Posted on 08/09/2004 10:30:58 PM PDT by goldstategop
On Criticizing A 12-year-old Girl
Dennis Prager
No column I have written has elicited more hate mail than my last one on the 12-year-old girl who spoke at the Democratic National Convention and publicly ridiculed Vice President Dick Cheney. I have written against same-sex marriage; on behalf of the president's international policies, capital punishment and Israel; argued for the superiority of the Judeo-Christian value system; and even defended divorce. Yet no column has elicited so much anger, use of expletives and foolish thinking.
It is clear I hit a deep nerve among many liberals and Democrats.
I wrote that this young girl exemplified the modern liberal desire to erase distinctions between children and adults, citing a number of examples, including the desire to lower the voting age first to 18 and now in California to 16 or even 14; not having children call adults "Mr." or "Mrs."; and having students rather than professors determine college curricula.
And I wrote that "Democrats went crazy . . . listening to a 12-year-old publicly mock the Republican vice president of the United States."
But what most infuriated my liberal correspondents was my writing, "This girl has accomplished nothing compared to Dick Cheney. She has no wisdom, no humility and no knowledge beyond the leftist platitudes spoon-fed by her parents and schools. She is a mere child, more foolish than most, in that she actually thinks she has earned the right to publicly ridicule the vice president of the United States."
Here are some examples:
"Has it come to this? The desperation of the GOP? Insulting a 12 yr old girl. You sure are a class act."
"You're an a--hole for saying that Wexler girl has not earned the right to criticize Cheney. F--- YOU d--k head."
"I have found that my own kids, aged 5 and 6 now can make very profound statements and can be very wise."
"Ilana Wexler earned the right to criticize anyone she wants to on the day she was born an American, you idiot!"
"Picking on little girls -- too pathetic for comment, really. I will pray for you. Geek."
"You are a very sad person if picking on the kid at the convention is your idea of clever writing."
"You have some nerve picking on a child. But I guess that is what we should all expect from Republicans now. Bible thumping and self righteousness all the while raping and molesting children when they think no one is looking. So, blow it out your ass."
"In re: your incredibly harsh words for Ilana Wexler . . . Go F--- Yourself."
Obviously, two themes particularly disturbed my thoughtful correspondents: That I criticized a 12-year-old girl and that I wrote she had not earned the right to publicly ridicule the vice president of the United States.
Regarding the first, the criticism of me presupposes that my column was all about the girl. It wasn't. It was about the Democrats' use of her.
Having said that, however, why should a 12-year-old girl be immune from adult criticism? Because of her age? This objection is staggering in its inversion of traditional wisdom, which held that it is 12-year-olds who generally need to hold their tongues before they criticize, let alone ridicule, an adult; and that it is adults' role to criticize the young so as to make them responsible adults. Unlike those liberals who take great pride in a 12-year-old publicly mocking the vice president of the United States, I would be ashamed of a 12-year-old conservative who publicly ridiculed a Democratic vice president.
Furthermore, note the double standard invoked here. A 12-year-old girl should be invited to speak at a national political convention and be taken seriously when she speaks -- but criticizing her is out of bounds because she is 12! This line of thinking reinforced my contention that the Democrats hid behind a 12-year-old girl because they did not have the courage to attack Vice President Cheney themselves.
I am also certain that the fact that the child was a girl added to the dismissal of me as out of line in criticizing her. In the feminist world in which liberals live, liberal girls and women of any age are immune from criticism, especially from men. We are allowed only to celebrate opinionated liberal females, whether Teresa Heinz Kerry or Ilana Wexler.
The second major liberal objection -- that all Americans have the right to free speech, so only an enemy of free speech could question the right of Ilana to do what she did -- is a non-sequitur.
You have to willfully misread what I wrote to infer that I questioned the girl's legal or constitutional right to do what she did.
What I wrote is that "She is a mere child, more foolish than most, in that she actually thinks she has earned the right to publicly ridicule the vice president of the United States."
I was simply asserting that before one mocks the American vice president at a national political convention, one ought to have earned the stature to do so, and I cannot imagine any 12-year-old who has. It is abundantly clear that the notion of earning stature is alien to many, probably most, liberals' thinking. Rights thinking so dominates the liberal mind that having the right to speech has to come to mean the same as always exercising it.
Childhood is the time to be a child and to be imbued with the values that will enable one to be a politically wise adult. I have enormous interest in speaking with children, but I have little interest in their political views. But, hey, I'm not a contemporary liberal.
That the dems went ape over her speech indicates that the liberal mind is generally on the level of a 12 year old.
The liberals didn't like him insulting a 12-year-old because they all think the height of compassion is getting in touch with one's "inner child". They don't like him insulting that which they are trying to emulate.
Liberal Dems are all, IMO, kids who had miserable childhoods, and who spend their whole lives trying to relive that which they feel they were cheated out of the first time around. They think someone being "childlike" has reached some perfect spiritual state.
Grownups stand by their words; children think their word is fungible.
Grownups make hard decisions and know they cannot have all they would like, so they have to choose carefully; children want it all, without pain or effort, now.
Hmm, any wonder why they so love this, uh, childish view of what childhood is like (in their imaginations, conveniently ignoring the pain and tough times that are a part of any normal childhood)?
Exactly.
More to the point, when your opponents hide behind women and children, you know they don't have the courage to say what's really on their minds. Its a tactic that's always been reprehensible.
Dennis Prager is great! I think he might be better than Hugh Hewitt, but I have yet to decide.
Given the quality of the curricula and teaching in a fair number of college classes, I can't see that that would really do too much harm.
I think its because Democrats have the IQ of a 12-year old.
"I have found that my own kids, aged 5 and 6 now can make very profound statements and can be very wise."
Of course the things a 5 or 6 yearold say sound very profound and wise to a liberal. That's above their average intelligence.
"My 6 year old found waldo really fast. I look to him for foreign policy advice."
Prager is right. The girl was nothing but a product of leftist brainwashing, the same kind the NEA is doing in all our public shcools. The left is becoming a serious threat to the future of this country. Was there any truth to the part about CA lowering the voting age to 16 or 14? That is just asinine, really, really asinine.
When this 12 year old chirping bird turns 30, she'll abandon her liberal mindset and grow up to be an intelligent, courageous Republican. She'll disavow what she said at DNC 2004 in Boston, and she'll look back humorously at how pathetic a loser Kerry was.
I take a slightly harder attitude, myself. I really don't appreciate being lectured to by a stupid, 12-year-old rich kid who is given a million-dollar microphone and several million dollars of public time to spout her ridiculous platitudes as received truth, and my advice to the Wexler brat is "shut up, dear, it's time for the adults to speak now."
Hmph. No wonder the Leftists love the Palestinian terrorists. They both send kids to do men's work.
Agree. It was a poor choice of words on Praeger's part instead of saying "right" it would have been more to the point to say instead "credibility".
Didn't the same Democrats BOO 12-year-old scouts at their last convention? And there was more than one of them.
I deliberately ignored the Dem convention so I hadn't known that a 12 year old preached to the congregation. That sounds about right. She was speaking to her peers.
It's no joke.
California Voting Age Legislation
Life in Wonderland continues.
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