Dennis Prager Show - Julie Hartman: The Truth Shall Set You Free
Aired: 2021-05-27
Duration: 08:38


=== Coming Out Confidently (06:54) ===

[00:00:00]  How would you characterize your political views two years ago?
[00:00:04]  I really wasn't very engaged politically, but I would call myself liberal because that was just all I knew.
[00:00:10]  And it's the default position.
[00:00:12]  Definitely.
[00:00:13]  Right.
[00:00:13]  If one doesn't think politically and socially and morally, one is a liberal.
[00:00:20]  It's the birthright, as it were.
[00:00:23]  And then you saw the videos, read my books.
[00:00:27]  It had a...
[00:00:28]  Big effect on your thinking.
[00:00:31]  And then I invited you to come on the show.
[00:00:34]  So may I tell the story?
[00:00:36]  Yes, please do.
[00:00:38]  So, you had second thoughts about appearing on the show.
[00:00:44]  Tell me if I got anything wrong.
[00:00:45]  Well, just to clarify, you invited me in here to watch your show.
[00:00:49]  Ah, yes, thank you.
[00:00:51]  That's important.
[00:00:51]  Then once I was here, you asked me, are you willing to come on?
[00:00:55]  I really, yes.
[00:00:57]  It's like...
[00:00:58]  Do you see that guillotine?
[00:01:01]  Okay.
[00:01:02]  So this is really important for you, my listeners, to understand.
[00:01:06]  She had zero expectation of coming on the show.
[00:01:09]  I just invited her to sit in.
[00:01:12]  And then I thought, well, why not tell everybody about the metamorphosis that you have undergone philosophically, intellectually, and...
[00:01:23]  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.
[00:01:41]  I mean, not just coming out of the closet, with a megaphone, with an orchestra, and a marching band.
[00:01:53]  What happened was, this really is etched in my memory.
[00:01:58]  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.
[00:02:17]  I know what that will mean.
[00:02:23]  Thought about it and then said, during a break, may I call my mom?
[00:02:29]  And of course, yes.
[00:02:33]  And I don't know what the conversation was like, but you came back in and said, I'll come on the show.
[00:02:40]  And I witnessed, it's not often in life you witness a transformative moment in a person's life.
[00:02:48]  By the way, it's not common that people have transformative moments.
[00:02:52]  Most people don't.
[00:02:54]  That was.
[00:02:56]  So now I would like you to tell me and my listeners what happened after that.
[00:03:04]  Well, first of all, that was such a lovely experience and you were so kind to me.
[00:03:09]  You didn't put pressure on me at all.
[00:03:10]  And I had a lot of fun speaking about it and it felt very cathartic to finally be open about my beliefs.
[00:03:16]  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.
[00:03:23]  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.
[00:03:29]  I agreed to appear on the show.
[00:03:31]  It goes on these various sites.
[00:03:34]  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.
[00:03:46]  There were many people who were supportive, but boy, did I get slammed.
[00:03:51]  I mean, I had so many people coming at me.
[00:03:55]  And interestingly, a lot of them actually didn't take issue with what I said on the radio because it was pretty benign.
[00:04:02]  I really just said that, you know, I was very influenced by PragerU and your radio show and your books.
[00:04:09]  But they took great issue that I was on your show.
[00:04:13]  They thought that by me coming onto this platform, I was supposedly supporting bigotry, white supremacy, all of the typical idiotic liberal party lines.
[00:04:28]  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.
[00:04:36]  But second of all...
[00:04:37]  I am only responsible for what comes out of my mouth.
[00:04:41]  I'm not responsible for what comes out of Dennis Prager's mouth.
[00:04:46]  I am just responsible for my own words.
[00:04:49]  But these people were just very, very vicious.
[00:04:53]  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.
[00:05:02]  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...
[00:05:15]  The cost is too high for me to say that publicly.
[00:05:18]  But I have to say, for about a week or two, it was so bad for me.
[00:05:25]  I couldn't eat.
[00:05:26]  I couldn't sleep.
[00:05:28]  I really started tormenting myself because I thought, did I do something wrong?
[00:05:34]  Was I wrong to go on the show and say it?
[00:05:40]  Now we're about a year after it.
[00:05:44]  I really am so much more comfortable in my conservatism.
[00:05:47]  I realized I did nothing wrong.
[00:05:50]  I am doing exactly what a college kid should be doing, exploring her beliefs, seeking out other opinions.
[00:05:58]  And I've just realized how wrong and inappropriate it is for them to smear me like that.
[00:06:04]  They have no tolerance for diversity of thought.
[00:06:08]  I did not know all of that.
[00:06:10]  I had a sense of it.
[00:06:11]  I did not know all of that.
[00:06:12]  I knew you went through the mill.
[00:06:14]  It's sort of coming out of the closet.
[00:06:18]  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.
[00:06:37]  I mean, it's endless.
[00:06:38]  Victor Davis Hanson.

=== Surviving Horrible Conditions (01:59) ===

[00:06:42]  You're afraid to do that, and you're right to be afraid to do that.
[00:06:48]  And there will be a two-week auto da fe, to use a Spanish Inquisition term.
[00:06:54]  You will be burned for two weeks.
[00:06:58]  And then, sort of like, what is it that Navy SEALs go through that crazy, horrible period to test who has the...
[00:07:11]  The strength to survive horrible conditions, but then you come out and you are so happy.
[00:07:17]  That's a great analogy.
[00:07:18]  It's so true.
[00:07:21]  Yes, it is a good analogy.
[00:07:25]  And that's why I make this appeal.
[00:07:28]  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.
[00:07:40]  He finally came out of the closet.
[00:07:43]  He is the happiest man I know right now.
[00:07:47]  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.
[00:07:59]  I want to get that quote.
[00:08:03]  No, no, really, because I think I want to write my next column advocating that people come out of the closet.
[00:08:09]  It is liberating.
[00:08:10]  It really is liberating.
[00:08:11]  What did you just say?
[00:08:13]  Do you remember what you just said?
[00:08:15]  Because I want to try to commit it to memory.
[00:08:17]  Well, luckily it's on the radio, so we can go back.
[00:08:19]  But I think what I said was it was causing me more pain to stay.
[00:08:23]  Ah, that's it.
[00:08:23]  That is so right.
[00:08:26]  It is.
[00:08:27]  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.
[00:08:36]  Right.
[00:08:37]  Hold it there.
[00:08:38]  Julie Hartman.