Author: Dennis Prager

As high school seniors throughout America will be receiving acceptance letters to colleges within the next month, it would be nice for parents to meditate on what they’re getting for the $20,000 to 50,000 they’ll pay each year. –The United States is no better than any other country, and in many areas, it’s worse than […]

I’d like to offer a simple proposal that, if enacted, could generate a great deal of a most precious resource: moral clarity. It concerns the death penalty. Opponents of capital punishment for murderers argue that the state has no right to take a murderer’s life. Apparently, one fact that abolitionists forget or overlook is that […]

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) last week. In the few words reported by the Weekly Standard magazine, he said just about everything one needs to know about Israel; about America and Israel; and about American political leadership: “America should stand by its friends and its democratic allies, […]

The Muslim world is threatened by religious fanaticism. The Western world is threatened by secular fanaticism. Both seek to dominate society and to use state power to do so. Both seek to eliminate the Other — for Islamic fanatics, that means non-Muslim religions and secularism; for secular fanatics, it means Christianity and virtually any public […]

As an American, a Republican, and a fiscal and social conservative — and though I have endorsed no Republican candidate — there is one thing that would disturb me greatly if Mitt Romney were not the Republican nominee: if Romney’s Mormon faith were a factor in his defeat. Many evangelical leaders have said that if […]

In the Republican presidential candidates’ debate on Jan. 7, Congressman Ron Paul said: “I’m the only one up here … that understands true racism in this country is in the judicial system.” He said this racism has to do with “enforcing the drug laws” and then added: “They (blacks) get the death penalty way disproportionately.” […]

Only a fool believes that all those with whom he differs are bad people. Moreover, just about all of us live the reality — often within our own family — of knowing good and loving people with whom we strongly differ on political, religious, social and economic issues. That said, I have come to believe […]

After a lifetime of studying the left, I have concluded that leftism is a form of moral poison. It causes otherwise decent and kind people who take it into their systems to say and/or do cruel and sometimes evil things. While not specifically about the left, a major new scholarly book, “Pathological Altruism” (Oxford University […]

Because the issue is so important, I have decided to respond to critics of my last column on adultery, politics and character. As any reader of my columns or books knows, I am a religious conservative, and my primary concern is morality. By morality, I mean issues of good and evil. I am also concerned […]

With Herman Cain’s announcement that he was suspending his presidential campaign because of the charges of sexual harassment and of a 13-year affair, issues are raised that the country would do well to think through. The two most obvious are whether we should care about a politician’s sexual life and how much the press should […]

The governor of Oregon, John Kitzhaber, announced last week that he would not allow any more executions in his state during his time in office. Kitzhaber, a Democrat, gave five reasons for his decision. My response follows each one. 1. “I refuse to be part of this compromised and inequitable system any longer.” This has […]

I periodically write and regularly broadcast about male-female issues because I want to help men and women, especially husbands and wives, get along better. But I have developed a secondary reason: to elicit left-wing reactions. They reveal an enormous amount about how the left thinks. For example, one of the biggest left-wing websites (Daily Kos) […]

Commentary Magazine asked 41 Americans to respond to this question: “Are you optimistic or pessimistic about America’s future?” The responses, including my own, appear in the current issue of Commentary. As we were limited to 500 words, I offer my response here, in edited and longer form. I am both optimistic and pessimistic regarding America’s […]

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s feminist magnum opus, “The Feminine Mystique,” we can have a perspective on feminism that was largely unavailable heretofore. And that perspective doesn’t make feminism look good. Yes, women have more opportunities to achieve career success; they are now members of most Jewish and […]

Last week, The New York Times published an opinion piece by Karl W. Giberson and Randall J. Stephens, a physics professor and history professor at Eastern Nazarene College, respectively. The authors take evangelicals to task for being anti-intellectual, anti-reason and anti-science. Their evidence: — Evangelicals doubt man-made global warming, — Evangelicals believe that gays can […]

The major difference between Hitler and the Communist genocidal murderers — Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot — was what groups they chose for extermination. For Hitler, first Jews and ultimately Slavs and other “non-Aryans” were declared the enemy and unworthy of life. For the Communists, the rich — the bourgeoisie, land owners, and capitalists — […]