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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:15:53
Leave Them Kids Alone
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hello, everybody.
Dennis Prager with you.
I want you to imagine that Donald Trump had sent 40 or so FBI agents into Hillary Clinton's home.
What the outrage would have been, the country would have been obsessed.
Obsessed with it.
That's all that the mainstream media, whatever that means, would be talking about.
We would be told that a tyrant was running the country, the threat to democracy in the United States that President Trump embodied, which they said anyway.
That's what the left does.
They attack and attack and attack so that it creates a shield over what they are doing.
It is so morally outrageous to watch your country descend into a third-world dictatorship, which is what we are descending to, because the left has no problem with that.
Liberals do, and conservatives do, the left does not.
It never has.
Tell me a place where the left...
has not gone for more power when coming into power.
There is no example since Vladimir Lenin.
It harkens back to the French Revolution, the left does, but that is another matter for another time.
It is painful to watch this wonderful country be ruined by its own people.
What can one say?
This is an example of something that is so prima facie, on the face of it, so evil, that beyond that, what is one to say?
The attempt to To undo the Trump presidency is what really is here.
He had the audacity of winning and the first president in our lifetime, no matter how old you are, to take on what I didn't know, I admit, I did not know there was a deep state.
When I heard talk of it, I thought it was somewhat hysterical.
And it exists.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, Lord Acton said.
I believe it was the 19th century.
I'll look that up.
But it's a very famous phrase, and it is entirely true.
Power corrupts.
Not only does power corrupt, this is the important addendum, but the corrupts seek power.
I'd like to know, tell me somebody with traditional American values who sought to make the government bigger and bigger and thereby enable himself or herself to have more power.
There may be such a person, I don't deny it, but I can't think of one offhand.
Leftism makes people worse?
Look at your child after college.
In many cases, obviously.
But worse people flock left.
It's a chicken and egg thing.
We're working on having Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz on.
If there's anyone in America who has lost more friends in the last five years...
And Alan Dershowitz, I can't think of one.
I have lost none.
My friends think similarly to me.
That's what friends are for.
If you don't share values, you don't have a real friend in the person.
It doesn't speak necessarily ill of that person, but it just is.
Alan Dershowitz believed that Democrats were really ultimately a fine group of people.
I raised this, oh, I don't know, 20 years ago in a public discussion with him in New York City.
Given his values, why is he a Democrat?
And I don't remember the precise answer, but I obviously didn't find it compelling.
Maybe I'll ask that to him today if he comes on.
They searched Melania's closet.
They were there for 10 hours, 40 people.
It's not possible to find nothing.
When the government seeks to prosecute an individual, in virtually every case, it will find something prosecutable, especially someone who has been as powerful as Donald Trump in terms of politics and in terms of business.
They're doing the same thing with regard to his business practices.
I don't think that there is a billionaire, if that's what he is, or many hundreds of millionaires, about whom one cannot find something to prosecute in tax payments, in...
Disclosures in whatever it might be.
But it is remarkable, given his success in New York City in the real estate market, that none of this has ever come up.
Have any people who have dealt with him business-wise said that he cheated?
Not that I am aware of.
People use the term Trump derangement syndrome frequently.
During the Trump administration, for the record, I never once used it.
But they were right.
Trump causes a derangement in people's thinking.
There are people who have stopped speaking to their father.
Stopped speaking to their father because the father supported Donald Trump.
For the record, We have at least as much contempt for those of you who support Joe Biden as you have for those who supported Donald Trump.
But the thought of not talking to one's father because he supported Joe Biden and continues to do so, despite the fact that he has done more damage to this country than anyone, probably including Andrew Johnson, after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
That's derangement syndrome for you.
People are increasingly talking about a separation.
How could you not talk about a separation?
The left and right have nothing in common.
Nothing.
There's no serious issue in life upon which we agree.
We hold the founders of America in awe.
The left holds the founders of America in contempt.
The left would like this country to be a pure democracy.
It was not founded to be one.
That's why we have a Senate, which is not democratic.
Little states have as many senators as big states.
And that is why we have an electoral college, so that the states elect the president, not a national popular vote.
They would like to do away with both of those.
We think that teaching children that they are not a boy or a girl, but they will decide which they are, is an example of child abuse that is legal.
Morally, it is indistinguishable from many other forms of child abuse.
The left finds it to be beautiful.
And you can go down the list of institutions ruined by the left.
What we have seen with the Donald Trump issue was something we would have expected in some state that is called the Banana Republic, because they produce bananas, namely Central America.
And now we are emulating them.
This country under the Democrats is indistinguishable from a corrupt Central American country.
Indistinguishable.
And the press is a large reason for it.
It is as corrupt as the rest of the left.
1-8 Prager, 776-877-243-7776.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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Hi, everybody.
Here's a headline from the Washington Post.
Served as Pravda to the Democrats as Pravda served it.
To the communists in the Soviet Union, I find no distinction.
Top Republicans echo Trump's evidence-free claims to discredit FBI search.
It is the Washington Post, New York Times, NBC, NBC, CBS, the whole gang.
It's a gang.
What the left has done to the profession of journalism...
is exactly what the motto of the Washington Post owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon.
One reason I try to purchase anything over a minimal amount of money from anywhere else on the internet.
It's not the only reason.
I want others to thrive and not just Amazon.
Their motto is, Democracy Dies in Darkness.
The darkness created by the Washington Post and the rest of the mainstream media is exactly what I fear will cause this death that is in their motto.
So I want to tell you something, and then I'll get back to these issues later.
So, let's see here.
Yeah, L.A. County.
Listen to this headline.
L.A. County urges COVID protections as kids go back to school.
2,335 new cases reported.
Wow, that's really something.
They resume classes this Monday.
So, here's an interesting question.
Who loves children more?
The left in America or the Danish government?
Which is, I presume, a liberal, at least liberal government.
So here's a headline.
A statement from the Danish government.
Titled, Vaccination of Children and Young People Under the Age of 18. Children and young people only very rarely become seriously ill from COVID-19 with the Omicron variant.
Therefore, from 1 July 2022, it will no longer be possible for children and young people under the age of 18 to get the first jab, and from 1 September 2022, it will no longer be possible to get the second jab.
Quite a few children with a particularly increased risk of serious course will have the option of vaccination after an individual assessment by a doctor.
Did you hear the words?
It will no longer be possible.
The Danish government is outlawing this so-called vaccine to children under the age of 18 in all of Denmark.
I will note this.
When I go to Denmark, I'm receiving an award in Denmark for free speech.
In November, and in my talk, I will note this admirable decision on the part of the Danish government.
But Barbara Ferrer, under the fraud in the name of science, wants children to be vaccinated.
If you love your children, don't you owe it to your children if you love them, and most parents love their children, to research the issue?
Why are you a sheep?
Now, if you have read up on this matter, on the danger of the vaccine versus the usefulness of the vaccine, that is, after all, the only question to be asked about anything.
What is the downside and what is the upside?
Don't you owe it to your child to have done this research before giving them a non-vaccine vaccine?
Non-vaccine is not an attack.
It's a description.
Vaccines prevent an illness.
This does not.
Since virtually everybody who gets the vaccine ultimately gets COVID, some form, like the President of the United States, it can't be said to prevent the illness.
So instead we get the line, it prevents you from going into the hospital.
You will get it, but that was never what was told to us.
From Biden to Fauci to all the others, they lied into the camera and told you it will prevent your getting COVID. Simple.
Like they knew.
Like they knew.
The most untested vaccine ever released upon the public.
And they knew its effects.
I think it's incumbent upon every parent in Los Angeles, county, and anywhere else in the country to know what the Danish government has decided.
It is forbidding children from getting, I read it to you, from getting the vaccine.
Under 18. Schools were open the entire two years in Sweden for children under 16. Nothing happened.
I get very philosophical about life, as you know.
I try to have clarity over life.
Given the moral failure of so many teachers and so many principals, And so many health officials, the utter and total moral failure of these people.
It raised a question in my mind that is difficult to answer.
Do you know people unless they have been tested?
Do you know yourself unless you've been tested?
The cowardice of so many doctors in this country, the cowering under the rules of the American Medical Association, the sheep-like behavior with regard to therapeutics, the sheep-like behavior with regard to vaccine.
I can't tell you how distressing it is.
There are some doctors who have passed the test, but most have failed.
What am I then to assume?
And this is not at all rhetorical.
I don't know.
Do I say this is otherwise a wonderful person, but sheep-like in his or her behavior?
That's what I have concluded.
I have not been able to dismiss the entirety of these people for failing the test.
The ones who instigate the test, the Barbara Ferrer's And the FDA and the CDC and NIH heads, that's a different story.
They are simply moral failures.
We resume on The Dennis Prager Show.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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I'm going to say a challenging thing to you, my dear listeners, and I hope you will accept it for and I hope you will accept it for the truth that it is.
You can't complain about the attack on this country from the left, what might end up a mortal attack.
And either not fight or help the fighters.
Okay?
Talk about moral failing.
That's a moral failing.
Either fight or help the fighters.
Pray for you as fighting.
This is fundraising month.
Help us.
It's as simple as that.
Most people don't.
Great numbers do, but most people don't.
I'm talking about most people who are worried silly about what is happening to our country.
PragerU has a branch called PragerForce.
It's young people.
There are 20,000 of them around the world.
Yesterday I spoke to a Japanese-American in Japan.
Today I have a non-Japanese-American.
Julia Spies, S-P-I-E-S. She is 17 years old.
She's a member of Prager Force.
She's in Charlotte, North Carolina.
We met three minutes ago.
And within one minute, I asked her, are you homeschooled?
I had no idea.
But my assumption, since she radiates maturity, was she probably is.
Anyway, Julia, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
Hi, Mr. Prager.
Thank you for having me.
When did you discover PragerU?
I discovered PragerU years ago, maybe about four or five years ago.
My older sister would show me Will Whitman on the street videos, so that's originally how I found it.
And then when I joined Instagram a couple years back, I started following PragerU.
A year ago, maybe nine or ten months ago, I saw a post on the PragerU Instagram for PragerForce.
And so that's how I joined PragerForce.
Have you met any other members?
Yes, I've met so many people.
Yeah, in just nine months, I've met a ton of people, especially through the networking calls once a month.
And yes, I've built some amazing relationships that I'm so thankful for.
I love hearing that because the biggest issue in terms of personal happiness is having kindred spirits in your life.
And I worry that a lot of conservatives are lonely.
Even conservatism.
A lot of people who are not leftists are lonely.
So I'm very happy to have heard that.
So do you watch our videos?
I do.
I actually have used quite a few of the five-minute videos for writing school essays or projects.
I wish I watched more, but being busy with school, I don't have a lot of time to watch many of them.
But I do enjoy watching the Will Witt's Man on the Street videos.
Yeah, he's great.
And I watch a lot of the ones they post, the clips on Instagram.
Have you ever seen any of my fireside chats?
It's okay if you haven't.
I'm just curious.
I have seen clips of some of them.
Right.
I think you would enjoy it, speaking to you in the time that I am.
I'm very interested in your explaining to people homeschooling.
I don't know the moral justification of sending one's child to a typical school in America today, almost anywhere.
And certainly in a big city, and Charlotte is a relatively big city.
So I advocate it, but I know that people are frightened by the words homeschooling.
They think it will completely turn their lives upside down.
By the way, it might be true.
So what has been your experience and your parents' experience?
So it definitely has turned my life...
My life upside down, but in the most amazing way.
I'm actually doing an online homeschool program.
It's called Laurel Springs.
And so all of my courses are online, and I submit everything online.
So my parents don't really do much at all, which is nice for them, and it's nice for me too, to have all my stuff online.
And I've had a lot of extra time that I didn't have when I was in school.
I used to go to a private Christian school, and I was just always so busy with work.
I didn't always have the best teachers to teach the courses, so I've really enjoyed being able to learn at my own pace, and yeah, it's really been great having the extra time, especially since I joined PragerForce, to talk with people through that.
All right, I'm going to be back with you in a moment.
Julia Spees in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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Go on, go on.
Hi, everybody.
Male Female Hour.
Every Wednesday, the second hour of my show, there's more to life than politics.
There's a lot to life.
By the way, it's all interrelated because happy men and happy women are more likely to be...
On the conservative side of matters, and the unhappy are more likely to be on the left side.
Every poll demonstrates that, but you have to be blind not to note it in your own lives.
So everything ultimately interrelates.
I know that, and you know that.
But I only said that for those of you who...
I wonder why I devote so much time to non-political issues.
Everything has ramifications, including male, female, relationships, and understanding one another.
So this is the most honest talk about men and women, of which I am aware, in the media, in America today.
And here's an interesting question.
Sometimes I just pose a question.
Sometimes I offer a theory.
Today I'm posing a question, so I invite you to call in as soon as you hear it.
If you are a female married to a male, or a male married to a female, or in a long-term relationship, which I hope turns into marriage, in either case, here's my question.
What have you learned about the opposite sex?
That you didn't know prior to your marriage or relationship.
Not about your person, your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife.
Not what have you learned about that person in the course of your marriage.
What have you learned about that sex or gender as the left has redefined it.
Being married, you're a man, you're married to a woman.
Have you learned anything about women?
And by the way, maybe you didn't.
I don't hold that to be a bad thing.
But I'd like to know if you think you have learned something about the opposite sex that you didn't know prior to your relationship.
1-8 Prager, 7-7-6, 8-7-7, 2-4-3, triple seven six.
If I had to guess over the broad sphere of relationships in our country, my theory would be,
and I'm not wedded to it, so to speak, That women learn more about men in the course of a marriage or a long relationship than men do about women.
Because we are so different from women.
So you say, well, women are so different from men.
Why isn't the learning...
Curve as great.
So I'm specifically thinking about male sexuality.
It's a terra incognita, unknown land, to the female of the human species until she interacts more or reads more.
A woman can learn it.
That's why I talk about it when I do.
I have a very well-received three-part series on explaining male sexual nature.
I assume it's at the Prager store.
I gave it years ago.
And since male sexual nature has not changed in the last 20 years, it's just as relevant today as it was when I gave it.
I was talking to a young woman.
Actually, to Julie.
And maybe we'll talk about this on a Dennis and Julie segment.
By the way, if you haven't tried it, it is unique in the world of broadcasting and podcasting.
My 90 minutes each week with Julie Hartman, this extraordinary 22-year-old young woman.
I've never co-hosted anything in my life.
She is unique.
It's called Dennis and Julie.
You can watch it on YouTube, Dennis and Julie Podcast, or you can listen to it at which Salem?
Salem Podcast Network.
Salem Podcast Network.
Dennis and Julie.
Dennis and Julie were talking off the air about this subject, and it was...
When I talked about men, it was fairly revelatory to her.
And she is exceedingly bright.
But male nature is a learning curve.
This is not an attack.
It's not a defense.
It is just a fact.
If women think men are like them, They generally come to believe either my husband is a weirdo or I didn't know men until now.
That's my theory.
But you may have different response.
Again, my question is, what have you learned, not about your husband or wife, but what have you learned about that?
The whole sex, or do you think you've learned, as a result of being married to a member of that sex?
By the way, if your answer is nothing, that's fine too.
I don't think that my being married, and I was married prior to this marriage, I don't think that my being married taught me all that much I think I had a grasp to the point that I'm not sure what is meant by men
will never understand women.
I don't understand that line.
I think the opposite is the real challenge for women to understand men.
Women are human beings who are women.
They're not animated exactly as we are, obviously.
By the way, ironically, I wonder if it might be fair to say that the less intimidated one is by women, and some men are, the happier the woman will be.
I think it's fair to say that women want strength in a man.
However you will define the term strength.
When I've asked women to define masculinity, nearly everyone ultimately came up with the word responsible.
Women like responsible men.
Women are generally, but not always at all, more emotional.
That is changing as men become emotional.
Not exactly what we want.
Feminists claim they want men who cry easily.
I'm not sure that women are aching for a man who cries easily.
They are aching for a man who makes them laugh easily.
So here's the question.
I'll take your calls upon return.
What do you think you've learned about men being married to one?
What do you think you've learned about women being married to one?
May not have thought about it.
And that's fine, too.
We shall return.
Male-female hour.
The Dennis Prager Show.
The Dennis Prager Show.
August is fundraising month.
And if the events that are taking place in America don't prompt you to help those who are fighting, nothing will.
PragerU.com, 833-PRAGER-U. If you give this week anything, it's doubled.
Generous donors have agreed to do that.
Whatever you give will be doubled.
Hi everybody, this is the Male Female Hour and the subject is, what do you think you've learned about your spouse's sex?
Not your spouse, but the whole group.
If you're a woman married to a man, what have you learned, do you think you've learned about men?
If you're a man married to a woman, what do you think you've learned about women?
Not necessarily about your spouse, though they usually are the same, because we think that our spouse represents that sex.
All right.
Jack in Tampa, Florida.
Hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
Hi.
I've been listening to you for a long time.
I met you a few times.
I would tell you, I've been married about 32 years, and the thing that it took me the longest time to learn was when my wife is upset about something and just wants to talk about whatever that item might be, that she really doesn't want me to be solving the problem for that she really doesn't want me to be solving the problem What she really wants is for me to listen to her and just kind of sympathize with her and maybe help her work through it.
It took me a long time to figure that out.
This is often said...
And I wish I had your wife on the line.
Because as much as I believe it, I'm not sure it's fully true.
Not that you're wrong.
Because there's so much truth to what you say.
I mean, give me an example, if you feel free to, of a problem your wife would have to which she would not want a solution.
Hmm.
Well, I think generally it'll be maybe things that occur at work that upset her or maybe something that's happening with somebody she knows that she finds upsetting.
And she doesn't really, more often than not, she doesn't want me to tell her, this is what you need to do.
I think more what she wants me to do is listen to her and maybe help her.
Right.
Maybe because she...
Doesn't believe there is a solution.
So let's say she has an awful boss at work.
And I said to your wife, what's your wife's name?
Belinda.
Ma or buh?
Buh.
Belinda.
Okay.
Belinda, let me ask you, if you have a lousy boss, what would you prefer?
Your husband commiserate with you and sincerely doing so.
Or, by some great miracle of God, your boss was moved to another business.
Well, she'd probably prefer the latter if I had the ability to do it.
Right.
So maybe we should modify it.
Maybe a woman wants to be heard.
More than to have a solution given, because she doesn't believe there's a solution.
But if there really were, she'd prefer it.
Oh yeah, I'm sure she would.
But I guess what it is, is for men anyway.
I mean, if a friend of mine came to me with a similar problem, the first thing I'm going to do is start telling him what he needs to do to fix it.
And I think a lot of times...
I don't know, maybe for women it's more of a catharsis to just talk about it.
Right.
No, no.
Well said.
Well said.
Thank you.
So I think we need a more...
Whatever he said is true.
I think we need, not necessarily my caller, we need a more nuanced view on that.
Because if there really is a solution...
I'll bet that the great majority of women would prefer the solution to having her husband hear her talk about it.
Right?
I can't imagine a scenario where a woman would be given the choice of, well, what would you prefer?
No solution, but your husband really listened to you talk about it and commiserate heartfelt listening or minimal listening, but the problem was actually solved.
I think that most women would go for the latter.
I think they want to talk about problems that they don't think there's a solution to.
I don't blame them.
Although, obviously, If they really believe there's no solution, the amount of talking about it will only perhaps exacerbate the pain.
But it does need to be talked about.
I totally agree with that.
All right, y'all.
That's interesting.
Mike in Minneapolis, hello.
Oh, hello, Dennis.
Hi there.
What a pleasure to talk to you.
I've been listening to you for over a decade.
Thank you.
You're awesome, man.
I've got something to share with all the guys out here.
We all know that women always try to make them look good with their hair, but until you do it, you really don't appreciate it.
So my fiancée, she broke her arm, and so I ended up really taking care of her.
I'm 62, and she's my age, so she likes to put curlers in her hair.
But I never knew that you can have a line in the back of your head, and what women will do is they'll do their hair so that it kind of poofs up so that they have no line in the back of their head.
And I never knew this.
All these years, I just figured, oh, women do a great job, but it's so hard to kind of poof it.
And then I would put curlers in her hair at night and curl them all up.
And now I end up looking at women, and if I notice a gal, and I can see the back of her hair, and she's got a side, you know, I'll catch that.
This is remarkable.
All right, thank you, my friend.
That is remarkable.
I saw your subject, and I said, I have no idea what I will hear.
After all, what was his name?
Rodney?
No, that's another one.
Mike, yes.
Mike, that's a riot.
After all these years, I assume you had been married before.
This is what you've learned about women.
Alright, this is a man who really knew women.
There was one lacuna in his grasp of the distaff sex.
Hey, Sean, you know distaff?
Look that up.
D-I-S-T-A-F-F. We shall return in a moment.
You're listening to the Male Female Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.
The Dennis Prager Show.
Distant. Distant. Distant.
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to or back to the Dennis Prager Show.
Probably the best known law professor in America is Alan Dershowitz.
He's earned the distinction of being well known.
Though I think he would agree with a theory of mine that fame and significance are not synonymous.
But he is both famous and significant.
Alan Dershowitz has written his latest book, and he can write this one.
The price of principle, why integrity is worth the consequences.
Before I ask you about the raid on Mar-a-Lago, Alan Dershowitz, I just want you to know that I mentioned you in a previous hour as an example, and I don't know this from you, I just suspect this from what I have read and from what I know about America.
There may not be an individual, and I say this With both admiration and sadness, there may not be a person who has lost more friends in the last five years than you have.
I think that's probably true.
I think that's probably true, as long as I keep having you as a friend.
I go back a long, long time with you.
Didn't you go to Flatbush Yeshiva?
That's correct, yes.
I went to Brooklynton Medical Academy, and I think my grandson is...
I'm studying under your brother at Columbia Medical School.
So we have some close connections.
I have lost so many friends.
I'll just give you a story from yesterday.
Yesterday I got an email from an old friend whose daughter is having an engagement party.
They had invited us.
We had gotten the present.
And they wrote an email saying, sorry, we have to disinvite you.
A group of people said that if they know you're coming, they won't come.
And that's happened over and over and over again.
Wow!
Wow!
I have a thick skin.
What's worse is that the public library in Chilmark, paid for by taxpayer money, has refused to allow me to speak.
They had me speak like seven years in a row.
The most popular speaker there.
And as soon as I defended President Trump, the public library said I couldn't speak there anymore.
Imagine if a Texas public library said from now on we're not going to allow any pro-choice speakers from speaking or any anti-racist speakers from speaking.
Every civil libertarian and liberal would be up in arms.
And in Schumark, I am despised because I'm thinking about suing the library to establish an important principle that libraries shouldn't censor books and they shouldn't censor speakers based on ideology, politics.
partisanship, or who you defend.
So, I'm going to ask you a philosophical question, given this experience you've had with friends.
Yeah.
I have asked the question on the air and privately.
Do we know people before they have been tested?
No.
The answer is no.
And, you know, I never want to make comparisons.
Never, ever want to make comparisons.
But when I look around in chalk, I just have to raise the question again, if some of these people were living in terrible places, fascist places, communist places, other places, how many of them would stand up if they knew that their own, in this case, only social standing would suffer?
I was told by an old friend and a former student that it would be...
Social suicide for me to invite you to the annual concert that he gives every year and that I've been invited to every year would be social suicide.
These guys are not even willing to commit a social gaffe by inviting me somewhere.
Imagine if they were the ones who had to stand up and defend dissidents in the former Soviet Union or fascist Venezuela or any of those other places, you know?
You're absolutely right.
We don't know people until they get tested.
And when they get tested, most of them fail to test.
And that's why I wrote my book, The Price of Principle.
You know, I'm not allowed to speak and show Mark.
The library banned me.
The Hebrew Center banned me.
The Community Center banned me.
Temple Emanuel in New York has banned me.
The Ramaz School has banned me.
The 92nd Street Y has banned me, and so, you know, thankfully I'm on shows like yours, and I can write a book.
It's becoming a very good seller, The Price of Principle.
I hope people will buy it and read it, because that's really my only voice these days.
This is my 50th book, and I, you know, I hope I'll be able to continue writing books for a number of other years, but that's my recourse.
And you're absolutely right about testing, and this is a small test.
Just a small test.
That's right.
So many of my friends have failed it miserably.
Well...
Not a single person in all of Kilmore, not a single person was hoping out against this.
Wow.
I wrote a year and a half ago, I write a weekly column, and I wrote one column titled The Good German, and then the next column was The Good American.
Yeah.
So I know exactly what you're responding to.
I am luckier than you in that my friends have always been kindred spirits, and I've lost none because we see eye to eye.
You won't lose me.
I think the difference is this.
My friends thought that I was a kindred spirit.
Because I always, you know, I voted against Donald Trump twice.
I'd love to have the right to vote against him a third time.
That's why I don't want him to be disqualified.
I want the right to vote against him a third time.
You know, I voted for Hillary Clinton and for Joe Biden.
And these folks thought, therefore, I was on their side.
I was never on their side.
I was always on the side of principle and civil liberties.
Mostly it came out their way.
But today, when it comes out the other way, when it comes out that my civil liberties incline me to defend President Trump in the impeachment and against the raid yesterday, that's what makes it clear to them that we were never kindred spirits.
They just was on my side because they thought I was on their side.
I was never on their side.
People come up to me in the street sometimes and say, I used to admire you.
And I say, you never should have admired me.
You don't understand.
I'm not on your side.
I'm on the side of free speech, due process, wherever it lands and wherever it's needed.
Sometimes I'm on your side.
Many times I'm not.
So do most liberals believe in liberalism?
No, no, no.
You know, most free speech advocates believe in free speech for me, but not for thee.
By the way, that's not true for us conservatives.
We believe in free speech for leftists.
We believe in free speech for Nazis.
Today you do, but when McCarthyism was around, many conservatives didn't.
When Nixon was in power, many conservatives didn't.
I think the best thing that's happened as a result of this raid and other kinds of things is that many conservatives have now really become strong civil libertarians.
Many were already.
But others were not.
You know, when I was a kid, people used to say, a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged.
And I always would say in response, a civil libertarian is a conservative who's being audited, who's had search and seizure on his house, and his kid's been busted for a drug offense.
Then they become civil libertarians.
Now, as a result of this raid, as a result of the impeachment, many conservatives who were hedging about whether they really want to be civil libertarians have become strong civil libertarians.
The test, and you talked about tests, is when they assume power, let's see how committed they are to this.
Well, I think there's a partial answer because Donald Trump was president for four years and nobody's liberties were suppressed.
I think you're right about that.
And he was very strong on issues of college campus speech and issues...
I mean, he was, from my mind, on the wrong side of the choice issue, but that's a close question.
Reasonable people would disagree about that.
And, you know, before he became president, he was very strong in support of gay rights.
When he became president, he was a little bit muted on that.
So, look, there's nobody who's perfect, except you and me, of course.
But beyond that, we're not going to find that in politicians.
That's what I always tell people.
If you want a candidate with whom you agree on everything, run for office.
That's right.
And then you'll find you don't agree with yourself on a lot of things.
Exactly.
When I vote for president, I usually vote for the least worst candidate.
Well, that's the reason that the founders wanted limited government.
They knew power is bad.
And not only that, they divided power into six units.
We're the only country in the history of the world where there are six units of power, legislative, judicial, and executive, divided by two, state and federal.
So nobody ever has all the power.
And that makes it a little bit inefficient, but it's worth the price.
It's like integrity.
It's worth the price.
We have a slow government.
We don't always get things done, but at least we know no one has a monopoly on power.
All right, back with you in a moment.
Alan Dershowitz's book, and I really called him to talk about the issues, but I want you to know about his book, The Price of Principle, Why Integrity is Worth the Consequences, and we'll talk about the raid in Mar-a-Lago.
The Dennis Prager Show.
Alan Dershowitz is professor of law at Harvard, emeritus, and has been in the news much of his life, major liberal spokesman, and now has lost his liberal friends, by and large.
We're going to talk about the raid.
That's the reason for this.
But I think that your story is so important.
I just want to make one observation.
You're speaking about conservatives coming on board for civil liberties.
Right.
I have to say, having been labeled a conservative much of my life and having a lot of conservative friends, it is inconceivable to me that at any time, at least in my life, that if one of our friends voted For the worst possible left-wing candidate,
Bernie Sanders, AOC, that we would say, don't show up at the bar mitzvah, because nobody will show up if you do.
It is inconceivable to me conservatives would think like that.
I think you're right.
I think you're right.
And especially real conservatives.
Look, I am a real conservative, because I think that real conservatives and real civil libertarians...
And real liberals, genuine liberals in the old sense of the term, have much in common, much more in common than with radicals or reaction.
And I think those of us who think of themselves as part of the centrist, conservative liberal...
Look, I was a great admirer of William Buckley, and he was a great admirer of me.
He was a conservative.
I was a liberal.
But we had the same view on civil liberties.
We had the same view on free speech.
We would argue with each other about specific economic and other policies, and then we would have a drink together.
That used to happen.
No more.
I mean, you know, as I said to one of my old, old, old friends who said, well, you've become a Trump supporter.
And I said, no, I voted against Trump, but what if I had become a Trump supporter?
Right, exactly.
A genuine Trump supporter.
You wouldn't talk to me.
And, you know, his view is a little different.
He said, if you were genuinely a Trump supporter...
Maybe we would, but you are us, and as one of us, you're supporting him.
I said, no, I'm supporting the Constitution.
I'm supporting civil liberties.
Some of them are too dumb to understand it.
Others pretend to be too dumb to understand it, and others are just McCarthyites, so they don't care.
McCarthyites on the left are just as bad as McCarthyites on the right.
This was a painful book for me to write, because in it I name names, I turn against people.
I condemn Lawrence Tribe.
I see him now as the worst of the kind of neo-fascist liberals who is prepared to trash everything in the Constitution and civil liberties in order to get Trump.
He reminds me of Valenti Beria, telling Stalin, show me the man and I'll find you the crime.
So this is a good example.
So he's a fellow professor at Harvard Law School.
So that's a good example.
Ten years ago...
If I'd have said to you, you know, this Lawrence tribe, he turns out to be a bad human being, what would you have said to me?
I would have said he's my friend and my associate, and I disagree with him, but I wouldn't want to have him called a bad human being.
I've changed some of my views on that now, because I think hypocrisy is something...
That is inconsistent with being a good human being.
And, you know, Tribe always fails the shoe on the other foot test.
Every example he gives, he would come out exactly the opposite way if the person being attacked was a Democrat instead of a Republican.
Do you know that Lawrence Tribe went on CNN without criticism and said he was trying to urge his former student, Merrick Garland, to indict and prosecute President Trump?
We're attempting to murder Vice President Pence.
This is a law professor.
If a law student did that in my class, he'd get a C- with great inflation.
That's what it's come to now.
It's so extreme that you can't have a disagreement with anybody without wanting to indict them and put them in jail and make them pariahs.
Good.
So I don't think anyone is in a position to answer this as well as you, given your immersion in the liberal elite for a lifetime.
So I, as my listeners know, I did not use the term Trump derangement syndrome once during the Trump presidency.
But I now believe it exists.
Do you?
I do too.
I do too.
I absolutely believe it exists.
It turns people's minds to mush.
It's not the first time it's happened.
Before that, I had used the term Israel delusional standard.
You mention the word Israel on a college campus, and rational people go crazy.
They think you're in favor of Israel.
My God, Israel is worse than Nazi Germany.
And, you know, Israel delusional standard has been with us now for 20 years.
The Trump one is relatively recent, but it absolutely exists.
You're right.
Can you explain it?
I can explain it in extremist terms.
I mean, if you're an extremist, if you're a communist or a Nazi, you see things that way.
I find it hard to explain how many of my former liberal friends have turned...
I just don't get it.
Look, I know Donald Trump.
I didn't vote for him.
As I said, I want to make sure he runs for president again and isn't disqualified by some bureaucrats, because I want to have the American right to vote against him, just like you have the American right to vote for him.
I don't want to see some bureaucrat or some legislator saying, no, he's disqualified and can't run.
By the way, that would be unconstitutional.
There's only four bases for running for president of the United States.
You have to be 35 American.
You have to have not fought against America in the Civil War, and you have to not have been impeached with the rider that you can't run for office again.
If you meet those four qualifications, no statute can deny you the right to run for president.
You can run for president from prison and win and govern if the people want that.
Raid.
And his book, my friends, is, as you hear, he's earned the right, the privilege of your reading it.
The Price of Principle, Why Integrity is Worth the Consequences.
as Alan Dershowitz re-return.
Hi, everybody.
Dennis Prager here with Professor Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School, Professor Emeritus.
*music* Author of literally dozens of books, all worth reading.
He's a fighter.
He's a man of courage.
He's a liberal who believes in liberalism.
A very, very small group, unfortunately.
It's funny.
I invited you on to talk about the raid.
We haven't talked about it for a minute, which is fine with me because these larger issues, I always, I'm a forest, not a tree man.
Clarifying the forest is the most important thing to me.
So I have one more question.
I've been preoccupied during the break just thinking about things you've told me about your life and about the abandonment of you by lifelong friends because you have defended, not even voted for, but just defended Donald Trump, which is because you're defending the Constitution and higher principles than any one of us individually.
You mentioned in passing something that I have no doubt flew by 99% of my listeners.
You mentioned a school that would only be known to people like you and me, grew up in New York, and who were familiar with the Orthodox Jewish world.
You said that the school named Ramaz would not invite you.
Did I get that correctly?
Not only that, they actually did invite me, and then the headmaster said they had to cancel me, that there was too much pushback.
From the Makhers, the board of directors, the wealthy people, the people who, quote, don't want to make trouble, don't want to rock the boat, don't want to have a controversial person like me speaking to the students.
I had offered to speak to them free to tell them how they're going to confront anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in their university and college classes.
Something that would be very valuable because I have spoken to more colleges than any Zionist in the world, all over the world.
And I could give them real insight into what they're going to face in college.
And the headmaster said, "No, we can't have you." So you weren't even going to speak on a political issue.
You were going to speak on a Jewish issue.
On a Jewish issue?
It's out of Jewish school.
So the reason that I repeated that fact that you noted that, as I said, would not be perceived as significant by people who never heard of the school called Ramaz, but I have, So people should know, and I say this with tremendous sadness, it is one of the preeminent modern Orthodox high schools in America.
And I went to the other one, the Yeshiva Flatbush.
I don't know if they would invite you now either.
But in any event, my only point is that one that I've made within Jewish life and is painful to me...
Is that I believe that there are woke inroads into modern orthodoxy that one would not have predicted.
Look, I agree, and it's hitting all aspects of the Jewish religion.
Temple Emanuel, where I was supposed to speak on the Bible, the Bible, instead of inviting me to speak on the Bible and Israel, they invited Peter Beinhart and paid him $25,000 to state that Israel doesn't have the right to exist as a Jewish.
The 92nd Street Y, which I was the second most popular speaker in history following only Elie Wiesel, has canceled me as well.
Even though people want to hear me speak, they have made the decision.
They don't want to have their people hear me speak.
And that's why I wrote my book.
I wrote a previous book called Cancel Culture.
This is my 50th book.
And this tells the story of the price I've had to pay.
I'm getting the book as soon as we finish this.
I'm aching to read it.
You'll enjoy it, yeah.
Well, I don't know if I'll enjoy it.
I'll benefit from it, but I don't know if I'll enjoy it.
I agree.
This is the crises of the time in which we live.
What is the story, Sean?
Okay, so fine.
So Alan Dershowitz has...
Is fighting the fight, my friends, based on principle.
So callers are calling, wondering, and I don't even know if I want to get into it, but you're certainly free to.
I asked you this when we first spoke, I don't know, 20 years ago at the 92nd Street Y, which would, of course, not invite me again either, and why you continue to vote Democrat in light of all the things that you're saying.
If I asked you this 20 years ago, I certainly would ask it today, and then, folks, his take on this terrible, terrible event in American history, the raid on an ex-president's home.
Yes, I didn't know he wrote this book.
Now I do.
I'm getting it.
The Price of Principle, Why Integrity is Worth the Consequences.
And I agree with him.
Integrity is worth the consequences.
Hey, everybody.
If you call, I'm going to try to take some calls.
I didn't expect this to go the whole hour, but I am absolutely mesmerized by this discussion with Professor Alan Dershowitz as a Harvard Law professor so well known in the country.
By the way, has Harvard Law allowed you to speak?
It's interesting.
I was asked to come to speak about Israel a couple of years ago, not recently, and they had to move it off campus because they were fearful of protest.
So they moved it a few blocks away from campus to the Chabad House, where there were no...
I don't mind protests.
I'm used to protests.
I've had them in Berkeley.
I've had them in Johns Hopkins University.
I've had them all over.
Protests are fine.
They're protected by the First Amendment.
But in some instances, I've had to have police protection when I've spoken about Israel and support of Israel.
Wow.
I can only be on for another 10 minutes.
I have to be off.
Oh, okay, fine.
Let's go to the raid then.
Okay, what was wrong with the raid?
Everything.
They should have never had a raid.
It should have been a subpoena.
And then the president could have invoked all of his privileges.
His lawyer-client privilege, his executive privilege.
This morning he invoked the Fifth Amendment privilege.
He could have done that.
And the Justice Department wanted to circumvent any claim of privilege.
They didn't want a judge to look through the documents to decide which ones may or may not be incriminating.
Weep in, grab everything, and be able to use that as an intimidating tactic.
In all my years of practicing walks, 60 almost now, I've never seen a search and seizure like this for an alleged offense like this.
They didn't do it with Hillary Clinton.
They didn't do it with Sandy Berger.
And I'm a big fan of whataboutism.
I think it's important to say, if they didn't do it to them, why are they doing it to him?
Under the law, you have to have equal protection.
So everything is wrong with the raid.
It never should have happened.
It should have been by subpoena.
And it's part, by the way, of a pattern.
The people who have been arrested, the Trump people, Navarro and Manafort and Stone, they've all been subject to special treatment.
They've been shackled, handcuffed, arrested, put in solitary confinement.
In my experience, when people are arrested for a crime like that, the lawyer gets a call.
Oh, by the way, attorney, your client has been indicted.
Could you bring him in tomorrow or Tuesday or Wednesday at your convenience in front of the judge?
And that's what happens.
But the, you know, dawn arrests and dawn raids, it's just not America.
It's not the way it should be.
Those are supposed to be last resorts, not first resorts.
So I am not overstating the case when I say to my audience, we are becoming like a corrupt third world country.
I think we have a distance to go before we get there, because we still have, you know, a check-and-balance system.
We still have elections.
But there is always the danger of getting close, and we can't begin to cross lines, and we're getting very, very close to those lines here.
And, you know, people said to me all the time, why are you defending Trump?
Because he's the guy who has been the subject of constitutional violations, as it were the Democrats.
I'd be defending them.
I don't make distinctions based on party or person.
I make distinctions based on principle.
It's amazing that your erstwhile liberal friends do not understand such a basic concept.
Well, some of them understand and they just pretend not to.
And some of them have Trump, you know, syndrome.
And they just believe that Trump's Hitler or worse.
And they think anybody who is...
So, I know you have to go.
I have a question.
I have an article, you'd find it fascinating, 32 questions to ask friends or relatives to determine whether they're a leftist or a liberal.
One of them is, do you support Columbia University having an all-black dormitory?
Absolutely not.
Of course not.
No, no, I know you don't.
Of course.
I'm just saying, do you think that's a good question to ask your friends?
Ask your friends.
What would they say?
I think many of them would say if blacks want it, they can have it, they can have anything they want.
I wrote another book called The Case for Colorblind Equality in an Age of Identity Politics, in which they come out strongly against self-segregation by people of color.
But your liberal friends would be okay with it.
Many would be.
So then, you know, maybe I'm wrong in making a distinction today between liberal and leftist.
Well, it's interesting.
There are some who are so far left that they would give up on all constitutional rights.
Others would just compromise them a little bit.
But the line between liberalism and hard leftism is becoming Listen,
thank you.
And from the bottom of my heart, I salute you.
The price of principle, why integrity is worth the consequences, and hopefully we'll speak soon.
I hope so.
I really enjoyed being on your show because you always ask the best questions.
Thank you for that.
That's a big compliment from him.
I ask real questions.
That's what I would say.
This was a very disturbing dialogue, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm going to take some of your calls.
Don't hang up.
I want to get this rabbi in Cleveland, Dan Olgin.
What denomination are you, rabbi?
Hi, Dennis.
Thanks for taking my call.
What denomination are you?
I'm Orthodox.
Modern Orthodox?
I would call myself Yeshivish.
Gotcha.
For those of you who need translation, which is 99% of you, it's not quite Modern Orthodox, and it's not quite...
Living in a segregated world, it's a combination of yeshiva and modernity.
Okay, go ahead.
Yeah, it's a mix, and I have college degrees as well as yeshiva education.
All right, so hold on.
I'm very curious, because I'm worried as you are about Jewish life, as I am about Christian life.
It's amazing how these ideas, these nihilistic ideas have affected religion.
You wonder who really believes in their religion.
Back in a moment.
Dennis Prager here.
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