I think their loss of prestige and acceptability is going to hurt them a lot more than it has, in the long run, if they don’t reform.
But despite all that, I am persuaded that you’re right to say that so far, the tort damages to the Scouts have been more significant.
is Denis Prager the one who came up with the term? I completely associate it with him. I think he says it the most maybe. I prefer xtian butt licking sycophantic sellouts myself-oops I’m a little moody today, my bad.
So I’ve been familiar with Prager’s idiocy for some time, but I hadn’t been paying close enough attention to his oeuvre. According to the Wikipedia entry on the term, the neutrality and factual accuracy of which are disputed (ha!), Prager did a 19-part series on promoting the concept of Judeo-Christian values and civilization. Gag. Prager has multiple references in the entry and is quoted several times.
But no, he didn’t invent the term. They put first known use in 1899 and then again in 1910, in reference to the theories around the emergence of Christianity.
Here’s what they say about its use:
And in this day and age:
I have no idea what the scout’s tort damages have been or how they stand relative to anything else the scouts have to deal with; I was just explaining why “waiver” doesn’t mean “damage proof.”
FYI: When I was in private practice the firm where I worked litigated the BSA case that went to the Supreme Court on a pro bono basis. I distinctly remeber reading about the BSA legal liability, and tort cases presented the biggest problem for the organization. I suspect that some of the damages get paid by insurance, but the organization has millions of dollars in insuarance premiums per year – and a lot of policies exclude coverage for intentional torts (as opposed to negligence) and criminal acts (like molestation). The 6 million dollar verdict makes the Philadelphia building “cost” almost negligible. Besides, that did not cost them anything directly, because they were using it free of charge. BSA can also control these matters: by getting rid of the ban. They claim to have a First Amendment right to speech, but Prager wants to silence others from expressing their views.
I’m slowly coming around to my husband’s belief that “Judeo-Christian” is what Christians call their religious culture whenever they want to ignore both Jesus’s “new covenant” and Judaism’s tradition of elaborate and constantly-revised oral interpretation.
In other words, Judeo-Christian means “I want to cite Leviticus as my defense for supporting the death penalty and hating homosexuals!”
Considering the term “Judeo-Christian”, Judaism and Christianity are working with a lot of the same source documents and Christianity was clearly just a sect of Judaism that got a little out of control originally. However, much the same could be said of Islam. Shouldn’t it be Judeo-Christio-Islamic? If combining the two religions has any validity at all, that is.