Dennis Prager writes at Townhall:

One of the many remarkable traits of the progressives is their lack of self-awareness.

This trait was on display last week in the media and Democratic Party’s characterization of Donald Trump’s acceptance speech – and the entire Republican National Convention – as “dark”.

For the left to dismiss other Americans as having a dark view of America is preposterous.

Because no one – not Trump, not the Republican Party, not any conservative – has nearly as dark a view of America as does the left.

Across the board – from the universities to the media to the Democratic Party – the left, around the world and in America, has an unremittingly dark view of the United States.

Here’s a brief glimpse.

• Racism “is part of our (American) DNA”, President Barack Obama said in 2015. Is there anything Trump said in his acceptance speech that is as dark about America as that?
• On July Fourth weekend, Vox published a long column arguing “3 reasons the American Revolution was a mistake”.
• The most widely read historian in American high schools and colleges, the late left-wing professor Howard Zinn, was asked (by me) whether he thought the United States had done more good or more bad in the world. “Probably more bad than good,” he answered.
• The left regularly characterizes the United States as a sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist and bigoted country.
• Our wars are wars for imperialist expansion, driven by material greed.
• The top 1 percent relentlessly exploits the other 99 percent.
• America is rigged against blacks, Hispanics and the 99 percent.
• Cops kill unarmed blacks proportionately more than they kill unarmed whites because so many cops are racist.
• About 1 in 5 female college students are sexually assaulted on campus.

Is there anything in Trump’s speech that can match any of those left-wing views of the United States for “darkness”?

Moreover, every one of those leftist critiques of America is false.

Nevertheless, we are in a dark time in America. In fact, Trump didn’t make the case for America’s darkness nearly effectively enough.

• Our universities – outside of the natural sciences – are being destroyed as learning institutions. They close minds, censor speech and indoctrinate rather than educate.
• Blacks have more anger toward whites and America than at any time since the civil rights era.
• American students are learning less while being indoctrinated more. They graduate high school barely able to write a coherent essay with proper sentence structure, grammar and spelling. But they know all about the existential threat allegedly posed by fossil fuels.
• According to a recent Gallup Poll, fewer young Americans than at any time since polling began are proud to be Americans.
• A greater percentage of Americans are dependent upon government for their income and even for food than at any time in American history.
• The American national debt is the highest it has ever been. And it is increasing at a rate that can only lead to an economic implosion.
• A smaller percentage of Americans are married than at any time in American history.
• Americans are having fewer children than ever.
• Fewer businesses in proportion to the general population are being started than ever before.
• Sectors of major American cities are essentially killing zones.

Is that dark enough?

And the list is only a partial one.

Moreover, every one of those dark facts is the result of left-wing policies, left-wing politicians, left-wing writers, left-wing professors and the left-wing party, the Democratic Party.

If all Donald Trump did between now and November were to delineate the darkness created by the left and the Democrats, he could potentially win in a landslide. But, for reasons that elude me, he won’t, just as no Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan has. In the same way that Democrats won’t identify America’s international enemy – Islamic terror – Republicans won’t identify America’s domestic enemy, the left.

And until Republicans do, the darkness won’t recede.

We agree with his diagnosis –  except for one item we removed from his own list of truly dark facts about contemporary America. We removed it because it is not a dark fact at all.

It is this:

Fewer Americans than ever before believe in God, go to church or affirm Judeo-Christian values, the basic moral code of America’s founding and of Western civilization.

The basic moral code of America’s founding was NOT that two-headed chimera “Judeo-Christian values”. The Constitution of the United States embodies the values of the Enlightenment.

Jewish values and Christian values are essentially different. Judaism holds justice to be the highest value. (Which was a good idea; only exactly what those men of old who wrote the Bible considered just was often not good at all.)

Christianity holds love to be the highest value. Love granted unconditionally. Even to the sinner; even to those who do evil to others; so mandating hypocrisy – which provides cover for every imaginable cruelty. And it is the opposite of justice.

Furthermore, Christianity brought a thousand years of darkness down on Europe; a darkness that was only finally dispelled by the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment set reason above faith, and enshrined liberty as the highest value. Protecting the freedom of each individual became the duty of the state. Under the rule of law, “justice” applied to the individual; only to the individual.

It is real progress if “fewer Americans than ever before believe in God and go to church”.

The churches did a terrible job when they had power. Let’s have no more priests ordering our lives. How about electing a businessman to lead us?

No matter what he says for political convenience – Donald Trump is not a religious man. And for us that is a definite plus.

He believes in his own ability to bring new opportunity for wealth and joy to all Americans.

He is a capitalist. Wherever true free-market capitalism flourishes, freedom flowers and happiness becomes visible.

His speech was not dark. It was a promise of a new dawn.

A promise he might fulfill if he becomes the next president of the United States.