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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
52:07
Body Diversity
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Dennis Prager here.
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Well, here we are on Thursday already.
May 19th.
You realize that we are approaching...
We're six weeks away from half the year is over.
2022.
Those of us who recall in 2001 was a science fiction movie about the future.
Somebody who was born in 2001 is now...
A senior in college.
Born in 2001. Yes.
So I debated a great deal within myself whether to talk about the Sports Illustrated issue featuring fat models and I I debate it for the obvious reasons, because it's such a sensitive subject, as indeed it should be.
Women's looks are a far more sensitive subject than men's looks.
That is the way of the world, just as within peacocks, men's looks or males' looks are more significant than females' looks.
That is the way in which the human race was built.
The female turns on the male.
And then you have the reproductive capacity.
That's the way it works.
Now, a man should turn on a woman too, but it's very different, very, very different as a general rule.
There are gorgeous men who turn any woman on.
I fully acknowledge that.
But they're very rare.
And not every gorgeous man, by any means, is heterosexual to begin with.
The very fact that it is difficult to discuss this issue proves the point about how what the left has done has made all discussion of reality difficult.
You have to live in the make-believe world of the left in order to avoid controversy and avoid being attacked.
One of the finest humans I know, Jordan Peterson, One of the finest thinkers I know, Jordan Peterson.
Spoke out about this.
Daily Wire reports, Sorry, not beautiful.
Jordan Peterson, Blast Sports Illustrated over plus-sized whimsuit issue cover model.
Now, you can make the case.
There is a case to be made.
Why not feature...
I don't know what word to use.
Overweight?
I mean, overweight doesn't quite do what fat does.
And the issue is not fat shaming or any other stupid slogan that shuts down honest dialogue.
What Jordan Peterson is speaking about is that we have...
We have systematically, or the society via the left, forgetting swimsuit models, in architecture, in art, there has been an assault on the concept of beauty.
And he feels that this is part of it.
Now, there are overweight, truly overweight women who are beautiful.
If one is speaking, of course, about one's face, which is what beautiful usually signifies, that is true.
And God knows that when I see such a woman, my heart breaks for her, because it's not true that every truly overweight person just goes home and eats a box of donuts.
There are very many other forces involved.
Many of which are not even known.
Nutrition is a very, very poorly studied subject in medical schools.
I don't even know if it's addressed.
So the issue of whether one's heart goes out or whether such a woman can even be found attractive by some men, these are all true.
But the swimsuit issue has featured what it considered The ideal, and I thought many of them were too thin.
I said this often.
I fully acknowledge.
I thought that it was a bit weird how thin some of the models have been.
Not all, but what some of them have been.
And I'm not thin-shaming.
So what happened when Jordan Peterson said this?
His looks were attacked.
Which of course is inevitable.
But the idiocy of attacking his looks are that he's not saying, I represent physical beauty.
He's not putting himself up as a model.
Maybe it doesn't matter.
There's a voice in me that says, maybe this doesn't matter.
If it's just...
Let's make some people feel good.
That's one thing, and you can debate whether that is the purpose of what is essentially a beauty contest.
But if it is to say there's no such thing as beauty, every body is equally beautiful, then it's an assault on truth.
The question is, is it...
An act of kindness?
Or an assault on truth?
Or both?
Sorry, not beautiful, Peterson remarked on Twitter in response to a New York Post headline about Yumi Nu, who was announced as the cover model for a Sports Illustrated 2022 swimsuit issue, and no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.
That's what he tweeted.
Peterson illustrated his objection in response to a Twitter user who criticized him.
It's a conscious, progressive attempt to manipulate and retool the notion of beauty, reliant on the idiot philosophy that such preferences are learned and properly changed by those who know better.
But don't let the facts stop you.
Peterson fired back at the user.
Peterson also included links to two scientific studies in his reply.
The first one, published in the journal Infant Behavior and Development, in 1998, showed that babies spent more time looking at faces judged to be attractive by adults.
Interesting, no?
Babies preferred the same faces as adults.
The second of 2009 study published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, remember he's a professor of psychology, found that more attractive women had more children than their less attractive counterparts, while the least attractive men had less children than every other group of men, who had roughly the same number of children, indicating that physical attractiveness may be related to reproductive success rates.
Peterson's tweet came in response to a New York Post interview with New, that's the woman's name, who is a very pretty woman, but quite heavy, who will appear as one of the cover models of the 2022 swimsuit issue, along with model, socialite, and television personality Kim Kardashian, model and singer Kiara, and model May Musk, the mother of Tesla.
And SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
She's how old now?
She's in her 70s?
60s?
No, she's definitely in her 70s.
I think she might even be in her 80s.
She's a good-looking woman.
So that's another interesting question.
We never have associated swimsuit models with a woman in her late 70s or even 80s.
So that, I think, is a positive development.
She's in her 70s.
Okay.
I think that is a positive development.
Portraying women who are not young as sexy is actually a wonderful thing.
But they didn't...
They took a woman who was good-looking and who looks good in a swimsuit.
In the interview, New, that's the heavy one, expressed her excitement at the opportunity and described herself as a champion of body and race diversity.
So what does that mean, body diversity?
So does, essentially, is Sports Illustrated saying anybody qualifies as a model?
Just as everybody qualifies as a valedictorian.
The issue here is not, God forbid, a Peterson attack on the heavy or on the fat.
It's an attack on the notion that there are no standards, that this is just another example.
What does body diversity mean?
The only area left in society where there are still standards of excellence is sports.
I wonder if that'll be shattered.
I don't think so.
But on every other occasion, diversity.
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Yesterday I spent a lot of time on the bum who was the President of the United States.
He used Buffalo to cast hatred upon half this country.
He's a hate monger.
One of the greatest lies in the history of presidential election campaigns was his statement that he...
He wanted to unify the country.
He makes Donald Trump look like a unifier.
Yes, however, if you can keep talking about white racism enough, white supremacy, people might forget that they can't get baby formula, or that gas in California right now is well over $6 a gallon for the first time.
Because of the sick fanatics in the environmentalist movement known as the Greens, having dominance in the Democratic Party and no drilling, you're paying more for energy.
You will probably not have air conditioning the whole summer.
In other words, you won't have it for the entire summer.
There will be brownouts.
Not brought to you by weather.
Brought to you about the Democratic Party.
And this is all fine with the environmentalists, because then they can say, you see, it's not reliable fossil fuel.
The bored and wealthy are very great dangers to a society.
The bored, anybody, the bored and poor are also a danger.
They simply manifest their dangers, their dangerousness, if you will, in different ways.
Here's an amazing story from CWB Chicago.
Chicago.
Just before 2 a.m.
on May 6th, Chicago police dispatchers notified patrol officers that a GPS tracker had located a stolen BMW. The car had been taken from an armed robbery victim in Lakeview the night before.
So they tracked down the stolen BMW. Police found the car on Museum Campus Drive and tried to pull it over.
But the driver sped away, and the cops let it go.
Is that clear?
So far, very clear, right?
It took off.
We tried to put a stop on it, an officer radioed.
We're not following.
We're not chasing.
Show us heading into the station to do a report.
All right, all clear?
They didn't chase the guy who stole the car.
Almost exactly an hour later, that BMW rolled up to the corner of Webster and Wayne in Lincoln Park.
You know that area well, I would assume.
You're from Chicago.
Even I know it.
A gunman got out of it and ambushed 23-year-old Dakota Early in an armed robbery attempt.
Within seconds, Early's life changed forever when the robber shot him three times at close range.
While demanding his phone password, twice in the back, once in his head.
He remains hospitalized.
Doctors had to amputate part of his leg last week.
His jaw, shattered by a bullet, is wired shut, and he will eventually need a voice box to communicate.
Alderman Brian Hopkins told a community meeting on Monday.
On Tuesday, prosecutors charged Tyshon Brownie, 19, with attempted murder and five counts of robbery in connection with Early's shooting and four other holdups.
Police believe the crew responsible for robbing the BMW's owner and Early may have robbed 20 people on the north side since May 4th.
Most of those occurred after police ended their pursuit of the BMW. So a veteran Chicago police officer said, It's easy to count the bad things that happen when pursuits go wrong.
There's no way to count the bad things that happen because a violent person wasn't pursued.
So they have a document, Emergency Vehicle Operations Eluding and Pursuing.
The document explains everything a Chicago cop must know and consider when deciding if they should pursue a vehicle.
It's 13 pages long.
There's a 13-page guide on whether you pursue a guy who is eluding the police.
Officers must conform to the balancing test, which is outlined in the policy.
Why would an officer chase a criminal, given this 13-page document?
The balancing test requires an officer to determine, quote, if the necessity to immediately apprehend the fleeing subject Outweighs the level of inherent danger created by a motor vehicle pursuit.
That's a farce.
What are they, prophets?
Crystal ball readers?
However, it is probably fair to say, I think, at any rate, that it is fair to say...
That a guy who stole a car and then is willing to speed away from police will hurt people.
Would anybody be willing to bet against that?
Critics argue the department puts its thumb on the balancing test scale so it weighs heavily against pursuing almost anyone.
That's right.
This poor man.
It was another black-on-black crime for those of you preoccupied with white supremacy.
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That's the number two.
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Pacific Time, 3 p.m., that's 6 p.m.
Eastern Time, etc., etc., you can hear him.
Larry Elder has moved on, by the way, completely positive between him and Salem.
In fact, I think he's going to even be doing some things with Salem.
It was just Larry's desire to have his own podcast, and Larry...
Has now a successor in Brandon Tatum.
And Brandon, you're terrific, and it is a joy to have you.
Did you ever do a daily show before?
Well, Dennis, I want to start out by saying thank you so much for having me on, and it is more of a pleasure for me to be on your show.
I think you're such an amazing guy, so I think the feeling is mutual.
I've never done a daily show to this magnitude.
I had a little small channel here in Phoenix.
I had a weekend show that was an hour long, and then I would fill in for the guests that would do their show from 12 to 3. I fill in a little bit, and it was a show where it was like four people on there, so I didn't get a chance to talk much.
So nothing to this degree, and I think that this is such a blessing for me to be able to...
To allow God to use me over the airways to touch American people, touched American people.
By the way, while it's not language that I have used often, it's exactly how I feel God has allowed me to do this.
I don't say He's appointed me.
I don't know how God works.
But I do believe that I have to answer to God for all the work that I do.
So I just wanted to say I resonate with that.
Let me get your take on Buffalo and particularly the speech of the president.
I said, Brandon, I thought it was the ugliest speech given by a president in American history.
But I don't want to leave you on if you thought it was a great speech.
Oh, no.
Trust me, we are kindred spirits.
He did not give a great speech.
He did not give a unifying speech.
They push fake propaganda to be partisan.
I mean, his speech had nothing to do with the people of Buffalo, essentially.
It had nothing to do with gun violence.
It had everything to do with politics.
They are trying to lead the American people on to the midterms and lead them into the 2024 election.
That's what the Democrats are all about.
They are worrying about power and not worrying about the people.
So it was a virtue signal on the backs of the dead people there at Buffalo.
That's right.
So I want to read to you something from a columnist at the Washington Post, the black guy named Brian Broom.
So I'm going to read this and get your reaction.
I keep telling my black friends that it's just going to get worse.
I keep telling them that some white men fed a steady diet of nonsense and statistics about the state of whiteness in the United States will only grow more convinced that people of color are the enemy, which means the sort of violence we saw over the weekend at a supermarket in Buffalo will get worse. which means the sort of violence we saw over the What's your reaction?
Well, I think that gentleman is completely out of his mind.
He probably needs to put down drugs or whatever he's using that's brainwashing him.
Because if you look at any statistical data, I don't care about your feelings.
I don't care about none of that.
Look at the statistical data.
The leading causes of death for young black men in America between 18 and 35 are at the hands of another black man through murder.
We don't have to worry about some white supremacists.
I have never seen a white supremacist.
I've never seen a Klan member.
This idiot that decided to be radicalized through channels outside of conservative talk radio, channels outside of conservative news outlets.
He was radicalized from what he said on 4chan.
He considered himself to be a leftist.
He considered himself to be a populist.
So he had nothing to do with conservative values.
He mentioned he hated conservative values.
So you're not going to be killed by a white man if you're black in this country, statistically proven.
You're not going to be killed by a police officer.
It's more likely you get struck by lightning than to get killed by a police officer as an unarmed black man in America.
So I really feel sorry for black people who allow emotionalism to make them susceptible to lies.
But the truth of the matter is, that's not the biggest concern for black men in America, is to be killed by some left-wing, deranged white supremacist.
Yes, that's right.
We'll be back in a moment.
Brandon Tatum, the Officer Tatum Show on Salem Network every day.
Another fighter and knows his stuff.
Alright, back in a moment.
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Hi, everybody.
Speaking with the newest talk show host with the national show on the Salem Network, my colleague and friend, Brandon Tatum.
The Officer Tatum Show officer is because he was a police officer.
Brandon, I read a report from Chicago in my first hour about cops letting a BMW filled with robbers get away because chasing is now considered too dangerous.
They went on to commit 20 more robberies.
In one of the cases, they shot a man in the head.
By the way, apropos of what you said, it was black shooting a black.
Black guy has no voice now.
He has to use a voice box.
Lost part of his leg.
All because the officers wouldn't chase the car because they have nothing to gain.
If there's an accident in the chase or even the guy being chased hits somebody, then they're sued or they're suspended.
Cops are not chasing.
This is another example of the reduction of police effort in America.
So you were a police officer.
What's your take on the chase issue?
Well, the chase issue is multifaceted, right?
There are some chases that are not warranted, meaning if a person has a suspended driver's license, do you want to chase that person through a populated city?
Probably not.
But when you're talking about people who are armed and dangerous...
And that could inflict harm on other American citizens.
You have the ability, you have the responsibility as a police officer to protect the public.
So in those situations where you have violent fleeing criminals, I think that it should be 100% acceptable to pursue them.
Because if you don't, what happens?
They go on and commit more crimes.
They go on and kill other people and put other individuals' lives in danger.
I think that it's very sad that our police officers have to hold back on rescuing.
The people that they are sworn to protect and serve because of political correctness.
We should stand behind our police officers, understand that they have a dangerous job, understand that things may not go 100% right, knowing that they're acting in good faith.
And I believe when we get back to the point of supporting our police officers, allowing them to do their job, supporting them when they're doing what's right and it may go wrong, I think we'll see a reduction in crime and we'll see the police departments around the country recover.
That was a great answer.
It wasn't even in the article.
That was an interesting thing.
Your point is well taken.
The chase, you should determine whether you chase what their offense was.
That's right.
Out-of-date tags is not the same as armed robbers.
I think that that should be the guidelines.
Do you...
Do you still have friends in the police force, or have you moved on?
Oh, no.
A lot of my friends that I still have today, I mean, when we were on the police department, we were like family.
So we have friendships for the rest of my life.
And so I still talk to them, I still communicate with them, and I also have gained a few more friends from around the world, or not around the world, but around the country, who reach out to me who are police officers that are still on duty.
Where were you, in Phoenix or Tucson?
Tucson.
Right, that's what I thought.
Okay, you're broadcasting from Phoenix.
So, what is the morale, if you can generalize?
I salute every police officer who has stayed a police officer, given the staggering amount of belittling of policemen that has taken place.
Yeah, I would say the morale is probably down 60%.
I mean, all the police officers that I know that are still working, they're ready to retire.
They're trying to get out of there.
Many of them have chosen different professions.
It is sad what has happened to policing in America.
It's impossible for them to get qualified people or an influx of qualified people to join the police department because they're terrified.
That's right.
Well, it takes a special mind to believe that fewer policemen means less crime.
You really need to have gone to college many years to believe that.
Well, you know, Dennis, they do this mathematical equation to fool the public.
They eliminate police officers.
Therefore, there's less police officers out.
Therefore, police officers are less engaged with the population.
They're arresting less people because they're not arresting people at all.
Therefore, the city, the mayor, they can say, crime is down.
Crime is not down.
It's just that we cannot record crime because cops are not out proactively policing and they're not making an arrest.
They're allowing people to go out and commit 45 extra crimes.
They may arrest them for one of the crimes because now it has gotten to the point where somebody's been shot and killed or shot and seriously injured.
They are fluffing the numbers.
It's not as much police interactions anymore.
There's not enough police.
There's no proactive policing in many of these cities.
Therefore, there's no arrests being made.
Crime is still going on.
Crime is rampant.
You ask anybody to live in these cities, they're terrified.
I have a friend who has a major company in Chicago, and his company has completely been absolved because the crime is too out of control for them to maintain they're in Chicago.
These real people are having real issues, and the city mayor, these Democrats, do not care.
They push false narratives so they can get reelected.
It's the ultimate in what's called gaslighting.
You think you're seeing all these murders and all these robberies of stores, but hey, crime is going down.
Are you going to believe your eyes, your lying eyes?
That's really what it amounts to.
Let me end with a personal question, because whenever I have a black conservative on, I ask them this question.
What percentage of your extended family agree with you?
Well, you know what?
I have to tell you when it started and where it's at now.
Where it started, I don't think nobody agreed with me at all.
And now, I just did a family event.
We went to the Rangers game.
It was 20 of my family, all Tatums.
My great uncle, who's 80 years old, went to his first baseball game.
And they all agree with me.
Even the ones who say, you know what?
I'm not really a big fan of Donald Trump, but I tell you what, everything that you say is right.
I listen to your show.
I'm glad that you're saying what you're saying.
My uncle said, he said, the Democrats, that he used, you know, language that I will not use on the show, but he said, Al Sharpton ain't, you know what?
And he said, them Democrats ain't, you know what?
They have never done nothing for black people.
And I almost teared.
Alright, do me a favor.
Invite me to the next Tatum family reunion.
Yes.
I love you, Brandon.
Thank you.
congratulations hi everybody Dennis Prager here and I'm delighted I have one of the world's greatest conservative thinkers, and I try to never use hyperbole.
So I mean that quite literally, one of the world's greatest conservative thinkers, Yoram Hazoni.
And his book is just out this week, Conservatism, a Rediscovery.
I'll ask him why he says rediscovery.
He's chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation, president of the Herzl Institute in Israel, and I have the delight of having had a Shabbat dinner at his home with my wife and his precious family.
Your family could truly be used as sort of a model family.
You don't even have to react.
No family is devoid of any issues.
I take that as a given.
That's for sure.
Right.
But given the normative realm of issues, your family is precious beyond words.
How many children do you have?
Yeah, Ellen, I have nine children and now three grandchildren.
So I'll ask you, this has nothing to do with your conservatism book, but on a human level, I'm curious.
So did you embrace, with your first grandchild, did you embrace the title grandparent immediately, or was there a voice in you going, wait a minute, I'm still a kid?
No, we embraced it immediately.
See, I'm immature.
There you go.
I fully acknowledge.
A streak of immaturity in me that it took me a little while to make peace with the fact that me, this guy, is a grandparent.
I just want to say you are an advanced version of me.
Look, it's an indescribable change in your life.
It's like you've been promoted.
It's like this gigantic change in altitude that you look down and you see two living generations.
It's vast.
I agree.
I'm very...
As one caller said to me once, Dennis...
I have the perfect description of you, transparent.
And so I've offered some transparency into something I'm not proud of, but I thought it was fun to acknowledge.
So one more story, if you would, on the personal level.
You want to briefly tell everybody about your dog?
That's not my dog.
It's my son's dog.
Your son's dog.
Yeah.
Yes, my son was serving in an elite combat unit, like a commando unit during the Gaza War.
And they were walking through streets that had been booby-trapped, including booby-trapped animals, like animals walking around with explosives on them.
And one day they were sitting and having lunch and this dog walked past them and started barking at some sheep or something to get it away from them.
And this dog that they found in Gaza started protecting this Israeli army unit.
And they realized that the dog was hungry and hadn't been taken care of, but the dog was trying to take care of them.
And when it came time to evacuate, the dog wanted to get on the bus to take them back across the border.
So my son took the dog across the border and they adopted this dog that protected them in Gaza.
What a story.
You should write that up.
It is so touching.
And I remember meeting the dog, and it was a wonderful experience.
So, folks, Yoram Hazoni is one of the great explainers of the conservative value system.
And the book is called Conservatism, a Rediscovery.
Hazoni is H-A-Z-O-N-Y. It's up at DennisPrager.com or anywhere you want to look for the book.
So, when in America, let's talk about America here.
When in America was conservatism a robust and even dominant philosophy?
Dennis, I just have to ask you, I'm sorry, I don't have patience to wait.
Have you gotten to the part of the book where I talk about your impact on me and my friends at Princeton when we were becoming religious?
Yes, I'm very touched that you wrote about me, and I'm very touched that you're saying it on the air.
I mentioned this with great pride to my producer right before you came on.
Thank you.
So to answer your question, During the 1980s, during the Reagan, Thatcher, Pope John Paul II years, there was a robust conservatism.
The conservatism of those days was an alliance of anti-Marxist liberals with conservatives.
So not every single person in that movement was on board with everything that was conservative.
But in addition to yourself, when we college students in the 1980s were founding the Princeton Torrey, this Reaganite student magazine, and adopting a conservative way of life and becoming conservative people, we had...
Thinkers like Irving Kristol and George Will in those days was very much a traditional conservative in yourself.
And I think that, to quote Irving, there was a broad understanding in the Reagan administration, for example, that conservatism is not just about freedom, that it's not just about economic liberties, that conservatism, as Irving put it, It consisted of three pillars, religion, nationalism, and economic growth.
And he always said, and I think many people understood, that economic liberties are absolutely crucial for economic growth, and you can't do without them.
But on the other hand, everything has to have its limits.
And the purpose of religion, which Crystal said was the most important part of conservatism, the purpose of religion and the nation is to be able to keep the right balance and the boundaries between, you know, between the guardrails, people say today, between between the guardrails, people say today, between what should be permitted and what's self-destructive.
So I think we had a pretty good conservatism in those days.
Like everything, it could have been improved.
A real wrong turn afterwards when the conservative movement kind of dropped religion and nationalism as important central features.
That's great.
That is great.
So, again, the pillars of traditional conservatism, at least in America, is religion, nationalism, and economic growth.
Right.
As you may know, I defined the American value system also on three pillars, which I got from America's coins and bills.
The monetary paper that we use, along with the coins.
Liberty, e pluribus unum, and in God we trust.
And so, it's essentially what you just said, just in different words.
Liberty with the economic freedom.
In God we trust is the religion, and E Pluribus Unum is the nationalism.
Is that fair?
Yeah, absolutely.
That's great.
See, folks?
There really is a way to define conservatism in the United States.
So do you see what's happening now as this epochal struggle for Western civilization, or is that overstated?
That's maybe understated.
It's certainly true.
I think it's very important for people to understand that the United States kind of had a ruling set of ideas after the Second World War.
That ruling set of ideas had already set aside You know, God in the schools, Bible in the schools, those things were banned by the Supreme Court in the 1960s.
So I think that the post-war liberal ideas that dominated America were very far from perfect.
But, you know, you could definitely say, look, America gave freedom for everybody to do everything.
Yes, all right, all right.
Hold on there because I want to remind everybody, conservatism, a rediscovery.
Yoram Hazoni, the book is up at DennisPrager.com.
The Dennis Prager Show.
Speaking to Yoram Hazoni, one of the world's leading conservative thinkers.
I'll tell you, by the way, Yoram, in light of what I just said about you being one of the truly leading thinkers today, whether we win or lose, if we lose, the West loses, and I only see darkness.
But putting that aside, it can never be said that we didn't make the case for our values.
I mean...
It wasn't for lack of intellectual firepower that we would have lost if we lose.
I just wanted to say that.
I'm not saying it is a compliment.
It is a compliment.
That's not why I'm saying it.
I just want people to understand our arguments are out there.
If people don't want to read them, then there's little we can do about that.
But we're doing our best, and we're doing pretty well.
Now, I just want to go to one aspect of the three pillars of conservatism.
You mentioned religion, nationalism, and economic freedom.
So, I'm totally on board.
In God we trust, e pluribus unum, and liberty.
I have made the case much of my life that conservatives blew it.
The religion part.
And they have been, most or many conservatives have been as secularized as leftists.
Why is that?
Well, it's because the...
Look, it's a...
Sorry, it's a complicated question, but to make something complicated simple, many thinkers of the Enlightenment, the rationalist stream in the Enlightenment, set as its primary goal the destruction of the standing of the Bible and religion.
So there's been a 200-year war, 250-year war, to discredit Tanakh, to discredit the Bible, to discredit Scripture.
And they won.
I mean, they succeeded in convincing the educated elites, first in Europe and then in America, they succeeded in convincing them that the Bible was darkness and foolery, that it doesn't have ideas that are important to your life, that it doesn't have ideas that had an impact on Western civilization and, in fact, shaped Western civilization.
And the result is, today, You know, in America, the Bible is banned from the schools.
You know, people have all sorts of reasons for it.
It doesn't matter.
Children go every day to school, to school that's been stripped clean of God and Scripture.
And what is not honored is dishonored.
If you don't have teachers saying the Bible is the basis of our civilization...
And the foundation of a good life and of a just society.
If you don't have teachers saying that, and children don't hear it every day, then they learn from the silence that Bible and religion and God are to be dishonored.
And so that argument has been one among the elites.
The universities have been working for 150 years.
On developing methods of deconstructing the Bible so that if you go to university and try to study the Bible, most places, there's not a single course you can take about biblical ideas.
And so that has been one.
And I think that if we talk about what's happening now, it is catastrophic.
2020 was the year that the left broke the resistance of the liberals.
And liberal institutions, you know, like where I studied at Princeton, have gone around removing the names of, you know, liberal presidents like Woodrow Wilson from the buildings.
Now, liberalism has shown itself, liberalism, I'm talking about liberalism, stripped of the conservative part, stripped of God and scripture and the nation.
That kind of liberalism has proved that it is incapable of fighting Marxism.
It's incapable of fighting the left.
And within two generations of kicking the Bible and God out of the schools, the liberalism has collapsed too.
And so when we ask ourselves, what do we need to do now?
I think both at the, you know, at the policy level, but also at the personal level, look, this is a biblical.
Situation.
We're being told that this society is on the verge of destruction.
And the traditional way of understanding how you're supposed to react to this kind of situation is through tshuva.
That's a Hebrew biblical word for repentance.
And repentance means that you can't just talk about Economic issues and freedoms.
You can't just talk even about national interest.
At this point, regardless of what you personally, I'm not talking about you, Dennis, but the listeners, regardless of what you personally think about God or the Bible, you have to understand that the only force that's strong enough to save America and the Western nations, the only force that has a chance, is biblical religion.
And whether you know it or whether you like it or whether you don't like it, it doesn't matter at this point.
You have to choose a side.
It's going to be Marxist revolution or it's going to be a return to biblical religion, to Christianity and to Judaism.
And that's in your personal lives too.
I want everybody to know two things about what you just heard.
First, I agree with every single word exactly as you put it.
Secondly, These are two religious Jews having this discussion.
And while it is unfortunately true that most Jews are on the left, because they have left these biblical beliefs and values, there are a lot of us around just as it has happened in Christianity where so many have left these biblical beliefs.
One more reason this book is so important, Conservatism, a Rediscovery by Yoram Hazoni.
Yoram, it is always a delight to talk to you.
Please keep writing and love to your family.
Thank you, Dennis.
All God's blessings to you and your work.
I have been blessed.
Thank you.
Dennis Prager here.
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