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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:18:19
The Queen’s Funeral
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hi, everybody.
Hello, I'm Dennis Prager.
I hope you had a good weekend.
I did.
I am in Dallas.
Return to L.A. tonight.
Had a wonderful weekend here.
Talk and weekend with PragerU supporters.
Had a fantastic dialogue with Glenn Beck.
Dinesh D'Souza came to speak.
Anyway, it's been a wonderful time.
People ask me in Texas, as they do in Florida, so why are you in California?
That's the $64,000 question.
And with the continuing ruining of the state by the Democratic Party, I don't even say Gavin Newsom because it is irrelevant.
Joe Biden is irrelevant.
Kamala Harris is irrelevant.
A Democrat today is a Democrat.
A Democrat today is a leftist.
And leftists ruin everything that they touch.
That is a given.
I have a list of 20 items in one article.
The left ruins everything it touches.
You should read it and send it.
So it's the funeral for Queen Elizabeth.
And there's a tremendous amount of ritual, pomp and ritual taking place.
And it leads me to one of my favorite subjects, the need for ritual for continuity.
I've written books on Jewish history.
I taught Jewish history at the college level.
And if I had to summarize the secret to the Jew's survival for 3,000 years, most of the time, over 2,000 years of those 3,000, not even in their own country, Every small people, virtually every people that has been displaced from its country has stopped surviving.
It's just disappeared from the human list of nations.
And the secret is ritual.
That's why I wrote my rational Passover Haggadah.
Because whether you're a Jew or a Christian or nothing or some other religion...
It explains, among many, many other things, that book, why ritual saves religions, why it saves countries, nations.
This is a beautiful thing to watch, this ritual.
Because ritual is the one thing in life that connects you with others and with your past.
Tell me something else that does.
Maybe I'm missing something right now.
I'm not being facetious at all.
But I'm trying to think, what connects me?
I don't mean rationally.
I identify with the founders of the country, which of course I do.
They were giants.
The founders of the United States of America were giants.
Period.
End of issue.
It almost seems divine that they got together at the same time.
But what connects me in some visceral, emotional way to my fellow Americans and to the past of my country?
Ritual.
When everybody sings as they did yesterday.
I was at the Dallas Cowboys football game.
And everybody rises and sings along.
Puts their hand on their heart for the national anthem.
Then we are all tactilely bonded with one another.
Without ritual, tell me how that happens.
1-8-Prager-776.
I'll actually take a call if you can tell me something other than ritual.
What bonds me or binds me to the American past?
Other than ritual.
Under the list of everything the left touches at ruins is ritual.
Take a knee for the Star Spangled Banner is the opposite of bonding Americans to one another.
It's a ritual.
Oh, they have rituals too.
The left has rituals.
Nihilistic rituals.
Taking a knee for the national anthem is staining...
A good chunk of you, my fellow Americans, stink.
You're white supremacists.
If there are no white supremacists to speak of, of course they exist.
Everything exists.
But it exists in tiny numbers.
It is the opposite of bonding Americans.
The National Anthem does.
The flag does.
Pledge of Allegiance does.
Taking the knee...
In a sporting event is the opposite.
I hereby assert that probably a majority of my fellow Americans are loathsome.
If you have another definition for taking a knee, I would like to hear that too.
It is literally the definition of divisive.
The left is inclusive if you're a leftist.
The only inclusion on the left His fellow leftists.
So you watch the Queen's funeral and what bonds one Brit to another?
The royal family.
What bonds them or binds them, I guess either is a usable verb here, to their past?
Think of how many generations it goes.
The hereditary nature of the royalty in Britain.
Let me defend that.
People don't like that.
Oh, you're born a king.
You're born a queen.
You're born a prince.
You're born a princess.
Well, you know what it does?
It avoids corruption.
That doesn't mean that any individual member of the royal family cannot be corrupt.
Of course, humans are humans, whether they're royalty or not.
But there's no buying a seat, as it were, in the royalty.
You're born it.
And that avoids all the intrigue of who will be king or queen and the like.
Now, obviously, you can't have that for...
Other positions in life, you have to elect prime ministers and presidents, of course.
But there is a case to be made for just being born into the position.
1-8 Prager 776. I deeply, deeply lament.
The death of ritual in American life.
July 4th was such a big deal for most Americans throughout most of our history.
The marches and parades, the bands, the music, and of course the fireworks.
So much took place on July 4th.
But July 4th has gradually become...
A day for hot dogs and beer.
And that's pretty much it.
In fact, July 4th has been demoted.
It's no longer the date of the founding of the United States of America.
The date is 1619 to the left.
It's not a celebration.
The founding of America for the left is a disgrace.
Amazing.
Just the words when I say them.
They're jolting.
The founding of America is a disgrace for the left.
The finest country ever made in history is a disgrace for these foolish people.
And that's what your kids are taught at any given college in the United States of America, and increasingly high schools and elementary schools.
And if you don't teach that America was founded in 1619, you're censoring the teacher.
So as I see the Queen's funeral, these are the thoughts that come to mind.
The last funeral of a monarch, what was it?
I guess the 1950s.
It's an astonishingly long reign.
I don't know if the woman made a single public error.
She had a trait that I love in people.
I love it.
Dignity.
There was always a sense of dignity around her.
And that's a burden, let me tell you something.
To know that every time you are in public, you are being assessed every gesture, whatever you wear, how you behave, what you say, and yet she was not perceived as a nothing.
She was a substantial woman.
And she loved her country.
We need ritual, my friends.
You don't have good ritual, you'll have bad ritual.
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I'm Dennis Prager talking to you about the importance of ritual.
Can I ask my Dallas team to come here because we have lost?
One second.
Yeah.
We have lost the calls screen.
Disappeared.
Okay.
Yes.
Yes.
Laguna Beach, California.
Jerry.
Hello, Jerry.
Hi there, Dennis.
How are you doing today?
Great.
Thank you.
I just wanted to call and point out one thing that I, one of the great rituals from my growing up was the celebration of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on their individual birthdays.
12th and the 22nd of February.
And, of course, we got away from that and just lumped them all together and called President's Day.
There's two presidents that really stand out to me and to most people my age, and it was those two.
But now the kids aren't learning anything about those guys.
That's right.
I have lamented that since the beginning.
President's Day is a farce.
It is a complete farce.
Ask anybody under 40, maybe even under 50, whom do we celebrate on President's Day?
They'll say all the presidents.
I got it, guys.
It came up.
It disappeared for some reason.
I got it back up.
Whom do we celebrate?
And they'll say presidents.
Oh, great.
We celebrate 45, 46, 47, whatever number.
47 presidents.
Wow.
That's exactly right.
You know why we have abolished ritual, whether it's July 4th, Thanksgiving, people don't put out decorations on Christmas nearly as much as they did in the past, because we have lost wisdom.
This is a perfect example of foolishness, which is the opposite of wisdom.
Wisdom tells me how important ritual is.
The unwise, the stupid.
If stupid means unwise, and it does, it doesn't mean lack of brain matter.
Very few people lack brain matter.
Vast numbers of people lack wisdom.
Secular life breeds no wisdom.
It's just a fact the most secular institutions in America are the least wise.
They're called colleges and universities.
The place where all the stupid ideas originate.
Well, let me repeat what I have said.
All of my career, which is now 40 years, to summarize all of my work in broadcasting, it would be to alert people to the consequences, the terrible consequences of secularism.
Even a lot of secular conservatives don't know that.
They think that we can perpetuate values that were nurtured in Judeo-Christian soil and drop the Judeo-Christian and they'll still be nurtured.
That is what we call a major boo-boo.
Major as in self-destroying.
President's Day.
That's perfect.
I can't believe I forgot to mention it.
That's why I took the call.
Good one, my friend.
That is exactly right.
In my school, I remember acting in George Washington plays.
We put on a play for George Washington's birthday and for Lincoln's birthday.
I still remember.
February 22, February 12. The number of Americans, every single American of my, virtually, not every, there's no such thing as every.
The vast majority of Americans of the baby boomer generation, of which I am a member, can tell you the birthdates of Lincoln and Washington.
The number of Americans under 45. That can is close to zero.
It went from everybody to nobody.
And the unwise think that that's just fine.
What you need is to fight for equity.
Anyway, there's nothing to celebrate in Washington and Lincoln.
As far as the left is concerned, they're worthless people.
The best people who ever lived.
These are living leftists.
That is exactly what they believe.
Whoever lived before them was a moral idiot.
These are giants.
Yes, that's what we're battling in effect, my dear friends.
Let me see here.
Mary in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Hello, Dennis Prager.
Hey, I can't believe I got through.
Every day I listen to your show and I wish I was sitting in the studio talking because you're talking about things I think about all the time.
I love that.
I'm glad.
Yep.
Yeah, I'm in a similar situation.
I'm in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the home of the University of Michigan, the most educated city in the United States.
And someone on the Detroit station said, oh, the smartest city in the United States.
And I'm going, I don't think so.
Well, you hit it on the nose.
It's exactly right.
Any town that is deeply influenced by its local university is a stupid town.
Yes, and I am in a position where I have nobody to talk to because I think.
I'm not a liberal or conservative.
I just think about things, and that's the worst.
I truly believe if you think about things and you think rationally, then you're not going to be on the left.
You can't be on the left.
No, not on the left, but sometimes I question my conservative friends, and again, I get...
Well, give me an example.
I'm very curious, because you're obviously someone who thinks for herself.
Give me an example.
I have come down on the side of not criminalizing abortion, even though I believe in the sanctity of life and the civil rights of unborn person.
All right.
Hold on.
It's a very interesting point.
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All righty, everybody.
What happened to my lady in Ann Arbor?
Here she is, Mary.
So this is interesting, Mary.
So you tend to differ with the left.
But there are times you don't agree with conservatives, so it's very interesting for me to find out the biggest one.
So you're against, as you say, criminalizing abortion.
You believe in the sanctity of life, obviously life in the womb you're referring to, and you're against criminalizing abortion.
So let me ask you, I have no, not even in my mind, to have any debate with you.
I'm just curious, because you're a thoughtful woman.
What do you think?
This is going to be a catharsis, because I've never been able to tell anybody this without getting backlash.
Oh, no, no, I won't give you any backlash.
Thank you, sir.
In my video on abortion, which has many millions of views at Prager University, I explain that I only talk about the morality of abortion, not the legality.
They're separate issues.
It's immoral to commit adultery, but it's not illegal.
Morality and legality are not identical.
Exactly.
It's legal to drive slowly in the left lane, but it's immoral.
It's not on the level of abortion or adultery, but it's an example.
So, what should be done if, where you have a healthy mother and a healthy baby, and it's the seventh month, eighth month, third trimester, the child would be completely viable outside of the womb, but she breaks up with her...
Oh, no, no, no, no, that's illegal.
Okay, so where do you differ with the conservatives on this issue?
I differ, I think, in early pregnancy.
Let's just talk about the first trimester.
Okay, that's fair.
You know what?
As a Christian, we don't know when the soul enters the body.
Well, it depends.
So why not err on the side of caution?
Well, I think a lot of Christians would actually, a lot of Christians would say that it enters at conception.
Anyway, thank you for the call.
Sean, if you could put this on hold.
My mouse is invisible here.
There we go.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
That was important.
No, I think most Christians would say at conception is when the soul enters.
But that is an interesting question.
Look, the irony is biology is more conservative than theology.
And it's had an impact on me.
When are you a human?
Why aren't you a human at conception?
Biologically, are you not a human at conception?
And I didn't always have that position.
It was actually biology, not theology, that has moved me on the abortion issue.
You can't biologically state we're not a human at conception, but we are in the fifth month.
Just as an example.
Anyway, I appreciate the call.
The Pope has announced here, this is a piece in Breitbart, Pope Francis calls for urgent attention to our gravely ill planet.
The international community must make the ecological commitment.
Quote, unquote, a top priority Pope Francis said in an interview published Sunday, yesterday, we have not awakened to the face of planetary wars and injustices.
Planetary wars?
Wait.
Climate change has induced planetary wars?
If you know what the Pope is referring to, I would be...
Appreciative of your calling.
I sincerely don't know what he's talking about.
Planetary wars and injustices.
You know what is unjust?
It is unjust to tell poor people you can't have fossil fuel.
What made the Western world the richest civilization in history, energy, abundant, cheap energy, you can't have.
You have to use lithium batteries or solar power or wind power.
You're going to get a lot out of that.
None of our societies are being powered by either of those to any significant degree at all.
But, hey, you poor people, you will.
If you care for the poor...
Green policies are destructive.
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Hello, everybody.
I'm Dennis Prager.
Hope you had a good weekend.
Coming to you from Dallas, Texas.
Had a great weekend here.
In fact, I caught the first half.
I had to give a speech last night.
But I caught the first half of the Dallas Cowboys Cincinnati Bengals NFL game.
I think it's only the third.
NFL game I've ever attended.
It might be the second.
I know I went to a Green Bay Packers game, so it might be the second.
And I like football live.
Because you see stuff that you can't possibly see on TV because you only see on TV what they are showing you on TV. The camera isn't showing you more than one event at a time by definition.
So you see things that you don't see otherwise.
And I found that fascinating.
I love the sense of a non-political mass event.
Do you understand how rare that is becoming?
Of course, the NFL, like the NBA and Major League Baseball run by cowards.
Fell in line with the leftist hate America rhetoric.
BLM rhetoric is hate America rhetoric.
If you want to deny that, you can.
The ease with which people fool themselves is remarkable, but nevertheless, it takes a lot of fooling of yourself to deny that the Black Lives Matter movement hates the United States of America.
How could it not?
Why wouldn't you hate a systemically racist society?
And they bought into it.
It's protection money.
Major League Baseball put the BLM on the pitcher's mound.
Whoa.
It's hard to go back to Major League Baseball after that.
But people crave the non-political.
The healthy do.
Let's put it that way.
The left politicizes everything and ruins everything.
Well, I have stuff to tell you about Ohio State University.
You send your kid there and you have done so either as a big optimist that your kid can withstand the gigantic left-wing propaganda institution that Ohio State University has become, or you agree with it.
But I don't know why else you would send your child there.
I'll get to that later.
And I opened the show today with regard to all the pomp and pageantry at the Queen's funeral today.
The ritual.
The need for ritual.
I make this case in my Bible commentary.
By the way, Deuteronomy is coming out.
Deuteronomy is the...
The most cited book by the founders of the United States of America, including any secular work, according to historians who have actually counted references to various works.
You may know nothing about Deuteronomy, the fifth of the five books of the Torah, of the five books of Moses, but let me tell you, the amount of moral...
Political, social insight in that book is astonishing.
My commentary is as long in Deuteronomy as it is in Genesis and Exodus.
It is coming out in three weeks.
I have a big event in Washington, D.C. at the Museum of the Bible, the first Monday of October.
You are invited to go.
Everybody needs a meaningful, positive experience at this time.
It's an investment in, I don't get any money from your going, so let me make this clear.
But to the best of my knowledge anyway, I'll ask Salem.
I'm not paid for this particular appearance, but my, look, I don't write a Bible commentary to get wealthy.
I write it because it's going to be my legacy.
That and still the best hope.
A book about the left and America.
But this is a big deal.
So I ask you to get it and read it.
The Rational Bible, it's called.
And in my Rational Bible and in my Rational Passover Haggadah, I explain that ritual keeps...
A nation or a religion alive.
And you see what's happened to the United States with the demise of July 4th, the demise of Washington's birthday, Lincoln's birthday, the left's assault on Thanksgiving, substituting Indigenous Peoples' Day for Columbus Day, the diminution in Christmas decorations in people's homes.
What a special time of year it was when I grew up and I saw so many homes with Christmas lights or nativity scenes or whatever it might be, or even just Santa.
But something.
Because we're too busy now.
People are too busy to put up decorations.
But it's at a cost.
Now we could be bland 12 months a year.
No holy days left.
No rituals.
I envy the Brits having this ritual.
It's a very beautiful thing.
The monarchy in no way disrupts the democracy of the United Kingdom.
But people are bonded with one another through ritual.
Sports is such a ritual, as I saw yesterday at the Cowboys game that they attended.
As I see at any game.
And the left tried to destroy that too with people, with players taking a knee during the national anthem.
Why should we be united by the national anthem when we can crap on the national anthem and the flag?
Right?
That's the left's view.
They call for unity, but it is one of the many great lies of the left.
They want unity if you're a leftist, that's all.
The only unity they want is a leftist.
By the way, I don't call for unity.
Because I'm honest enough to know I want unity on my values.
Unity in and of itself, inclusion in and of itself, these are not necessarily good things.
Depends what the values are.
Pretty obvious to me.
It should be obvious to everybody.
I went to the rodeo on Saturday night.
PragerU actually was the featured...
Sponsor of the evening.
I have great pictures of these big Prager U signs at the rodeo.
I was very touched by how many people, especially kids, came over to get selfies with me at the Fort Worth rodeo.
It was so beautiful when the cowgirl opens it up by riding around the arena.
On our horse, holding a big American flag.
I felt that I had left California, left New York, left Pennsylvania.
Well, not Pennsylvania.
That's torn.
Left Massachusetts.
I had left the world of the left, Minnesota.
And I had reconnected with people who love this flag and love this country.
When this cowgirl was riding her horse, first slowly, then very fast, with the American flag and people cheering, the rodeo.
And I said to Alan Estrin, who was with me, known to many of you as the living martyr, I just was sitting next to him and I just said to him, This is the opposite of Massachusetts.
This is the opposite of Berkeley.
This is the opposite of Manhattan.
It is.
People, by the way, leftists would agree.
People at the rodeo are the opposite of them.
They would 100% agree with that.
There were no Paul Krugman's or Charles M. Blow's in the audience.
They represent a different America than the one that I attended.
So you have a choice.
Who are the healthier people?
Folks at the rodeo?
Or New York Times columnists?
As a general rule.
I'm sure there are a couple of exceptions.
More coming up.
I'm Dennis Prager.
The Dennis Prager Show.
You know, I'm thinking about this Berkeley law professor giving the latest PragerU video.
It's now 500 of these videos, which they're far superior to virtually any university in this country if you want to gain wisdom, insight, and knowledge about life, about history, about theology, about life, about morality.
You would do much better, and it's free.
Send your kid to Prager University than to Yale unless they're studying STEM. Science, technology, engineering, math.
The left hates PragerU because it's so effective.
And, oh, it's not a university.
It's not a university.
It's not a university.
What does that mean, it's not a university?
It's better than a university.
I literally mean that.
Your kid watches five, the 500 videos, reads the associated materials.
Your kid will know so much it'll blow your mind.
Of course they hate it because it doesn't distort history.
It doesn't distort life.
It gives wisdom.
Wisdom is the antithesis of leftism.
We're working on my going on one of the most widely viewed left-wing podcasts, The Young Turks.
I'll give you more information.
Should it materialize?
I've accepted the invitation.
And they have spent now quite some time attacking me.
The latest, the one that's really driven them crazy.
I drive them crazy.
It gives me some pleasure because it means I'm hitting the target.
It was a sign-up in, I don't know, fifth grade, fourth grade, third grade class.
The world is a special place because you're in it.
And I said I thought it was a foolish poster to put up.
Kids need humility, not puffing their egos when they're 10 years old.
The world is really a special place because you're in it.
This is the message.
The left loves that message.
You don't have to earn specialness.
Just exist.
Get a trophy.
Get an award.
No more valedictorians.
No more SATs to get into college.
Nobody's better than anybody else.
You're all great.
When I said that, if I thought my father said this to me, I would think that he had drunk and he's never gotten drunk.
They said, oh, I must have been not loved by my father.
No, I was so loved by my father that he tried to raise a decent adult.
That's the most loving thing you can do as a father, is raise a decent adult.
Not a narcissistic adult.
Part of the reason I've been able to handle life is I wasn't raised to think I'm the center of the universe.
Leftists raise their kids.
They have for the last three generations.
They didn't even know they were leftists.
Just that was what they were told.
Tell your kid how great he is, how great she is.
You're best.
You're special.
You're the most special.
You're special special.
You're special to the second power.
You're great.
You're awesome.
You don't have to earn any of those titles.
You just have to breathe.
Get a participation trophy.
You just have to show up.
By the way, I'm not sure you have to show up.
You just have to enroll.
That's loving, right?
Tell your kid how he is the center of the world.
That's loving.
Tell your kid you've got to work very hard to be a good person.
That's not loving to the people of the Young Turks.
Can't wait to tell it to them.
That'll be a fascinating half hour.
If it materializes, but I hope it does.
It's only a technical question now, to the best of my knowledge.
I find it fascinating and wonderful that they've invited me.
I asked them to do so, publicly.
I even invited them onto my show.
But it proves to me that they believe what they say.
I have asked all of my life, does the left believe their lies?
And I think most do.
They believe America's systemically racist.
They believe men menstruate.
That's why they're willing to debate.
Because they're sure they're right.
It's a different universe, the leftist universe.
Yeah, America's systemically racist and men menstruate.
And it's fair if biological men compete in women's sports.
There's a professor that just wrote a piece that there shouldn't even be male in female sports.
Women are just as good as men.
This notion that there's a biological difference is not true.
A professor.
Of course a professor.
Who else writes this stuff?
And a female, which is not insignificant given the disproportionate number of females involved in woke ideas in academia and in medicine and elsewhere.
Oh, that drove them crazy, too.
You can't criticize women.
You can only criticize men.
You can't criticize Muslims.
You can only criticize Christians.
They have a whole bunch of...
You can only criticize whites.
You can't criticize blacks.
That's the world of the left in a nutshell.
Hey, here's news from Chicago.
You know, my wife and I are going to Chicago in a few weeks.
Just to hear the Chicago Symphony.
We periodically do that.
We did that with the Cleveland orchestras.
These are some of the greatest orchestras in the world.
I don't know if it'll continue to be that way because they're no longer having...
A lot of these orchestras have dropped blind auditions.
They want to know the color of the prospective violinist, violist, cellist, clarinetist.
They don't want to measure you just on how well you play the instrument, which is why they had a curtain up for all auditions for the last many decades.
The New York Times called for the end of blind auditions.
We want to know the color of the prospective violinist.
We don't want to know how well they play the violinist.
We want to know their color.
So I don't know if orchestras will remain as great as before.
Not because people of color can't play a great violin.
In fact, I don't know what Asians are considered, but they're not considered white.
And they make up a disproportionate number of the new members of the greatest orchestras in the country.
Thanks to blind audition.
Ironically, this is not going to hurt whites, it's going to hurt Asians more.
Just like the dropping of standards in general.
We'll hate Asians, we'll, excuse me, affect Asians more than anybody else.
So we're going to the Chicago Symphony to hear one of our favorite symphonies, a Brooker Symphony.
And I will admit, of course we're going, but I will admit that given the amount of crime in Chicago, I think about it in thinking that I'm going to Chicago.
You know how many people were shot during this past weekend in Chicago?
Nearly 60. Between Friday and Sunday morning, 45 people were shot, five of them fatally, in Chicago.
But people will still vote Democrat.
Back in a moment.
All right, everybody.
Dennis Prager here.
Wonderful to be with you.
Quick review of some earlier points.
I think I should do that more often, because there are so many points made on any given talk show or newscast.
You can easily, and people do, it's natural to forget what was said before, as important as it might have been.
I discussed the Pope's statement about the central problem facing humanity is climate change.
Not the demise of God, religion, the Bible, no.
That's secondary.
See, Pope Benedict XIV, he believed that the great tragedy was secularism.
He was right.
The death of God and the Bible in the Western world is the central problem.
It produces horrible results.
Christianity's demise in Europe gave us communism and Nazism.
But other than that, it's not been a problem.
And in America, it gives us men menstruate.
It gives us wokeness.
These are all secular phenomena picked up by left-wing religious people like the Pope.
Because the left ruins everything it touches, from the Episcopal Church to non-Orthodox Judaism to the papacy.
Of course, if you think the left is a moral force for good, then you're thrilled about the left's influence on Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism.
That's how it works.
I understand that.
If you think the left is good, we have a very different value system.
So it is in the real world.
I spoke about ritual and the power.
No ritual, no continuity.
You will lose your religious or national identity as you leave ritual.
This is happening to America.
The loss of ritual for July 4th.
Veterans Day for Washington's birthday, Lincoln's birthday, Columbus Day, which has in any event been trounced.
The people who trounce Columbus Day, they say it's because they support the indigenous people and some of the tragic consequences of the arrival of Columbus.
It's understood.
So here's a question for people who denounce Columbus and Columbus Day.
It's simple.
It's a very fair question.
Would you have, if you could turn time backward and never have had Europeans come to the Americas, would the world be a better, a worse, or the same place?
As the arrival of Western civilization in North America, producing the freest countries in history.
Until now, Canada is no longer a free country, and America is moving in that direction.
But until now, do you think that that was a net gain or a net loss for humanity?
If you think it was a net gain, you can observe Columbus Day.
And if you think it was a net loss, then you can't observe Columbus Day.
Just as a reminder, it's not like...
The civilizations found in North and South America were all intellectually and morally advanced.
In Central America, the Spanish found vast amounts of human sacrifice.
Vast, vast numbers of people were sacrificed to the gods.
Not for every single Indian nation, but for many.
The abolition of human sacrifice was probably a good thing, I would say, just as the abolition of the burning of widows in India was a good thing done by the British Empire.
British, well, that's another fair question.
If you could turn back the clock of history, would you wish the British had never...
I'd love to ask that in a referendum in India.
Do you think that the Indian subcontinent, as it is called, was a net gainer or a net loser because of British imperialism?
British imperialism established one national language.
People in India couldn't speak with one another.
Their languages are completely different.
You speak Bengali, you're not going to get along with anybody from Kerala, the state of Kerala.
They're as foreign as they are to you speaking English.
Courts of justice, independent judiciary, the end of Sati, widow burning, the assault on the caste system from Brahmin to untouchable.
These are legacies of the British Empire in India.
To be a leftist, you have to be a combination of ignorant and arrogant.
I know better.
I know better than everyone who preceded me, including Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the like.
And that's what they believe.
Because they know what that sign in the fifth grade or whatever grade it was that I've been commenting on.
The world is a better place because you're in it.
You are terrific.
God, the left hates me for knocking that sign.
I'm going to play you some of the attacks on me.
They are such a revelation.
I am a lightning rod for the left.
Because I know...
I know exactly what they think and how they think and the moral idiocy that is at the heart of all leftism.
It's great to tell fifth graders the world is a better place because you're in it.
You don't give them moral instruction.
You don't tell them to be a better person or how to be a better person.
You tell them how wonderful they are from the get-go.
That's why you get trophies for participating.
It's worth noting that this is part of the self-esteem movement, and it is worth noting that according to Roy Baumeister, one of the leading criminologists in the United States, said it on my show, said it in his writings, the people with the most self-confidence he has met are murderers in prison.
Not self-confidence, self-esteem.
Yeah, self-esteem doesn't necessarily produce good people.
It might necessarily produce worse people.
I'm so terrific, I owe you nothing.
Now, you could say, I'm so terrific that I owe you something because that's why I'm terrific, because I'm a moral person.
Okay, I'll live with that.
But that's not the message.
You're terrific for breathing.
Oh, they pissed.
So they have...
Headlines, Dennis Prager attacks fifth graders.
The reason they do that is because they're liars, truth is not a left-wing value, and because they're not too bright.
They actually think I attacked fifth graders instead of the teachers and parents who put those signs up.
I'm attacking fifth graders.
That's really something.
I never said to my boys...
By the way, you have no idea how many people comment, oh, what does Dennis Prager know?
He has no children.
The certitude with which people on the left lie is breathtaking.
So I have two sons.
Never told them the world is a better place because you're in it.
But I did tell them constantly, be a good person so that the world can be a better place because you're in it.
Be good is not the same as...
You are wonderful.
Try to be a good person.
Work at it.
Would you say to a kid, you are a great pianist, the musical world is better because you're in it?
Why wouldn't you say that?
You wouldn't say that because they don't play a musical instrument.
Oh.
So if they're not adept at music, you won't say, That the musical world is better because you're in it, alright?
Would you say that the basketball world is better because you're in it?
No, you would only say that to a kid who is proficient in basketball.
But you don't have to be proficient in goodness, in ethics, in character, to be praised for how wonderful you are.
That's the difference.
There are standards in sports on the left.
There are no standards in ethics.
You're just terrific the way you are.
You think that's a good message?
Okay.
Dennis Prager here.
So, it's been a real controversy.
That I've attacked the sign, the world is a better place because you're in it, up in classrooms.
I had posters in my classroom as a kid in a religious school, love your neighbor as yourself, guard your tongue, and a whole host of, oh yes, another one I remember.
Who was the strong man, the one who conquers his nature?
I'm translating from the Hebrew, the signs were up in Hebrew.
So what do you think is going to produce a kinder, finer person?
Those signs?
Or the world is a better place because you're in it?
So here is what is excerpted on YouTube from PragerU on what I said on my last fireside chat.
In case you don't know, there are 257 fireside chats.
I do it every week.
Every week.
I didn't miss once during COVID. Of talking.
Into the camera and millions, hopefully, I would say, I don't know, at least a million people watch it.
Many of them young people.
I know because young people come over to me a lot.
Anyway, we know it, but it doesn't matter.
This is what was excerpted from my last fireside chat.
The world is better because you are in it.
So this was a message to, I don't know, fifth graders, eighth graders, somewhere between that.
So what age would that be?
Eighth grade is about 13, so between 10 and 13. Yeah, that makes sense.
It blew my mind.
The world is better because you are in it.
So I was thinking, number one, Did I ever get such a message when I was 8 or 10 years old?
And I started to crack up.
If you would have said to my parents, you know, I think you should tell Dennis that the world is better because he is in it.
I think my mother would have probably just left the room and done what she wanted to do, call up a friend or something.
My father would have thought, uh, what?
The world is better because Dennis is in it?
And he would have thought the person was losing their mind.
Why would you say that?
I mean, it's not anti-Dennis that he would have said that.
It was pro-reality.
Why is the world better because any 10-year-old is in it?
Let's be honest.
I'm not sure the world is better because the average 40-year-old is in it.
Some people make the world better.
Some people make the world worse.
Some people have no effect or minimal effect.
Anyway, it's a bad message.
It's not only a stupid, meaningless message.
It's a bad one.
It just feeds narcissism.
I don't want 10-year-olds walking around thinking the world is better because they're in it.
I'll tell you what the message ought to be.
So that's where it cuts off, Sean?
That's where we cut it off or where it's cut off on YouTube?
Yeah, too bad.
That's really a shame.
Because the whole point is what it should be.
Alright, I'll have to speak to them.
The whole fireside chat is viewable where, Sean?
Sean, are you with me?
Sean, come in.
The whole fireside chat is viewable where?
At PragerU and at Daily Wire.
That's viewable and listenable, correct?
Okay.
So that's too bad.
If you can dig that up, I would like to play it.
You're efforting very good.
Okay, so here is again this popular left-wing podcast, The Young Turks, who find my message just despicable.
Go ahead.
You got the Young Turks coming up, Sean?
Go ahead.
We're waiting, folks.
That school sign that I saw, school room sign that I saw in the New York Times, the world is better because you...
That was not from the fireside chat.
That was from my radio show.
Go ahead.
You are in it.
I don't know what grade it was.
I assume something like fifth grade.
What a stupid message.
Plus, it's not true.
What has any fifth grader done to have made the world better because he or she is in it?
So that is Dennis Prager, a guy who is infuriated by a picture that he saw hanging on a wall in a school.
And it sort of makes sense that he'd be sensitive about what goes on in schools, since he is the leader of PragerU, a literal fake school.
But anyway, while it's pathetic...
By the way, hold on, hold on.
So just know, in typical left-wing fashion, it's just ad hominem attacks.
It doesn't bother me, but it's important that you realize this.
We are not a fake school, by the way.
That's a lie.
We are as real a school as exists.
The only difference is it's not accredited.
It means you don't get a degree.
If the only schools that exist are schools that give degrees, then do they acknowledge there is any learning outside of accredited schools?
Is that the only place one can actually learn?
I know for a fact That you would be better off sending your kid to Prager University than to Yale unless they're studying science, technology, engineering, or math.
They would be brighter, kinder, finer, wiser, and probably even no more.
Okay?
We have 500 videos, probably have three dozen professors from all these prestigious places among others.
Okay, everybody, Dennis Prager here.
I have been widely attacked.
In fact, I don't know if you know this, it was the most trending tweet on Twitter last week about my statement that the sign up at elementary schools, the world is a better place because you're in it is foolish and breeds narcissism, not moral excellence.
And including Dennis Prager hates fifth graders and other typically foolish comments from the left.
Lies, really.
I attack fifth graders?
Amazing.
It's like when I criticized Greta Thunberg.
It was, again, attacking children.
Truth is not a left-wing value.
So here is the Young Turks again, the third time in the last two weeks that they spent all this time attacking me.
So the first is about how Prager University is a fake university.
It is not.
It is one of the most wonderful places to learn in the world.
And I would say hundreds of millions of people would agree, since we have a billion views a year.
And if they didn't shadow ban us and otherwise harass us.
There would be a lot more.
We continue.
Terrible.
People online had a lot of fun with his embarrassing comments.
SDL tweeted, the average fifth grader adds more to the world in a day than Dennis Prager in a lifetime.
Okay, so here is, hold on.
That's another great line.
He cites a tweet that the average fifth grader does more good for the world in a day than I have in a lifetime.
This man knows as much about my life as I know about his, which is to say nothing.
Needless to say, I'm not insulted.
It's just a line of sheer ignorance in typical left-wing fashion to smear the person you differ with.
Does he have an idea of how many...
Marriages I have helped.
How many unhappy people I have helped become happier.
We're talking in the hundreds of thousands of how many people who were bereft of meaning whom I brought to religion.
Again, I suspect in the tens if not hundreds of thousands of the people that I have given hope to in a time of despair.
But the average fifth grader has done, has really brought more marriages together than I have, among other things.
All right, we continue.
By the way, I think by the time they break for lunch, the fifth graders passed him.
Anyway, Mrs. Betty Bauer says the we must protect our children folks seem eager to insult them.
And that is definitely the case.
All right, so that's a deep comment.
I'm insulting fifth graders by saying that the world may not be better if they're in it, or that the sign is a bad one to make them a good adult.
The purpose of adults is to make children into good, moral, ethical adults.
That is the task.
I think this fails at that task.
You're already terrific is not a good message if you want to make a good adult.
I am not insulting children.
I'm insulting the adults, idiot.
Continue.
We can speculate about why exactly he is so sensitive about messages of positivity and hope and encouragement for kids, but he has actually given us a little bit of a clue as to why he might not like that stuff.
Take a look at this.
It's the opposite of the way many of us were raised.
If my father had said to me, you know, Dennis, the world is better because you are in it, I would have believed that even though he was never drunk, that he was actually drunk.
That gives you a little bit of a window into his family life.
And, you know, I'm not a part of his family.
I can't judge.
But I can have thoughts, and I'm having them right now.
What do you both think?
Yeah, I think that's called telling on yourself.
And my number one takeaway from that video was, be kind to your children.
Otherwise, they might turn out to be conservative.
Okay, that's great.
No, that's precious.
That is precious.
He's right.
In a certain way, he's right.
I will explain.
Hey, everybody.
Dennis Prager here.
I really hit a nerve with my attack on the sign in elementary schools.
The world is a better place because you're in it.
And I think it's part of the narcissism that has been engendered in children.
I'd like to ask these people at the Young Turks, and I will be dialoguing, believe it or not, or debating on their show.
We're trying to set it up now.
But I'd like to ask them a question.
Do they believe, as Tom Brokaw...
He was a liberal fellow, not a leftist, but a liberal, that the World War II generation was, quote, the greatest generation, or at least a great generation, the ones who fought World War II again.
And if he says no, then there's nothing to talk about.
But if he says yes, or she says yes, whichever young Turk I ask the question to, Do you think that any of them were brought up with the message, the world is a better place because you're in it?
I don't.
That's why my father wouldn't have said it to me.
Not because my father didn't love me, but because he didn't spoil me.
So then he says, you see, this is the giveaway.
Ah, Dennis Prager's father didn't love him.
And that's why he turned out conservative.
And that's what the guy said at the end.
Right?
Be kind to your kids or they'll turn out conservative.
That's what they believe.
This is so precious, the clarity that all of this is providing.
I see.
So, for example, all the kids in the inner city without fathers, to discipline them, they turn out conservative or leftist?
To the extent that one could even define them politically.
They certainly didn't turn out conservative.
The kindest people I know were in fact raised by conservative parents.
That doesn't mean that there were no kind people raised by liberal parents.
There's no doubt that there are.
But I believe that the message, you're not so terrific.
You've got to work to be terrific.
We'll do much more to raise a terrific person, morally speaking, than you're terrific.
That's where we differ.
You're terrific is more likely to produce liberal kids.
I couldn't agree more.
It's one of the rare areas of agreement.
You've got to learn to be terrific is more likely to produce a conservative kid.
Okay, I agree with the Young Turks on that.
Go on, please.
People turn out the way that they do, right?
And so apparently his dad was, you know, very mean to him.
So he grew up being a very mean person.
So my father was mean to me, and I grew up...
This is awesome.
It's actually laughable.
But it's not laughable because whatever number of viewers they have believes this.
So I'm a mean person.
Do they have any criteria to establish it?
Would they like to interview a thousand people who have had interactions with me?
Funny, I've been called everything.
This is the first time I've ever been called mean.
Anyway, every adjective has been used.
And my father was mean to me because he didn't say that the world was better because I was in it.
I think he was a good father for not saying that.
I didn't turn out thinking I was the center of the universe like so many on the left do.
They're better than Washington.
They're better than Moses.
They're better than Lincoln.
They're better than Jefferson.
I didn't think that.
I thought that there were so many brilliant, wise, terrific people before me to whom I owed respect and to learn from.
If the world was going to be better because I was in it, man, I had to work damn hard to achieve that.
That's what I was taught.
Clearly, the young Turks were taught they're great.
And it shows.
The narcissism ekes through everything the left says.
Continue, please.
That's what he learned.
Like, his dad told him that he wasn't worth anything.
Right, okay, is that...
You know, so in this matter, is he stupid or is he just...
And I'm not being cute.
My father thought I wasn't worth anything because he didn't say to me that the world is better because I'm in it?
That's quite a jump, isn't it?
What a jump.
You're either the reason the world is better or a reason the world is better in fifth grade, or your father thinks you're not worth anything.
So all the fathers in American history who produced terrific young people and never said this, everybody knows this is new.
This is a piece of nonsense developed by the fools of our time.
Tell kids how great they are in fifth grade.
All the fathers in history who didn't say this thought their kids were worth nothing.
You think Lincoln's father told them this?
Washington's father?
They love Gandhi.
You think Gandhi's father told them this?
Hey, Mohammed.
Mohandas.
Excuse me, not Mohammed.
Mohandas.
You're in fifth grade, but I want you to know the world is better because you're in it.
I'm a prophet.
God, these people.
Oh, my God.
The intellectual level of their discourse.
So staggeringly low.
Continue, please.
So, I mean, now to his original point, what has a fifth grader ever done that's contributed to the world?
I don't know.
Made his parents happier?
Made his grandparents happier?
Okay, so fine.
Okay, okay, wait.
So that's quite possible.
That was true then at birth.
They made the parents happier.
So shall we tell infants as soon as they understand?
Because you have made the world a better place?
So just showing up, you have made the world a better place.
I don't know why that's a great message.
Anyway, it's a family message.
It's not the world.
You made your family happier.
It's ironic that the people who are so pro-choice, pro-abortion even, are so assertive that every child makes the world a better place.
You'd think they'd want more children on Earth.
Then we have a better place.
The left is known for wanting fewer children on Earth.
After all, they cause climate change.
This is precious.
I hit a nerve.
Well, everybody, this is so illuminating.
You have to understand how big this has become, my comments objecting to the sign.
Elementary schools, the world is a better place because you're in it.
I think you need to earn accolades in life.
That makes a better person.
I want to be a person thanks to whom the world is better.
I'm not automatically such a person.
I think it produces a better person.
How to be a good person is the most important question in life.
The left undermines that question.
You're already terrific.
After all, most of them believe we're born with a good nature.
Shows you how foolish they are.
Continue, please.
...happier, and you don't have to solve the theory of relativity by the time you're in fifth grade.
People generally like kids.
They think that they bring sunshine and happiness into their lives.
Okay, what does that have to do with anything?
So why is the world such a mess?
It's not obviously because of kids, but obviously a lot of kids who were so wonderful end up doing a lot of bad things.
Isn't that true?
A lot of bad things happen.
There's a lot of corruption.
Forget the genocide of the 20th century.
100 million noncombatants murdered.
You think they were murdered by narcissists or people who thought that they had to earn a moral place in life?
This has to do with liking kids.
And by the way, not all kids are likable.
These are the same people who tell us what a bullying problem we have in schools.
You think the bullies are narcissistic?
You think bullies think they're terrific or lousy?
I don't know.
But I suspect if I had to bet on it, they'd think they're terrific.
The reason you feel you can hurt another person is because you think you're better than that person.
Continue, please.
But for Prager, that's an unthinkable thought.
You have no value.
The world's not better.
Wait, wait, wait.
You have no value.
God, the stupidity coming from this man.
Not saying to a kid, the world is a better place because you're in it means you have no value?
Wow.
This is very important for you folks to hear all this.
It's one of the rare times the left is confronting me.
Very important.
And I intend to be on that show, hopefully this week.
Let you know.
Okay, everybody.
Please pre-order Deuteronomy, the next volume of my Rational Bible.
See you tomorrow.
Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
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