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Radio talk show host Dennis Prager: ‘America will nurture a new Muslim’

Jamie Weinstein Senior Writer
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Radio talk show host Dennis Prager told The Daily Caller that he believes American Muslims can revitalize Islamic civilization.

“America will nurture a new Muslim — one who can believe in Muhammad and the Quran but who abandons belief in a Shariah-based state and affirms the primary American value of individual liberty, which has not been a normative Islamic value,” Prager argued.

“We already have such Muslims in America. Needless to say, the mainstream media ignore these Muslims, just as they do conservative blacks.”

This is among many issues Prager addresses in his new book, “Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph.”

Prager said he wrote the book because he hates “evil.”

“And there is only one solution to it of which I am aware — the American values system,” he explained.

“As I write in the book, evil has been normal; America is the aberration.”

Prager also dismissed to TheDC the notion that China’s authoritarian capitalism has the legs to overtake the American way of life.

“Every age has found some alternative to American values appealing,” he explained. “The number of Western intellectuals enamored of fascism and all the various expressions of Marxism was legion. Today it is the Chinese model — a dictatorial state with a somewhat free economy — that some think is superior. Just a decade or so ago, the Japanese model — ‘Japan, Inc.’ — was offered as a superior model. None of these theoretical alternatives have ever produced anything like the combination of liberty, prosperity and strength America has enjoyed.”

Read TheDC’s full interview with Prager about his book and why he believes American values are so important to the world:

Why did you write the book?

Because, as I wrote in the introduction, I hate evil. And there is only one solution to it of which I am aware — the American values system. As I write in the book, evil has been normal; America is the aberration.

Why are American values so superior to other values?

Because no other value system has succeeded anywhere near the American in creating a good society and a society that thinks in primarily moral terms when addressing the world.

Explain your concept of the “American Trinity” and why it is important.

The American Trinity consists of the three values that appear on all American coins and bank notes: “Liberty,” “In God We Trust,” “E Pluribus Unum” (“Out of many one”). “Liberty” demands as small a state as possible, since the bigger the government the smaller the citizen, and the less liberty. “In God We Trust” posits the Creator as the source of meaning, moral values, human worth, objective good and evil, and certain inalienable rights. “E Pluribus Unum” posits that blood, race, ethnicity and national origin mean nothing as compared to values — and therefore we must forge one national identity based on those values — not on race, ethnicity, etc.


How do we go about, as you suggest, missionizing the American Trinity?

First, Americans need to know what they are selling before they can sell it. In the last hundred years, vast numbers of Americans have forgotten or never been taught the distinctive American value system. We are a messenger who forgot his message. Almost half of America has been seduced by leftism, which rejects small government; the superiority of liberty over material equality; the need for God (though not necessarily for a specific Jewish or Christian expression of the divine — some of the founders were Christian culturally and ethical monotheists theologically); and the need for a national identity.

Once enough Americans reacquaint themselves with Americanism, we should promote it to all countries just as the left promotes leftism and Muslims promote Islam. One need not be American to affirm Americanism.

Some in Asia and in American academia look at the recent economic success of China and say their authoritarian capitalism is a plausible, even better, model than Western liberalism. How do you respond?

Every age has found some alternative to American values appealing. The number of Western intellectuals enamored of fascism and all the various expressions of Marxism was legion. Today it is the Chinese model — a dictatorial state with a somewhat free economy — that some think is superior. Just a decade or so ago, the Japanese model — “Japan, Inc.” — was offered as a superior model. None of these theoretical alternatives have ever produced anything like the combination of liberty, prosperity and strength America has enjoyed.

How does European society, which certainly shares the Western liberal tradition, fail to live up to the qualities you so value in the American tradition?

First, it has lost its will to fight evil. Instead of learning to fight evil, the Europeans, particularly the Germans, concluded that to fight is evil.

Second, the big European state deadens the individual citizen. On the whole, Americans are so much more alive. The individual feels freer to do and say whatever he wants (until such time as the left succeeds in reshaping America in the image of Europe).

Third, Europe has so lost any sense of purpose — because of its abandonment of God and of nationalism — that its peoples no longer reproduce in numbers necessary to survive. Except for a minority in their midst, many of whose members share few of Europe’s values, most European countries are contracting.

Fourth, the welfare state produces selfish, materialistic people who riot against longer working hours and a later retirement age, and who give far less charity and volunteer far less time per capita than do Americans.

You believe that American Muslims can revitalize Islamic civilization and make Islam more open and tolerant than it currently is. How so?

America will nurture a new Muslim — one who can believe in Muhammad and the Quran but who abandons belief in a Shariah-based state and affirms the primary American value of individual liberty, which has not been a normative Islamic value. We already have such Muslims in America. Needless to say, the mainstream media ignore these Muslims, just as they do conservative blacks.


If you were president, what three policies would you immediately enact, if you could, in order to set America on the path to making the 21st Century another American century?

Because cutting government spending is the single most important thing America needs to do in order to remain financially solvent, my first two policies would be directed in that regard.

Closing down the Department of Education and all the other bureaucracies that destroy individual initiative, standards of excellence and national prosperity.

Ending, as soon as feasible, all but the most indispensable safety nets. Americans are becoming a nation of takers, whereas we were always a nation of givers.

Ending the “progressive” income tax, putting in its place a flat tax with fewer deductions on nearly all American wage earners — until such time as the income tax can be done away with in favor of a national sales tax.

Are you optimistic about the trajectory America is currently on?

Only if Americans reaffirm American values (that’s why I worked so hard to write “Still the Best Hope”). It is very hard to undo the entitlement mentality. Being given unearned money is entirely analogous to being given heroin. Governments have become the biggest drug pushers — the drug being entitlement money. Moreover, from elementary school through graduate school, in movies, on nearly every television station, in the arts and popular culture, the left-wing blanket smothers all other ideas.

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Jamie Weinstein