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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:06:54
The Sunshine State
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Dennis Prager here.
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I'm Dennis Prager.
Final broadcast from Miami.
I've been spending a week here.
I will talk to you about it at length or at greater length next week when I return to California.
What I've been doing here with Jordan Peterson and some others.
It's been a very moving, powerful experience.
You will get to experience it later in the year.
You know, when I return to California, not only is there no joy in me, there's a certain dread.
If you would have told me when I moved to California in my 20s that I would ever not be excited going back to California, I would have thought you were crazy.
If you ever need an example of the left ruins everything it touches, just say California.
Of course, you could say America.
You can say culture.
You can say schools, medicine.
But just say California.
California in the American mind meant freedom, excitement, joy, joie de vivre, joy of living.
Now it means fecal matter in the midst of major cities.
The emblem of California today might well show poop, human poop, on the street.
How do people vote?
It's such a riddle.
How do people vote for what ruins their lives?
You have to, there is only one, excuse me, there are two possibilities.
There is a nihilist streak in you, like in George Soros, like in, as Marx quoted, the devil in Goethe's Faust.
Everything that exists should be destroyed.
Some people, Antifa, that is what Antifa believes, for example.
That is what AOC believes.
Much of the Democratic Party believes.
But most people who vote Democrat don't believe that.
So the only other possibility is brainwash.
I see before me an utterly deteriorating state.
It is less free.
It is less joyful than Florida.
There was no comparison.
The joie de vivre in this state is just remarkable.
I never spoke of Florida in laudatory terms.
I never spoke about it at all, to be honest.
I've been to Florida about 50 times.
My beloved Aunt Chippy lived here.
I flew here at seven years of age and then flew back to New York where I grew up, also at seven years of age.
In those days, if a seven-year-old wanted to fly or the parents wanted the kid to fly, they took him to the airport, said goodbye at the gate, and then somebody picked the kid up at the destination.
I don't know for whom it is worse.
Kids today who have never seen how wonderful America was?
Older people like me who saw how America was wonderful and now see what is done to it today.
It's not perhaps an important question, but it's an interesting question.
So I have no joy in returning, except obviously my wife, it's a rare occasion.
She couldn't come with me.
It's a big deal to me to have my wife come with me wherever I travel.
At least for more than a day or two.
But it just didn't work out this time.
This was a sudden invitation.
And obviously, I'm very happy to see her.
I'm very happy to see my friends, the community that I have helped build up in making a synagogue there.
But the thought of going back to California from Florida, It's like going back to Eastern Europe from Austria during the Cold War, which I did very many times, and that's why I use that analogy.
Wikipedia editors feverishly change article on recessions to match Biden talking points.
There is such a perfect example that we now have of the...
Left-wing nature of the Democratic Party and all of the media, New York Times, Washington Post, they are Pravda to the Democrats.
They are Pravda to leftism.
Pravda was a Soviet communist newspaper.
A recession had a definition.
Not anymore.
Because they would have to admit that there is a recession.
I'm not sure it means that much.
The average American who was suffering economically, Is not sitting down and saying, gee, I wonder if this is a recession.
That I can't afford what I am buying and used to buying.
That my rent has gone higher and my income has stayed the same.
And that everything pertaining to energy, which means everything, is so much more expensive.
Gee, I wonder if it's a recession.
Not sure the average American gives a hoot.
I don't even particularly give a hoot.
I just give a hoot about truth.
An edit war broke out on Wikipedia, Breitbart reports, this week over the definition of recession.
As the Biden administration and the corporate media take the unprecedented step of denying the U.S. is in recession, even after two consecutive quarters of negative growth, which has been the definition of recession for a very long time.
More than 70 edits to the page about recessions were made before the site locked the entry, preventing further changes.
The edit successfully de-emphasized the broad consensus definition of recession to consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, instead parroting the Biden administration's talking points.
So let me tell you, it's very important that you know, if you are looking up some historical facts, if you are looking up, as I often do, the keys of, let's say, all of Haydn's quartets, Wikipedia is fantastic.
I sent donations to Wikipedia in the past, until I got locked out of my own page, which has such a distorted view of who I am.
I can't edit my own page in Wikipedia.
I'm a well-known conservative, so we don't want to have too much truth on that page.
Yes, people don't know that.
Wikipedia is useless on anything.
It's as useful as the New York Times on any controversial issue or controversial person.
Editors of the leftist-dominated online encyclopedia are pushing a definition of recession that is unusually broad and favors the Biden administration's claims that no recession has occurred.
Why did they tamper with it at all?
Why didn't they leave recession as it is?
This definition from the National Bureau of Economic Research claims that a recession, quote, is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the market lasting more than a few months.
What was until recently the broad consensus on the definition of a recession to consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth remains at the top of the page, but editors have been attempting to remove it.
This definition is also described as the United Kingdom's definition.
Hmm.
The article continues to note further down the page in a section on the definition that in a 1975 New York Times article, economic statistician Julius Shiskin suggested several rules of thumb for defining a recession, one of which was two down quarters of GDP. In response to the edit war, senior Wikipedia editors have locked the page on recession, preventing users from making further snap edits to it.
Anyway.
So it is.
I'm going to look that up and see what appears there.
Anyway, I welcome you to the show, Dennis Prager Show.
Yesterday I was reading to you and I didn't get to finish because I had to really terrific...
I had terrific guests on yesterday.
About what's happening in Portland public schools where they don't use girls and boys anymore.
They don't use mom and dad.
They don't use Mrs., Mr., or Miss, or even Ms. They don't use boyfriend and girlfriend.
Instead, they have people, folks.
They're big on the X like in Latinx.
Guardians, mix.
So everybody, there's no Mrs., there's no Miss, there's no Ms., there's no Mr., there's no Mix.
The attempt to obliterate gender.
I may be the only one, at least the only one I know of.
I never think I'm the only one.
There's a lot of bright people out there.
But I'm the only one I know of who said that when they said gender doesn't matter in the battle for same-sex marriage, It was a very slippery slope.
Rising interest rates, stock volatility, out-of-control inflation.
People are concerned about what the future holds financially.
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Dennis Prager.
I have achieved the status of a...
What do you call it, Sean?
What am I again?
A promo code.
Wow.
Very few people can say.
I think there are more...
There are definitely more astrophysicists than promo codes.
You don't think?
No, no, no.
Human promo codes.
Yes.
Sean, you should go in the punishment room for that doubt.
All right.
I normally don't take calls this early, but A, it's happiness hour.
B, I really want to reemphasize the point that I made about going back to California.
So let's go to David in Los Angeles.
Hello, David.
Hi, Dennis.
How are you?
Well, thank you.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
Yeah, you mentioned earlier about every time you, now that you come back to L.A., you feel an unease about it.
And I really share that sentiment.
I used to live in Paris, France.
I've been back for seven years.
And I was always excited to come back here.
And now, with all the nonsense going on, You know the expression, there's a thin line between love and hate, and that's usually what we apply to couples, to people that are in love.
Well, that's how I feel about L.A. I used to love it here, the weather, the lifestyle, the beaches, and now I just can't stand it here anymore.
Yep, so this is the...
Look, it's the first time in California history it has lost population.
It's actually lost a seat in the House because it's lost so many people.
And remember how many people move here who are brand-new immigrants, legal and illegal, especially illegal.
And I don't know if they qualify to vote or not, but they do.
And I don't know if they qualify in the census.
But whatever it might be, we are a losing population in that state.
For good reason.
It's my bond with people that keeps me there.
It's not even the weather, and the weather is the most beautiful weather in the world.
The possible exception of Perth, Australia, and Pretoria.
Is it Pretoria?
Let's see, in South Africa.
I think it's Pretoria.
There are very few places with the weather of the West Coast of the United States, and especially California.
Here's another one.
Steve in Arcadia, California.
Hello.
Hey, Dennis.
Thanks for taking my call, a fellow traveler in the figurative and literal sense.
I just spent five days in Key West, and I've traveled to Florida many, many times over the last 20 years, 25 years because of family and stuff.
I moved to L.A. originally in the 80s from the Midwest.
I was intoxicated with the place for so many years, but I'd say pretty much since the pandemic, coming back to Los Angeles is the most depressing experience that I've ever had in my life.
Wow.
All right.
So, my friends, I represent a lot of people.
I never thought I would talk this way.
The first time I went to Los Angeles, I was 25 or 24 years old.
I was a New Yorker.
One of the...
I don't know how many vivid memories any of us have of things way in the past, but this is a vivid psychological memory.
It was at JFK Airport, and I looked up on...
The screen for flights, and I saw flight whatever it was, American Airlines, Los Angeles.
I had a palpable sense of excitement.
I am finally going to California.
The ability of left-wing nihilism to destroy is nowhere more obvious than in California.
I was reading to you about Portland schools.
It is an amazing thing, the Portland school issue, what they're doing.
Flags, let's see, what else do they have here?
Students are shown photographs of gender-nonconforming individuals encouraged to celebrate the flags for non-binary, genderqueer, genderfluid, and two-spirit identities.
For some students, the subversion of the gender binary might also involve a gender transition.
The curriculum provides a detailed explanation of how to, quote, pause puberty through hormones and or surgeries, unquote, and advice on adopting a non-binary identity and set of pronouns.
Our vice president, a truly low-life human being, a nothing.
I played the tape of her this week at a meeting, of course, masked.
Masked.
Unbelievable.
Two and a half years after the pandemic began, she's masked.
And she announces, it's unbelievable, she announced her preferred pronouns to the group of people who were gathered with her.
By the end of fifth grade, the curriculum explicitly asks students to make a commitment to change.
According to the dictates of gender ideology, students receive a list of six commitments, including I commit to learning more about what LGBTQIA2S plus words mean and how they have changed over time.
I commit to learning about the history and leadership of black trans women.
Boy, if there's a subject that has been indefensibly ignored in...
Elementary school curricula?
It's black trans women.
Do they learn anything about grammar?
Do they learn history?
Do they learn how to write properly?
No, but they will learn about black trans women.
And parents will send their kids to Oregon schools.
Back in a moment.
The Dennis Prager Show.
One of my top assistants notes the following.
When Reagan, Wilson, and Duke Magin were governors of California, no liberal announced how much they dreaded returning to California.
That's right.
The Democrats are the leftists now, and they destroy everything they touch.
Hey, so listen to this, my friends.
One of the claims of the left that I heard when I was in graduate school at Columbia University in the 1970s, that's a long time ago, which confirmed to me that I was in an institution dedicated to lying.
Columbia has deteriorated exponentially since I was there, and it was not committed to much truth when I was there.
So one of the lies I was told, and every student has told this to this day at Columbia and virtually every other university, blacks cannot be racist.
That, along with poverty, causes murder and rape.
and other violent crimes and that anti-communists were wrong and that men and women were basically the same you have to understand there's more sick stuff there's more lying today on campuses but this is not new only the extent is due We were not told men give birth.
We were told there's no difference between men and women, and that led to men give birth.
But one of the big ones was blacks cannot be racist.
A claim of 100% absurdity, a 100% lie.
It's not partially true.
It's entirely false.
Anyone can be a racist.
It's almost like saying a black can't be a bank robber.
Black can't be a racist.
So listen to this.
This is brand new news, alright?
What's the date on this thing here?
The 27th.
Two black teenage girls in New York City were arrested Tuesday.
That is, let's see, Friday, three days ago.
Charged with hate crimes over the brutal attack on a 57-year-old white woman riding a bus in Queens earlier this month.
The New York Police Department said that a 15-year-old girl and a 16-year-old girl were arrested on Tuesday in the confines of the 102nd Precinct.
They each faced two counts of assault while carrying out a hate crime.
And aggravated harassment while carrying out a hate crime.
Their names were not released by police due to their ages.
I don't quite follow that.
This is serious crime.
NYPD released a video and a photo showing three black girls walking down a city street earlier this month.
About 6.50 p.m., police said, the three unidentified individuals, now 2R, approached a 57-year-old female passenger on the southbound MTA bus in the vicinity of Jamaica Avenue and Woodhaven Boulevard, struck her in the head with an unknown object, causing a laceration and bleeding.
They carried out the attack while making anti-white statements, police said.
God, even Fox News capitalizes white.
Oh my God.
The individuals fled on foot and the victim was removed to Jamaica Hospital.
The woman received three staples on her head because of the injuries.
The victim, 57-year-old Jill Lacroix, told the outlet she has three biracial children, is a grandmother of five, and currently works as a bartender.
The woman recounted the attack to the newspaper, saying one of the teenage assailants with green hair began shouting that she hates white people, the way they talk, and accused her of being a fan of former President Trump.
I will read to you more of the things that they said to this woman when they beat her.
So tell me, is it a lie or is it partially true or fully true that a black can't be a racist?
Hmm?
We'll put this piece up.
DennisPrager.com.
We should put it, we should juxtapose it with blacks can't be racist.
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MyPillow.com promo code Prager.
It's the happy, happy, happy, happy hour.
It's the happy, happy, happy, happy hour.
From Florida.
From Florida.
Yes, it is.
The original lyrics.
Amazing.
Hey, everybody.
The Happiness Hour every Friday, the second hour of the show.
Because the happy make the world better and the unhappy make it worse.
So join me.
It's the happy, happy, happy, happy end.
All right.
Download the Sando News Channel app and watch me if you want.
I won't comment on whether you want to or not.
Yes, my...
Say it again, Sean?
No, they're not cryons.
They're chyrons.
Oh, my God.
What I have to deal with.
Oh, my God.
It's difficult.
It is difficult, my friends.
Let me recover from that.
Oh, this is a PTSD moment.
All right, I'm back.
Hey, everybody.
The Happiness Hour.
I really believe that.
The happy make the world better, the unhappy make it worse.
I'm not blaming all unhappy people for their unhappiness.
I'm just telling you the truth.
It's a virtue to pursue happiness.
It is a moral virtue like pursuing goodness and nobility and dignity and kindness and fairness.
Okay, y'all, I have a topic that arose solely as a result of doing the Happiness Hour now 23 years.
That's a big chunk of time, 23 years.
I have never been on on a Friday and not done the Happiness Hour.
There were times it was tempting given very bad news in the world, even the week of 9-11.
I did the happiness hour.
Because you have to talk about happiness when things are bad.
If you only talk about happiness when things are good, it's not a particularly useful talk.
So this has arisen, or this arose, years ago.
And had I not done a happiness hour all the time, talked to so many people, no, not to, with, with so many people, I would not have known this.
So I'd like you to call in and tell me, do you know people who do not want to be happy?
1-8 Prager-776-877-243-7776 It's an amazing thing when you think about that.
Are there people who don't want to be happy?
I had no sense of that.
Until it arose on some of the shows.
I mean, it's like saying you don't want to be healthy.
You don't want to be happy.
And yet, the argument was made, and it seemed to me to be accurate.
There are people who don't want to be happy.
Now, why would somebody not want to be happy?
So here are some possible reasons.
One is they get more attention being miserable.
If they're happy, they feel they will get less attention from friends, from a...
Parent, I think especially from a parent, the squeaky wheel gets the grease or something like that.
The squeaky wheel gets vitamin D. I think that's the phrase.
So that could be one reason why people don't want to be happy because they get more attention.
They're, so to speak, rewarded for their being miserable.
Another possibility is if they became happy, they would lose their resentments.
And people seem to be very attached to their resentments.
I'm laughing because the thought to me is so foreign.
But I think there's a lot of truth to that.
If I am happy, that means I have let go of all these resentments.
And they seem to give a lot of people meaning and fill their emptiness.
If they have nothing to resent, Then there are others for whom that would undermine their whole theory of life, their entire political and social stance.
God, if I don't resent America, for example, if I don't resent men, or if I don't resent whites, what happens to me?
Oof!
I lose my raison d'etre.
I lose my reason for being.
The whole basis of my outlook on life is based on resentment.
These are very interesting things to address.
Why some people just don't want to be happy.
And as I said, I learned that from you.
It never occurred to me in all of my thinking about happiness that everybody doesn't want to be happy.
That everybody, excuse me, that there are people who don't.
I just assumed everybody wants to be.
I still have to believe most people do, at least in our society.
You know, I tell religious people, by the way, Christians and Jews, for that matter, Muslims, Any religion.
I can reply to Hindus, Buddhists.
If you are known to be religiously active in your religion, and you are an unhappy person, you are the best advertisement for atheism.
Of course.
If your religion is so impotent that it cannot make you a happier person, Then that's an indictment of your religion.
But I am convinced, you folks calling in have taught me this, and now I am absolutely convinced that the number of people who do not want to be happy, A, that they exist, and B, that the number has increased.
Because you let go of your victimhood.
To be happy.
And that, folks, is as addictive as heroin.
I am a victim is as addictive as drugs, alcohol, gambling, whatever addictions there are out there.
I learned this.
I learned the idea that not everybody wants to be happy from you.
And then these reasons are reasons that I'm offering.
If you're unhappy, it means you're not in a constant state of complaining.
I have to believe that for some people, complaining is literally part of their nature.
Giving up complaining is like giving up water and air.
There seem to be a lot of reasons.
Now that I have been apprised of the fact that there are people who don't want to be happy, there seem to be a lot of reasons why that may be the case.
All right, let's see what you have to say.
Mary, no, excuse me, Nancy in Lake Mary, Florida.
Hello.
Hi, how are you?
All right.
Sean, this is about as loud as I have ever heard a call.
I'm sorry, I'm on speakerphone in my car.
No, no, not your phone.
Yeah, go ahead.
Yep.
We've met twice, once at my synagogue and once at a political event at the Lake Mary Event Center.
I was the rare Jewish Republican female that you had met.
Hold on.
Hold on.
I think we need to celebrate this.
A Jewish Republican female.
Correct.
All right.
Let me ask you something.
Do you know any other people who fit those criteria?
Yeah, we do have a pretty decent-sized group of friends here that fit that criteria.
Hey, I've got to come to Lake Mary.
Well, yes.
You have been here before.
You just come back.
I do.
All right, hold on.
I want to hear your take on people who don't want to be happy.
What a joy.
I'm sure she's happier than...
Many other Jewish females.
Promo code Prager.
Awesome.
Happiness Hour every Friday, second hour of the show.
There's no doubt that there are people who don't want to be happy.
Why is that?
I've offered some theories, and do you agree that these people exist?
Back to Nancy in Florida.
A rare breed, a Jewish female conservative.
Hi.
And cigar smoker.
That's even rarer, I agree.
Okay, so before I get into the topic, years ago you had said unhappy people are most happy when they make other people around them unhappy, and it was like, hit me like a bolt of lightning.
Totally explaining a couple people in my life.
That's correct.
Many unhappy people resent happy people.
Yeah, yes, exactly.
They find them obnoxious.
All right, go ahead.
So my brother-in-law is very much what you described with a person who's addicted to blah, blah, blah.
He has lived his life with delusions of grandeur and constantly fails.
And he goes from failure to failure to failure.
The sad thing is, on the rare occasions where he's had successes, he cannot run with them because he does not know how to handle success.
Whenever he's had a success, he's done something to make it implode to get him back to a place where he knows how to deal with things.
Very sad.
That's fascinating.
So, I'm curious, is he married?
No.
I didn't think so.
That's it.
Has he ever been married?
No, he's never been married.
So, how is he your brother-in-law?
Is he your husband's brother?
My husband's brother, yes.
So...
Does your husband ever remember his brother being happy?
I don't know if there were times in their childhood when maybe he may have been, but there's been trouble for this person's whole life.
Does he earn a living?
Barely.
Barely.
He fancies himself an independent contractor, but of course, you know, once he gets a job, there's always a problem.
Well, you know, listen, thank you.
I really look forward to meeting you again.
I've come to a tentative conclusion about humans, many, many conclusions.
This one's tentative because I don't want to believe it and because I'm not certain.
But I'm close to certain.
In fact, I am certain.
People are born with natures.
If I didn't believe we could fight our natures, it would be pointless to do any of the writing I do, any of the speaking, and this radio show.
Pointless.
Everything about what I do, and not only me, of course, is predicated on the belief that you can fight your nature and become better, smarter.
I don't mean IQ smarter, smarter in the sense of thinking clearly.
And so on.
However, it is very tough.
tough.
It sounds like this brother of her husband has a nature that works against him.
So, can he undergo a transformation?
Given the number of people who have undergone transformations, many of them through a religious experience or commitment to religion, I have to believe he can.
but I also believe that it's very possible that the hand he was dealt by life has been a tough one.
He sounds like a...
I hate to use the term, and I don't mean it to hurt him in any way.
He's anonymous.
Sounds like a loser, and that he doesn't want to be a non-loser.
That he has found this niche.
And he wears this.
It's sort of like getting used to wearing a hair shirt.
All right.
Anyway, that was very interesting.
Let's see.
Chuck in Duplaine, Illinois.
Hello.
Hello.
Glad to talk to you.
You're awesome.
Thank you.
Well, I don't know, but thank you.
Well...
I've been listening to you for quite a while.
But anyway, I figuratively lost my wife to COVID when it started.
She was a different person after that.
She went out and got her shots without telling me.
I was opposed to it.
You know, I've been watching the other doctors and virologists and just, this isn't right.
But anyway, it totally changed her perspective on life.
How so?
Give me an example.
Well, we're going on 49 years of marriage, and her personality has changed.
She's, you know, she's a germaphobic now.
She never was that way.
And it just affects everyone around in the family.
Oh, you sneeze or this and that.
And her family is all vaxxed, and we couldn't see them at Christmas time or Thanksgiving because we were, you know, my kids and I were, you know, were carrying the place.
Unvaxxed.
Right.
And now, her whole family and my wife, they all got COVID. They're all getting it, and I told them that.
Yeah, but they have an answer.
Their answer is, it doesn't matter.
It would have been worse without the vaccine.
Yeah.
Bing, bing, bing.
But they were promised by every authority that the vaccine would prevent them getting COVID. And so they still, they have, everything told to them, no matter how obviously mendacious, meaning lying, false, they believe.
So I really, my heart goes out to you, such a long marriage since you were 17, if I have your age correct.
18, 18. 18, yeah.
So, I have actually, I have a question for everybody on that basis.
Here it is.
It's not, it's, I don't know, I'll do it on another hour, but here is my question.
Do we know people if they haven't been tested?
This is a brand new question in my life, A perfect answer to it.
But it's a very important question.
Hi, everybody!
Can't go swimming in a baseball pool has not been on this happiness hour.
Wow!
That might be a first in over a decade.
Don't hang up, folks.
I'd like to at least summarize your call.
It's always painful for me because...
The quality of callers is very high.
So let me get a review.
Don't hang up, please.
You hang up.
I don't see what you want to say.
Chicago Jim.
He has a friend that does not want to be happy.
He says he doesn't deserve to be happy.
Wow.
I am so intensely curious.
In 20 seconds, Jim, tell me, why does he think he doesn't deserve to be happy?
Sean, I don't have control over the cursor, unfortunately.
I don't know what happened here.
Are we still on, Sean?
All right, put on Jim.
All right, a few seconds.
Why doesn't your friend think he deserves to be happy?
I'm not hearing anything, Sean.
Okay.
Are we having technical problems?
All right, we don't hear him.
Okay, sorry.
Let's see.
Another one.
Okay, oh, damn, I dropped the wrong one.
What a bummer.
Let's see.
Don in Dallas struggles with my saying that there are people who don't want to be happy.
I struggle with it too.
That's why I raised it.
But there's no doubt that there are such people.
They are afraid of being happy for whatever reason.
But I've talked about the reasons in the first segment of the show, of the hour.
Jim in Sacramento can't understand because what is happiness?
So I write in my book on happiness, which you should all read, Happiness is a Serious Problem is the book.
I write in the beginning, I don't give any definition of happiness because if you look it up in the dictionary, it is of no help whatsoever.
Let's put it this way.
Most people know when they're happy and when they're not happy.
But if this helps, I relate it to inner peace.
To me, inner peace and gratitude are the components of happiness.
Hayward, California.
Melissa, her older sisters live on resentment.
She's lost them.
That's right.
You give up your unhappiness, you give up your resentments.
All right, everybody.
Call now on any subject under the sun.
1-8 Prager 776. If you want to increase your happiness, go to my new podcast, Dennis and Julie.
Look it up on YouTube.
YouTube, you'll love it. you'll love it.
Hey, everybody!
There we go.
Dennis Prager with you.
This is the Arius of the agenda.
Whatever's on your mind about you, about me, about life, about death, and, of course, about fountain pens, cigars, audio equipment, classical music.
What's the other one?
I don't remember the other one.
Photography!
Oh, God, how could I forget?
Enjoy.
Okie doke, everybody.
Okie doke, everybody.
I love this hour.
It's whatever's on your mind.
By the way, I always announce, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, Please feel in any way hurt or offended if I drop your call without taking it.
There could be any number of reasons.
None of them reflect upon you.
In a stronger America, I would never have had to make that announcement.
But people are hurt much more easily in our time, which is a big problem.
All right, it is what it is.
And let's go to your calls here.
Okay.
Let's see.
Let's see.
Chicago, Illinois, and Tim, hello.
Sean, I don't have use of the cursor, so no, no, no, release the cursor to me, and I'll be able to do it.
All right, let's give it a...
All right, there we go.
All right, Tim in Chicago, hello.
I'm here.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
As I get older, I think more about the things I enjoyed that I did in my life.
Something simple like stickball on the street or kissing my parents goodnight.
There was a last time I did those activities, and I didn't know it.
Would it have been better that I knew it at the time, or is it better that I didn't know it for my sanity today?
You mean whether you knew how good it was?
No, just whether I knew that was the very last time.
There was a time that I kissed my mom for the last time, and she didn't die suddenly, so I didn't know at the time that was the very last time I would kiss her.
Would it have been better that I'd known, or is it better that I don't know?
I gotta admit.
But how could you have possibly known?
Well, you're right about that.
Well, I guess some people would know because their parents...
Well, you know...
Yeah, exactly.
If your parent is in a hospice or is dying at home...
But things I enjoyed so much, I would love to have known that was the last time.
It just bothers me that I didn't.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
Well, let me just say, if that...
I'm sure it isn't something that bothers you more than anything else, but I don't know why that should afflict anybody at all.
But it's an interesting question.
If you knew then, this is my last stickball game.
By the way, I didn't know you played stickball in Chicago.
We did in Brooklyn.
This is the last time I'll ever be playing stickball.
Well, it would give the moment more meaning than any other stickball game, I guess.
It would give that kiss to your parent all that much more meaning.
But one way of rephrasing the question is, would we be happier if we knew the future?
And I tend to believe not.
Anyway, that's a fun question.
I appreciate your calling.
All right, be well, my friend.
Walter, Woodland Hills, California.
Hello.
Yes, hello, Dennis.
I spoke with you last week about our responsibility in the war in Ukraine, and you are going to come back after the break and give me your position.
Okay, I will.
It's amazing that you got in both weeks in a row.
That's a magic dialing.
But it can happen.
My position on Ukraine is that we are morally obligated and in terms of self-interest obligated to aid Ukraine.
It is one of the rare times I disagree with some very prominent conservatives who think it's basically none of our business.
When you're the strongest country in the world, a lot is your business.
It may not be the business of the government of Ghana or what to do about Ukraine, but it is our business.
If nothing else, the real threat to America, which is the Chinese Communist Party, is looking to see if America will respond.
And it's hard for me to imagine conservatives saying, we don't give a damn if the Chinese take over Taiwan, if they invade Taiwan.
So here's a very simple question.
Is it more or less likely that the Chinese Communist Party will invade Taiwan if we do nothing in Ukraine?
Putin, have a great time.
It's not our border.
And sorry that this is happening, but the Ukrainian government's not that important to us.
There's corruption there, as if there's no corruption in America.
It used to be you could speak about other countries as corrupt.
Under the Democrats, every institution has been corrupted in the United States.
Is it beyond repair?
No.
But it is in a third world state.
51 heads of intelligence agencies a month before the 2020 election signed a statement that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.
They lied.
They simply lied in order to make sure that Biden wins.
That is as corrupt as you get anywhere in the third world.
So to speak about Ukraine is corrupt in light of the corruption that is endemic to the NIH, CDC, FBI, CIA, Department of Justice, et cetera, et cetera, is irrelevant.
Okay.
So we only save non-corrupt governments from invasion by outside forces, and we're But I return in any event to the key point.
How we respond is monitored by the true enemy of freedom on earth, the Chinese Communist Party.
So for that reason alone, plus I do believe we are morally obligated, If people believe you're morally obligated, if you're richer, to help the poor, why aren't the stronger morally obligated to help the weaker?
I mean, this is about as a brazen an act of evil invasion as we have seen since World War II. Having said that, I think that some of the comments of this awful president have been truly stupid.
And dangerous.
You don't declare Putin a war criminal.
And you don't offer him no out.
If he's a war criminal, then you want to sentence him to life imprisonment.
And anyway, you call him a war criminal, who's going to try him?
The International Court of Justice?
The last group we want to give power to over the world.
But it was a stupid comment.
I am not absolutely certain that there won't be a nuclear exchange.
I've never said that in my life.
I was absolutely confident.
I was a little kid.
So it may not mean anything, but I had zero fear of nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It was inconceivable to me that the Soviet Union would risk annihilation over Cuba.
But Putin is in there for personal reasons.
He wants to be a new Peter the Great, or new Tsar, or new Stalin.
He's a bad dude, and he's been made worse by COVID. Germaphobes are a problem.
I'm a germaphile.
I'm a big fan of germs.
That was tongue-in-cheek, but it's not entirely tongue-in-cheek.
Okay, I hope that made that clear.
All right, Walter, I appreciate your calling, and don't call again next week.
Give other people a chance.
All right, what did you say, Sean?
All right, let's see.
Well, we've got an interesting one here.
A violent offender convict.
That'll be interesting.
We'll take that.
All right, I'm going to take more of your calls when we return.
This is the hour you set the agenda.
It's inevitable that I'll get some theological call.
There are a few subjects I could talk about.
For hours.
Theology and music.
Back in a moment.
The Dennis Prager Show.
Hello, my friends.
Dennis Prager, what's ever on your mind hour.
And let's get to Scottsdale, Arizona.
Larry, hello.
Hello, Dennis.
How are you today?
Well, thank you.
Thank you.
I appreciate you taking my phone call.
I'll monologue, but in the interest of segment time, I'll be pretty quick about it.
I download your podcast, so I end up listening to yesterday's show today, and I just listened to the segment you did with the gentleman who was talking about the defund the police, decriminalize, release people from jail movement that seems to be pretty popular these days.
And your screen and your screener had it right.
I'm a convicted violent offender.
Without going too deeply into detail, I had zero criminal history, and the worst thing I'd ever done was a speeding ticket until the thing I was convicted for.
Ended up doing a little bit of time behind bars.
And I will tell you, any rational human being who has truly been around the real criminal element of this country would never think to defund the police.
Or have zero cash bail or let some of these people out to ever touch a piece of ground outside of jail cell or prison cell walls.
Our prisons are generally populated by really awful people.
And one must be glaringly naive, willfully stupid, or just completely inexperienced to advocate for, A, fewer police officers to deal with them, and B, fewer of them.
Bless you.
There is a segment of our population, what did you say, glaringly, or I guess glaringly naive?
I find naivete in adults inexcusable.
I find naive adults to be unimpressive, because they're lazy.
In that they don't want to confront reality because it's painful and they want to avoid pain.
There are truly bad people.
To deny that there are bad people and say there are only bad actions, not bad people, you must understand that saying that means there are no good people.
You can't have, logically, good people But there are no bad people.
If you are to assess people as good, then clearly, what are you going to say?
There are less good?
Everybody's good, but there's less good?
What about really, really, really, really less good?
Are they bad?
But that's why I am so angry.
That people who hold that human nature is basically good.
It's a desire to stay a child and believe in fairy tales.
Actually, I take that back.
Fairy tales were very realistic about bad people.
So, I truly do take back that statement.
That's right.
And the difference between bad people hurting you and bad people not hurting you are jails and policemen.
Sorry.
That's the truth.
And children, a major factor in leftism, the desire to remain a child, that's why so many aren't marrying or having children, is a big factor in their views.
Angela in Medina, Ohio, a place I get a lot of calls from.
Hello.
Hi.
My question today is just, do you believe that God judges our actions by their intent or their outcome?
Your theological question for the day.
That's a biggie.
The reason that I believe he judges it by their outcome, unless it's unintentional, obviously, but I don't know who has bad intentions on a conscious level.
The vast majority of people who have done massive harm in history did not wake up with bad intentions.
Would you include some of the recent mass shooters in that?
Yes, that's a very fair question.
When I think of evil, I think of mass evil, not individual evil, more, because you can't compare any amount of mass shooting to the genocides of the 20th century.
So when I think of evil, I think of that, or destroying what is good, like destroying America, that's evil.
The shooter, I think that God would definitely take into consideration brain malfunction, if that indeed was the intent.
But what if the shooter is motivated by, I want to get back at all the kids who bullied me?
So what will God do?
Say, you know, I really understand.
You were really hurt by bullies, which is what some people write about with some of these young shooters.
They were bullied.
Of course, the vast majority of humanity has been bullied and they didn't murder anybody.
So I really don't think much.
Your question is superb, but I don't think much about it since I'm not God and I can't know how God is.
I only know that he rewards the good and punishes the bad.
How he assesses good and bad, only he knows.
So that's why I don't think about it quite as much.
It's a great question.
God knows everything and therefore is capable of rendering perfect justice.
We can only render imperfect justice.
But we have to do that.
So I'm preoccupied with our judgments.
Good one.
Thank you.
Let's see here.
Tampa, Florida.
Ed, hello.
Yes, Mr. Prager.
How are you, sir?
Truly well.
Thank you.
I was telling you a call, Screener, like a month ago.
I was coming out of the supermarket into the parking lot.
And there was another person next to me, and he got in his truck.
And I noticed that he had one of those in his back window, a sticker that says Biden Harris.
And I don't know, I didn't mean to be intrusive or anything, but curiosity, at that moment, I went there and I asked him, excuse me, sir, I said, can I ask you why the reason why you voted for Biden?
And he got very emotional.
And he started yelling at me, you know, that Trump is this, Trump is that, and everybody that voted for him is an idiot and is irrational.
Well, without trying to be rude on it, he said, I'm not an idiot, but I voted for Trump.
I said, get away from me, and I'm going to run you over with my truck.
He opened his door and closed it, and then he lowered his window and said, if you don't get away from me, I'm going to call the cops.
I said, well, go ahead.
Call them.
Call the cops.
Wow.
I believe your story.
We'll be back.
Dennis Prager here.
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