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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:14:11
So What?
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Hi, everybody.
I'm Dennis Prager.
I welcome you to the program as the Dennis Prager Show.
So, it appears...
Overwhelmingly likely that the Wuhan virus, as it should have been called, was in fact a Wuhan virus.
It didn't merely start there.
It was started there.
There's a difference.
I watched Tucker Carlson's take on this last night, and he played the herd.
A.k.a.
the left.
All saying what nonsense and what conspiratorial thinking it was for anyone to say that the virus began in a Chinese military lab.
But it is overwhelmingly likely that it did.
It was overwhelmingly likely that it did then.
However, To me, as big a sin as the Chinese killing seven million people, one million Americans, as big a sin as that is the killing of freedom in America by the left.
And this is a perfect example of how they lie and lie and lie and lie and lie and only lie.
And the most important lesson is they get away with it.
They get away with it.
Morning Joe mocked, Joe Scarborough mocked anybody who said that it wasn't from bats and, well, Penangula?
What's the name of that animal?
Sean, come on, Sean, what is the name of that animal?
Pangolin.
Which I learned last night is a mammal.
Now, I don't know if that's relevant, but they didn't claim that it came from mammals.
Although, I think bats are bats mammals?
Oh, well, end of that theory.
Yes, conspiratorial thinking.
That's all they know how to do on the left, is to mock.
They don't counter.
They don't argue.
Oh, it was a joy to see some of the heroes of the left debunking the idea.
And when it was raised, it was said to be racist.
When President Trump spoke of the Wuhan flu, it was racist.
To say that it was started in a Chinese lab was racist.
Here is a very, very important lesson.
The question is not, is it racist?
The question is, is it true?
But the question, is it true, is not a left-wing question.
Every single day I broadcast, I bring to you another enormous lie of the left.
And, of course, the vast majority, overwhelming majority of leftists do not listen or read any of us, and so they don't know anything that you know.
They don't know this.
Ask any left-wing relative, very gingerly, sweetly, innocently, how do you think the COVID virus began?
Who do you think has better immunity?
Those who had COVID or those who were vaccinated?
These are a series of questions.
They don't know anything.
They only know to call us names.
That is what they know.
The involvement of Americans in that Wuhan lab should be investigated as well, because apparently we were involved.
The stories that are coming out in the United States.
Christian girls team forfeits playoff against team with trans student from the Daily Mail.
Once again, the only hope for the Western world, the whole Western civilization, lies with religious Christians and Jews.
The only hope.
I'm going to blow your minds right now with a little anecdote.
Even the living martyr does not know this.
Yesterday, I was on a two-hour podcast with two Orthodox Jewish women who, to my great honor, frankly, flew from Miami and New York, respectively, to conduct this podcast with me.
I'll make you aware of it when it comes out.
Again, two Orthodox Jewish women, specifically members of the community known as Chabad.
Almost anywhere you live, in any medium-sized city, there is probably a Chabad house.
These are the rabbis, all bearded, and their wives who run these houses.
And I have a very deep and abiding affection for these people and what they do.
I speak for them all over the world and enjoy them immensely.
I'm not a member of the group, but I am an admirer of the group.
So these two Chabad women, one has, I believe, eight children and one has four children, came.
Absolutely beautiful women, as so many of these Chabad wives are.
And I told them, you women have to write a book, how to continue looking great after eight kids.
They really, I don't know how they do it.
But you know, you're laughing because you know how true it is.
One of them was a grandmother, and I thought, grandmother, you've got to be kidding me.
Grandmother?
The other one was not a grandmother.
I'll put up a picture on my website, actually.
So we talked about everything.
They interviewed me about everything.
And I told them perhaps my favorite story because it so affected my life.
When I told my fourth grade rabbi at my yeshiva, my Orthodox Jewish school, half day, Religious subjects, half-day secular subjects, and he said it was the time for the afternoon prayer.
I walked over to him very respectfully and said, Rabbi, I'm not in the mood for the afternoon prayer.
And it was clear he had never heard mood and prayer in the same sentence.
He thought and thought and thought and finally just said, Dennis Prager is not in the mood for the afternoon prayer.
So what?
And the so what about mood affected my life to this day.
Whether I want to do something or not, I have learned to say to myself, so what?
I could even do it more than I do.
That is the essence of self-discipline and doing what is right.
And that's what you should say to your children when they say, I want more candy, I want more cake, I want more ice cream, I want more video.
And you can say, so what?
And the kid has no answer.
So why am I telling you the story?
I'm telling it to you in light of what I just said about how the only hope is the religious.
So I said to them, I applied this notion of so what if you're not in the mood, even when I wrote 10 years ago, and all of you can see it on the internet, When a wife is not in the mood.
That is, I think, the title of my two-part column from at least 10 years ago.
The left went crazy, and I'll explain why in a moment.
And I said, if you have a loving husband, you have a good marriage, he's a good man, and you're not in the mood, then often, not always, but often you should say, so what?
I'm not in the mood, so what?
It's good for him, it's good for me, it's good for the marriage.
And they both said, I didn't expect a reaction.
I expect a laugh, or I expect another question on some other subject, and they said, oh, that's exactly the Chabad attitude.
Two women.
They didn't consider it date rape, as the Daily Kos did.
Remember that?
Dennis Prager, you can look it up.
Dennis Prager advocates date rape.
Wherever I write a column and there are comments from the left, there's, oh, oh, you're going to listen to this guy who advocates date rape?
The sick, bad, bad, bad world of the left versus the infinitely healthier world of the religious.
It's not a perfect world, the religious world, by any means, but it is the only hope.
This basketball team, the Christian school that won't play, every school should not play if a women's team has a biological male on the team.
That's where the hope is.
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The secular world is a mess.
It's a total mess.
And so is a good chunk of the religious world that has forsaken its religious values.
To be a member of the herd.
There's a Catholic university I just read during the break, St. Mary's University in Notre Dame, which has denied TPUSA a chapter on campus, Turning Point USA, because they have said that there are only two sexes.
So that is now considered uncatholic by a Catholic university.
When I read that something is Christian, Jewish, or Catholic, I have no idea what it stands for anymore.
Does it actually stand for Christianity, Catholicism, Judaism?
Like the National Council of Jewish Women, the only thing Jewish about them is that it's composed of Jews.
But in terms of values, it might as well be the ACLU or...
The Southern Poverty Law Center or some other left-wing organization.
Christian girl team forfeits playoff.
But here is a Christian team that is actually Christian.
And that is where our hope lies with religious Jews and Christians.
A Christian prep school in Vermont forfeited a playoff girls basketball game in the state championship tournament.
After discovering the opposing team had a transgender player on the roster, the mid-Vermont Christian school girls team, the Eagles, were set to face off against the Long Trail Mountain Lions in the fourth game of the playoffs last week before the Christian school dropped out, therefore giving up its place in the tournament.
The head of the institution, Vicki Fogg, said it would be unfair and unsafe for the high school girls to play against a biologically male player on the other team.
In a statement to Fox News, Fogg wrote, We withdrew from the tournament because we believe playing against an opponent with a biological male jeopardizes the fairness of the game and the safety of our players.
Allowing biological males to participate in women's sports sets a bad precedent for the future of women's sports in general.
So it took a religious school to have the courage to do that.
Has any secular school in the United States of America forfeited a game because it would not play against a team with a biological male in female sports?
Remember how the girls of the University of Pennsylvania on their swim team were pressured by the University of Pennsylvania, another moral and intellectual wasteland, to compete against a swimmer?
What team was, what was that person's name again?
Leah Thomas.
Leah Thomas, right.
Leah Thomas swam for whom?
Oh, University of Pennsylvania, yeah, exactly.
Leah Thomas was on the guys' team the year before.
Didn't do that well, but he set records swimming against women.
And that was okay with virtually every feminist group in America, because like the environmentalist group, their concerns are not respectively women or the environment.
Their concerns are overthrowing Western civilization.
Feminists care about women like communists cared about workers.
It's just the way it is.
They use women, and women in vast numbers are perfectly happy to be used because they don't know it.
On the environmentalists, it's so obvious that it's painful.
Nuclear power is clean power, and they're opposed to it because it doesn't overthrow civilization as we know it.
State law in Vermont.
This is really something.
State law in Vermont prohibits discrimination against student athletes on the basis of their gender identity.
Identity.
Not on the basis of their gender.
Gender identity.
You say you're a woman, then you get to use the women's locker room, and you get to play against women.
Just say you're a woman.
Ta-da!
And people vote Democrat.
People vote Democrat.
It's very distressing.
The state's education agency says that the best practice entails providing transgender and gender non-conforming students.
Quote, The same opportunities to participate in physical education as are all other students.
That's it.
That's their statement.
You say you're a woman, you play against women.
The agency also advised that transgender students should not be required to use the bathroom or locker room that conflicts with the student's gender identity.
I'm a woman, I get to use the women's locker room.
One did at the YMCA in California a few weeks ago, and he exposed his male genitalia to all the women in the shower, including a young girl.
Now, if you say you're a woman, The law in California is you must be allowed to expose yourself to women.
If you don't say you're a woman, you go to jail for exposing yourself to women.
Right?
Everything about the left is sick.
Why this is not clear to all Americans is clear to me.
Because they don't hear anything you are now hearing.
They are the most insular, unaware, uninformed people in our country.
And the media makes sure that they maintain their ignorance.
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Hour number two of the Dennis Prager Show.
Is this what I think it is?
Yes it is.
It is the last day of February.
The speed of January and February, I find it drop depressing.
We're into March tomorrow.
Yes, it goes fast.
Hmm.
Alright, I just wanted to meditate on that fact.
I did, and now we proceed.
So this has been mentioned by others, I am sure.
But I did not mention it, and I think I need to.
A comment made by the most, I believe, vicious man to ever be President of the United States, Joe Biden.
I never spoke this way with Clinton or Obama, so this is not because he's a Democrat.
He is vicious because he's a Democrat, but I'm not attacking him because he's a Democrat.
Being on the left makes you a worse person, there is no doubt in my mind about that.
You become...
If you're not angry, you're not a leftist.
What he said, maybe...
One of the most vile things a president of the United States has ever said since 1776. Although, what year did Washington assume the presidency?
Was it 76?
No, no.
I didn't think so.
1780, really 1790. Really?
1790. 14 years after saying we're an independent country.
Yeah.
Since the late 18th century, he watched Till, lynched for simply being black, with white crowds, white families, this is from American greatness, gathered to celebrate the spectacle.
By the way, let me comment on that.
I have seen these pictures.
For those of you who think humans are basically good, human nature is basically good, how do you explain people?
Celebrating at the lynching of a human being because of his color.
I look at these people and I think, are we members of the same species?
Anyway, taking pictures of the bodies and mailing them as postcards as the American Greatness writes, which is a conservative piece.
Conservatives hate racism much more than leftists do.
Hard to believe that was done.
And then, so this is, anyway, this is what he said.
This is a quote.
I have to be very, I don't have any quote marks, so that was my error.
Lynched for simply being black, this is what Biden said after watching Till.
Nothing more.
With white crowds, white families gathered to celebrate the spectacle, taking pictures of the bodies and mailing them as postcards.
Hard to believe, but that was what was done.
Okay.
And then he added, and some people still want to do that.
That's vicious.
Yes.
Do you know anybody who still wants to lynch blacks?
You mean anybody lately, any of your pals that you go to dinner recently with a would-be lyncher?
How about you?
You have a very broad circle of acquaintances.
Anybody mention that they'd really like to lynch a black?
Such a horrible, horrible statement tonight.
What an indictment of this people he represents.
This man is so vicious.
The conscience of this man has never actually worked.
The way he blamed a man for the horrible deaths of his first wife and a child in a car accident, said that the man was a drunk driver.
It was a total calumny of the man, to the best of my knowledge, and what has come out.
And then runs for office, I will unite the country.
Some people want to lynch blacks.
If you saw a movie on the Holocaust and then said, and some people want to put Jews back in gas chambers.
Would it be accurate technically?
Yes.
Would it be the right thing to say about Americans?
Is there a gas chamber movement among Gentiles in the United States?
If you don't create hatred among groups, you're not an effective leftist.
What current data might support Biden's charges?
Writes the American Greatness.
Is Biden referring to federal interracial crime and hate crime statistics charting violent white propensities against blacks?
None exist.
In fact, they continually reveal that so-called whites are underrepresented as perpetrators in both categories.
While over-represented as victims in interracial crimes.
Dramatically so in the case of black on white violent crime.
So it's the inversion of truth plus a lie and vicious.
A black is more likely to hurt a white than a white is to hurt a black in a criminal violence situation.
Biden's latest accusation comes from a president who once eulogized the former racist exalted Cyclops and segregationist Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat, needless to say, West Virginia, as one of my mentors, and lamented that the Senate is a lesser place for his going.
Biden is president, no less, as he used just that derogatory insult, boy, For distinguished blacks.
I didn't know this.
Indeed, the very day before Biden leveled his some people slur, he was back at it with his racist boy reference to the black governor of Maryland.
You got a hell of a new governor in Westmore.
I'll tell you, Biden told an audience of union workers on Wednesday, he's the real deal.
And the boy looked like he could still play.
He got some guns on him.
I don't even know what that means, but anyway.
The boy, black...
Is that what the term is?
Big guns means big biceps?
Why didn't I know that?
All right, fine.
Well, thank you.
Glad I said I didn't understand it.
You have to say when you don't understand something or you never learn anything.
It seems embarrassing, but there's a great phrase I learned, among the great phrases I learned in yeshiva in my youth, and it was a famous phrase from the Talmud, Lo habayshan lomed, the easily embarrassed does not learn.
Isn't that great?
Isn't that a great phrase?
So I learned not to be embarrassed if I didn't know something.
But look at that.
The boy looked like he could still play.
The boy.
I can't imagine saying that.
I couldn't imagine saying that about any adult male.
His earlier August 2021 similar boy trope of referring to one of his top aides.
I'm here with my senior advisor.
A boy who knows Louisiana very, very well and New Orleans, Cedric or Cedric Richmond.
Biden also smeared two black journalists who had the temerity to ask him a few tough questions.
One with the now infamous slang ad hominem, you ain't black.
Huh.
Yeah, I remember that.
You ain't black.
But a Democrat can get away with anything.
Yes, some Americans would still like to lynch blacks.
The fomenting of the hatred of whites in this country by the left.
I don't know if there is any parallel in history of members of a group fomenting hatred against their own group like the left does.
Like white leftists do against white people.
I can't think of any parallel in history, and history was my major.
It is a form of pathology, certainly morally pathologic.
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So, let's see, I mentioned, right, I mentioned what's happening with the lowering of standards with the L.A. police.
Let's...
*Sigh* How did America produce so many terrible people like Karen Bass, the mayor of L.A.? How did we do this?
I admit that I have an emotional reaction here.
I really am guided by reason.
But I admit as well that my disappointment is also something that I have to struggle with.
I have placed Americans, not naively, on a pedestal, but I've been to 130 countries.
I've lived a long life, and I admit to you that the amount of awful people, of spectacularly foolish and destructive people, was hidden from me.
I didn't expect the majority of doctors at children's hospitals to advocate, ever advocate, that a teenage girl Have her breasts removed.
Perfectly healthy breasts because she says she's a boy.
I didn't expect that.
This has come as sort of a shock.
That a president of the United States says that there are Americans who want to lynch blacks.
I didn't expect that.
How did this basically decent country produce indecent people?
So many indecent people.
I don't know the answer.
I mean, I know it to a certain extent, and I know it as well as anyone, I think.
I understand the destructive consequences of secularism, the destructive consequences of a left-wing education.
But I didn't think...
I still am taken by surprise.
We have produced...
People with more toxic ideas than any other country in the world.
We're a net exporter of society-destroying ideas.
I have very good shock absorbers, so I can handle it, but I have to say that it is painful for me to tell you that America is a net exporter of destructive, mean, vicious, and stupid ideas.
Is not easy, but my commitment to truth is greater than my commitment to anything else.
And the truth is, that's what we have produced.
We have students at Columbia University's medical school, University of Minnesota's medical school, taking an oath that has nothing to do with medicine, but is a let us crap on America oath.
That's what their oath of office is?
Do you think the doctors of the next generation will be as good as the doctors of the last hundred years in the United States?
There is no chance.
No chance.
They are taught hatred as much as they are taught medicine.
Wow.
Uh Well...
I look at my children and my grandchildren.
I'll never forget, I called up my older son after the O.J. Simpson trial, and I'll never forget what I said to him.
David, I apologize.
I am giving you a worse country than my father gave me.
So it is not exactly new.
And if you hear these things in despair, that's narcissism.
You don't have a right to despair because then you won't act.
But I am not going to fill you up with pablum about things aren't bad.
I'm not going to lie to you about the country being better than it is.
It isn't.
Your task is to fight.
That begins, at least at the beginning, with not despairing.
There are plenty of us who want a reassertion of the greatest value system ever devised, the American.
In God we trust, e pluribus unum liberty.
If you know of a better three-value system for a country, let me know.
And I am quite serious about that.
Let me know.
Right.
How bad it's gotten?
The university is the perfect example of it.
And I give you stories from there every time.
Here's another example.
70% of suspects freed from jail without bail are arrested for more crimes.
So this whole George Soros funded, there's a man.
Who was so bad a human being that I actually, and I mean this sincerely, he makes me entertain the belief, and obviously not him alone, vast numbers of people, that I've never believed in my life.
Maybe there is such a thing as the diabolical.
More than 7 in 10 criminal suspects released from jail without bail.
Go on to be rearrested for committing more crimes, a new study reveals.
In early 2020, amid the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, this is from Breitbart, the California Judicial Council required counties to enforce, quote, an emergency bail schedule, which effectively released thousands of criminal suspects from jail without having to pay bail.
Under the guise of reducing prison overcrowding because of COVID, the data are in.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here, the Ultimate Issues Hour, the third hour every Tuesday, some great issue of life.
The lack of Ultimate Issues Hours in college, high school, or even elementary school is the reason why there is so little wisdom in the country, and that's why we are collapsing.
Wisdom is the mother of goodness, not good intentions.
That in itself is a statement of wisdom, which I learned at a very, very early age because I was raised religious.
I have a guest on occasion.
I have a guest on the Ultimate Issues Hour.
I came across this professor in doing my research for my commentary on the Bible, the Rational Bible.
Three volumes are out.
For your edification, Genesis, Exodus, and Deuteronomy.
I am working on finishing Numbers.
And then I have Leviticus.
I am sure I am the only talk show host in history, perhaps forever and ever, who will have written a commentary on Leviticus.
Okay, the man that I'm having on is Daniel Dreisbach.
He is a professor at American University, and you'll tell me exactly what you are a professor of, because it's a long title.
He got his degree at Oxford.
The book is published, interestingly, by Oxford, Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers.
The reason this is on the Ultimate Issues Hour is because this country, the United States of America, was founded on biblical values.
Whether you are a Jew, a Christian, any type of Christian, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and whether you are agnostic or atheist, it's either true or not true.
Now, there are two separate questions.
Is it true?
And do you like it?
I know it's true, and I like it.
The rejection of those values is the heart of the moral crisis of America today.
That people can say men give birth.
Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers is very illuminating.
Professor Dreisbach, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
Thanks very much for having me.
It's a pleasure to join you in conversation.
Wonderful.
What is your exact title?
Well, that's a good question.
I am in a multidisciplinary department.
And I usually go by a title, Professor of Justice and Law.
Okay, so what is the complexity that I'm missing?
Well, you know, my department is more multidisciplinary than most.
We have criminologists and sociologists and philosophers and whatnot.
But what ties us together is a common interest in law and how it impacts various aspects of life.
So, again, it's a professor of justice and law?
Is that the term?
That's the title that's been given.
Right.
So, I have to believe that this very thesis, that the Bible is at the heart of the founding of the United States, doesn't go over well with some of your colleagues.
Is that a fair statement?
That may be a fair statement.
I will say that my...
Employer has been very good to me.
And one of the benefits of working in a multidisciplinary department is I can pursue interests that are perhaps not shared by others, even though they may raise an eyebrow here or there about what I am researching and writing about.
But in all fairness, my department, my university has given me great liberty to pursue my interests wherever they lead.
What is the name of your most popular two courses that you give?
Well, I developed a course about 30 years ago called American Legal Culture, and it has proven very, very popular, oftentimes now running multiple sections of the same course.
I also teach a course on law and religion.
Probably not so popular, but it's certainly a course that I have enjoyed teaching over the years.
Wonderful.
And you got your doctorate at Oxford, is that correct?
That is correct.
And what was that in?
It was in the politics subfield.
Interesting, they don't say political science there.
They call it the subfield of politics, which suggests a more philosophical, perhaps historical approach.
Well, there's no such thing as political science, so I salute Oxford for not using the term.
This was, in my opinion, done because the people in the humanities had an inferiority complex vis-a-vis the people and the sciences, so they had to use the word science to take themselves more seriously.
I think that's right.
It's a movement that happens in the late 19th century, and again, I think it's about Giving a certain legitimacy to a discipline is to attach the word science to it.
Right, okay.
So I bumped into you most recently because of my commentary on Deuteronomy.
Now, let me get this correct, because if I don't have it correct, I'm in trouble.
I have you saying, That the founders cited Deuteronomy more than any other single book and that Montesquieu was in second place.
Is that correct?
That is true.
So let's take one step back and say that the Bible was by far the most cited work in the political discourse of the American founding.
And the book of Deuteronomy alone is the most cited work in this literature.
And we're talking here primarily the last...
A third or so of the 18th century.
This is a time in the life of the nation when Americans are beginning to agitate for their rights as freeborn Englishmen.
And believing that they had failed in that effort, they then fight and secure independence.
And so the Bible accounts for about a third of all the citations.
And Deuteronomy, as I say, is the most frequently cited book, followed by Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws.
But just to put it in a little different context, the book of Deuteronomy alone is cited about twice as frequently as all of John Locke's writings put together.
So that should give you a sense of how prominent it is in the discourse of that era.
If that question were asked to Americans, I don't think 100 out of the 330 million would know the answer.
I think you're probably right.
Yes.
And, you know, we live in an age where students of the American founding, they give great attention to the influence of Enlightenment thinkers.
And I think with with appropriately, they give influence to some of the classical Republican influences and British common law and constitutionalism.
But largely ignored in the scholarly literature on the American founding is the influence of the Bible and in particular, the Hebrew scriptures.
It's just sort of been whitewashed out of the scholarly discourse.
It's so painful.
I know everything you're saying to be true, and it is so painful because that is In my opinion, the root of our crisis, but it is also, it shows you how little commitment there is to truth.
When I have written and lectured on this on the internet, the most common reaction is, no way, it was enlightenment and the Greek and Roman thinkers that influenced the founders, not the Bible.
That is now commonly believed by university graduates.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
And, you know, you raised a question earlier about the reaction to my scholarship, and I will tell you...
That as I speak, not only at my own institution, but around the country, I will often, after I've spoken, see someone heading my direction and they're red in the face.
And I expect them to unload on me that I've gotten it all wrong.
And quite to the contrary, they're angry.
And they'll say to me, look, I've been through elementary school, secondary school.
I've got a college degree.
I'm even pursuing a master's degree.
And this is the first time.
I have never been exposed to this notion that the Bible was read, had an influence on the American founding.
And they're quite angry about it, and I think appropriately so.
That's right, because they've been denied the truth about our founding.
Now, I'd like you to explain that this holds true for the non-theologically Christian, but culturally Christian, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.
Well, yes, that's right.
And I think we need to be very clear about this.
When I make the claim that the Bible is by far the most cited work, I'm not making a claim about the interior faith of the American founders.
There's evidence.
They give their testimony.
They share their views on faith, a number of them, but not all of them.
So I'm not making a statement about their own faith commitments per se.
I'm simply saying, what was the sources of influence on their thought?
What were they looking to?
What were they citing?
And the Bible, to be very frank, was clearly the most accessible, it was the most authoritative book in late 18th century America.
We know, for example, from probate records that if a family owned only one book, it was almost certainly the Bible.
God is this powerful.
Okay, hold it there, Professor Dreisbach of American University.
This is truly, truly important.
His book, Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers, is up at my website.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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This man has done a service, Daniel Dreisbach.
D-R-E-I-S-B-A-C-H. That's Bach with a dries before it.
He's a professor at American University, and he's done the most systematic survey of what the founders cited.
And lo and behold, the book they cited the most was the Bible, and in the Bible it was the Old Testament.
That's why I have called America the one truly Judeo-Christian country in world history.
It is now being overturned, and there is already chaos as a result.
So you were mentioning how much the citations were, and that it didn't even come, I'm adding this, from people who were doctrinally Christian.
Clearly, Jefferson and Franklin, among others, did not believe in the Christian Trinity.
Would they have said they're Christian if they were asked?
Yes, I think both would have said that they are Christian.
Now, Jefferson said, I am a sect of myself, right?
So he is in a Christian denomination of one person, the person of Thomas Jefferson.
But look, the Bible is so pervasive in the culture.
I think most Americans of that age would have learned to read with a copy of the English Bible in front of them, in particular the King James translation of the English Bible.
And so when they spoke...
They spoke in a language that resonated with their audience.
You mentioned Jefferson and Franklin, who are no Orthodox Christians, to be sure.
I would add to that list Tom Paine, right?
Well, that's fascinating.
I think of him as an atheist.
Well, he's close.
He's close.
I'm not sure he would call himself an atheist.
But the whole argument in common sense is based...
On a reading of the Old Testament and the sin of the Jews and asking for a human king, right?
1 Samuel 8. Oh, so perfect, of course.
A rejection of hereditary monarchy is at the heart of his argument.
Right, but God didn't want them to have a king because God should be the king, but that's not Thomas Paine's view.
That God should be the ultimate king of society.
That hereditary monarchy is an inferior approach.
And he's using this example of the Jews.
But again, he's speaking in a language that would have been easily understood and recognizable by his audience, even though he himself is no Orthodox Christian.
I know there's no scientific answer to this, but I'm...
I'm curious, in any event, if the average, and I mean truly average American, in 1850 were asked to name the five books of Moses, would he or she have been able?
Well, I'm going to guess the answer is yes.
And again, this is a Bible culture, even if we're not speaking of true believers, because it would have been a...
A part of their education.
It would have been at the heart of their literacy education.
And let me give you an example.
Look at the writings.
Look at the words of Abraham Lincoln.
It resonates with the language of the King James Bible.
This is a man who knew the language very well.
Take, for example, the Gettysburg Address.
He starts with four score and seven years ago.
An odd way of expressing the number 87. But he's using a King James biblical formulation.
That's right.
Comes from Psalm 9010. Man has on earth...
Three score and ten years.
But he doesn't stop there.
By the way, he's putting his audience in a biblical frame of mind.
Fascinating.
Did you know that?
He's telling them he's got something very serious to say.
But where does he go?
Four score and seven years ago.
Our fathers, this is the language of the patriarchs.
It is also the language that begins the Lord's Prayer that we find in the Gospel of Matthew.
But he doesn't stop there.
He goes, brought forth.
Our fathers brought forth.
Brought forth is a phrase used twice in the King James.
In Genesis chapter 1, it's the language of the creation story.
It's the language of liberation.
Moses brought forth the children of Israel out of bondage.
It's the language of Matthew in speaking of Mary who brought forth a Christ child.
Biblical language permeated the discourse of the time, and Lincoln's using a language that would have been known very, very well by his audience.
This is, I'm telling you, you're adding minutes or hours or weeks to my life.
It is such a joy to hear this from a scholar.
And as I said, I use you, and this is such a delight.
So here's my second part of my make-believe question.
So if you went on campus where you are, American University, what percentage of students would be able to answer?
So can you name the five books of Moses?
Yeah, that would be a tough question.
And I've been teaching a little over 30 years.
And people often ask me, what trends have I seen over 30 years of teaching at the college level?
And the thing that jumps out at me most is, and again, I have a very small sample size, so I hesitate to make broad claims about it.
But in my small sample size, my sense is that students are increasingly biblically illiterate.
And I think that's a reflection of our society.
And I have to be cautious.
I can't make allusions to the Bible and expect that my students are going to understand what the allusion is to simply because they come from a much more secular culture, biblically illiterate culture, quite frankly.
I don't think that they would know who Cain and Abel are.
Yeah.
You're probably right.
You're probably right.
Yes.
Most Americans don't know that what's often considered the greatest American novel, Moby Dick, begins with, call me Ishmael.
Those are the first words.
Most American college students don't know who Ishmael is.
Quite a part.
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
I want to get your reaction as soon as we return.
Professor Daniel Dreisbach, reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers.
I'm Dennis Prager.
The Dennis Prager Show.
I have to say, I'm having a ball here, folks.
This is actually good for my health, which is good anyway, thank God.
But Daniel Dreisbach is adding to it with a scholar confirming what I have...
Inferred and deduced from all of my study.
The country is a Bible-based country.
I might add, I'm not going to put words in his mouth, but that is the reason for the anti-Americanism that is pervasive in the country, because it's a hatred, ultimately, of the Bible.
That's really what it's about.
By the way, Professor, preparing for the show, my producer found that you and I... Both have an essay in a book called The State of the American Mind, 16 Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism.
That's right.
We're bonded in more ways than one.
My essay in that volume, by the way, deals with exactly what we were talking about before the break, which is it's hard to be...
An educated person in Western society, in Western culture, without some understanding of the Bible.
How do you understand Handel's Messiah?
Or you mentioned Moby Dick.
Or, you know, think of the great works of Faulkner, for example, Absalom Absalom.
Or think of the allusions to the New Testament in Julia Ward Howells' The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
Or if you want pop culture, remember that popular folk tune of the 1960s, Turn, Turn, Turn.
How can you be an educated person in our society without...
This grounding in sort of a biblical literature.
And I think it disconnects us in some really profound and dangerous ways that we're losing that knowledge, that understanding of that biblical connection.
Well, don't start me.
The purpose is not any way to produce educated people.
It's to produce indoctrinated people.
It's not an argument that'll even resonate with Americans.
Well, you really won't be well-educated.
So what?
If it's not the aim, it's not a threat.
I would push this, by the way, even further and say I think it's difficult to understand our constitutional experiment, our experiment in self-government, in liberty under law, without some understanding of the Bible.
The Constitution is premised...
On a political anthropology that was informed by the Bible.
And the framers often said that, right?
They understood what happened in Genesis chapter 3, the fall.
And so they designed a government that was practically obsessed with the separation of powers and checks and balances.
Because they knew that humans vested with power could not be trusted.
The basic design and content of our constitutional system, I think, reflects a biblical understanding of human nature.
Franklin himself, interestingly enough, in the Constitutional Convention, in talking about the requirements for members of Congress, what does he do?
He cites...
Exodus 18, 21. That's Jethro's advice to Moses on the kinds of leaders that he should gather around them to help govern the children of Israel.
And he's speaking of this language that speaks, you need to look for men, evil men, who fear God, who love truth.
And the part that Franklin quotes is that hate covetousness, right?
So he's citing, and he tells us, by the way, in this speech, he's citing the scripture.
In making an argument for a particular kind of political leader that we should aspire to in this new constitutional republic.
It's music to my ears, but it comes with pain because it's all being rejected today.
Maybe you should give a chorus.
If you don't know the Bible, you may turn out an idiot.
How many people will enroll?
Well, we should try it.
I'll tell you what.
Bring me in to give one of the lectures.
I have no doubt that you'll do better than I can.
No, no, no.
That's very sweet of you.
I don't think so at all.
That's very kind.
You might need police, however.
That I would acknowledge.
The service you are rendering with this work you're doing is...
It's unparalleled, and I'm so happy I have you on, and we're going to continue, because I'm going to ask you the $64,000 question.
Don't answer it now, but when we come back, was it founded to be a Bible-based or Christian country?
Which term would you use?
Back in a moment, Daniel Dreisbach is a professor at American University.
Hey, man.
I have really come to admire and adore Professor Daniel Dreisbach of American University.
Done phenomenal research.
The amount of reading he has done is intimidating, actually.
On the biblical origins of the country and the citations of the founders, for example.
So as I said, the $64,000 question, or for you, Shekel question, since you're biblically based, is what would you say is the more correct statement?
And I don't know what you'll answer.
That the founders wanted this to be a Christian country or a Bible-based country?
Yeah, I think that's a good question.
And this is not the first time you might want to ask this question in American history.
Because if we look at the experience of the pilgrims and the Puritans, they were motivated by a desire to create Bible commonwealths.
That is to say, political societies in alignment with biblical principles as they understood them.
So this is a question that has been of long standing in the American experience.
Now, we're going to find some founders who very explicitly speak of the influence of the Hebrews and the Jews.
We're going to find others who speak specifically about the Christian influence.
And so if we look at the rhetoric of the time, we're going to find examples of both.
But I think they would have all been agreed that it was a...
An experiment that was influenced in part.
By the Bible.
It was a mix of influences on the founders.
They're reading diverse intellectual sources.
As we mentioned earlier, they're very much influenced by English common law and constitutionalism, which, by the way, was very much influenced by the Bible.
But they're also reading the ancients and whatnot.
But I think they would have been very comfortable with the idea that it's the Bible and biblical ideas that Let me just make one final point here, and that is, I think they turn to the Old Testament,
what the Christians would call the Old Testament, perhaps more than the New Testament, and there's some interesting reasons for that, but just to be very clear here, they're likely to read the Old Testament through a Christian lens, so they're often putting a Christian spin on On the Old Testament.
So it may not be in perfect alignment with the ways that a rabbinical source might interpret the Old Testament.
So of course that's true for a religious Christian who will read the Old Testament through Christian eyes.
I'm well aware of that.
But not all of them were doctrinally Christian.
I kept using the examples of Franklin and Jefferson.
By the way, I know you know, but if you have anything to say about this, they designed a seal, a great seal of the United States, showing God leading the Israelites out of Egypt.
Correct?
That's right, right.
Why was that rejected?
I know what they designed, but I've never figured out why it was rejected.
Well, you know, that committee is a committee of three, John Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson.
They were given that assignment on July 4th, 1776, in the afternoon of that momentous day.
They spent a number of weeks working on.
They came back and reported in August.
I think it had more to do with the calendar and the exigencies of the moment.
That other things sort of overtook the agenda of the Congress.
And so it sort of sat on the table there more than anything else.
So it just didn't get considered in time.
That's right.
I think that's the more obvious explanation.
I have to say that.
It would have been so healthy for arguments about the nature of America if that were the Great Seal and it would be on our currency as opposed to, what is it, novum ordum secularum?
That's right.
Yes.
And by the way, Dennis, They proposed a motto to go with that seal that you just described, which is this.
Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.
That's what they proposed.
Could you imagine that?
Again, now I'm in pain.
You've brought me all emotions in the course of this hour.
But it's perfectly, right?
It's bringing a biblical perspective to the moment.
Where is that phrase from?
Did Jefferson make it up, or is that biblical?
Well, that's a very interesting question.
My answer to you would be this.
It is at least a paraphrase of late Reformation resistance theology that's coming out of Europe.
That very specific formulation, it's much debated as to its origin.
It's possible that Franklin framed it himself.
But again, this is a debated point, and I have a little footnote in my book that sort of explores that question.
But it was in the air.
It was showing up in various similar formations in various political expressions of that time.
I'm just shaking my head because it's so painful.
This country's greatness is rooted in the origins of its founding, and you're explaining these origins.
But let me show, let me mention one very interesting sort of Jewish...
Good, good.
Don't forget, don't forget.
Got to take a break.
Daniel Dreisbach, professor of American University.
This book was published actually seven years ago, and I don't care.
I don't care if it was published 37 years ago.
A great book is a great book.
But I just wanted to bring that to your attention here.
Where do I have the book here, Alan?
Yeah, there's a link.
Yes, okay.
So, Daniel Dreisbach is a professor at...
American University, reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers, how deeply immersed they were in the Bible, the most cited book.
So you were going to make a point.
Do you remember what it was?
Yes.
I wanted to show sort of this Hebrew gloss.
On how Christians interpreted the Bible, I would suggest to you that American understandings going back to the colonial era, but American understandings of what constitutes cruel and unusual punishments was very much influenced by the Hebrew scriptures.
And in particular, Deuteronomy chapter 25, which limits corporal punishment to 40 stripes or 40 lashes.
Now, very interestingly, in a number of early American laws, this is after the Declaration of Independence, laws are being passed that limits corporal punishment to 39 stripes, 39 lashes.
Well, where does that come from?
Because Deuteronomy speaks of 40 stripes.
Well, this is a Temudic...
I love it.
That is so great.
That is such a terrific example.
I'm too curious.
Forgive me.
You certainly could take the Fifth Amendment on this.
Are you personally religious?
I would describe myself as a person of faith, yes, very much.
May I ask what your faith is?
I would describe myself as a Protestant Christian.
I grew up in a Christian home, and I sometimes say everything I know about the Bible I learned in Sunday school.
Well, I cite my yeshiva training constantly on the air, so I totally identify with you.
Do you have any kindred spirits at American University?
I do, yes, certainly.
I would just point this out to you personally, in that some of my closest colleagues, and certainly those who share my interests, have oftentimes been my Jewish colleagues on the faculty, especially those who take their faith very seriously.
I am happy to hear that there are Jewish members of the faculty who take Judaism seriously.
You have further made my day.
Happy to do so.
You, sir, are a joy.
I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed this hour.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for having me, and I've enjoyed it as well.
I'm glad.
Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers, Daniel Dreisbach.
It's up at my website.
Dennis Prager here.
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