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Macro vs. Micro Values
00:08:19
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| Ultimate Issues Hour is the destination. | |
| Maps give you no wisdom. | |
| They give you spectacular knowledge. | |
| Here is exactly where you are, but they don't tell you where you should go. | |
| That's what the Ultimate Issues Hour is about. | |
| The big stuff. | |
| Where to go. | |
| So, everybody, I'm Dennis Prager, and I thank you for being with me. | |
| New York Times had a very, very long article on Prager University and me just on Sunday. | |
| And one of the things that they noted about me was that I have always been preoccupied with great ethical, moral issues and think that it's far more important to raise a good child. | |
| Than a child who gets into a prestigious college. | |
| Or even, you know, a good child rather than a brilliant child. | |
| And yet, I support President Trump. | |
| And how is that possible? | |
| And they say, well, he separates micro and macro values. | |
| And a lot of commenters commented on that in the New York Times. | |
| What kind of guy am I? Is this Prager? | |
| And here, I'll give you one example in a comment. | |
| I thought Prager considered moral values, marital fidelity, religiosity, respect, honesty, and the like, to microvalues. | |
| Considered moral values, I don't know what the two is for, microvalues, and as important as macrovalues, whatever that means. | |
| Seems as though he is speaking out of both sides of his mouth. | |
| Alright, so that was a comment on me in the New York Times. | |
| So I decided, maybe I'll explain. | |
| This will help a great deal in understanding the complex question of how do you assess a human being, morally speaking. | |
| We are almost two separate beings, we humans. | |
| Our micro and our macro selves are not the same. | |
| Ideally, and this is important, ideally both are good. | |
| We have good micro values, that is how we treat people in our daily life, and we have good macro values, the values for society. | |
| That we have good in both. | |
| Very often, people have not had both. | |
| There were people in the South who supported slavery, who were honest and decent and generous and kind in their daily life. | |
| Alright, there's an example of a bifurcation between macro value and micro value. | |
| There were people who wanted to get rid of slavery. | |
| They had a great macro value. | |
| And they were awful toward the humans in their lives. | |
| They had terrible micro values. | |
| I don't know why this is so... | |
| Well, I do know why it's complex. | |
| It's complex because people don't learn any wisdom anymore. | |
| They learn specialized knowledge. | |
| They don't even get much knowledge anymore. | |
| They get knowledge in one arena. | |
| The arena that they specialize in. | |
| But this is just common sense, what I said. | |
| I learned it because I went to religious school, but it is also common sense. | |
| There's just a difference. | |
| When it comes to the president, it's a good example. | |
| Now, I'm not of the school that he is terrible in his micro-life, but obviously quite flawed. | |
| Not even quite. | |
| Obviously flawed. | |
| Right? | |
| We understand that. | |
| He has sinned in his micro life. | |
| But his macro values seem to be superb to me. | |
| Now, people who hate him think his micro and his macro are awful. | |
| Okay, that's fine. | |
| I'm not here to defend the president. | |
| I do that other hours. | |
| I am here to make clear how we assess ourselves and others In the moral sphere. | |
| That's all. | |
| So to me, a president's macro values are way more important than his micro values. | |
| Because he gets to put into effect his macro values. | |
| Most of us don't. | |
| I do because I have a fairly large constituency. | |
| So my macro values matter, not as much as a president's, but they matter because I affect others in the macro, not just in the micro. | |
| How I treat my wife, how I treat my friends, how I treat my business associates, how I treat a waitress. | |
| Okay, those are all the micro arena. | |
| Most people do not have a place to express their macro values, or at least, well, they have a place, the voting booth, social media, micro... | |
| Most people today, unlike the past, really do have a vehicle for macro values. | |
| But of course, not like a president. | |
| Therefore, in assessing a president, I am infinitely more interested in his macro values than micro values. | |
| Correct? | |
| That is what... | |
| People reading the New York Times piece on me and Prager, you did not pick up. | |
| And I don't blame the writer, because as it is, it was a very long piece. | |
| They're not going to explain all of my views. | |
| I understand that. | |
| But I read to you a typical comment. | |
| I thought Prager considered moral values... | |
| Like microvalues, as important as macrovalues, whatever that means, seems as though he's speaking out of both sides of his mouth. | |
| Obviously, this person doesn't understand what I mean. | |
| I'm not blaming them. | |
| I'm just stating it as a fact. | |
| They don't understand. | |
| But it doesn't take long to explain, right? | |
| I mentioned this in passing. | |
| I mentioned a few times that I'm just finishing this very long book. | |
| About the man who was most responsible for giving the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, to Stalin. | |
| Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist who left Germany when Hitler came to power. | |
| He was the second leading scientist. | |
| He was indispensable to the creation of the atom bomb in England and America. | |
| Indispensable. | |
| He's a brilliant, brilliant scientist. | |
| And in the very beginning of the book, in passing, the author writes about how decent a human being he was. | |
| And I have no doubt about it. | |
| He was loyal to friends. | |
| He was not a mean person. | |
| He was extremely responsible. | |
| He was not lazy. | |
| He worked hard. | |
| Whatever trait you want. | |
| But... | |
| His macro values were awful. | |
| He believed in communism. | |