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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:06:00
Toxic Masculinity
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Dennis Prager here.
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Welcome, friends, to the Dennis Prager Show.
Bob France sitting in for Dennis on this Friday, the 17th day of the sixth month of the year of our Lord, 2022. I appreciate you being with us.
It is the start of Father's Day weekend, and it's a very important weekend.
And that is a very important day, and it's something that we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about on this program.
I welcome you, of course, to join us wherever you may be listening, if it's via the Salem News Channel or the Salem app or on your local affiliate or your website, dennisprayer.com.
I welcome you to the program.
We're going to be taking a lot of people's calls today as we talk about, well, it would be very easy.
Because of what we do and the age in which we live, the age of Biden inflation, to just talk about the gas prices, which I will.
To talk about the assault on our border, which I will.
To talk about runaway gas prices, which I will.
To talk about the lies being told to us by the January 6th committee, which I will.
We can do all of those things.
But that's an everyday thing.
Because this is an everyday problem.
This isn't something that just started when Putin invaded Ukraine.
This started when Joe Brandon was elected, or selected, or appointed, or whatever you want to call it, became the President of the United States.
And it is an ongoing thing, and it will be.
Inflation is not transitory.
The recession that is coming is real.
The gas prices, the food shortages, they are real, and those will be here for a while.
We only get a little bit of time.
To talk about things like our families.
To talk about things like the importance of Father's Day.
Because of the importance of, well, fathers.
And that's what I want to do.
You know, there's a belief in mostly the modern American left, but in some cases even extending into the center of the ideological scale, that Strong, aggressive, otherwise often known as masculine males are bad for our country, bad for our culture.
They call it toxic masculinity.
There's a belief in some of these circles that males have to be more like females.
Need to be more feminine.
Need to be in touch with their feminine side more and not be so toxically masculine.
There's a belief that the patriarchy is to blame for all of the problems that go on in our culture.
For mass murders, for mass shootings, for violent crime.
That this is all able to be pinned on essentially straight, toxic, patriarchal, masculine males.
This is what we're told by the left, which is why we are target number one.
There is no one There is no one sex nor sexual orientation or group of individuals demographically that is so easily and openly targeted with blame for everything quite like straight males.
I won't say straight white males.
I'll just say straight males.
And I say the straight males because the part we're talking about here has to do with nuclear families.
That means fathers and mothers and their children.
And you have to be straight and procreate with a female in order to have those children.
So that's why we're talking about this.
And as we approach Father's Day on Sunday, I want to quote some things to you, and I want to share some things with you that I think are extremely important for us to analyze as we talk about what is ailing us right now in our culture and in this country, beyond the obvious, things like prices and things that are in control of government but not in our control.
This was actually written in February by a gentleman by the name of Terrence Jeffery, who is the founder of CSN News, and the editor-in-chief, rather, of CNS News.
And Terrence Jeffery wrote this piece back in February, but it's obviously much more important right now as we approach Father's Day.
Let me give you just a little bit.
In 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in the United States entered World War II, there were around 2.5 million babies in this country.
That were born in 1941. Of those babies, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 95,700 of them, or about 3.8%, were born to unmarried mothers.
So that's a pretty low number, 3.8%, as in 1941. The traditional family led by a mother and a father, in the same home with their children, was a foundational fact of American culture.
In 1945, by the end of the war, The percentage of babies born to unmarried mothers rose to 4.3%.
But one year later, by 1946, the first full year after the war, it dropped back down to 3.8%.
The traditional family had survived.
Then in the 1950s, the percentage of American babies born to unmarried mothers began to slowly tick upward, hitting 5.2% by the end of the 50s.
By 1969, 10% of American babies were born to unmarried mothers, almost double what it was at the start of that decade.
By 2008, that 10% number had grown to past 40%.
Now in 10 of the last 13 years, 2008 through 2020, it has surpassed 40%.
In the three years that it did not, it never dropped below 39.6%.
So if you round 39.6% up, go ahead and say that each of the last 13 years has been over 40%.
In those 13 years from 2008 to 2020, there were 51.1 million babies born in this country, according to the CDC. 20.6 million of those, or 40.36% were born to unmarried mothers.
This country is not headed in the right direction.
A generation, as Terence wrote, will soon be coming of age in which a large percentage of the population will have been denied a traditional family life.
What happens when families fall apart or fail to form in the first place?
Government happens.
Government gets bigger and takes more control over people's lives.
That's what.
In 1941, Medicaid, a form of welfare, did not exist.
Authorized in 1965 alongside Medicare, the Medicaid Act says, This is Title 19 of the Social Security Act, says all states, D.C. and U.S. territories and so on, have Medicaid programs designed to provide health coverage for low-income people, which is certainly understandable and fine.
But what does that mean?
By July of 2021, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, there were 76.7 million people enrolled in Medicaid.
Last fiscal year, according to the monthly Treasury statement, The federal government spent $520 billion on that program.
When it was created in 1965, 7.7% of American babies were born to unmarried mothers.
But by 2020, that percentage had risen to 40.5%.
The percentage of those babies born on Medicaid was 42%.
What does all of that mean?
What it means is that traditional families and economic well-being are interconnected.
In 2020, according to the Bureau, the Census Bureau, only 4.7% of married couple families in this country lived below the poverty level.
But at the same time, 38.1% of female householders with children under 18 and no spouse, no dad, lived in poverty.
46% of them with children under 6 lived in poverty.
That means if America continues on this long-term trend in which more than 40% of the babies born each year are born to unmarried mothers, and even more than that are born on Medicaid into poverty, it's hard to see how this country will prosper.
Quite frankly, it's hard to see how this country would survive that.
This nation was built by pioneers who sailed across broad oceans and ventured onto vast prairies seeking to live their lives self-sufficient and free.
They did not want to live their lives dependent on government.
They wanted in fact to be independent.
We need to be teaching our children.
And our grandchildren to emulate those pioneers who gave us this great country.
And we can't do it if we can't raise them in a traditional family with a mother and a father providing for them things that only mothers and fathers can provide.
Things that two mothers cannot.
Things that two fathers cannot.
Things that only one mother and no father in the household can.
Things that only one father and no mother in the household can.
There are things that only a mother can provide to a child, and there are things that only a father can provide to a child, and if one of those is absent, the child is in serious jeopardy.
Does that mean there cannot be success stories?
People born of single mothers, or born to single mothers and raised by single mothers who can't be successful?
Of course not.
But those people are the minority.
Those people are a serious outlier.
Because the overwhelming statistical analysis shows that if you're born into a single-parent household, especially without a dad, you are in for a lifelong, miserable existence filled with being runaways, drug addictions, and usually brushes with the law, if not outright prison sentences.
The numbers don't lie.
Dads matter so much.
And we're going to talk about that as we continue on The Dennis Prager Show.
My name is Bob France.
I'm glad to be with you on this Father's Day weekend.
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AmericanFederal.com Thank you very much, Dennis.
Honored to sit in your chair and an honor to talk to your extraordinarily intellectual audience.
And I really, really appreciate that.
877-243-7776 is, of course, the number to join the show, and we welcome you to do that.
I'm live in the ReliefFactor.com studios here, as Dennis said, in Cleveland, AM 1420. The answer is my home base.
My home program is called Always Right Radio, and you can find it online at alwaysright.us, alwaysright.us.
I'm talking, and I want to talk for a bit now and listen to you two about Father's Day.
And about how extraordinarily important it is to push back against the notion that toxic masculinity is indeed toxic.
Masculinity is something that absolutely should be celebrated.
Masculinity should be recognized and appreciated for everything that it has done for, in order, families, communities, societies, and cultures.
Basic building block, which is the nuclear family, was built on toxic masculinity.
Aggressive, masculine men doing things that needed to be done in order to protect, in order to provide, in order to make things possible for the nuclear family.
That is, of course, not to discount, obviously, all of the extraordinarily important aspects contributed to families by mothers, but that is another topic for another day.
Generally, Mother's Day.
There's no such thing as toxic femininity.
Nobody talks about femininity being toxic or the mother's role as being something that is bad for families.
But they do that with toxic masculinity.
And at the family level, which is the basic building block, and up to the next level, which is community level, and as I say, going to societal and then culturally.
Masculinity is something that needs to be celebrated for everything that it does.
In fact, masculinity is what provides for young children to have the self-discipline, to grow up themselves, and to replicate the process.
To pair off with someone else of the other sex, and there are only two.
Let's make sure we're not confused about that.
There are eight but two genders!
Two genders ain't nothing but men and women.
Thank you, Pastor Robinson.
To pair off with somebody of the other gender, to procreate and to raise their children in the same way, it's how civilizations are populated.
So the idea that men or males or toxic masculinity or the dreaded patriarchy is something that needs to be quashed in order for communities and societies and cultures to grow is just simply nonsense.
Let's talk about what happens when there aren't those masculine role models and figures around.
Let's talk about some of the statistics.
They are staggering, to say the least.
85% of incarcerated men grow up in fatherless homes.
85%.
63% of youth suicides.
Those young people grew up in fatherless homes.
91% of high school dropouts did not have dads in the home.
90% of all homeless or runaway kids ran away from fatherless homes.
And the numbers continue, demonstrating that the love of a father who is present every day is a stabilizing force in many kids' lives.
That masculinity.
If kids have never heard the words, Just wait until your father gets home.
Those kids are in trouble.
Those kids don't know what it's like to fear the judgment and thus the discipline of an authority figure who strikes a little bit of fear and commands a whole lot of respect from those children.
Kids who don't know that discipline in the home, which is so overwhelmingly provided by wait till your father gets home, have no such respect for the discipline and the authority figures in the schools called the teachers, the principals, the coaches.
Those same kids who don't have respect for authority in the home and thus in the schools when they run away and drop out of the schools, they have no respect for the authority figures in the public life.
Police officers.
For example, bosses, managers, people who are over them in whatever role they are in at that moment in their lives.
And that's what leads to those numbers that I just gave you.
Fathers are integral.
They're not...
They're not gravy.
They're not the cherry on top of the life sundae.
They're not the gravy on top of the mashed potatoes.
They are integral if they are not there.
It's not a luxury.
If they're not there as the necessity, children are in trouble.
Now, I said before, and I want to make sure I underscore this point as we are entering Father's Day weekend.
This is not to say that a child cannot be a success growing up in the home of a single mom.
It's just that those single moms are superheroes.
You understand?
A woman who is raising kids in a home where the father is not present for whatever reason, either he ran...
When he found out that she was pregnant or she didn't want him anywhere near the kids' lives and so she moved or maybe he didn't even know at all.
It was a one-night stand and he's somewhere else and she didn't even tell him or couldn't tell him that she was pregnant.
Whatever the case is, a single mom raising a child of children in a home by herself, if that child grows up to have respect for authority in adults, if that child grows up to go to school all the time, to study, To do well.
To graduate.
To maybe even go on to college or go right into the work world and be successful, productive members of society.
That mother deserves a cape.
Because that mother is a superhero.
And what makes heroes so valuable is their rarity, because there aren't a lot of them.
The reality is a single mom who was able to produce a kid who's productive in that way did something that was extraordinarily difficult.
She had to work one or two jobs, maybe a third, while still coming home and making sure homework got done, coming home making sure house got cleaned, kids got fed, dishes got done, laundry got done, kids were in school, went to the parent-teacher conference, and did all of it anyway.
That's a superhero mom.
But the sad reality is there are very few of them because look at the numbers that I gave you.
85% of incarcerated men grew up without a dad.
Those moms just couldn't be the superheroes they needed to be.
Or they tried their best and just couldn't make it work.
Dads matter.
Masculinity matters.
A strong male role model matters every bit as much as a strong, loving maternal presence matters.
They both matter, which is why this attack on fatherhood, this attack on patriarchy, this attack on toxic masculinity, quite frankly, this attack on males in general.
And this attack on the nuclear family, saying it's okay to have a two-dad family or a two-mom family or three-of-a-kind or whatever kind of bizarre concoctions they want to come up with, this attack is going to destroy our communities, then our society, and then our culture.
And I'll be right back.
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I get a lot of positive feedback with Bob Franz.
It's in for me.
From Cleveland, Bob Franz.
Take it away.
Well, thank you so much for that kind introduction, Dennis Frager.
If you are watching the broadcast now, instead of just listening to it, hey, I got the video working.
How about that?
If you are watching and listening by way of DennisPrager.com or the Salem News app, or Salem News Channel, rather, or the Salem News app, or maybe one of your local affiliates, however it is that you do it, we've got it working, so how about that?
I wouldn't advise it anyway.
I'm on radio for a reason.
But there it is.
It's available to you.
I appreciate that.
Bob Fran sitting in for Dennis.
I'm live in the ReliefFactor.com studios here in Cleveland, Ohio.
You know, it's kind of funny with that really wonderful and overly kind introduction to say one of the best broadcasters is, sir, the only thing I think, or one of the things, rather, that makes a good broadcaster a good broadcaster is the knowledge of when they should stop talking and let somebody else who can say it better say it.
You're going to be a great broadcaster by not saying something and letting somebody else say it better, and I'm about to do that.
Normally, I won't play something long-form, more than probably a minute and a half in terms of an audio soundbite.
But when we're talking about a PragerU video, I'll just play the whole doggone thing.
I'll play all four minutes and 54 seconds of it if it's something that is said better than I can say it.
And since we're talking about Father's Day here, as we begin our number two of the Dennis Prager Show, if you missed the first hour, we've been talking about the importance of fathers, and we've been talking about the importance of masculinity in kids' lives.
Masculinity is not toxic, or at least masculinity should not be considered by default toxic.
Any more than white skin or light skin should be considered the skin of an oppressor, just because there have been people with that color skin who have oppressed in the past.
Just like people with darker colored skin should not be considered victims, because there have been people with darker colored skin that have been victimized in the past.
That's what CRT does, critical race theory.
Well, when it comes to what we're talking about here, men and women, fathers and mothers, Gender roles in raising families.
I think it's extraordinarily important to recognize that just because someone is male and masculine, it doesn't make them toxic.
Masculinity must be revered.
It must be appreciated for what it can do and does do, particularly in the context of families and raising children.
And on Father's Day weekend, which is what today is, the start of Father's Day weekend, How can we not do that?
How can we do anything less?
It's that important.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to let Dennis Prager's PragerU go to work here.
Allie Beth Stuckey recorded this one four years ago, back in August of 2018. It is just as relevant, in fact, maybe more relevant today, because of what we've experienced in the LGBTQ Rainbow Mafia alphabet movement, even more so in the last couple of years.
And this attempt to demasculinize, that's not a word, to emasculate is the word, men, particularly teaching young boys, you know, you don't have to be a boy, you can be a girl, and encouraging such behavior.
So Allie Bestucki recorded this four years ago.
It's relevant right now, and I think we should all listen to it.
Rape, murder, war.
They all have one thing in common.
Men.
Aggression, violence, ambition unchecked by conscience, all the stuff of toxic masculinity, right?
And the solution is obvious.
Make men less toxic.
Make men less masculine.
Make men more like women.
But I'm here to tell you that that way of thinking is not only wrong, it's dangerous.
Here's why.
When you try to make men more like women, you don't get less toxic masculinity.
You get more.
Why?
Because bad men don't become good when they stop being men.
They become good when they stop being bad.
Aggression, violence, and unbridled ambition can't be eliminated from the male psyche.
They can only be harnessed.
And when they are harnessed, they are tools for good, not for harm.
The same masculine traits that bring destruction also defeat tyranny.
The traits that foster greed also build economies.
The traits that drive men to take foolish risks also drive men to take heroic risks.
The answer to toxic masculinity isn't less masculinity.
It's better masculinity.
And we know what that looks like.
It's a young man opening the door for a girl on their first date.
It's a father working long hours to provide for his family.
It's a soldier risking his life to defend his country.
The growing problem in today's society isn't that men are too masculine.
It's that they're not masculine enough.
When men embrace their masculinity in a way that is healthy and productive, they are leaders, warriors and heroes.
When they deny their masculinity, they run away from responsibilities, leaving destruction and despair in their wake.
The consequences can be seen everywhere.
One in four fathers now lives apart from his children.
And children who grow up without a dad are generally more depressed than their peers who have a mother and a father.
They are at far greater risk for incarceration, teen pregnancy, and poverty.
71% of high school dropouts are fatherless.
Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives, family is the most important.
And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation.
That was said by then-Senator Barack Obama in 2008. If we are honest with ourselves, he went on, we'll admit that too many fathers are missing from too many lives and too many homes.
As much as we try to deny the need for real masculine strength in society, there's no denying its necessity.
Healthy families and strong communities depend on the leadership and bravery of good men.
The current trend is to feminize young men in the hopes of achieving some utopian notion of equality and peace.
And it starts at the earliest ages.
In the school classroom, boys are invariably the problem.
On the playground, aggressive games like dodgeball have long been banished.
We tell young men that their intrinsic desire to compete is wrong.
Everybody gets a trophy.
Don't run up the score.
This anti-male tilt continues on through higher education and into the workplace.
It has created millions of tentative men, unhappy women, and confused boys and girls.
Here's a secret that every woman knows.
Women want real men.
Men they can count on and yes, look up to.
No amount of feminist theory will change that.
I don't know.
Any woman at any age who is attracted to a passive man who looks to her to be his provider, protector and leader.
Every woman I know wants a strong, responsible man.
That's not a consequence of a social construct or cultural pressure.
It's innate.
The devaluation of masculinity won't end well because feminine passive men don't stop evil.
Passive men don't defend, protect or provide.
Passive men don't lead.
Passive men don't do the things we have always needed men to do for society to thrive.
In his book, The Abolition of Man, English social philosopher C.S. Lewis writes about this problem.
He describes the tension between cerebral man and visceral man.
By his intellect, Lewis explains, man is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.
We need both.
Take away one and you're left with a man who's either weak or wicked.
And in a world of wickedness, weak men are nothing more than enablers of wicked men.
Rape, murder, war.
They all have two things in common.
Bad men who do the raping, murdering, and warring, and weak men who won't stop them.
We need good men who will.
It's not masculinity that's toxic.
It's the lack of it.
I'm Ali Stuckey for Prager University.
That was...
You didn't just stumble onto a Friday edition of the Male Female Hour, just FYI. This is just what needs to be said about fathers as we go into this Father's Day weekend.
It's very important to me.
And what she said at the end there, I can't speak for women because I'm not a woman, and yes, I can recognize what a woman is without being one.
If you watched Matt Walsh's film, there are some who cannot or say that you cannot.
But I agree with what Ali Stuckey said.
Women do not want beta males.
Women do not want men who are going to hide behind them and say, protect me in the face of a threat.
Provide for me in the face of difficult times.
Defend me in the face of adversity.
Men have provided those roles.
Men have played those roles, rather, provided those services who have done those things for their wives, for their children, since the beginning of, well, Western civilization.
The nuclear family is at its core, one of masculinity, combining and working with a woman who is not a feminist, but practices femininity, and both of them teaching those roles to the children.
Who grow up to procreate and replicate them for theirs, and so on and so forth.
That's what a nuclear family is, the building block of our communities.
Those communities become the building blocks of our society, and those societies become the building blocks of what we call our cultures.
And it's extraordinarily important that we do not demonize the core of that, which of course is that man at the center of it.
So that's the reason I've been talking about it on this Father's Day weekend.
I welcome your phone calls once again.
8 Prager 776. That's 877-243-7776.
Bob France sitting in for Dennis.
Right back to your phone calls after this.
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I'm not Dennis.
I'm Bob France, and I'm in Cleveland, Ohio, and I'm glad to have you aboard the Dennis Prager Show.
We're going to go right back to the phones now, and we are lit up here all over the place, and I think we're going to go to Clearwater, Florida, and that looks like John.
John, thanks for joining us on the Dennis Prager Show.
Bob France sitting in.
Go ahead.
Hey, Bob.
I just wanted to make a quick comment about the goofy dads and the dad jokes.
I think moms would never...
Have that aspect because everyone looks at mom as the tender loving person, but it's dad that always gives that goofy joke or that funny tie to make everybody laugh.
So mom teaches our kids how to love tenderly, but it's dad who makes everybody happy.
And, you know, there's nothing wrong with that role.
You're right.
There's nothing wrong with that role.
When dads are trying to be funny and making dad jokes and making everybody happy and laughing, comfortable, whatever, there is nothing wrong with that whatsoever.
But I guess my whole point of that was, you know, it's like in my family, you know, my daughter is, you know, is a...
Just like her mom.
They're all about fashion, and my daughter models her fashion after my wife, and it's all wonderful.
But does my son model his fashion after me?
No, he makes fun of me because he's never going to take fashion advice from the guy wearing the khaki cargo shorts and the T-shirt and so on and so forth.
But when Father's Day comes around...
I would like fathers to be treated not how they are at their goofiest, but for the role that they play as fathers, the same way moms are.
You know, there's things that you can do.
Stereotypical fashion to kind of tease moms in their moments, but we don't do that.
We honor them and we say, man, the job you do for our family is so crucial.
The loving, protective, nurturing things that you provide for our children are crucial, and that's why we love moms.
But when it comes to dad, it's like, yeah, there's the old man in the plaid shorts at the barbecue grill, and it's just the goofiness of it.
I would like to see...
How about a radio station saying, send me a picture of your dad holding his children?
Send me a picture of your dad playing ball with you or something that meant a lot to you?
Because that's the kind of thing I think that will foster the respect for the role of the dad in the family that has disappeared over the last 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years.
Not to say there isn't room for the fun and the levity that you're talking about and the goofy dad jokes, but when Father's Day rolls around, I would like for the father to be respected a little bit in the same way we respect mom, not just on Mother's Day, but around the calendar.
Make sense?
Fair enough.
Absolutely.
Fair enough.
Yeah.
And a great point you make.
And like you said, I tell dad jokes, and I don't wear the most fashionable clothes.
But when, you know, for people who don't know what you're talking about, I mentioned this a couple of segments ago, there was just a radio station, an FM music station on in my area in Cleveland, and it was something to the effect of send pictures of your dad in his dad clothes, and the worst dad or the funniest dad clothes or whatever will send you a prize.
It was a contest.
And I thought, you know, why mock dad?
Why is dad on Father's Day weekend, why do they have to mock dad?
How about send a picture of your dad in his best moment with his kids?
Send a picture of you on dad's shoulders.
Send a picture of you catching the ball from dad or hitting it to dad.
Send a picture of dad holding and feeding his infant child.
Whatever.
Something that shows that dads have just an equally important role in the development of their kids more than just telling dad jokes and wearing goofy clothes.
That's all I'm saying.
And I probably shouldn't have been triggered by it.
I wasn't really quote unquote triggered by it, but it just struck me as odd that dads don't get the respect.
And when dads don't get the respect that moms get, dads are deemed to be less valuable, less important in a child's life.
And as we have quoted statistic after statistic on, it's not true.
Dads are extraordinarily important to the success of the children and their lives.
We're going to go to...
Lake Ariel, Pennsylvania, it looks like.
Mike, you are on the Dennis Berger Show.
Bob France sitting in.
Go ahead, sir.
Hi, Bob.
I'll try to keep this as short as I can.
I'm a retired state trooper, and when my wife left, I got custody of my three children.
I remarried, and my wife helped me raise my three children.
My ex had a baby by her boyfriend.
Now, everybody's grown up now.
Now, my daughter is an Air Force veteran, and she teaches at a prestigious school in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
My older boy is a state trooper, like I was, and my baby flies rescue attack helicopters in the Air Force.
Wow.
Their half-brother, the half-brother is a druggie.
Such a druggie that his half-brother, my older son, actually arrested him for drugs.
A couple of years ago, my daughter comes, "Daddy." Thanks for taking us.
If you didn't take us, we would have turned out like my half-brother.
And that's the important part that a dad can do.
You know what?
The pride I hear in your voice.
I want to make sure I heard it all correctly.
You've got a son who is a state trooper.
You've got a daughter who is a teacher.
And you've got another son who flies rescue helicopters.
In the Air Force.
In the Air Force.
The pride that I hear in your voice is extraordinary and so very well-deserved, and your point is exactly what my point has been through this broadcast.
You cannot overstate the importance of a strong, positive male role model in a kid's life, and that is not to underestimate or to diminish in any way the role of the mother, but the father's life is integral, as the statistics prove and as your personal life experience proves.
So I'm so glad you shared that.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mike.
God bless you.
God bless you, and happy Father's Day to you as well.
Let me go to Chicago next.
This is Don in Chicago.
You're on the Dennis Prager Show.
Don, go right ahead.
Hello.
I really enjoy listening to your show.
I think you do a great job.
I just wanted to make a reply on the Father's Day that I've been listening to.
I agree 100%.
I have one job, one job all in my life.
That was to follow my father's footsteps, take care of my children, do what I can do.
I failed at everything I've ever done.
I refuse to fail as a father.
I am proud to have a father that I've had.
And regarding masculinity, taking away banhood, it's terrible what the Democrats are doing.
But that's exactly what they're doing.
We have to stand tall.
We have to stay together.
And we have to celebrate our parents, because without our parents, where would we be?
Well, I'm glad you brought up the Democrat aspect of this.
You're 100% right.
What did Hillary Clinton say?
And what do Democrats and leftists say in general?
They say it takes a village to raise a child.
A village is led by what?
It's led by the government.
It's not led by mom and dad.
It takes a village to raise the child.
Moms and dads are irrelevant.
And it happens to be the same exact philosophy of Marxists, like BLM told us.
We'll be back.
Okay, six minutes before the top of the hour.
If you're on hold to talk about Father's Day and the role of fathers and toxic masculinity under attack, as they call it, toxic masculinity, stay there, and I will take your calls after the top of the hour.
But I want to finish this hour with a little personal story as we approach Father's Day.
It was about a week and a half ago.
I was spreading some mulch in the mulch beds.
My son, who's 18, Who's a Division I college football player who I raised in what I hoped was the right way.
And we stopped and leaned on the back of the truck and taking a break from spreading mulch.
And he said, how about them jeans?
And I... Look down.
I wasn't wearing jeans.
I was wearing shorts.
We were doing work.
And then he goes, no, mine.
I was like, you're not wearing jeans either.
He goes, shut up.
And I said, oh.
And he was talking about, because he had just come home from the gym, and he was talking about how strong he was getting.
He said, how about them jeans?
And it just so happens I'm a tall guy.
I'm 6'3", and my wife is a tall lady.
She's 5'11", and my son is 6'4".
And he's like, those jeans made me.
This physical specimen, I think he was trying to say.
Just a little braggadocious father-son banter, you know.
And I said, yeah.
I said, you got lucky.
There's no doubt.
I said, why do you think I married your mother?
I knew we would have told you.
My daughter, by the way, is 5'10", also.
And it was just a little moment of levity.
He says to me...
When I have a son, I am going to do everything for him.
I go, what do you mean?
He goes, I'm going to coach him.
I'm going to teach him.
I'm going to help him lift.
I'm going to teach him martial arts.
I'm going to do this, this, this, this.
And I said, why?
And he said, because when he grows up to be amazing, I want him to say, my dad made me this.
And I looked at him.
I didn't say a word for probably a good 10 seconds.
And he's looking at me kind of bug-eyed like, what?
And then I just put a finger in the air, and I just kind of put a finger at the air, and then I turned it and I pointed it back at myself.
I said, hello, welcome to my world.
That is exactly what I tried to do for you.
When you were four years old was the first time I threw a ball at you.
If your hands went for it, I said, we're in business.
If it hit you in the forehead, I was going to have to sit you down in front of a piano.
And I said, son, this is what I've always wanted, is for you to achieve whatever made you happy and whatever you were most comfortable becoming.
I've always wanted you to be an athlete because I've always been one.
And of course I wanted to coach you and do all of those things.
But I said two things, son.
Number one, you're going to burn them out if yours is the only voice he hears.
Because tell me something, how many times have you heard me coaching you through these years where you got sick and tired of hearing me?
He said a lot.
I said exactly.
And so will your son.
But if you give him the support he needs and give him other voices as well, you'll get what you want someday, son.
You'll get what you want in your own son.
But just know how good it makes me feel to know that you want to raise your child the way you might not even realize I tried to raise you.
And that's what Father's Day means to me.
We'll be back.
Welcome to our number three of the Dennis Prager Show.
Whoa!
My name is Bob France, coming to you live from Cleveland, Ohio, home base, ReliefFactor.com studios of AM 1420. The answer, my show is called Always Right Radio.
It is a double entendre.
You can figure it out for yourself.
Always Right Radio is online at alwaysright.us.
I bring that up because, well, two reasons actually.
If you can't get through on the phone lines when I give you 8 Prager 776, that's 877-243-7776, I tell my local audience this in Cleveland every day, you can also leave a message for me, literally, that I will play on the radio.
And you do that by alwayswrite.us.
There's a button up there that's red.
It says Sound Off.
Click it.
Type in your name.
Click Record.
Record your message.
It comes to my screen.
I play it on the radio and I'll respond to it.
Nationwide, no matter where you are, I'll respond to it, whether it's a question or comment or whatever.
But the other point is, I guess my email address is also up there, which I started radio back in the late 1990s, and I remember the only ways you could get through to me when I was doing a radio show back then was call the show or fax.
Those who are in radio long enough, remember, when you've got a fax machine, you fax your comments, too, and you'd give the phone number, and the machine would be whirring in the background.
We'd have an intern running over and pulling these things off, and people would be taking, you know, they'd come out of the fax machine like it looks like a little kid with crayons, you know, writing messages and faxing them to the host.
Then email became widely available.
You know, the very late 1990s and 2000s when the.com really exploded and the internet really exploded.
And then we started taking comments on shows by email.
And it was like so much better than faxes because they're right on your screen.
And of course, since then, we don't even do email anymore.
It's call the show or it's leave messages for the show or it's put comment sections on the web pages or...
You know, texting, texting services, all of these different ways to reach a show.
But I just got an email.
They're reminding me about the old days.
I got an email on my alwaysright.us page.
And the email reads simply from Dennis.
Who needs a daddy when you have an uncle?
Sam.
So exactly right.
That's the left's mentality.
You don't need a father.
Big Daddy government will take care of you.
Uncle Sam will take care of you.
That's what it's all about.
That's kind of the point.
That's exactly what I've been talking about since I started the program two hours ago on Father's Day weekend.
The left doesn't believe dads are necessary because anything that a dad can provide, the government can provide for you.
And, of course, the only problem with that is the fact that it is wholly and provably untrue.
Because when real fathers aren't there and government thinks they can do it all, that's when kids end up in prison.
85% of the incarcerated men in prisons today are from fatherless households.
So, funny joke, I'm glad you mentioned it, but that's what they believe.
Who needs a daddy when you've got an uncle?
Uncle Sam, that is.
Uncle Sam plays the role of daddy for you.
Big daddy government.
And it never, ever works out the way it's supposed to.
I almost gave you a local phone number.
877-243-7776.
That's 8 Prager 776. If you want to continue to call and talk about dads and fathers and toxic masculinity under attack as we approach this Father's Day weekend, I will take those phone calls.
I've got a few other things I want to get in in this hour as well.
But since we promised, let's do the former.
Let's stay on the Father's Day issues and the toxic masculinity attacks.
Carol is in Lancaster, Ohio.
Carol, thanks for joining us on the Dennis Prager Show.
Go ahead.
Hi there.
Can you hear me?
I hear you just fine, Carol.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you so much.
The fellow that spoke a few calls ago that was explaining how toxic single women are really doesn't have a clue.
I'm a retired elementary principal, and so I've watched many families grow over many years.
And the single mom that I have known works so hard.
They love their kids.
They do their best.
I've known many dads that put their kids first.
They make them a priority.
And they grow up so strong, those kids, thankfully.
But the problem in this world, this society in general, is the lack of men who take responsibility for that one action.
They desert the mom.
They don't care about the kid.
There is no role model for them to watch.
They don't learn the children, don't learn how men should treat women.
They don't know how to be strong and bold and courageous and do all of the things they should be doing as a man in our society.
And that is the piece that's missing.
It doesn't matter what color you are, how old you are, what your economic status is.
Men need to be fathers.
If they're going to go...
Meet a woman somewhere.
They need to be responsible for the possibility that there's another life coming, and they need to step forward, whether they're in the home or they come back and forth.
The kids need their dads so much.
Men need to be responsible for the little person that they create and stick with them for their whole life.
There's only one chance to do that right.
And when men don't do that...
Then we have prisons full of people who are lost, who are angry, who feel left out, who feel like victims, and that is the problem, in my opinion.
So thank you for taking my call.
Well, don't hang up yet.
Don't hang up yet.
I would like to talk to you about that if I can for a second, Carol.
I agree with you wholeheartedly.
Clearly, one of the biggest problems with these fatherless households is the man not wanting to be a father, running when they find out that they got a woman pregnant, or not knowing because it was a one-night thing and they never saw her again, and she can't track him down, or whatever the case might be.
So you're a thousand percent right about that.
But there is another element to it, and that element is, of course, the number of women who...
Don't necessarily, or are not necessarily honest with the men that they are with.
Oftentimes a man may be told, and I'm not justifying in any way, shape, or form either one of their decisions to have unprotected sexual activity, particularly outside the bounds of marriage, which is something that I would fully and wholly support, because that's how this is supposed to work anyway.
That's a whole different MOLAX. Right.
Yes, it is.
It really is.
But as it pertains, since we're talking about this, there are guys who have no idea.
The woman says, maybe especially if they're a dating situation, I'm on protection, I'm on the pill, or whatever, and they're not.
Or they forget or they don't, and they make an irresponsible decision.
And then the man has absolutely no idea.
After the breakup.
So the point here isn't to point the finger of blame at one or the other.
If women and men are going to get together and be sexually active, they both need to recognize that, yes, a pregnancy could result, and together we are going to take care of our child.
Whether we get married or not, we have to make that commitment.
But the reality is...
An extraordinary number of these single-parent households come from people who don't make that commitment or they're actually the products of divorced parents where they did plan to raise the kids together but through irreconcilable differences or whatever.
Mom and dad split.
There's a split household.
Dad doesn't, you know, get to see the child as often, maybe weekends or maybe every other weekend as visitation goes.
So there's a whole slew of obstacles in the way sometimes for kids to have that fatherly influence.
A big number of them, like you said, are the ones who just run and don't take their responsibilities up.
But others are relationship-driven, either by married or unmarried mothers and fathers of these kids.
Agree?
Carol, are you still there?
Did we lose Carol?
Okay, we may have lost Carol.
I'm here.
Oh, there you are.
I'm sorry.
I couldn't hear you anymore.
For some reason, you were dropped out.
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, I called back.
Sorry.
I don't know where I was.
But absolutely, I agree with you.
It's got to be 100% responsible on both sides of the party.
So I'm not excusing women for not being honest.
And yeah, the story of when to have a relationship and sexual relationships is a whole different.
But I agree.
I mean, as adults, everybody needs to be responsible, honest, and all those things.
But I do think, honestly, that men, in general...
The ones who are not in the home are a large part of a problem for those kids.
They're missing that huge piece of an example.
Yeah, so it's not toxic women.
I don't even know where that came from.
No, no, it's not.
I don't think anybody really...
Well, I think maybe one caller referred to toxic feminism, and I don't think that's a thing.
Yeah, I don't think that's a thing.
I think there is such a thing as feminism demonizing masculinity and therefore trying to force masculinity out of the family relationship, outside of the family dynamic, and maybe that's what they mean by toxic.
But super quick, in 30 seconds, let's tie this to another huge story right now, which of course is Roe vs.
Wade and the situation of abortion.
Should a father who knows that his girlfriend or wife is pregnant with a child have as much say as to...
Whether or not that child is allowed to live, or is the decision only up to the woman?
Well, that brings another, a bigger question to mind.
First of all, I am pro-choice when it comes to somebody making a choice.
Oh, boy.
Okay, listen, Carol, I know, I know, there's a hard break here.
I apologize for setting you up there.
I thought I'd get a quick answer.
20 minutes after the hour, Bob France sitting in for Dennis Prager.
8 Prager 776 is the number.
877-243-7776.
I want to respond super quick to the last caller from Lancaster, Ohio.
Her name is Carol, I believe it was.
I didn't expect her to go into a longer explanation when I tried to get her just before the buzzer and the hard break to say, to answer the question, should men have a say in whether or not the unborn children that they are responsible for are given birth or aborted?
Everybody says it's a woman's choice.
It's a woman's decision.
My body, my choice.
A woman's health care choice between yourself and her doctor.
Now, if you're pro-life, this is not an issue.
You believe, of course, the child is going to live.
And if you don't want the child, you can't raise the child.
And it's a situation that is untenable for you, though.
That's what adoption is for.
That's why I'm here.
My mother had an option.
She chose adoption.
It's a very, very subtle difference between abortion and adoption.
Three letters.
B-O-R or D-O-P. It's abortion, death.
Adoption, life.
I was given up for adoption.
I was allowed to live.
Here you are.
Here we are having this conversation together.
But when women don't believe in life, and they believe it's just my body, it's my choice, me and my doctor, we'll figure it out.
Maybe I'll have the baby, maybe I won't.
Where does dad come in?
Where does the father come in?
Because the last caller, Carol, was right.
Fathers need to be there for their children.
But as such, does a father not have a right to have a say in whether or not he has children?
Can the father say, don't abort that child?
It's 50% mine.
Because quite literally, you can't have that child without my participation.
You couldn't have conceived of that child anyway.
So if it takes two to conceive, why does it take only one to decide whether the child lives or dies?
That was the question I asked, and it's probably my fault.
I want to apologize to the caller, because I guess that is a much deeper question than a quick, short five- or ten-second answer.
And we were up against the bell.
But if somebody else wants to answer that question, we can certainly do that.
I want to go now to Chesterton, Indiana, and that's where Susan is.
Susan, thanks for joining us on The Dennis Prager Show.
Bob France sitting in.
Go right ahead.
Susan, can you hear me in Indiana?
Yes, hi, I can hear you.
Can you hear me?
Okay, I got you.
Go ahead, Susan.
All right, yeah.
I just wanted to share a different perspective.
I have two sons, and I've been married for 28 years.
I have two boys.
One is the younger one.
He's 23. He's in the Army National Guard, and he goes to college, and he does all the right things.
My other son decided, well, I can do his own thing.
He was always getting into trouble in school.
My husband was with us.
The entire time, there was never a problem as far as his activity and involvement with my son, but my son continued to get into trouble.
We tried everything we could, counseling and all kinds of stuff.
Nothing worked.
He ended up, unfortunately, going to prison for just not doing what he's supposed to.
Basically, he hit his girlfriend.
He got a DUI, all kinds of stuff.
And when he was in prison, people would ask him, you know, like, Like, you come from a middle class, upper middle class family.
What do you mean you've been to, like, every Caribbean cruise?
You know, you've been to islands, and you've done this and that.
And he said, it dawned on him, he's like, wow, I guess I didn't have it so bad.
Well, when he got out, he gets a girl pregnant, and then he's still, you know, this girl, I have a granddaughter now, she moves to Florida, they only dated six weeks, and she is on the welfare.
And to your point, with you being adopted, I was adopted as well.
I, of course, did not want to have an abortion, but in that situation, knowing that my son wasn't on the right path, this girl is not on the right path, I suggested maybe they look at alternative options.
Well, she ended up having it, the child, and my son is not active in this life, this poor little girl's life, and so now she's on the welfare, and he decided he would get his life together.
He works, he has a job now, he's doing things better, but he's not living in my home.
And I just wanted to put a perspective on it that even though me and my husband and my other son, we all did the right thing, sometimes people just don't want to comply to the rules.
And our society feels like then we have to pick up the pieces for people like him, this girl, you know, my granddaughter, and they're on the welfare.
And it's like it's set up for failure because this girl, why would she ever get off the benefits?
because she gets literally more things for free than I could possibly ever see her getting based on her educational background.
So something is wrong with the amount of generosity that we give.
I know that sounds rude and mean and cruel, but I feel that some of the benefits are so good that it gives the mother of my granddaughter no incentive to get off those benefits.
Well, not only does it disincentivize getting off of the benefits.
sadly, In our culture, it incentivizes some women to have more children that they cannot provide for because it makes the benefit check Bigger.
And they don't have to work.
And they don't necessarily use all of the checks and the other things that are given to them through welfare and other children's services for the children.
The children get the bare minimum and necessary to survive.
And the mother or, you know, mother and new boyfriend or whomever uses those monies on themselves.
That is a sad reality.
But to the bigger point that I think you're making here, and I really appreciate you calling to make it, Susan.
And I want to address it for just a second.
And that is, you can do...
Do your very best.
You raised both of your sons the same.
One of them turned out to be terrific, wonderful, productive, educated, working, and so forth.
The other one chose a bit of a different path.
You probably wonder to yourself, what did we do wrong?
How did we go wrong?
We raised them the same.
We raised them in the same house with the same rules.
They had the same money.
They had the same lifestyle, the same type of neighborhood, the same type of school.
Why did one of them go one way and one go the other?
And the answer is nobody will ever know.
Nature versus nurture has been a discussion in the American culture for eons, since longer than I've been alive.
What makes a child turn out the way a child did?
Is it nature versus nurture?
And the answer is it's different for every child.
You can nurture them the same and have them come out the same, sometimes different because there is a natural...
Proclivity or a draw, if you will, I'm probably lacking the right word here, to be drawn to.
Things are a little more risky for some people, a little more dangerous, and they're a little bit less inclined to just do the safe and the right things, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Which is why when I was talking even about single mothers, some single mothers turn out great kids.
They are, however, the outliers.
The majority of them can try their tails off, and their kids just aren't going to be able to do well without their fathers in the household.
You can do your best, but you cannot force something to happen with your children.
I wish you well, and I wish your family well, and I wish your grandchild and her mother well, too, because it's a very difficult situation you just described.
Thank you so much for that call.
More calls coming up.
Bob France sitting in for Dennis Prager on the Salem Radio Network.
Prescott, Arizona.
Kevin, you're on the Dennis Prager Show.
Bob France sitting in.
Go ahead, sir.
Thank you for taking my call.
My pleasure.
I actually was a single dad for 20 years, which was unheard of 20 years ago, 21 years ago, when I became a single parent from the time my daughter was three months old.
I also have degrees in adolescent counseling psychology and worked in group homes with kids coming out of juvenile prison and within the juvenile probation system.
I will tell you this, the court system in a lot of states...
Really go against the fathers.
They do.
I've seen it in courts, literally, where the mothers actually use the courts to punish the fathers, use the kids as a weapon against the fathers.
And at some point, the fathers, a lot of times, they just get done being beat up by the mom and the courts, and then they just walk away.
You know, that wasn't my case, but I've seen that firsthand.
I have too.
I've heard it from a lot of people who have gone through it, and you're right.
And it's unfortunate.
In a lot of states, the fathers have very little to no rights whatsoever, particularly as it comes to shared custody or equal custody with the mother, even if they are willing.
And guys are demonized, rightfully so, those who abandon their children.
And again, there's a stereotype that says because a significant number of males aren't there for their kids, that...
The mother should be automatically given the default position of full-time caregiver, full custody.
And it's unfortunate when there are dads who want to be full-time dads, who want to have custody, shared custody, equal access, and so forth, and they're not allowed because of the stereotype of the deadbeat dad.
So God bless you as a single father for raising successful kids and for sharing your story, because you're right.
It's very unfortunate.
It's very unfair.
Connie is in Cleveland, Ohio.
Again, a homegirl.
Hey, Connie, go right ahead.
Hi, Bob.
Yeah, I think that...
I firmly believe that the father should have rights to prevent the girlfriend or wife from having an abortion.
One example I can give you is years ago I typed up a medical report and the father ended up in the emergency room because he was so distraught because his girlfriend had an abortion.
That is an awful thing to hear.
I don't want to say that's common.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
I don't know, but anytime I hear stories like that of where men have no say and they're begging their girlfriend or their wife or whomever it is who doesn't want to have that child, please don't kill our baby, please.
The default decision always comes down to her because she has to do the carrying and the burying of the child.
She wouldn't have a child if it weren't for the father's participation.
He ought to have a participation in the decision.
And I just don't know what to say about that other than it's tragic.
Yeah, I know.
Connie, thank you.
Thank you so much for the phone call.
There's no answer to that, by the way.
You know, there isn't, because there's only two people involved.
It's not like there's a tie break.
Okay, the third person gets to decide.
Unless, of course, the third person is the child, and the child should be able to break the tie and say, yeah, I'd kind of like to live.
Hey, that's all the time that I've got.
We've spent the entire program on dads and parenting and nuclear families because it's Father's Day weekend.
Please thank your dad.
Please give respect to your dad, the father figure in your life, and please...
Make that the norm every day.
Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
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