I can’t bring myself to post that much about this, but I feel the need to join the chorus in the echo chamber, to mix metaphors shamelessly, on this one. Right-wing blowhard Dennis Prager, favourite target of my friend Friar Yid, has announced his belief that equality is not an American value:
Equality, which is the primary value of the left, is a European value, not an American value. Let me tell you that right now. I know this sounds offensive to half of my fellow Americans, because they have been Europeanized in their values. The French Revolution is not the American Revolution. The French Revolution said Liberty, Fraternity, Equality. The American Revolution said Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We have lost touch with what our distinctive American values are. We have distinctive American values. … We have a better value system, and this is being protected by one of the two parties: the Republican party.
If you feel like torturing yourself, there’s video and commentary all over the blogosphere. There’s not much I can add to this on top of what everybody else has already been adding:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That’s from the very same Declaration of Independence from which Prager quotes the cherished American values of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”—from the very same sentence, in fact.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
And that’s from Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Is Prager brain-dead? No, he just has a level of contempt for his audience the likes of which is hard to find this side of Ann Coulter. (And by the way, I would advise you all to stay this side of Ann Coulter.)
(Via Think Progress.)
