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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:10:09
Sri Lanka
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here.
Do you know that it was a call yesterday from a physician that did something that normally doesn't happen in my life?
I have been writing for over 20 years a column that comes out every Tuesday.
It's at DennisPrager.com and starts at Town Hall and then migrates to Daily Wire, American Greatness, Jewish World Review, and many, many other places, thank God.
Because I think I have something important to say, otherwise I wouldn't say it.
So what happened was rare.
I normally write the column over the course of the weekend and then polish it on Monday.
It has to be submitted by Monday late afternoon.
Obviously my time.
And yesterday a physician called, who had called many times, Took issue with me about therapeutics, specifically ivermectin.
Which is fine.
That's why I took his call.
I like calls that take issue with me.
But then he said, I'm a scientist.
And that was a precious moment in my life.
To which the response is, so what?
I can read reports just as well as you can.
I don't know as much as he does about the way the human body works.
Of that there is no question.
I pray that's true.
He's a doctor.
The title of my column today, it's at my website and town hall, is You're a Scientist, So What?
It no longer means a damn thing because scientists are either As a general rule, not all, but as a general rule, sheep like teachers and others, or they are ideologues who don't care about science but care about policy.
A very important thing to realize what scientists, journalists, teachers...
Priests, rabbis, ministers have done to their professions.
They have diminished the stature of their professions so much that it doesn't mean anything anymore.
As I mentioned yesterday, in light of that call, I was taught, and in fact we did it, in my religious Jewish school that I attended until 19 called the Yeshiva.
We stood when the principal came into the room, a rabbi.
We just stood, because he was the rabbi and a principal.
And then we sat down, of course, but we stood when he came up.
In my synagogue, when the rabbi walked by our area of seats, everybody would stand as he would walk from where he sat to, let's say...
Be called up to bless the Torah.
And now I know nothing about your stature if you are a priest, rabbi, or minister.
And it is simply true about every profession.
If you're a journalist, I assume you lie for a living.
I assume that you're a journalist in the way Pravda writers were journalists.
This is very sad.
I compartmentalize these sad things so I can go on as a happy guy, which I am.
But I won't deny reality.
How many people in the healthcare profession signed the document?
In the middle of COVID, when they were telling everybody stay home, don't gather with people, said, oh, but racism is a health issue.
So it's okay to go and demonstrate and protest racism.
That's a health issue.
So they bastardized the word health issue.
It doesn't mean anything anymore.
Health issue is whatever the left says about any issue that they want to push upon the American people or any other people.
When there's no profession left, I mean, there are good scientists, there are good teachers, there are good rabbis, priests, and ministers.
Of course there are, thank God.
But it's...
It's worse than a crapshoot.
The odds are you're with a person who either lacks wisdom or courage.
That's a very big deal, as we say.
So here's an interesting question for you.
Have you been following what's going on in Sri Lanka?
Sri Lanka is an island country off the southeast coast of India.
I think it's the southeast coast.
Maybe it's the southwest coast.
It's funny.
Usually the thing you say first is right.
You want to check that?
I think it's southeast.
Yeah.
Southwest are the Maldives.
Southeast is Sri Lanka.
And I was there.
It's a beautiful...
It's known for being a beautiful island.
It was called Ceylon.
It's now called Sri Lanka.
I've never understood these name changes.
I'm sure that Sri or Sri Lanka is closer to the indigenous language of the country, but why does anybody care what foreigners call their country, unless it's a bad name?
Do the Germans insist that the world call Germany Deutschland?
Germany has nothing to do with Deutschland.
They share virtually no letters.
I haven't followed that.
Why did Peking become Beijing?
What was wrong with Peking?
Anyway, Sri Lanka, or Sri Lanka.
Has just seen the government overthrown by massive protests.
Massive.
Because the man has bankrupted his country in large measure because he followed Western ideas about how to bankrupt your country, specifically the Greens, Green Economic Environmentalist Policy.
Is there a movement that has done as much destruction as the environmentalist movement?
In our time, I can't think of any.
There might be, but I can't think of any.
Every leftist movement is destructive, but this one has been particularly destructive.
So this is from Common Sense, and it's by Michael Schellinger, who is a very bright man.
And didn't he sort of start as a liberal?
Oh, yeah.
No, he started as an environmentalist.
He started as an environmentalist, yeah.
He has a lot of intellectual honesty in his life.
Okay, let's see.
The proximate reason for the chaos is that the nation is bankrupt.
Millions are struggling to buy food, medicine, and fuel.
Between June 21 and June 22, food prices rose 80%.
Last month, annual inflation hit nearly 55%.
Can you imagine that?
A 55% annual rate of inflation?
Wow.
Wow.
Since the start of the pandemic, half a million people have fallen into poverty.
If you've never paid attention to the island country just off in the southeastern coast, I was right, there we go.
You might think this is just how it goes in developing nations, but the truth is that Sri Lanka had been gradually rebuilding itself after decades of civil war and authoritarianism, and then this happened.
We in the West had a lot to do with it.
The underlying reason for the fall of Sri Lanka is that its leaders, starting with former President Siri Sena, and continuing with his successor, the recently deposed Kotabaya Rajapaksa, Fell under the spell of Western green elites peddling organic agriculture and ESG, which refers to investments made following supposedly higher environmental, social, and governance criteria.
That's what ESG is.
Environmental, social, and governance.
Sri Lanka has a near-perfect ESG score of 98, higher than Sweden, 96, and the United States, 51. What does having such a high ESG score mean?
In short, it meant that Sri Lanka's two million farmers were forced to stop using fertilizers and pesticides, laying waste to its critical agricultural sector.
Think Holland.
Back in a moment.
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Sri Lanka does not register on most people's radar, understandably.
There are 200 or so countries, and you can't keep up with all of them.
But what the Western environmentalists have done to crush this small country is evil.
Because the environmentalist movement is evil.
I know it's impossible for a leftist to even entertain that.
All evil is on the right.
But if evil is measured not by intentions, but by results, human suffering has increased exponentially because of the Greens.
Germany, a country that is almost always wrong, followed the Greens and they are in terrible shape.
And it will have repercussions around the world.
It's the most important economy in Europe.
And it is entirely induced because Green thinking has taken over the elites.
In Holland, they are...
Crushing farmers.
I was shocked to learn Holland is the second greatest exporter of agricultural products.
So the world has some dependence upon Holland, and needless to say, the Dutch do.
But crushing people means nothing because, as has been noted on this program by various guests, including Mr. Epstein, Alex, who is just a truly brilliant man.
I have great respect for his mind.
The ultimate aim of the environmentalist movement, the Greens as they're known, is truly anti-human.
It is a deep sickness.
It's a worship of the earth at the expense of humanity.
It is an inversion of Genesis which says, and you shall dominate nature.
It is, you shall let nature dominate you.
The depth of the anti-human element of the greens is not perceived by most people who think that the worship of the earth is a beautiful thing.
Because, as Chesterton pointed out, when people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything.
So I continue.
So the country had the highest ESG score, environmental, social, and governance criteria.
They bought it whole hog.
And of course, the irony, or an irony, is that China, a vicious regime, truly vicious, there isn't a moral idea in the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.
These people are completely amoral and immoral.
Completely.
They are a very scary bunch.
They are scarier than Putin.
And they're buying up countries.
That's basically what they do.
They buy up countries.
And they bought up Sri Lanka.
And nothing pleases China more than when any country succumbs to the Green, totalitarian policy.
So, thanks to another idiocy, lockdowns, it lost one of its major sources of currency, tourism, three to five billion dollars a year.
And then, telling their farmers, you can't use fertilizer.
Sri Lanka's two million farmers were forced to stop using fertilizers and pesticides, laying waste to its critical agricultural sector.
To be sure, there were other factors behind Sri Lanka's fall, the lockdowns which I just meant to you, and what China's doing.
But the biggest problem was Sri Lanka's chemical fertilizer ban, which passed last year.
And was central to the country's effort to comply with ESG. The numbers are shocking.
One-third of Sri Lanka's farmlands were dormant in 2021 due to the fertilizer ban.
My friends, do you believe, does anybody believe that Sri Lanka makes one tiny bit difference in the climate of the world?
Do you understand how sick this is?
I would like to know, why did Sri Lanka's legislature pass these laws?
Were they paid off to do so?
Why are they mesmerized by Western crushing of their economy in the name of something that has essentially zero effect?
Over 90% of Sri Lanka's farmers had used chemical fertilizers before they were banned.
After they were banned, an astonishing 85% experienced crop losses.
Rice production fell 20%, and prices skyrocketed 50% in just six months.
All because they listened to Western environmentalists, a human-crushing movement.
Sri Lanka had to import $450 million worth of rice.
That's amazing.
That's amazing!
Despite having been self-sufficient just months earlier.
That's like us importing oil after Donald Trump's four years.
We were exporting oil.
The sick, despicable, crushing, life-crushing, anti-human left follow their advice and it's suicide.
It is suicide.
But people are not allowed to hear other viewpoints.
Imagine getting up at a college class and saying, actually, this left-wing movement is crushing my family and our society and our world.
Imagine that?
No, it's unimaginable.
Well, they're revolting in Holland and they're revolting in Sri Lanka.
Get any ideas?
We'll return.
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I think I've ever had on the show.
And I have had a lot of guests.
Yes, that's right.
There you go.
It doesn't count that my engineer is a major skateboarder, but he hasn't competed.
Anyway, it is a pleasure to have Taylor Silverman.
She is a skateboarding champion, and she is a human champion, which is obviously more important.
She's had the courage to speak out after a competition, and if I'm not getting this entirely right, Taylor, obviously correct me.
So you competed and you came in second to a biological male who competed in the women's competition.
Is that correct?
Correct.
And it was just an amateur level contest.
I'm not like one of the top skateboarders or anything.
But there was money involved and I did travel and have to compete in qualifiers to get there.
And it was really...
Shocking to arrive and find out that that was going to be a contest that we'd have the opportunity to compete for second place at.
Were you the only woman in the competition to speak out?
The only person to speak out with my stance publicly.
publicly.
I've heard some talk kind of behind the scenes, but I'm the only one who tried to speak to Red Bull about it.
And unfortunately, Red Bull ignored the email that I sent them.
So I turned to social media because I felt like what had happened was unfair and they were silencing me and people needed to be aware of this.
When you would raise this, which I presume you did with fellow females in the competition, what would they say to you?
Actually, during the contest, I tried to just ignore it and not focus on it because...
I didn't know what to think at the time.
It was pretty shocking.
It wasn't the first time that I'd done a contest with transgender competitors, but especially with there being money involved and having traveled and flown to get there, I just didn't expect it to unfold that way.
So I tried to just have a good attitude and focus on my skating and having fun and enjoying getting to see everybody because these events bring together a bunch of people who I don't get to see very often.
I was too uncomfortable to say anything at the time.
So it wasn't until later on that I ended up reaching out to the contest organizers because I thought that was the most appropriate way to go about it rather than talk to everybody when I could just talk to them in private about it.
And I didn't think that I was the only person who felt like it was unfair.
I think that a lot of people think it's unfair whether they were...
Were there any competitors who thought you were wrong, not for speaking out, but wrong, that it is fair for trans women, biological men, to compete against women?
There have been a couple people who have commented or claimed that I'm hateful because of this, but I'm not sure whether they're arguing that they think it's fair or whether they think that...
Oh, no, forgive me.
I'm not referring to trolls on the Internet.
I'm referring to fellow competitors, parents, etc., people involved in skateboarding.
I think there were a couple of girls who were in the contest, but they were people who weren't on podium and weren't really impacted.
They didn't lose anything.
But I don't know exactly what they said.
I know some people made some statements.
But you would say in general people thought it's unfair.
I think the majority of people recognize it's unfair, but they're also scared to speak up because they see what happens when people speak up.
They get attacked, they get harassed, they get targeted and called all sorts of things that...
Are not true.
And in my case, I got targeted with anti-Semitism, which I knew was going to happen just because I'm a Jew on the Internet.
And anytime I say anything, somebody brings that up.
But it's a scary thing to come forward about.
And it was really disappointing that Red Bull hadn't just talked to me about it.
And maybe we could have, you know, they could have seen where I was coming from and at least heard me out and what I have to say rather than...
Just completely ignoring me and my concerns.
Yeah, I have a lot to ask you about.
This is very important what you've gone through on both levels.
The hate because you know it's not even a matter of belief.
You know it's unfair what has happened.
And the anti-Semitism.
I have some thoughts on both.
Back with Taylor Silverman in a moment.
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I'll pound 250 and say Dennis Prager.
Hello everybody, I'm speaking to a young woman who is a major amateur skateboarder, but has actually been in competitions where there were monetary prizes.
She came in second to a male who said he was a female, and she, unlike the vast majority of people in her sport, or any sport, Because courage is the rarest of the good human traits.
There are many nice people.
There are very few courageous people.
Something I repeatedly note here.
So she's one of the courageous.
And she spoke out.
And a very interesting and terrible development.
The barrage of not just your transphobic hater.
Isn't that amazing?
You're a transphobic hater.
It shows you the power of the brainwash.
A biological male competes against women in women's sports, and you're a hater if you're angry that you were cheated out of your win.
I'm angry on her behalf, and I didn't compete.
She's not my daughter.
If you have to be the person who's angry, then the moral character of this nation is shot.
Everybody should be angry about it.
The other aspect, though, and I want to get into that, is the amount of anti-Semitic males.
She wears a Star of David and is known as a Jew.
And what was the nature of the anti-Semitic attacks?
That you're a Jew and you shouldn't be speaking out.
I'm curious, what is the correlation?
Forgive me for adding on to my question.
What is the correlation between your protesting the unfairness of this competition and your being a Jew?
I think that one of the reasons there was so much anti-Semitism immediately is because when I made the post, I happened to be in Israel.
And there's a lot of people who hate Israel and believe a lot of misinformation.
And what I found was when people ignore facts about one issue so they can promote a harmful agenda, they'll do it about other issues too.
And I think that's what we saw here.
But a lot of the comments were like the from the river to the sea stuff and you're a colonizer and a white supremacist and stuff like that.
and it really just showed that there's a lot of ignorance present and people don't really know what they're talking about they just want to come after you for the worst thing they can think of but it's very strange position to be in when people are calling you a bigot while attacking you for being Jewish I don't think it's knowable although one could have assumptions
Would you say that...
The majority of the anti-Semitic attacks came from people on the left or the right?
Oh, definitely the left.
But I think that anti-Semitism can manifest anywhere on the political spectrum.
But on the left, they try to disguise it as social justice, which is especially dangerous when there's propaganda spreading on the Internet and people are buying into that and then claiming that...
You know, Jews are at fault for everything or switching out a few Zionists because that seems like a more palatable term to them.
But yeah, definitely the left.
And it was really disappointing to see that.
And it happened coming from people who I didn't know, but also people I did know.
And people who literally just months prior were wishing me to have a great time in Israel.
I had been friends with and spent time with and skated with and never had an issue with.
They never said anything about me being Jewish and only positive things about me wanting to travel there.
So that was kind of shocking.
The second I said something they didn't agree with, that's what they went after.
Rather than trying to defend their position, they just attacked me for being a Jew.
Have you drawn any conclusions from this?
Well, all the comments and messages that I received are not new, it's just more.
I would get comments and messages like this before, so I was aware that anti-Semitism is a big problem in the world still, and I knew that this could happen, which is one of the reasons I didn't speak up sooner.
Because I thought about how to address it after Red Bull ignored me.
I thought maybe I could make a video.
Maybe I could make a post.
And I thought, well, they'll come after me because I'm in Israel.
They'll come after me because I'm a Jew.
And I've seen people get those anti-Semitic attacks online where their posts just get flooded with comments, which is what happened to me, and it still happens every day.
But I guess that what I've taken from it is all I can do is ignore it.
Or if I have the opportunity to educate somebody who wants to have that conversation, I think that is a good thing to do.
But I can't let it impact me, and luckily I have a lot of really supportive people in my life.
I have an awesome family and friends, and my boyfriend's amazing, and I'm more focused on that community than people on the internet.
Because in real life, people don't say that stuff to me very often.
Every once in a while, somebody will say something anti-Semitic or do something.
But it's far more common on the internet because people aren't scared to just...
When I asked you about conclusions, and I appreciate your answer very much, but I was thinking more in the social or macro sense than in the individual sense.
So I'll be very direct with you as a Jew and as one who's written a major book on anti-Semitism and who has fought it and knows it well.
I can tell you that your answer did not surprise me.
I did not know what you would say, but your answer did not surprise me.
In the United States of America, overwhelmingly, Jew hatred comes from the left, not the right.
And Jews don't want to acknowledge this because most Jews are on the left.
And it is an act of suicide.
I say to you with great sadness.
We're going to take a break.
I'm going to come back for a few minutes with you because I want people to know where you are now on the Internet, which is a very interesting thing.
We had met, actually, when I appeared on where you're working.
Taylor Silverman is my guest.
The story is compelling.
The Dennis Prager Show.
I'm going to raise this subject that I have not talked about maybe in a decade.
I'm going to raise this subject.
But I did talk about this early on, certainly in the first half of my career, which, by the way, It will be 40 years next month.
To say that term is to enter the realm of science fiction for me.
Because I feel the same as I did when I started.
I'm blessed in that way.
But it's such a large number.
Of course, it's a biblical number.
40 is the number of days of the flood in Noah's time 40 is the number of days Moses spent on Sinai 40 is the number of years the Israelites were in the wilderness 40 is the number of days the spies were in Canaan and it appears Later on as well,
40 means a divinely ordained period of significance.
It doesn't mean it's the number between 39 and 41. But in my case, it's the number between 39 and 41. I don't know if it has divine significance.
I hope it does.
Anyway, I did speak about this, and I would say that There were three issues that even most of those who agree with me on everything differed with me.
Secondhand smoke, marijuana, and this one even more so.
I have no doubt I lost listeners on this one.
But if I broadcast only what I thought would keep people listening, I would be prostituting my values for ratings.
And I can't do that.
It's not even that I refuse to.
It's not in my disposition.
Anyway, the issue was breastfeeding, and I thought that it had become a cult.
And there's a recent article in the New York Times about that issue, about breastfeeding versus formula.
I never said that breastfeeding wasn't better.
I just thought that it became a cult.
So there was a piece.
Imagine a world where men had to breastfeed their babies.
Elizabeth Spires, a contributing opinion writer to the New York Times.
She speaks about, my son began drinking formula in earnest when he was seven weeks old after I was taken to the emergency room in an ambulance because I had postpartum pre-eclampsia and a blind spot had erupted in my vision, a potential stroke symptom.
When I finally got home and found that my baby had been happily guzzling formula and was fine, instead of feeling relief, I cried.
By feeding him formula, I felt I had failed him on some level.
That now seems ridiculous.
The New York Times published this.
But at every turn, formula had been framed to me as a distant second best.
A somewhat shameful option you turn to only as a last resort.
The suggestion that women who sustain their babies with formula should just breastfeed is, sadly, not coming from the fringe.
It was articulated by both the editor-in-chief of a prominent Catholic publication and Bette Midler, among others.
Eric Sammons, the editor of Crisis magazine, put it this way.
I would also say that hopefully this is a wake-up call to become more self-sufficient.
God literally designed mothers to feed their babies.
So that's an example of religious people said God gave women milk in their breasts.
Everybody had a reason.
Oh, the child will be much healthier.
The one, my favorite, they will be smarter.
I was not breastfed.
I was formula-fed.
And I'm quite happy with my level of intelligence.
Nor do I believe that I would have been smarter had my mother breastfed me.
I think the idea borders on the absurd, actually.
This is woefully ignorant.
It is insulting to the many women who cannot breastfeed or cannot produce enough milk.
To keep their babies fed.
And it is insulting to the women who choose formula because it's the most rational decision they can make.
That's one of the things that was amazing.
Why weren't feminists pro-formula?
Doesn't it liberate women to go on with their lives?
But feminism has nothing to do with Helping women, as is clear now with the trans issue in sports.
It's just another cult-like movement that has done tremendous damage.
Oh, you're just like men, girls.
Oh, yeah, sex can be as meaningless to you as it is to male nature.
Of course.
You don't want to prioritize getting married.
You want to prioritize having a career.
You cannot overstate the damage that the feminists have done.
They did some good.
Every movement does some good.
You don't ask, did a movement do any good?
You ask, what is the sum total of the movement?
So it's completely irrational that feminists would not be pro-formula.
The most rational decision they can make because their babies need it.
Because they can't or don't want to pump at work because formula allows fathers to participate more.
I must say, I loved feeding my kids with the bottle.
Research increasingly shows that the benefits of breastfeeding outside of the potential bonding experience, and it must be said it isn't always a bonding experience, are probably marginal, especially when you control for economic factors.
In the United States, wealthy, well-educated women are more likely to breastfeed.
If their children have better outcomes in terms of education and wealth later, is that a function of breastfeeding?
Or the fact that their mother started with those things and others did not?
Of course it's the latter, not the former.
So I said there were three issues.
Secondhand smoke.
I knew it was...
A lie that 50,000 Americans die of secondhand smoke a year.
And I know why they came up with the lie, because they weren't persuading people to stop smoking cigarettes by telling them it's dangerous.
But if you announce that it kills others, then you get results.
Marijuana, as I mentioned last week, I said repeatedly, I would much rather my teenage child smoke.
A cigarette, certainly a cigar, than a joint.
And vast numbers of listeners differed with me.
And the same with, I never joined the breastfeeding army.
And part of the reason is, I am completely impervious.
Well, completely, I don't know.
I am generally impervious to social pressure.
My assumption is that if it doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense.
The fact that a lot of people say something has never meant a damn thing to me.
Never.
It is part of my ability to be right most of the time.
Indeed, almost all the time.
I'm not bragging.
I'm explaining.
I have no reason to brag.
I have a wonderful life, and I am very secure in my skin.
But I assume that when there is spontaneous eruption of new belief, it's probably BS. I've been right in every case.
You want to breastfeed?
God bless you.
I never spoke against breastfeeding.
I spoke against the cult of breastfeeding.
The guilt laid on women who wouldn't.
So, 25 years later, the New York Times publishes a piece.
I'm going to read to you the letters to the New York Times.
In 2015, when I gave birth to an 8-pound boy, I was strenuously encouraged by doctors.
Yes, of course, doctors.
Back in a moment.
The Dennis Prager Show.
Why am I erasing this issue out of seemingly nowhere?
One reason is an incredible because the New York Times is always on the bandwagon of all these causes.
And what are they going to do?
do.
It's one of their opinion writers and she decided to write about the pressure she felt to breastfeed and it wasn't a good thing for her.
I raise it because it's all part of the same thing.
Do you unquestioningly obey things that are told to you no matter how absurd?
You really believe 50,000 people die because somebody else smoked?
You probably do believe it, but it's a gigantic fraud.
It was invented.
Because the other arguments against smoking didn't work.
Do you really believe lockdowns of kids out of school is a good thing?
Then why did you go along with it?
From the breastfeeding pressure to the lockdown pressure, it's all the same thing.
People are led by the nose like sheep and are willing to be led, are happy to be led.
Their anger isn't against those who lead them.
To the slaughter, it is against those who speak out against being led to the slaughter.
The greatest anger in the last two years was against people who spoke out against lockdowns, who spoke out against masks, and, God forbid, questioned whether a vaccine that doesn't vaccinate works.
That's the anger.
Not at the rushing through of a vaccine.
That has not been properly tested.
One day you'll know how much damage was done by the vaccine on young people and older people.
It'll come out.
Everything comes out over the long run.
Just like now, it's kosher for the New York Times to actually publish an article about the cult of breastfeeding.
I doubt that they published this 20 years ago, or would have.
Research increasingly shows that the benefits of breastfeeding outside of the potential bonding experience are probably marginal.
In 2015, I gave birth to a...
An eight-pound boy, I was strenuously encouraged by doctors, nurses, and the books and articles I read to breastfeed.
If there is a more sheep-like profession than doctors, I can't name it.
There's an equally sheep-like profession, professors, teachers.
But the doctors?
If I hear a lot of doctors join a cause, my suspicion now wasn't in the past, but it is now, that it's probably not true.
When I mentioned switching to...
Remember, wasn't it doctors who formulated the idiotic food pyramid that the American government established?
Many doctors and certainly nutritionists and other experts.
Experts.
Yep.
When I mentioned switching to formula to medical professionals, I always encountered a volley of questions about why, usually followed by a question or two about whether I had tried various methods to extend breastfeeding, some of which involved expensive equipment and various schemes to trick the baby into feeding at the breast when he clearly preferred to just eat in the easiest possible way.
Not a single person who asked me these questions seemed convinced that I was doing what was best for my family and child, not to mention myself.
Not one.
Yes, that's right.
Mm-hmm.
You drive a non-electric car, you're destroying the world.
You're smoking, you're killing people.
Even outdoors.
You're killing people.
The stuff that we are told and accept.
If a woman is 90% miserable and her baby benefits 1% from whatever is causing her suffering, this is deemed an acceptable trade-off.
It's a great line.
The version of this mentality that I most frequently encountered in Brooklyn, where I live, Holds that women must deplete themselves physically, emotionally, and economically to be good mothers.
On community message boards, many insisted that breastfeeding efforts should be pursued up until a mother's nipples were practically falling off.
There were many gory descriptions of bleeding and damaged areolas.
These evangelists for breastfeeding, many of them would identify as liberals, Shocking that they're liberals, aren't they?
The advent of modern formula is really as revolutionary as the advent of birth control because it allowed many women to retain a degree of autonomy over their time and health while providing their babies with nutrition.
For women who are dealing with postpartum depression and anxiety on top of sleep deprivation, formula can be a godsend, something that allows them to restore some aspects of a normal life.
This should be regarded as important by itself, and not only when it's coupled with a qualifier that a healthy mother is also good for the baby.
Women should be happy and healthy.
Period.
Yes, exactly.
So I have some of the letters that they always fascinate me.
Published in the New York Times.
These are not just comments on the internet.
From Rosemary Keough O'Neill, West Hartford, Connecticut.
To the editor, kudos to Ms. Spires for her excellent portrayal.
Of the issue of breastfeeding versus formula feeding, I struggled with breastfeeding my first two babies, so decided to opt for bottle feeding my third.
It was one of the best decisions I ever made.
I was well rested.
The baby got to bond with her father during the middle of the night feedings.
We knew how much the baby had been fed, and everybody got to be part of nourishing her.
It's tough to confront the breast is best crowd.
One friend of mine threatened an intervention.
How do you like that?
A friend.
Some friend.
But it was my baby, my body, my choice.
None of these slogans are actually meant when people say autonomy over their body, but they're okay with the government.
Mandating that you get a vaccine or you be fired from your job or you be dismissed from the military, they're fine with that.
They don't really mean bodily autonomy.
They're all slogans.
Ask yourself, have you thought positions you take or is it the social pressure that has you take them?
Hi everybody, it's the Ultimate Issues Hour, third hour every Tuesday, some great issue of life.
I have given many analogies for the importance of this hour.
My favorite is, a map tells you where you are, but wisdom tells you where to go.
So, knowing where you are, if you don't know where you want to go, is of no use.
So, Ultimate Issues Hour is about where we should go.
Whatever the subject might be.
So here's my subject today.
It begins with a question slash riddle.
What is the most hated group in America?
I could add to that.
What is the only group in America you are allowed to publicly hate?
And are...
Or is publicly hated?
Let you think for a moment.
And the answer is Christians.
There is no close second.
Tell me a group that is as hated, well, I guess there is a group, but it's a temporary group, because I assume, the non-vaccinated.
Right?
There's the only competition for a group you are allowed to hate.
In fact, you are commanded to hate the unvaccinated.
But that's on the back burner right now.
But Christians?
The loathing of Christianity and Christians?
All the more remarkable is the fact that there's no term for the greatest hatred in America.
There's a term for the hatred of every single group, even when those hatreds are minimal and wildly exaggerated.
Right?
In the religious realm, Hatred of Muslims is called Islamophobia.
Hatred of Jews is called anti-Semitism.
Hatred of Christians is called...
Uh-oh.
Not called anything.
How could that be?
Why is there no name for hatred of Christians?
You've got to admit, that's pretty suggestive of something.
Is there a group that is killed on religious grounds as much as Christians are today?
Now, if Iran had its way, more Jews would be killed than Christians.
They'd like to annihilate every Jew of Israel.
But, thank God, it is not happening.
So, when it comes to massacring a religious group, it's Christians, especially in the Middle East and West Africa.
It doesn't make the headlines because it doesn't comport with the lying media.
That's an entirely accurate Trump phrase.
It is a lying media.
They lie so effectively they don't even know they're lying.
But the lying is of omission as much as commission.
It is reported on page 14 or something, if it's reported.
Another massacre of dozens of Christians in Nigeria, let's say.
But it doesn't comport with the left-wing media's agenda, which is to depict Christians as persecutors, not as persecuted.
Only Muslims are persecuted.
So when Muslims wipe out Christian villages, it doesn't really make any headlines.
In the United States, The loathing of Christianity on the part of the left is so deep.
That there are Christians on the left means nothing.
The ability of people to commit suicide on a national or religious level is well documented.
I spoke to the skateboarder in the first hour who was cheated out of her win by a biological man in the women's skateboarding competition.
And she spoke of the astonishing amount of hatred directed to her as a Jew because she spoke out against the biological man defeating all the women in the women's competition.
And I asked her, did it come from the left or the right?
I said overwhelmingly from the left.
I don't even think she's on the right.
It's a young Jewish woman from Michigan.
And I told her, it is amazing that Jews vote left.
It is an act of suicide on the part of Jews to do so.
And it is an act of suicide on the part of Christians to vote left.
As they watch their churches get emptier and emptier, left-wing Christians just double down.
Same as left-wing Jews.
As they watch their synagogue get emptier and emptier.
And they double down on the left.
Anyway, the greatest hatred right now in America is of Christians.
It is so regular that I know exactly what they'll write, so I don't always read them.
I spend more time reading left-wing pieces than right-wing pieces.
But what was it this week, this one in the New York Times?
So, Sunday Magazine.
So listen to this.
This is about the threat of Christianity to America.
Talking about right-wing Christians.
By the way, for the record, most of you know this, but I'm a Jew.
I'm a religious Jew.
I'm not a Christian.
So it's much harder to dismiss what I'm saying.
Since I am not a Christian.
However, when you have a commitment to truth, it doesn't matter what you are.
Everybody who's committed to truth basically has the same realizations.
It's irrelevant if you're a Christian, you're an atheist, you're a Muslim, black, white.
That's the beauty of truth.
Truth is truly the one thing that can unite people.
But we're swimming in the world of lies.
Men menstruate is the great example.
Many, that is, of these Christians, dismiss the historic American principle of the separation of church and state.
We never had a principle of separation of church and state.
It's another left-wing lie to themselves.
Separation of church and state appears nowhere in the Constitution, in the Bill of Rights, It was in a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote.
That's all it was.
We have a ban on a state religion.
But what does it even mean, a separation of church and state?
What does it mean?
According to the left, it means that people who have Christian beliefs should not be in the state.
Because You are not allowed to have the state, the government, the society influenced by people with Christian beliefs, like the human is conceived at conception.
So, it's not dismissed because it's wrong, it's dismissed because it's Christian.
Because the obvious question to ask these people is, okay, if it's not at conception, At what point is it a human?
And their answer is, never!
Now that has nothing to do with Christianity.
It has everything to do with science and truth.
They say they do not advocate a theocracy, but argue for the foundational role for their faith in government.
Their rise coincides with significant backing among like-minded grassroots supporters, especially as some voters and politicians blend their Christian faith with election fraud conspiracy theories.
I don't mean...
They never explain...
You know, I know why, by the way.
The reason that this isn't explained, and I want to deal with this when we come back, is that they don't have to.
They live in a hermetically sealed world, left-wing writers.
So everybody that they think reads them knows what they're talking about.
Back in a moment.
The Dennis Prager Show.
Hi everybody.
Reading to you from this article here in the New York Times just two days ago.
About the threat that Christians are posing to the country.
The truth is the Christians are the only organized threat, or the only large group threat, I should put it that way, to the left.
That's why they hate them.
So let's see.
They blend their Christian faith with election fraud conspiracy theories, QAnon ideology, gun rights, and lingering anger over COVID-related restrictions.
Why is that wrong?
I know they don't agree with any of those positions, but why is it wrong to be animated by your Christian faith?
With regard to any of these things.
Forget the QAnon.
They always throw in QAnon.
I still don't know what QAnon is.
I've never visited it.
I don't know what it is.
Nobody writes to me in email about QAnon.
This is just another left-wing propaganda line.
QAnon, QAnon.
So they meld their Christian faith.
So you're allowed to have an anti-gun rights belief because of your left-wing ideology, but you can't have a pro-gun belief because of your Christian ideology.
That's the way they think.
Their presence reveals a fringe pushing into the mainstream.
Ah, that's the fringe to worry about.
Christians, I see.
But the people who say men give birth, who say that we should tear down statues of George Washington, that's not a fringe to worry about.
The fringe that would bankrupt this country in the name of climate change, that's a healthy fringe.
The church is supposed to direct the government.
The government is not supposed to direct the church.
Representative Lauren Boebert, a Republican representing the western part of Colorado, sent recently at Cornerstone Christian Center, a church near Aspen.
I'm tired of the separation of church and state junk.
Congregants rose to their feet in applause.
So I don't understand.
Even if you disagree with everything this Lauren Boebert says, why is a Christian not allowed to bring his or her faith into the government?
I don't understand that.
Why can you only bring secular faiths like feminism, environmentalism, socialism, Marxism, that you can bring in, but not Christianity?
I don't understand it.
And when I say I don't understand, I mean that.
I don't understand it.
You can bring every ideology into your positions except Christianity.
Fascinating.
A small handful of people who espouse this vision, like Ms. Boebert, have recently come to power with the blend of Christian messaging and conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump elevated.
Others, like Mr. Mastriano, he's the Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, are running competitive races while most have long-shot campaigns and are unlikely to survive.
Primary races.
The ascension of these candidates comes amid a wave of action across the country.
The most significant is the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v.
Wade and end the constitutional right to an abortion.
The way they write, there is a constitutional right to an abortion?
That was what one court said.
Another court majority said no.
All of a sudden, constitutional rights mean something to a leftist.
Cracks me up.
On top of its recent series of decisions allowing for a larger role for religion in public life, such as school prayer.
Isn't that about the coach that prayed at the 50-yard line?
Anyway, what's wrong with school prayer?
All of American history until 1962, there was school prayer.
Were we violating...
The Constitution?
All of American history?
Nobody...
I invite this woman onto my show.
My friends, there is a greater chance you will win a lottery than that she would come onto the show.
They don't debate.
On top, yes, such a school prayer and funding of religious education.
States have also been taking action.
Many have instituted abortion bans.
A Florida law prohibits classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in early elementary school.
So here is my response to this argument on this leftist article column.
If the only people to oppose Teachers talking to five-year-olds about gender identity are Christians?
That is one of the most persuasive arguments for the greatness of Christianity I have ever heard.
And I'm telling you, this is a non-Christian.
Indeed, it would be almost dispositive.
If she's right and essentially the only people who oppose...
The robbing children of their sexual innocence at the age of five are Christians?
Well, that's a pretty big attack, not on Christians, but on Jews and on Muslims and on atheists.
Think about it.
You have to be a Christian to care about the sexual innocence of children?
What a compliment to Christians.
I don't even think Christians believe that.
I think they know they have allies who aren't Christian.
Dennis Prager here.
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