| Time | Text |
|---|---|
|
Coming Out Confidently
00:06:54
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|
| How would you characterize your political views two years ago? | |
| I really wasn't very engaged politically, but I would call myself liberal because that was just all I knew. | |
| And it's the default position. | |
| Definitely. | |
| Right. | |
| If one doesn't think politically and socially and morally, one is a liberal. | |
| It's the birthright, as it were. | |
| And then you saw the videos, read my books. | |
| It had a... | |
| Big effect on your thinking. | |
| And then I invited you to come on the show. | |
| So may I tell the story? | |
| Yes, please do. | |
| So, you had second thoughts about appearing on the show. | |
| Tell me if I got anything wrong. | |
| Well, just to clarify, you invited me in here to watch your show. | |
| Ah, yes, thank you. | |
| That's important. | |
| Then once I was here, you asked me, are you willing to come on? | |
| I really, yes. | |
| It's like... | |
| Do you see that guillotine? | |
| Okay. | |
| So this is really important for you, my listeners, to understand. | |
| She had zero expectation of coming on the show. | |
| I just invited her to sit in. | |
| And then I thought, well, why not tell everybody about the metamorphosis that you have undergone philosophically, intellectually, and... | |
| That was a very, very difficult question for Julie, because to appear on my show meant that you were, I guess, coming out of the closet. | |
| I mean, not just coming out of the closet, with a megaphone, with an orchestra, and a marching band. | |
| What happened was, this really is etched in my memory. | |
| She said, I said, listen, please know, in no way is there pressure for you to come on, and I won't think any less of you or anything, but I know what it means if you appear a student, Harvard student, on the Dennis Prager Show. | |
| I know what that will mean. | |
| Thought about it and then said, during a break, may I call my mom? | |
| And of course, yes. | |
| And I don't know what the conversation was like, but you came back in and said, I'll come on the show. | |
| And I witnessed, it's not often in life you witness a transformative moment in a person's life. | |
| By the way, it's not common that people have transformative moments. | |
| Most people don't. | |
| That was. | |
| So now I would like you to tell me and my listeners what happened after that. | |
| Well, first of all, that was such a lovely experience and you were so kind to me. | |
| You didn't put pressure on me at all. | |
| And I had a lot of fun speaking about it and it felt very cathartic to finally be open about my beliefs. | |
| So that day I go home, I tell some of my supportive friends that I appeared on your show and they were very happy for me. | |
| The next morning I wake up and your show, I put a clip of it on YouTube, which of course they're allowed to do. | |
| I agreed to appear on the show. | |
| It goes on these various sites. | |
| And it started circulating around Harvard, around a lot of the people I go to school with, some people who I went to high school with. | |
| There were many people who were supportive, but boy, did I get slammed. | |
| I mean, I had so many people coming at me. | |
| And interestingly, a lot of them actually didn't take issue with what I said on the radio because it was pretty benign. | |
| I really just said that, you know, I was very influenced by PragerU and your radio show and your books. | |
| But they took great issue that I was on your show. | |
| They thought that by me coming onto this platform, I was supposedly supporting bigotry, white supremacy, all of the typical idiotic liberal party lines. | |
| And I said to them, well, first of all, I just reject the notion that Dennis Prager is all of those things and that his platform espouses any of those kinds of views. | |
| But second of all... | |
| I am only responsible for what comes out of my mouth. | |
| I'm not responsible for what comes out of Dennis Prager's mouth. | |
| I am just responsible for my own words. | |
| But these people were just very, very vicious. | |
| But another thing I want to say, and I hope this gives some encouragement to people who might want to, as you said, come out as conservative themselves. | |
| I also had a lot of people in my community reach out to me and say, I would never say this publicly, but I'm really proud of you, and I support you, and I agree with you, but it's just... | |
| The cost is too high for me to say that publicly. | |
| But I have to say, for about a week or two, it was so bad for me. | |
| I couldn't eat. | |
| I couldn't sleep. | |
| I really started tormenting myself because I thought, did I do something wrong? | |
| Was I wrong to go on the show and say it? | |
| Now we're about a year after it. | |
| I really am so much more comfortable in my conservatism. | |
| I realized I did nothing wrong. | |
| I am doing exactly what a college kid should be doing, exploring her beliefs, seeking out other opinions. | |
| And I've just realized how wrong and inappropriate it is for them to smear me like that. | |
| They have no tolerance for diversity of thought. | |
| I did not know all of that. | |
| I had a sense of it. | |
| I did not know all of that. | |
| I knew you went through the mill. | |
| It's sort of coming out of the closet. | |
| I'm telling this to all of you because I would say a vast number of you listening are in the closet, fearful of putting on a Facebook page, just a column that I wrote, or Ben Shapiro, or Larry Elder. | |
| I mean, it's endless. | |
| Victor Davis Hanson. | |
|
Surviving Horrible Conditions
00:01:59
|
|
| You're afraid to do that, and you're right to be afraid to do that. | |
| And there will be a two-week auto da fe, to use a Spanish Inquisition term. | |
| You will be burned for two weeks. | |
| And then, sort of like, what is it that Navy SEALs go through that crazy, horrible period to test who has the... | |
| The strength to survive horrible conditions, but then you come out and you are so happy. | |
| That's a great analogy. | |
| It's so true. | |
| Yes, it is a good analogy. | |
| And that's why I make this appeal. | |
| A friend of mine in one of the major orchestras of the country, obviously not necessary to say which, but it's one of the top ones, and he finally did it. | |
| He finally came out of the closet. | |
| He is the happiest man I know right now. | |
| Well, you find that it, I found at least, that it was causing me more pain to stay silent about my beliefs than it was to be open about them and to be hated. | |
| I want to get that quote. | |
| No, no, really, because I think I want to write my next column advocating that people come out of the closet. | |
| It is liberating. | |
| It really is liberating. | |
| What did you just say? | |
| Do you remember what you just said? | |
| Because I want to try to commit it to memory. | |
| Well, luckily it's on the radio, so we can go back. | |
| But I think what I said was it was causing me more pain to stay. | |
| Ah, that's it. | |
| That is so right. | |
| It is. | |
| It was actually causing me physical pain because I look at so many of these leftists and they are using their freedom to subvert freedom. | |
| Right. | |
| Hold it there. | |
| Julie Hartman. | |