Dennis Prager Show - Ultimate Issues: Few Of Us Actually Achieve Goodness
Aired: 2021-02-17
Duration: 05:43


=== Goodness in Groups? (05:43) ===

[00:00:00]  Anyway, the stories are quite remarkable.
[00:00:03]  So I concluded, among other things, only minorities of people, only small numbers really achieve good.
[00:00:16]  It is very rare for goodness to be achieved by large numbers of people.
[00:00:25]  That's the way it is.
[00:00:27]  I wish it were not so.
[00:00:29]  There's a phrase in Hebrew about such a group.
[00:00:34]  It's called, in English, the saving remnant.
[00:00:39]  That there is a saving remnant that saves a place.
[00:00:43]  I feel that in the United States today.
[00:00:47]  How many of you are alone at your place of work?
[00:00:52]  At your school?
[00:00:54]  Feel alone?
[00:00:55]  Because you are largely alone.
[00:00:58]  In upholding liberty and freedom and objectivity and truth, the basic Judeo-Christian value system, you're alone.
[00:01:09]  There are a few of you, but you're largely alone.
[00:01:13]  I felt this when I was at Columbia in my graduate school years.
[00:01:17]  I remember it.
[00:01:19]  I'm mentioning it because I so distinctly remember one night at a restaurant across the street from Columbia.
[00:01:28]  Broadway and 116th Street, Manhattan.
[00:01:31]  And I remember thinking, I'm alone here.
[00:01:37]  I believe in God.
[00:01:39]  I believe in the Bible.
[00:01:42]  I believe in America.
[00:01:45]  And I knew one other student.
[00:01:51]  Literally one.
[00:01:52]  I'm sure there were more, but I only knew one who shared my values.
[00:01:59]  So please understand, this is the way it works.
[00:02:03]  So here's another question, and the one I want, or not question, this is the statement I wish to make for the Ultimate Issues Hour.
[00:02:13]  All of my life, I have said that the single most important question in society is how do you make good people?
[00:02:24]  That is the single most important question society must address.
[00:02:31]  And the left has made it that we don't ask that question.
[00:02:37]  We ask, they ask, how do we make a good society?
[00:02:42]  Wrong question!
[00:02:45]  That is like saying, how do you make a good salad?
[00:02:49]  The ingredients have to be good!
[00:02:52]  You can't make a good salad without good ingredients, or a good cake, or a good anything.
[00:03:00]  How you make a good society is stupid.
[00:03:04]  How you make individuals good is everything.
[00:03:09]  There is no attention to the question, how do you make a good individual?
[00:03:13]  None.
[00:03:15]  It is all macroethics, not micro.
[00:03:18]  Ethics are micro.
[00:03:21]  You know how you make a good society?
[00:03:23]  You make good people.
[00:03:25]  There is no other way.
[00:03:29]  The Judeo-Christian tradition and values understand that that's the question.
[00:03:38]  So they have character development, like I did in my religious Jewish education.
[00:03:47]  The motto in my yeshiva, as it was called, which I went to until 18 years of age, half the day in Hebrew, religious studies, half the day in English, secular studies.
[00:03:57]  It's pretty intense.
[00:04:00]  And they never said something very popular in the 70s.
[00:04:05]  I'm okay, you're okay.
[00:04:06]  That was a big motto, name of a book, very popular.
[00:04:12]  By the way, the end of the sentence, it was not the end of the sentence.
[00:04:17]  In the book, the book was I'm okay, you're okay.
[00:04:20]  But the real implication was I'm okay, you're okay, it's America that stinks.
[00:04:29]  Or sucks, to use the language of the day.
[00:04:33]  We're great, America stinks.
[00:04:37]  Turned out it was the opposite.
[00:04:39]  America was great and they stunk.
[00:04:42]  That was the real case.
[00:04:46]  As usual, it's the opposite of what folks on the left say.
[00:04:50]  But this is everything.
[00:04:52]  Fight racism, all this, all that, make equality.
[00:04:56]  Everything is society concentrated.
[00:04:58]  Meanwhile, we're not producing decent people.
[00:05:03]  But it's the single most difficult question and most important question in life, in society.
[00:05:09]  How do you make good people?
[00:05:10]  Because the raw material ain't great.
[00:05:14]  You can make good people.
[00:05:16]  The raw material of human nature enables us to be truly good.
[00:05:21]  But undirected and undisciplined and without values we become what we are made to be.
[00:05:32]  Animals.
[00:05:34]  1-8 Prager 776 877-243-7776 Ultimate Issues Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.