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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:15:03
Making Up Wisdom
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hi, everybody.
Dennis Prager here.
Sean, my...
What are you?
My technical director?
Is that your title?
Oh, give me a break.
Technical director.
What the hell does that even mean?
My engineer.
But what does that even mean, engineer?
Just wished me a good show.
See, he's always a little worried.
Will this show really work out?
Good to be with you, everybody.
It's the day after...
The third volume of my Bible commentary is out.
From a very early age, I have wanted to bring these five books to the world.
I am living my childhood dream in so many arenas, and I thank God or fate, I don't know how much God intervenes in any given life.
I just don't know.
So that's why I say God or fate or luck.
And whatever is responsible, this has been my mission, to explain to people the calamity of secularism.
Look at what is happening to America.
It's happening all from the secular world and the so-called religious people who have been profoundly influenced by secular society.
The most obvious, this is the make or break, the treatment of children in children's hospitals by asinine doctors who have lost their moral balance.
Yeah, you're 15 and you think you're a boy?
No problem.
Here, let me give you powerful medicines to stop you from menstruating.
Because at 15, or even at 11, or at 9, If you say you're a boy, well, by golly, you're a boy!
This is what we're supposed to believe.
Why can't 11-year-olds have the vote?
If they could decide that they're the other sex, why can't they decide whom to vote for?
The age of idiocy is the age ushered in by secularism.
Please understand that.
Name a secular institution with wisdom.
You cannot.
The stupidest institutions of our society, the most vile in terms of ideas are the universities, and they are the most secular institutions we have.
The arrogance of people to think that the basic text of Western civilization can be ignored and you'll still end up having a good Western civilization.
It's arrogant stupidity.
It's not just stupidity.
It's arrogant stupidity.
I don't need any wisdom from the Bible.
I am the source of my own wisdom.
Whoa!
And then you come up with men give birth.
When you become the source of your own wisdom, you come up with men give birth, America systemically racist, defund police.
Make it a misdemeanor to steal up to $950 every time you steal.
This is the stuff you come up with when you make up your own wisdom.
Okay?
That's why this is so important to me.
By the way, I can't believe I didn't know this, but I didn't know this when I wrote my commentary on Deuteronomy, the fifth of the five books.
I'm not going in order.
I'm now doing the fourth.
I'm working on the fourth called Numbers.
My dear friend Jack Hibbs, one of the most eminent pastors in the country, called me yesterday when I was on Brandon Tatum's show.
He was listening.
Called me during the break when I was talking about Deuteronomy.
He said, just want you to know, Dennis, that's the book Jesus most cites.
How's that?
Jesus and the Founders.
I'll give you an idea of how important the book is.
The founders of the United States cited Deuteronomy more than any other religious or secular work.
Montesquieu, the French Enlightenment thinker, was number two.
I'll tell you, if you can spell Montesquieu and Deuteronomy, you are darn impressive!
That's up there with spelling Albuquerque correctly.
Can you do that?
I'm looking at my producer, who was a man of truly great knowledge.
Can you spell Albuquerque?
Give it a try.
No?
He's not giving...
No, no, he's...
The reason he shook his head is, A, he doesn't play my games.
Sean does.
I have somebody here who responds to the inanities that I come out with.
You know, it takes a somewhat fertile mind to come up with the question, how many Americans can spell Deuteronomy, Montesquieu, and Albuquerque?
By the way, I can do Albuquerque and Deuteronomy.
I don't know Montesquieu.
M-O-N-T-E-S-Q-U. I don't know.
Check it out, Sean, will you?
Check it out.
So that's why this is the passion of my life, to get these ideas out.
While the good Lord gives me time on this earth, which he certainly seems to, or fade again, I don't know if it's God or whatever it is, in the next two weeks I'll be in eight cities.
Big tour around the country with my Salem co-hosts.
From city to city to speak on the forthcoming elections.
That was an interesting question in my earphones.
Dennis, do you know how hard it is to look up something you can't spell?
That was a good one.
Oh, wait.
M-O-N-T-E-S. Did I say that?
Q-U-I-E? I-E-U. Oh, I really screwed it up.
All right, so...
How many Americans can do Montesquieu, Albuquerque, and Deuteronomy?
This is the passion.
You see, we need an exit strategy.
You have to fight the left, but you have to also give people the values that you stand for.
By the way, my column this week is beginning a series explaining conservatism.
Do you know why we're in the crisis we're in in America?
Half is because the left is so destructive and powerful.
Half is because the traditional American didn't explain his values, her values, to their children.
That's why.
Christians did a lousy job of explaining the need for God and religion.
Jews did a lousy job explaining the need for God and religion.
And conservatives did a lousy job explaining conservatism.
I'm not blaming them.
If you don't know how, or you don't even know you need to, then you're not going to do it.
That's my life's project, explaining American values and explaining Judeo-Christian values.
That's my life in a nutshell.
And that's why I beg you to read.
It's not easy for me to say, I beg.
Anyway, it should be pretty obvious you don't write Bible commentaries to make a fortune.
But this is the project of my life.
We have to get these things clear.
Or we will lose the greatest experiment in liberty in human history.
All right.
How much time do we have before the break, Mr. McConnell?
How long is Tulsi Gabbard's comment on why she's leaving the Democratic Party?
A minute 20?
Oh, so we can play it?
Take it away.
I can no longer remain in today's Democratic Party that's under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers who are driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoking anti-white racism.
Who actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms that are enshrined in our Constitution.
Who are hostile to people of faith and spirituality.
Who demonize the police but protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans.
Who believe in open borders.
Who weaponize the national security state to go after their political opponents.
And above all, who are dragging us ever closer to nuclear war.
Now, I believe in a government that's of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Unfortunately, today's Democratic Party does not.
Instead, it stands for a government that is of, by, and for the powerful elite.
Now, I'm calling on my fellow common sense, independent-minded Democrats to join me in leaving the Democratic Party.
If you can no longer stomach the direction that the so-called woke Democratic Party ideologues are taking our country, I invite you to join me.
Wow.
Wow.
That's a big deal.
That's correct.
The woke elites.
That's what it is about.
Weaponizing the state to go after political enemies.
That is exactly what Soviet Russia did.
What Communist China did.
That's what the Democrats are doing.
California to doctors agree with us or shut up.
Editorial in the Wall Street Journal.
The state empowers a medical board to punish misinformation.
California Gavin Newsom ran ads in Florida this summer, claiming freedom is under attack in your state.
It's a classic example of truth is not a left-wing value.
I pick my words very carefully.
It's not that they set out to lie, it's that truth doesn't matter.
That may be the same, but I think my way is more precise.
Truth is not a left-wing value.
Fighting racism.
It's theoretically a left-wing value, for example.
Egalitarianism, theoretically, is a left-wing value.
But truth is not.
Freedom is attack in Florida, under attack.
He put out such ads.
This man is considered presidential material.
Well, but as I point out, it's irrelevant which Democrat runs.
The ad should have aired in his own state, writes the Wall Street Journal, which is in the land of lockdowns and mask mandates.
And under a new state law, doctors may even be punished for disputing the government's public health orthodoxy.
These experts are often wrong and loathe to admit it, as we learned with pandemic government lockdowns.
It's really actually very depressing that I, who have no medical background, knew that the lockdowns were a colossal mistake from the beginning.
April 2020, I tweeted and published an article that it was the greatest worldwide mistake in history.
There were greater evils, as I point out.
It was a mistake.
I was precise in my language.
People on the left, of course, thought I was nuts.
I was right.
Doctors were wrong.
You have no idea how that doesn't help me feel good about society.
I'd much rather be wrong and doctors right when it comes to medicine.
You think it brings me joy to think that the medical profession has been corrupted by a combination of...
Hypochondria and wokeness?
It's a very scary proposition.
Lockdowns?
Children should not go to school?
Two-year-olds should have to wear masks?
Remember those crying kids on airplanes?
It's not ancient history, folks.
A 13-year-old can remember this.
California Democrats last month enacted legislation that empowers the state medical board to discipline doctors licensed in the state who, quote, disseminate misinformation or disinformation.
See the New York Times wants to interview me?
Have you seen that?
Because of my participation in 2,000 mules?
They want to interview me.
Yeah.
It's misinformation if you think that there might have been cheating in the last election.
Even if you say you don't even know, which is what I say.
I said, I don't know for sure, but I think there are legitimate reasons to suspect that there was cheating.
They're so totalitarian on the left that even if you accept the fact that Joe Biden is president, that's not enough.
It is not enough for you...
To act properly, you must think properly.
Every left-winger is a totalitarian.
Liberals are not, they're just weak.
But every leftist is a totalitarian.
In a totalitarian state, it is not enough to behave properly.
You must think properly.
If you think there might have been cheating in the last presidential election, that is enough for you to be reviled.
You can't think it!
That's right.
That's the New York Times position.
You can't think it, let alone even say it, even though you're not in any way, shape, or form advocating the overthrow of the presidency, of the Biden presidency.
So they're doing this in science.
Misinformation is the left-wing's euphemism for what we differ with.
If we differ with it, it's misinformation.
And they laugh at the medieval church for putting Galileo under house arrest.
Tell me the difference between the California Medical Board and the Catholic Church putting Galileo under house arrest.
I'd like to know the difference.
He went against the consensus, and these doctors go against the consensus.
Are you telling me that science is based on consensus?
You have to be joking.
The consensus of doctors in the early 20th century was that masturbation has terrible physical effects on you, including blindness.
The consensus?
Science is run by the outlier.
It's the outlier who finds truth, not the consensus.
We take a vote on scientific truth.
Is it a vote?
Like climate change.
Oh, it's the consensus.
So, what is their terminology?
The case is closed?
No, not the case is closed.
What's the terminology for it's, we have the absolute truth and there's nothing else to be adjudicated?
Science is self.
Science is settled.
That's right.
Settled.
Yeah, settled.
Since when is science settled?
Maybe it's settled on certain basic laws of gravity, for example.
Thermodynamics.
The science is settled.
Because computer modeling has come out with a certain conclusion.
The law grants the board broad discretion in defining the scientific consensus.
And misinformation.
Yet seven of the board's 15 members who were appointed by the governor and state lawmakers aren't even physicians.
The president is an environmental attorney.
The president of the California Medical Board.
Gotta fight, my friends.
You got one life.
Easy is not the purpose of life.
Back in a moment.
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Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here.
So what is your position or what are your relatives who are left of you?
If you are on the right, what is their position on a five-year-old who says that he or she is not a he or she, but is the other, or is neither, is non-binary?
It's a term actually five-year-olds now are taught.
So what is your position on their getting affirmation from the medical community?
That's the term they use.
Five years old.
And should the parents...
Be required to say yes.
Ami Horowitz, who does these extraordinarily important videos, and every time he comes out with one, I have him on the show.
You are in California now.
You live in New York, but you're here now, Ami Horowitz.
You can see it at PragerU, correct?
Yeah.
And what?
And YouTube.
And YouTube.
Ami Horowitz, you went to the University of California at Los Angeles, UCLA. You stood in the middle of campus, and what did you ask?
First of all, it's a PragerU exclusive, I should point out.
Good, thank you.
So, okay, why do I do what I do, right?
Obviously to help clarify things.
That's the main point.
And the main clarification I want to make...
Is I want to make liberals understand that the left does not hold the same values that they do.
They think they do, right?
If you ask people who are liberals, well, does the left believe in open borders?
They'll go, of course they don't believe that.
Does the left believe in the destruction of capitalism?
They look at me and they go, no, that's all right-wing talking points.
If I asked them, does the left believe that five-year-olds should be allowed to medically transition through hormones and surgery, they would again look at me and say, nobody believes that.
You're just creating a straw man, a boogeyman.
So the videos I do are to prove that that's exactly what the left believes.
So I went to UCLA with a petition, hidden cameras, and the petition was for a fictitious young girl of color.
Who is five years old, who wants to medically transition.
And I told her parents wouldn't allow them.
I want you to sign a petition in support of little Annie Rodriguez, five years old, who wants to transition.
Against her parents' wishes.
Correct.
Her bad, bad parents won't let her do it.
And we need to fight back.
And, you know, I would say of the people who stopped to speak with me and listened to the pitch, You know, virtually everybody signed it.
Virtually everybody.
These were all students at UCLA, obviously.
Yeah, it's self-selective because the people who I'm stopping, after they hear this is about a transition of five-year-old, they're all, obviously, all people on the left, right?
A liberal.
So a lot of people, I try to talk to them about it, and they just walk away.
They didn't want to sign a petition.
They didn't want to listen.
But the people who listened to the pitch virtually all signed it.
Okay, so to be fair, it is important that many didn't sign.
But that's only because they just didn't want to hear the pitch.
Didn't we bother?
I see.
So your point is, of those who heard what I'm asking you to sign, nearly everyone signed.
Correct.
Okay.
Which is, of course, fair.
A lot of people just ignore signing.
Doesn't mean they differ with you.
They're trying to get class.
No, no, clearly.
I'm a crazy person.
I mean, look at me.
Yes.
Looking sick.
I totally get it.
So let's play the opening of this video.
Well, we will when we can.
I can act it out.
You probably could, actually.
I want people to understand what you were asking people to sign, that a five-year-old be allowed to do this.
Against the will of the parents.
I'm not talking about putting on a dress, okay?
I'm not talking about putting on some makeup.
I specifically said she's going to go through hormone therapy and then surgery.
And then, you know, when people were signing, I was so incredulous that I even said a couple times, did I mention that she's five years old?
Oh, yeah, I don't know.
And they would go in and say, oh, she knows who she is.
She should have the right to make these kind of choices at that age.
She knows exactly what she's doing at five years old.
I'm not sure I wasn't throwing my feces around at five years old.
I think I might have been doing that.
There is another element here which sails by most people, and that is that not only does the left support this, but a big chunk of this is the undermining of parental authority.
And that is the first thing every cult...
And every totalitarian movement does.
They knock out parental authority.
Because it's about the collective, right?
A parent having authority, meaning they're allowed to have individual choices, which is what the left is against, right?
The left is against individual choices, your ability to make your own decisions in life.
The left is about, we have to collectively make a decision, and we all have to get in line behind that decision.
All right, watch the video at PragerU.com.
We'll return...
To Ami Horowitz in a moment.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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Dennis Prager here with Ami Horowitz who makes these extremely significant videos.
He went on the UCLA campus and he had a petition on behalf of a five-year-old who was a Hispanic name, right?
Annie Rodriguez.
Sorry?
Annie Rodriguez.
Annie.
Annie Rodriguez.
And would you support by signing this petition to enable her to start transitioning to a boy?
She's five, but her parents don't want it.
Will you sign the petition to enable her to do it against her parents' wishes?
Is that correct?
So here, listen to a part of it.
You can watch it at PragerU.
How old is she?
She's five.
She wants to do the transition now as a five-year-old.
Okay.
Great.
Thank you very much.
Good luck.
Thank you very much.
Okay, that's the opening.
I'm Ami Horowitz, and the very young transitioning has gathered a lot of support from the left.
But how young is too young?
Let's find out.
So you see the video if you're watching the show.
Little Annie Rodriguez is a five-year-old girl of color, and she wants to transition, but her bad parents won't let her.
Would you guys mind signing a support for her?
Sure.
Thank you.
Little Annie Rodriguez is a five-year-old girl of color, and she wants to transition, and her parents aren't letting her.
We're trying to petition support for her.
Yeah, that's fine.
Thank you.
At five, she has a right to be who she wants to be, correct?
I agree.
I think she knows what she is.
Right.
I think she's fully developed off to realize that.
Her parents think that she can't make that kind of decision, and we think she can.
And I think she's ready to make a decision like that.
Okay.
Thank you.
If you're coming up to people during a pandemic, I think you should at least be wearing masks.
But for little Annie Rodriguez.
Wait, hold on.
That was a highlight.
If you're coming, this was done in April.
It could be April.
Sometime June, February.
This is 2022. This is outdoors.
And this girl says, if you're coming to people in the middle of a pandemic, you should be wearing a mask.
Wow.
In fact, it's interesting because she has a dilemma.
What value is more important to her?
Annie Rodriguez or a mask?
That's a tough one.
You're right.
I'm surprised she chose the mask, to be honest.
That's like the gay community, not community, the gay activist leadership.
They have to choose between hatred of Israel, which treats gays totally well.
And, by the way, did you see the Palestinian story of the gay guy?
Was beheaded.
Just happened.
Correct.
I think a 25-year-old guy.
Correct.
But they're pro-Palestinian.
By the way, good call back to my last video.
Oh, God, that's right.
Wow, that was really powerful.
Tell everybody.
I think they should know.
Where can they watch that?
PragerU, baby!
I heard of it.
Yeah, it's a nice little website.
They're doing pretty well.
So go ahead.
In a nutshell, tell about that video.
So, like you said, there is this weird thing in the gay community, not just the leadership, the community, where overwhelmingly the support for Palestinians over Israel, they've chosen the Palestinians over Israel despite the fact that...
Israel has supported the gay community.
In fact, it's one of the most open places for gay people in the world.
Versus the Palestinians, where it's just not open, they kill you.
As was shown just recently when a gay man who was, by the way, given asylum in Israel, who made the mistake to go back to the West Bank, was beheaded.
Not just killed, beheaded.
And I showed in this video how the Palestinians were advocating rape and killing and torture.
Of gay people.
And then we showed the video to gay people on the streets of San Francisco who professed earlier in the video to me how they support the Palestinians.
And you could see their heads.
You could see the gears turning as they're watching the video.
The facial expressions.
And they all, to a man, changed their position after watching this video saying, you know what?
I didn't realize this.
I didn't understand this.
I support Israel over the Palestinians.
They all...
Every single one changed their minds.
This is an example of something that I have said for years.
They don't know what we know.
Leftists don't know what we know.
They don't know how gays are treated among Palestinians.
Or among many Muslims, to be honest.
In Islamist societies.
Not genetic or predisposition for them.
Iran as well.
I'm sorry?
It's not like they're genetically made up to be anti, to be liberal.
You're not genetically made up to be anything.
Of course.
But they don't know this.
So now that those gays in San Francisco that you have on your video found that...
They all changed their pro-Palestinian to pro-Israel.
Correct.
Maybe it's a more decent society, which of course it is.
Which shows you the power of what you and I do.
Because it wasn't like we sat down in a symposium for three days or I walked them through the process.
They watched a 13-minute video.
A 13-minute video, it changed their worldview, which is essentially what we did.
And I can't tell you how many times...
By the way, I do focus groups.
Every year where I bring in college students and they watch, they fill out a form before they see my videos and they watch some videos and they fill out a form when they finish.
And between 50 and 75 percent, depending on the video, will change their position based on a 3, 4, 5 minute, 10 minute video.
So what we do has incredible impact.
Right.
That's why I say the opposition to conservative speakers on campuses makes perfect sense.
They have them for four years, and they're afraid of 90 minutes of a conservative speech.
And they're right to.
They're entirely right to fear it.
Because it's all drivel.
It's a big balloon with nothing inside leftism.
Nothing intellectual inside.
Nothing moral inside.
So you can expose that in 90 minutes or even in 5 minutes.
Your video on the gays in San Francisco changing their mind once they realize what happened.
So how we got onto that was the dichotomy here or the dilemma for this girl between you're not wearing a mask and signing the petition for the 5-year-old girl who wants to transition to a boy and her parents.
Are opposed to it and signing the petition against the parents.
So every single person who heard the whole petition signed it?
Not everyone, but the vast majority.
So one you showed didn't, who cracked me up, he was at the end, and there were still a couple of others?
There were a couple of others, but one that only one, except for him, not a single person looked at me and said...
All right, watch the video, folks, at PragerU.com.
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Hi, everybody.
Dennis Prager with the Male-Female Hour, second hour of my show every Wednesday.
That's why I picked Wednesday, because it has the word wed in it.
We have been doing this for at least 15 years.
I think it's the most honest talk about men and women, of which I am aware at any rate in the media.
The reason, I can be honest, is A, I don't shy away from any subject, including sexual subjects, and B, I'm not a man fan or a woman fan.
I am a good person fan.
And the good Lord seems to have distributed jerks equally between both sexes.
That's the way it works.
Unfortunately, they don't always marry each other.
Sometimes they marry non-jerks.
But that is a different subject.
So I got a very good one today for you, and it will depend upon your calling in and responding, which I do periodically.
Sometimes I offer my own ideas, and you respond.
And sometimes, well, I will offer my own ideas on this one, actually.
But I really want to know, as well, what you think.
It's a very simple question.
Should you reveal your past to your future spouse?
That's it.
1-8 Prager 776. 877-243-7776 And I don't only mean sexual past, though that's the most obvious.
And a lot of people think that they should not open up about that to their future spouse.
I am not sympathetic to that view.
I think that you should say everything about yourself to your spouse and your future spouse.
Whatever you hide, Is a creator of greater distance between the two of you.
That's just a fact.
Also, if you hide something from your past, it means that you are afraid of that person's reaction.
Right?
There can't be any other possible reason.
If you were not...
Fearful of their reaction, you would tell them.
This is about as simple as life gets.
So that means you don't really trust them.
Hiding something from your spouse is an indication of non-full trust.
If you knew this about me, you might not even marry me.
Or love me.
Or love me less.
The sexual past is an obvious example, but it could be anything.
Say, you were found guilty of shoplifting.
Should you hide that?
And I have to say, I think that that's more shameful than a sexual past.
1-8 Prager, 776-877-243-7776 I've never done this as a, I don't think, we checked our records, we couldn't find a male-female hour in which this was the subject, but I know that it came up for some reason as a secondary subject on an occasion.
And a lot of people thought that you should hide your sexual past, for example, from your spouse.
As a spouse, I don't understand that at all.
I'm not being hyperbolic here.
When I say I don't understand, I don't understand.
It's not a euphemism for I don't agree.
I don't understand.
Is it that important to you to believe that you're marrying a virgin?
Is that the issue?
And if you found out that you were not marrying a virgin, you would not marry?
Well, I don't happen to agree with that outlook.
Or anything of your past.
If you can't tell everything about your life to your spouse, clearly you're not going to tell it to anybody.
And walking around with secrets is a burden and is something that blocks true closeness with another human being.
That is my take.
Alright, I'm going to go to your calls here and we'll begin in Eau Claire, Wisconsin with Jake.
The famous Jake of Eau Claire.
Hello.
Yes, Jake of the French Clearwater City.
That's right.
Clearwater, Wisconsin.
Yes.
And thank you, Dennis.
I really appreciate your show.
I've been listening for a long time.
First time caller.
Thank you.
I will say, I like you.
You're very welcome.
I like your comment about the, you know, a-holes or jerks being distributed, you know, throughout all the two genders.
I like that.
Good.
Good.
And I used to be in law enforcement for many, many years.
So, you know, if anybody, right, should believe in the truth, it should be those that are honorably doing that job.
And I did it honorably for a long time, and I believe in integrity and the truth from my military days as well.
And, you know, I'm 41 years old now, and I found out something recently about myself at the VA, that my brain is a little different.
I have, like, this Rain Man memory, and I can do reports from memory for, you know, hours later and stuff.
And that I'm slightly on the Asperger's spectrum.
But I didn't really understand that about myself because of maybe the way I was raised, a very male-dominated, alcohol-infused childhood with certain abuses and all that.
But I didn't really realize that.
And I'm not blaming anyone.
I'm not holding any grudges or anything or any blame.
I know that won't do me any good.
But what I'm coming around to say here now is that...
I recently found a woman who is closer to 30, and I'm 41, but I'm really active.
I'm a long-distance runner and a cyclist, and I need someone very active, and she fits the bill for me perfectly.
She has been such a godsend in my life, and knowing that she, you know, right off when we first met and we kind of were talking about our lives, I stressed honesty and integrity, and she stressed that and how, you know, if you're going to be with someone the rest of your life.
Does it really matter if they were in search of love and in search of acceptance and trying to find someone to care for them and love them?
So if they aren't a virgin anymore, that doesn't take anything away from them to me.
Alright, so you're clearly on my side.
I wish you well.
I know a man with Asperger's who is one of the most wonderful people I know and brilliant.
I wonder if Asperger's and high intelligence are correlated.
Have you ever heard of that?
Do you think so?
Interesting.
Christina, Long Island, New York.
Hello.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi, Dennis.
I agree with you mostly, but I think that there are some things that should probably be told.
My ex-husband did not decide to tell me that he had a same-sex attraction until about 15 years into our marriage.
And it ruined us.
And he said it shouldn't change how I feel about him.
Did he act on it?
I mean, it did.
Did he act out on it?
Well, he said he never did it, you know, personally, one-on-one, but I mean there was all the internet stuff and the cell phone stuff, you know, it was just...
I'm curious, how was your sex life with him?
Well, it became nothing.
It went to zero, which led to us divorcing because I had no more desire once I knew that that was what he wanted.
Stay on with me.
This is a fascinating, truly sad.
That it ended that way.
I want to ask you some more questions.
Male Female Hour, Dennis Prager Show.
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Hello, my friends.
I'm Dennis Prager.
Male-female hour, second hour Wednesdays.
Should you reveal your past, whatever we're talking about, your whole past to your prospective spouse?
This is such an interesting and, of course, somewhat sad call.
And I'd like to talk more with Christina on Long Island in New York.
Fifteen years into your marriage, your husband told you that he's attracted to men?
Well, he didn't really tell me.
I had to find out.
I kind of knew something wasn't right from kind of the beginning, but he never actually came out and said it until I confronted him with it.
And that was after 15 years?
The first, like, real solid evidence I had was about after 11 years, and then things just kept happening, and I was just like, that's it.
I can't do this anymore.
Was he sad about this whole thing?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, he cried, and he begged me to stay, and, you know, he...
He was like, oh, that's not what I want.
I want you.
Do you believe that?
I mean, part of me wanted to believe it, but the other part of me, there was just too much showing me that if all guards were down, that wasn't the fact of the matter.
I think he wanted part of it.
He wanted to be married.
He wanted to keep the family together.
He wanted the good reputation and the good how he looked.
His innate desires were not for women.
His innate desires were for men, and he tried to fight it.
God bless him, he tried to fight it, but it just didn't work out very well.
Until the 11th year, was your lovemaking normal?
Define normal.
Did you feel he...
That he was responding sexually, erotically to you when you were together, and was it semi-frequent?
So, he didn't have a problem performing, but it was never, like, super passionate, and it was never frequent, I'll say that.
Like, we would go months without any initiation.
And it got to the point where I was like, alright, let me just see how long it takes him to want to do anything, and then it would go forever.
It would feel like forever.
And you were young.
Oh yeah, I was like prime time, here we go.
Right, right.
You have children?
We had one together, yes.
Is he now...
Living with a man?
No, he's alone.
So am I. I think we did a lot of damage to each other.
In the divorce?
Well, I think there was, you know, we tried to patch things up, but like during counseling and in like those four years between the 11th and our final divorce, like it was just pain after pain and he said things and I said things and I don't know.
I want to say that maybe one day we'll be able to get with people that could appreciate each other, but, like, I don't know if I ever want to even try anymore.
Because how do you trust anyone after, you know, you get married to someone you thought you knew?
I don't know, it's just thrown everything.
All right, so you called, responding to my question, should you tell everything about your past to your future spouse, as...
Apparently, vehemently pro that position.
He should have told you, I like men.
Right.
That's why you called.
Well, my heart breaks for both of you, actually, because that is his nature, but he wanted to live a heterosexual family life.
Is that a fair statement?
Absolutely.
Yeah, so my heart breaks for both of you.
Why have you not remarried?
Oh, I mean, I don't trust myself.
What does that mean, you don't trust yourself?
Well, you know, I thought I knew the guy.
Obviously, I married him, and then that shows up, and it just goes out of my face.
So, in other words, you're afraid that you could fool yourself again?
Well, yeah.
Well, and I also, like, you know, live in that many years without really any desire.
It really does a number on your self-esteem.
Oh my God.
Well, I want you to know I really feel for you.
I feel for him, too.
Yeah, it's one of those things.
You really lived a tragedy.
How was your child doing?
Oh, he's alright.
You know, now it's just mommy and daddy's house splitting up the time.
Does he know that daddy wants men?
No, I can't say that.
I won't ever be the one to say that.
He's got to come out and say that to himself.
And he hasn't told his son?
No.
No.
I don't know if he'll ever tell anyone, really.
Oh, wow.
Well, I thank you for calling me, and I only wish you well.
This is a good example of tragedy.
Some bad things are caused by malice and evil, and some bad things are caused because they're just tragic.
This falls in the latter category, hence the Greek tragedies.
Back in a moment.
The Dennis Prager Show.
Hello my friends, Dennis Prager here.
Just a note, if you missed the male-female hour, you missed one of the most intense hours of radio I have had.
Oh, to learn of the human condition.
Which brings me actually to the subject.
As I said to you, Earlier in the show, having 40 years of talk radio has meant that I have spoken with, not two, but with more people than probably any living human being.
And I raise every subject, not just the items in the news, like the last hour.
So I have learned an immense amount about people through this, and it's been incredibly useful.
In the commentary on the Bible that I'm writing, the third volume came out yesterday, Deuteronomy, for two reasons.
One, I understand people so much better, having spoken with so many.
But the other is, I know what people need to confront, the issues that can help their lives.
and The man I'm about to talk to on the air is responsible for the Rational Bible Project.
As I write in my books, if it weren't for him, this wouldn't have happened.
It's as simple as that.
I owe him a tremendous amount because if this were a movie, he would be the producer.
That's the way I would put it.
His name is Joel Alperson.
His contribution has been so immense and continues to be that it's called the Alperson edition on the book spine and cover.
We met, I don't think he can tell you that, I think 30 years ago.
And the rest is history, as it were.
So, Joel Alperson, how does it feel to have Volume 3 of the five volumes out?
It feels like one of the large stones of the pyramid were just put in place.
I did not know what you would say.
I didn't predict that one.
You're the one who writes them.
But I have to say, in a supportive role, it's quite an effort getting each one of these volumes completed.
And, you know, just like I assume when the Egyptians saw a big stone of the pyramid in place, there must have been a huge feeling of gratification.
That's pretty much how I feel about these.
That's a very good analogy.
So the pyramid will be the five volumes.
That is correct.
I get it.
That is correct.
So, first of all, we met 40 years ago.
In fact, we met the months after you started broadcasting.
Oh, is that interesting.
Now, by the way, folks, Joel Alperson lives in Omaha.
He was raised and born there.
He has lived his whole life in Omaha.
He now has a family, a wife, and four children, which is its own story, which, by the way, we broadcast your story about your four children, one of the most interesting stories anybody could want to hear.
And did you know...
If you were listening, only if you were listening to my show today, because sometimes you hear it afterwards on PragerTopia, will you have learned this?
So you know that I learned after, sadly, after I had already completed Deuteronomy, that this was the most cited book by the founders of the United States.
So that you know.
Yesterday I learned from a dear Christian friend, one of the leading pastors of the country, Jack Hibbs, That Jesus cites Deuteronomy more than any other book.
I heard you say that.
Isn't that something?
Jesus and the Founders?
It's remarkable.
And the average American doesn't even know what Deuteronomy is?
You're right.
You're right.
Well, if you'd permit me, I'd like to make the case for the book that you struggle to make because you feel like it's too self-promotional.
So, what I wanted to say to your audience is, I've read every single Amazon review from both Genesis and Exodus, and now there are two up from Deuteronomy.
The vast, vast majority of the reviews come from people who appear to be religious.
Not all, but the vast majority.
And so, I wanted to aim my comments at the people who are not so religious, maybe purely secular, but still fans of yours.
And I can only imagine, for those people, the notion of buying a Bible anything must seem silly, you know, not them, somebody else, for somebody who talks to God or to Jesus every day, but not for them.
It may even come off as a religious fairy tale.
And so why would they buy a book to explain religious fairy tales?
And the answer is that, and this is the reason for this commentary, because there's no shortage of commentaries out there.
The reason for the commentary is to bring insights to our modern-day lives that no other commentary I've seen or heard of brings.
So it actually occurred to me to read a short example.
Rather than just to say it and have your audience just take it for granted that I'm telling the truth, I wanted to give one very brief example.
In chapter 11, you write that life consists of both blessings and curses.
And so 1126 says, see this day I set before you blessing and curse.
So somebody reads that and they say, this is exactly the reason I don't want to buy a Bible commentary.
I'm already asleep after I just read that line.
And what would there be to say about a line like that?
Well, here's what you said.
You said almost everything in life.
Can be both a blessing and or a curse.
The day one's child is born is, with a small handful of exceptions, one of the most blessed days in a person's life.
Over time, however, some children can be more than a curse, can be more a curse than a blessing to a parent.
And more frequently, they are both.
Hopefully with the blessings predominating.
So too, for most people, their wedding day is another unloyed blessing.
Like children, however, over time, many marriages are a mixture of curse and blessing, and some are overwhelmingly a blessing and others overwhelmingly a curse.
On the other hand, many things that seem like a curse when they occur, losing a job, for example, turn out to be a blessing.
How religious does somebody have to be?
How God-centered does somebody have to be to derive meaning from an insight like that?
This book, even though it comes with the baggage of Deuteronomy and Bible and commentary, is better thought of as a 3,000-year-old self-help book.
And a 3,000-year-old self-help book explained by a man that you, the audience, love, that you listen to, you respect, you admire, and you learn from.
The foundation of his beliefs, the foundation of his values, the foundation of the principles that he offers on the air come from this set of books.
And he's written it in a way so that you can read it as I just read it to you, such that you don't have to feel uncomfortable that you're not religious, or uncomfortable that you don't believe in God, or that the Bible came from God.
You can simply be interested in bettering your life.
And so I hope if I moved anybody in terms of what I've just said, I hope rather than waiting until the end of the show or until it's a convenient time, I hope while my words are still ringing in your ears that you'll order right now because later you'll forget or the mood won't be as strong within you.
But I started working on this 20 years ago.
And that's with getting married, divorced, remarried, four four-year-olds at home, all of that, a business to run.
I have plenty of other things to occupy me.
This project has possessed me because I think it's so incredibly important.
And for those who are concerned about where our country is going, and I think that's probably the overwhelming majority of your audience, Dennis, the founders of this country didn't believe our country was possible without these values.
So to properly understand where our country needs to go, you have to properly understand what our founders thought was best for this country.
And there's no set of books I know of.
Not just because I've been involved.
There's no set of books that I know of that more profoundly explain what the founders thought is powerful about these values than the commentaries you've written.
Well, now you folks know why he's the producer.
That was so...
Eloquent.
Well, thank you, Joel, for everything and for this very eloquent endorsement.
I'll see you.
You earned it.
Thank you.
I'll see you when we put out numbers.
You got it.
I was just reading to you about California's new law.
That you can lose your medical license if you offer disinformation or misinformation.
This is very scary stuff.
The Wall Street Journal correctly editorializes against it.
Florida Surgeon General, man I know and admire, Joseph Ladapo, Friday advised young men not to get mRNA vaccines.
After a state analysis found, they experienced an 84% increase in cardiac-related deaths within a month of vaccination.
He's also recommended against vaccinating healthy children.
They're at low risk for severe illness, and the benefits don't clearly exceed the uncertain risks.
Would Joseph Ladapo lose his license?
Now, if he practiced in California, may well have done so.
This has nothing to do with science.
This is the left's desire to shut up everyone who disagrees with them.
Using the FBI, the CIA, the IRS, and now medical boards.
That's all it's about.
Stifling, crushing dissent.
That's it.
Because there is no example in the history of the 20th century when the left began in the Russian Revolution of the left being in power and not crushing dissent.
There is not a single example.
From Columbia University to the California Medical Boards.
There is no example of the left in power not crushing people who differ with them.
And I'll tell you why.
Because if the left allowed dissent, there would be no more left.
There would be liberals, there would be conservatives, but there would be no left.
And they know it.
That's why they can't stand when we show up on campuses.
In 90 minutes, we can undo four years of indoctrination.
I think I did.
Look at my University of Wyoming speech.
It's on the internet.
Under California's new law, a pediatrician who advises children against vaccination could have his license yanked.
What do you think of that?
So you will not be getting what your...
You understand something now.
In California, you will not actually get what your doctor necessarily believes.
You understand that?
They don't want to lose their license.
It's the end of their career.
It's the end of their livelihood.
The end of the profession they love.
Because if they tell you what they really think and it differs with Gavin Newsom, forget doctors.
If it differs with Gavin Newsom, you will lose your license.
And you know how many liberals know what I'm telling you?
Zero!
Liberals hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil with regard to the left.
It would create too much cognitive dissonance.
Liberals know one thing.
Republicans and conservatives are my enemy.
That's it.
That's what liberals stand for.
They don't know about this law.
They don't want to know about this law.
Under California's new law, a pediatrician who advises children against vaccination could have his license yanked.
Ditto to a gynecologist who tells a new mother that trace amounts of the mRNA vaccine have been found in breast milk.
The latter is true, but the board might determine that it contradicts the consensus.
That vaccines are safe.
The expert consensus has often shifted during the pandemic.
The law appears partly aimed at doctors who prescribe such drugs as ivermectin, which I took for half a year, that haven't been authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for COVID. But off-label prescribing is permitted under federal law, of course.
A lot of medications are used for something that they weren't originally...
Scheduled for.
A lawsuit filed last week by two doctors makes a strong argument that California's law violates First Amendment speech rights and is unconstitutionally vague under the 14th Amendment.
Even Mr. Newsom seemed to concede this by attaching a statement to a signature on the bill directing the board to punish only, quote, Those egregious instances in which a licensee is acting with malicious intent or clearly deviating from the required standard of care while interacting directly with the patient under their care.
Yet the law isn't narrowly tailored.
Doctors have no way of knowing what will land them on the dock.
It will chill discussions.
Between patients and physicians, that's what I just said to you.
My dear friends, thanks to the Democrats of California, that loathsome group of people, thanks to them, you will have no way of knowing, none, unless you put your doctor on a lie detector.
You will have no way of knowing if your doctor was telling you what he or she really believes.
Please understand that.
What I just said, I swear is true.
There is no way any longer in California for you to have a clue if your doctor is telling you what he or she really thinks.
They might be.
I acknowledge that.
But you don't know that!
You can't know that!
Because of the Democrats of California, whom most Californians will re-elect, of course.
They don't want to know the damage the Democrats and the left are doing.
Too much cognitive dissonance.
The corruption of the medical profession by the left is example number 25 of everything the left touches.
it ruins there are a handful of fantastic organizations in this country ADF, Alliance Defending Freedom is one of them.
I truly implore you to go to my website and click on their banner and make a donation.
It's a fantastic habit to get into supporting good causes.
I have the senior counsel, Jeremy Tedesco of the Alliance Defending Freedom.
They take these court cases.
And they go to the Supreme Court frequently to battle for liberty, often religious liberty, but all liberty on the Supreme Court level.
Jeremy Tedesco, thank you for being with me on the show.
You have just, you, that is your organization, have just come out with, I'm reading here, ADF rates 50 companies on the Fortune 1000 list.
On commitment to free speech and religious freedom.
Is that correct?
That is correct, Dennis.
We put that out in May of this year.
Very excited about it.
Okay, explain what you did.
Well, yeah, I can explain what we did, but then I want to explain why we did it.
So what we did was we rated 50 Fortune 1000 companies.
We're going to build on this year-over-year.
It's an annual index.
On their respect for free speech and religious freedom.
We came up with a 42 question scoring rubric that we think is a pretty objective and comprehensive assessment of whether these corporations respect these kind of fundamental architectural aspects of a free society, those being free speech and religious freedom, and then scored them.
So the point of the index is to try to encourage these corporations, kind of shed some light on the problem.
We all know there's a problem, but what is the actual source of the problem?
The censorship and the religious discrimination and the anti-free speech nature of what we're seeing from big business.
And then how do we fix it?
So there's both the diagnosis and then there's the cure because we have a whole bunch of resources, model policies, guidelines, toolkits.
That businesses can also look to to assess the way they're impacting free speech and religious freedom and make some positive changes inside their businesses.
One thing I want to make sure you understand, too, and your listeners, is we looked at three aspects of business.
We looked at workplace, we looked at market, and public square.
And so we looked at the workplace section.
How do you treat your employees?
Do you respect the religious and viewpoint diversity represented within the broad swath of employees that you have?
From a market perspective, we were looking at consumers and suppliers and vendors.
And then Public Square, we were looking at what are their charitable giving policies and practices, and how are they engaging publicly when it comes to political advocacy, legal advocacy, that could impact negatively or forget free speech and religious freedom.
And looking at those three things, through our 42-question matrix, we came up with a score for all these corporations.
So I have a very dark question.
If you were to make a list of big companies, Fortune 1000 companies, that doesn't suppress freedom, would you have any candidates?
I think we would have a few.
But I don't think they're going to be in the industries that we study.
So our main concern, ADF, you were talking about, we go to the Supreme Court, we battle for free speech and religious freedom and life issues, parental rights at the U.S. Supreme Court, of course, throughout the country.
But right now, one of the biggest threats coming at those particular core values comes from private corporations.
So how do we solve that problem?
Right.
We're going to get to the solution.
I obviously want that.
If there's no solution, we have to know that.
And if there is, we have to know that.
But I am truly curious.
I'm putting you on the spot.
But not to put you on the spot, I'm just genuinely interested.
Can you name a big corporation that does not suppress liberty today?
Well, I haven't found them yet, but I promise I will look and I will report it out to you.
Okay.
I don't think there are going to be some good ones.
You have to understand that our focus of the index was big tech and financial services to begin with.
And as you know...
Those are the industries that the left-wing activists are really focused on with ESG and DE&I and just all the kind of progressive demands.
And so they're the most entrenched industry.
But they're also the biggest threat to free speech and religious freedom.
So we focused on those two industries primarily first, kind of the big tech and financial services.
All right, so we'll hear who the biggest culprits are in a moment.
This is a painful interview.
Please donate now.
Go to the ADF banner on my website.
I would like my show to raise the most funds for this group.
It would mean a lot to me.
Folks, it's very important to donate money to good causes.
If you don't help the fighters, you're helping the bad guys.
The ADF banner is at my website.
Dennis Prager here.
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