How do you regard the old?

Dennis Prager notices that the left hates the old.

Rejection of the old is a reason the Left has contempt for the Bible. To progressives, it’s ludicrous that 2,000- and 3,000-year-old texts could guide a person’s behavior today.

Low regard for the old is also a major factor in the Left’s dismissal of the Founders and of the original intent of the Constitution. Talk about “old white males” — the Founders are white males who are now over 250 years old. What could they possibly have known or understood that a progressive living today does not know more about or understand better?

Why? Prager says there are two reasons for this contempt of the old.

One is the yearning for utopia. Since Marx, the Left has sought utopia in this world. And that means constantly transforming every aspect of society. As then-Senator Barack Obama said before the 2008 election: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

By definition, those who seek to transform consider the old essentially worthless.

The other answer is self-esteem. The Left began the self-esteem movement in large measure owing to its own high self-esteem. Those on the left are certain that they are smarter, kinder, more moral, and more compassionate than — in every way superior to — their opponents.

Before the ascendance of the Left, it was assumed that the old had more wisdom than the young. Indeed, even every leftist I have asked, “Are you wiser today than 20 years ago?” has answered in the affirmative.

Nevertheless the Left has transformed “old” — a title that commanded respect in every civilization before the 1960s West — into a pejorative.

As a result, we live in the age of new music, new art, new families, new morality, new education — and now, new marriage. If you think all these are good, then “old white males” — like almost everything else old — do indeed constitute a threat. If you think the Left’s fixation on the “new” and “change” usually hurts society, “old” sounds good.