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Hey, everybody.
This is about as easy an intro as I've ever done.
Julie Horton is...
You know what?
It's not easy.
I'm afraid you'll think I'm sort of exaggerating.
This very, very young woman is a phenomenon.
I thank God I found her.
She means the world to me, and you will understand why.
You know, we do a podcast together every week, Dennis and Julie.
You can watch it on YouTube, and it's worth it.
Anyway, now just sit back and enjoy Julie Hartman.
Hello, everyone.
If you hear Billy Joel playing at the start of the hour, you know who's guest hosting.
As Dennis just said in his lovely introduction, thank you so much for that, Dennis.
My name is Julie Hartman.
I am 22 years old.
I'm a recent college graduate.
Many of you have heard me host this program before.
This is actually my third time hosting the Dennis Prager Show.
It's my fourth time hosting national radio, so I did two for Dennis, and then I did one for Mike Gallagher.
I was driving to work today, and I was just bouncing in my seat listening to music.
It was super early in the morning, and I was just so excited because I cannot emphasize to you enough what an honor it is to do this job.
I love it.
It is really a privilege to be with you, and it is especially an honor to sit in for someone like Dennis Prager, who has changed my life in more ways than just the political.
Those of you who listen to Dennis and Julie, Dennis just mentioned that we have this podcast together.
It premieres every Tuesday, and you can listen to it on Apple Music or Spotify or watch it on YouTube.
Those of you who have listened to it before know that Dennis and I have really become close friends.
He's like an uncle and a grandfather figure and a boss and a co-host and a best friend, and he says he thanks God every day that he found me.
Well, I thank God every day I found him.
Many of you are aware of how I did find Dennis Prager.
I won't repeat the story at length because, again, I imagine most of you know it, but for those of you who don't, you can go onto my website, which is julie-hartman.com, and you can find out that story.
Or you can go back and see the other times I've guest-hosted for Dennis.
The dates are August 10th, 2021, and July 14th.
Oh, excuse me.
August...
10th.
Oh, yes.
August 10th, 2021. Yes.
And then July 14th, 2022. See, I love guest hosting that much that I actually have the dates memorized.
So please go back and you can watch the introduction to that to see my story.
But just to give a 15-second synopsis, I'm actually sitting in this chair today because of an email.
I had encountered Dennis' work during the summer of 2020. Back then, dear Lord, I was a Democrat.
But during the Black Lives Matter riots and during the time I was sent home from college due to COVID, I really became disillusioned with the left.
I found Dennis Prager through his organization, PragerU, and I emailed him.
And it is really miraculous that he saw my email because last summer when I worked for him, one of my responsibilities was actually to read his mail for him and respond to people.
And it really is just unbelievable that he saw it because the sheer volume of mail he gets is crazy.
So, to make a long story short, we developed a personal and professional relationship, which again has changed my life.
Now we have a podcast together.
Last summer I was a weekly guest every Thursday on his radio show, and now I am a guest host.
In fact, and this is a...
I don't know, Sean, if I've announced this before on air, on national radio, that is.
I've announced it on the podcast.
But starting in two weeks, I will actually be a full-time employee here at Salem.
I'm very excited about that.
I'll be continuing with the Dennis and Julie podcast.
I'll also be doing a podcast of my own, which will be a live YouTube show.
And I will also host a weekend show on the Salem News Channel.
And on top of that, I will be a standing guest host for Dennis and some other of the incredible Salem talent.
So anytime any of them are out sick, on vacation, giving a speech, or just want to relax, they'll call me and I am going to sit in.
So again, boy, what an honor it is to do this at any age, but especially at 22. And I thank you all for listening to me.
Those of you who have listened to me before know that I am a history buff, a self-proclaimed history nerd.
I actually majored in history in college, and I am in the middle of an 1,000-page American history book by Paul Johnson called The History of the American People.
And I want to alert you all to two historical events that occurred on this day, September 1st.
They're pretty remarkable.
The first historical event occurred on September 1st, 1752. That's 270 years ago.
And it was that the Liberty Bell was brought from England to Pennsylvania.
Now, just a little bit of historical fact here.
When the Liberty Bell was brought over, I think it was rung for the first time in England, and there was a crack in it.
And then when it came to America, then of course it wasn't America, it was the 13 colonies, but when it was brought here to the New World, they patched up the crack, and then once America was officially founded, they rang the bell again, and it cracked again.
And I don't think it has ever been rung since.
You know, I'm just thinking now, how symbolic that the Liberty Bell has a crack in it.
I actually like that imagery more of our Liberty Bell having a crack in it than being fully intact, because I hope it reminds us that liberty is fragile.
I know that we are certainly seeing that today.
It's a shame what's going on in this country.
You know, Dennis asks me all the time if I am happier as a result of becoming a conservative, and the answer is undoubtedly yes.
I feel more grateful.
I feel more like myself.
But I have to say a downside to it is that now I lay awake at night worrying about America.
So that's the first event I wanted to alert you to.
The Liberty Bell came to this country 270 years ago today.
And the second event, which is pretty remarkable, and some of you history buffs may know it because it's pretty famous, World War II started in Europe on this day.
In 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland.
Now, of course, World War II was already underway in Asia.
The Japanese were trying to colonize China.
In fact, they invaded Manchuria, which is one of the northern parts of China, as early as 1931. But on this day was the day that Hitler invaded Poland, really setting off World War II in Europe.
Two events, to me, show the range of occurrences that can happen in history.
I was recently reading a book called The Next 100 Years by George Friedman.
I highly recommend it to all of you.
It's a riveting book.
And he has this great line in it, or series of lines, where he says, if you could go back to one of the imperial capitals of Europe, On January 1st, 1900, and you were to walk up to one of the citizens on the street and say, do you know that in 20 years from right now, the German Empire would not exist, the Russian Empire would not exist, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire would not exist?
They would look at you and tell you that you were crazy.
In other words, no one...
Could have predicted what was to come, not just in the next 20 years, but my God, in the next 40 or 50. And I think it would behoove Americans to remember that things can go wrong really fast.
There are so many problems in the world, so many things that are out of people's control.
Look at the Polish who were invaded, what is it, 82 years ago today.
They had no control over that.
But what is so discouraging to me about our problems in this country...
Is that so many of them are manufactured.
They're contrived.
They're contrived to make certain groups of people feel better about themselves, and they're contrived to suppress political opposition.
Police brutality is probably the most salient example.
Twelve unarmed blacks were killed in 2019 by police.
You were more likely to get struck by lightning than be killed by police in 2019. And look at what's happened with the defund the police movement and skyrocketing crime.
Another manufactured problem is this notion of white supremacy, which is apparently so rampant.
President Biden says it is the number one problem facing our nation.
Heather McDonald is actually going to join me next hour to talk about how this white supremacy hysteria has infiltrated into medicine.
You know, people think America will survive.
As much as the left hates America, there's a part of them, I believe, that thinks it will always take care of them.
And we better be careful, because if we continue down this route, it won't.
I'm Julie Hartman.
We'll be back.
The Dennis Prager Show, live from the Relief Factor Pain-Free Studio.
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Hello, everybody.
We are back here at The Dennis Prager Show.
I am Julie Hartman.
You know, I didn't mention this in the first segment, but I would like to mention it now.
Dennis and I have a podcast together that I did mention, but we also have...
I've created Instagram and Twitter and Facebook accounts for our podcast, so you can see clips.
That is at DennisJuliePod on Instagram, at DennisJuliePod on Twitter, and then our Facebook account is just called The Dennis and Julie Podcast.
So please do check it out.
On our podcast, I talk a lot about social media.
I think that in many ways it has been a bad thing for our youth and not just for our youth, but for people in general.
But there's good social media and there's bad social media.
And I know that I have learned a lot about conservatism through following PragerU and The Daily Wire.
And so I really encourage you to follow our podcast accounts because I promise you, you will be getting good material.
That's at DennisJuliePod.
We're going to go straight into a news story here that, you know, so many of these news stories are both surprising and unsurprising to me.
They're surprising because they're so absurd, and they're unsurprising because they're so absurd.
Google just announced that Google Maps will only produce options for abortion clinics when users search for abortion-related services.
However, crisis pregnancy centers, nonprofits that offer financial and medical assistance to mothers attempting to keep their babies, will no longer appear in queries regarding abortion.
Okay?
Look, I have said many times on this program and on the podcast with Dennis, I am very conflicted about the issue of abortion.
I'm pretty clear on what I think on most issues, but this one I really do go back and forth.
But the point here is whether or not you support abortion.
This is not okay.
We here have a tech giant that essentially has a monopoly in the market.
Very few people use sites other than Google.
So when people are going to search for locations, they're going to use Google more likely than not.
We here have a tech giant that is actively trying to suppress services The article also says that Yelp has placed a customer notice on these crisis pregnancy centers that say that these facilities,
quote, Now that's interesting to me because I was recently reading That there was a California statute that passed that says that now nurse practitioners can perform abortions.
Now, is Yelp putting that disclaimer on Planned Parenthood clinics or any other abortion clinics?
This is outright discrimination against conservatives.
And, you know, I'm about to make what some may consider to be a particularly audacious claim, but...
It's the truth.
I believe second to disabled people, conservatives are the most discriminated against group in the United States right now.
The reason why I put disabled people first is because, as many of you know from listening to Dennis and Julie, I have a severely autistic older sister who has bounced around from group home system to group home system within the California government system.
You know, I should actually do a segment on this.
You would not believe how incompetent a lot of her care has been, how she has been the subject of verbal and physical abuse.
I've really had a window into seeing how disabled people are neglected and not cared for and not cared about.
So that's why I put them first.
But second, I would absolutely say conservatives.
And this is a prime example.
You know, another example, I'm sure many of you heard this a few days ago on this very program.
Dennis interviewed a January 6th prisoner named John Mellis.
I have to tell you, this was one of the most heartbreaking segments I've ever heard.
I am not a crier, and I was driving listening to this crying in my car.
John Mellis entered the Capitol on January 6th.
I'm not condoning his behavior.
I don't think people should have entered the Capitol that day.
But he nonviolently entered the Capitol.
Ready for this?
He's been in prison for 19 months.
No bond.
His bond hearing and his hearings in general to be able to get out of there have been pushed back, pushed back, pushed back with no reasoning.
He is not allowed.
Any visits, not even virtual visits.
He said on the phone when he was speaking to Dennis that he looks around and he sees other prisoners being able to go and visit with their families during visitation hours, and he is not allowed to do so.
The other January Sixers in there are not allowed to do so.
He's been in solitary confinement for about eight months of those 19 months.
He also says that he sees regular beatings.
In fact, one of the other January Sixers in there had one of his eyes gouged out during a confrontation by a racist correctional officer.
Meanwhile, I would like to remind all of you that our Vice President Kamala Harris encouraged people during the Black Lives Matter summer when billions of dollars were lost due to rioting.
Businesses were shattered.
25 people were killed during these Black Lives Matter riots.
Okay, that is twice as many unarmed blacks that were killed the year before in 2019, and five times as many people that were killed on January 6th.
Kamala Harris tweeted to have people chip into the Minnesota Freedom Fund to post bail for those protesting in Minnesota.
And so many people chipped in that all of those rioters...
Those Black Lives Matter rioters in the summer of 2020 were able to get out of jail.
Actually, many of them weren't even arrested.
They were just let go.
But those who were arrested were let out.
Okay?
In addition to that, there was so much money raised by this Minnesota Freedom Fund that not only were they able to bail out the Black Lives Matter rioters, but the rest of the money went to those accused, ready for this, of rape, murder, and other violent felonies.
One of the women in prison got $100,000 cash bail, and she was charged for stabbing a friend to death.
That is discrimination of conservatives.
We have political prisoners.
The January 6th people are treated vastly differently from Black Lives Matter rioters.
Another example of this discrimination is the suppression of information.
Look at what has come out about the Hunter Biden story.
Twitter outright suppressed the Hunter Biden story in anticipation of the 2020 election.
Another example is that mothers and fathers are taken away from their children in custody battles if they do not abide by their children's pronouns.
We do have blatant discrimination in this country.
The left talks about discrimination all the time.
But the supreme irony is that they are fighting against discrimination.
That in many cases, doesn't exist.
We'll be back.
I'm Julie Hartman.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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Julie Hartman here, in for Dennis Prager, who is in Denver today.
You know, I gotta tell you guys, he has more energy than me as a toddler.
I have to tell you, I was an extraordinarily energetic toddler.
My parents are listening right now.
I'm sure that they are nodding their heads.
You know, my mom, when she would drive me home from school, would drop me off at the end of the block and make me run down the block home, or not make me, but I wanted to do it.
And she would drive alongside me because she hoped that that would get my energy out.
Unfortunately, it did not.
I'm sorry, Mom.
The point, though, is that Dennis has that much energy as I did at 74. He is in Denver right now.
He travels all over the country to speak.
God bless him.
So I'm sitting in for him today.
Lucky me.
Last segment, I was telling you that I really believe that right now, and that is crucial right now, in American history.
I believe second to disabled people, conservatives are the most discriminated against group in the country.
Now, this story that I'm about to report on proves my point very well.
Some of you may have heard this.
It barely made national news, which really upset me because I think it should have been on the front page of all of these newspapers.
There was an 80-year-old Washington state woman who was banned from her local YMCA. She has been a member of that Y for, ready for this, 35 years.
She was banned from that Y a few weeks ago because she saw a transgender individual in the women's locker room.
She says, watching four and five little girls pulling down their suits in order to use the toilet.
This woman, her name is Julie, actually, so automatically I have a proclivity to like her.
She's got a good name.
Her name is Julie Jamon, but I like her on top of that because she's a hero.
Again, she says that after she was done swimming in the pool that she's been going to for 35 years, she went into the locker room and saw an employee with a man's voice and who looked like a man watching these little kids changing.
And ready for this, she told the man, get out of here.
I'm quoting her.
I asked if he had a penis.
And he said, it was none of my business.
I told that man to get out right now.
Julie, if you are listening, you are my hero.
Sean, I would like to interview Julie sometime.
The next time I guest host, or even for my own show, I am going to interview this woman.
She is a hero.
And ready for this, she was banned from her Y. Because the head of the Y said that she was...
Discriminating against the employee.
Wow.
She actually held a counter-protest outside of this YMCA, which, by the way, I did not mention is in Seattle.
She held a protest, and a bunch of transgender individuals in Seattle came to her protest outside of the Y to protest her.
So again, my first reaction to this story, and I mention this, When I first started reporting on it, why is the media not reporting on this?
You know, last night I went on the USA Today, New York Times, and Washington Post websites, and I searched the name Julie Juman, and guess what?
Nothing.
Nothing came up.
Meanwhile, I would say about once a week, I see in those papers, black man was kicked out of this restaurant.
Racism!
Black...
Woman was denied mortgage loan.
Racism!
Why are they not reporting on this?
That a woman was kicked out of her YMCA for standing up for little children who were being watched by a pervert.
You know, one of the bedrocks of the leftist project, I believe, is to unravel distinctions.
They unravel distinctions between men and women.
Between legal and illegal, healthy and unhealthy.
We see that with nowadays they're calling obesity.
If you say that obesity is a health problem, you're fat phobic.
And one of the distinctions that they are trying to unravel is between what is just and unjust.
And when you unravel that, you unravel civilization.
Some people may not think that something like this is a big deal.
Oh, it's just in Seattle.
Oh, it's just one instance.
Oh, the Y is run by someone who doesn't have his head screwed on straight.
But if we allow this to happen, and this is happening in a lot more places than Seattle, we are truly unraveling our civilization itself.
Because our civilization is nothing without our values.
We'll be back.
I'm Julie Hartman.
The Dennis Prager Show.
The cultural shift from prosperity, integrity, and faith to its current perceived state of anger, discontent, and victimhood.
Uncle Tom II offers historical footage, photos, correspondence, and data to reveal the genuine strides of black America in the 20th century, the deliberate Marxist strategy to create racial tension and replace God with government, the NAACP's sinister agenda, the fall of Black Harlem, The truth behind Black Lives Matter and the demoralization of America for political power.
Don't miss Uncle Tom, too, from executive producer Larry Elder and director Justin Malone, with Brandon Tatum, Votie Bauckham, and Chad O'Jackson.
Watch the movie on demand or buy the DVD now at SalemNow.com.
That's SalemNow.com.
Hey, everybody.
This is about as easy an intro as I've ever done.
Julie Hartman.
You know what?
It's not easy.
Because I'm afraid you'll think I'm sort of exaggerating.
This very, very young woman is a phenomenon.
I thank God I found her.
She means the world to me.
And you will understand why.
You know, we do a podcast together every week, Dennis and Julie.
You can watch it on YouTube and it's worth it.
Anyway, now just sit back and enjoy Julie Hartman sitting in for now.
Under the covers, and I guess that's why they call it the blues.
Just stare into space.
Picture my face.
Okay, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Sean is cracking up.
I had to.
I had no idea that Sean was going to play that song.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hey, you know, if this talk show hosting career doesn't work out for me, I think I'm going to become a singer.
I love that Elton John song.
I guess that's why they call it...
You know, I'm really opening up to you here, you audience members.
It's kind of a sad song, but I think I want it to be my first dance song at my wedding.
Oh, Sean's rolling his eyes.
Sean, are you rolling your eyes because you think I'm never going to get married?
Huh?
Huh?
Yeah.
I've got to admit it to you.
I just think it's so beautiful.
I would love to dance to it at my wedding.
I'm sorry for doing that to your ears, but hello to all of you.
Welcome back to the second hour of the Dennis Prager Show.
Dennis is in Denver, hence why I'm sitting in for him today.
We have a podcast together called Dennis and Julie, and you can find us on Instagram at DennisJuliePod and Twitter at DennisJuliePod and Facebook, and it's called the Dennis and Julie Podcast.
You know, last episode we actually talked about music.
This is a bit off topic from what I wanted to talk about this segment, but hey, whatever.
I'm in the second hour.
I'm feeling loose.
Let's go there.
You know, as I mentioned, I'm 22 years old.
And Dennis and I talk a lot about the generational differences between his and mine.
And one of the ones that I've really been focusing on lately is the kind of music that we listen to.
And I said on our last podcast, so many of us listen to the same type of music.
Drake, Rihanna, Kanye West, Taylor Swift.
What's similar about all of those kinds of music is that, number one, it's very energetic.
Number two, a lot of the times it's violent.
And number three, and most importantly, it's self-aggrandizing music.
The kind of music that my generation writ large listens to, and by the way, I'm not saying everyone, okay?
I'm not trying to make a sweeping generalization, but I'm trying to highlight a theme here.
We mostly listen to this kind of self-aggrandizing music that makes you feel like you are walking into a stadium and everyone is screaming your name.
I posit that the reason that we listen to this music is because many of us lack the emotional sophistication to be able to listen to a song like the ones that I
think, in large part, it's because we have had it so good as Americans.
That's not to say that People my age haven't experienced hardship in their lives.
But we are the most privileged generation, not just in American history, but in the history of the world.
And I think a lot of us, again, are so used to having such relative stability and prosperity that we don't want to go.
We've never had to really face true adversity.
And so that's why we don't listen to songs that maybe talk about adversity or make us think about adversity because we don't want to go there.
Anyway, that's my little spiel.
Thank you, Sean, for that opening of Elton John and for throwing me off track.
But that's a little glimpse of the kind of stuff that you'll get listening to Dennis and Julie.
It's really unique.
We actually don't really talk about events or politics.
We talk about themes and trends and the age difference between us, the gender difference.
Yes, at Dennis and Julie, we think there are two genders, male and female.
The differences between us really make the show interesting and, of course, the similarities as two conservatives.
Anyway, on to what I wanted to discuss this hour.
I'm sure some of you know about this report that the House Democrats just published a few days ago, saying that the Trump administration pushed the vaccine too fast.
But I want to talk about it again because it is just so astounding.
I mean, the audacity.
Okay, so this we have here, I'm quoting House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn.
The select subcommittee's findings that the Trump White House officials deliberately and repeatedly sought to bend the FDA's scientific work on coronavirus treatments and vaccines to the White House's political will are yet another example of how the prior administration prioritized politics over public health.
After pushing the vaccine Probably longer.
I'm not good at math.
I was a history major.
But I know for the past at least year and a half, the Democrats have been pushing the vaccine on us.
We are well aware of the mandates.
In fact, they continue to push the vaccine on us.
I just read an article that D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is mandating that children ages 12 and up must be vaccinated in order to return to private and public education.
This is still going on, this vaccine push.
Now they are pivoting, at least the House Democrats are pivoting, and saying, oh, it's Trump's fault that the vaccine was pushed too fast.
How does that make any sense?
I think really what's happening is that a lot of information is coming about.
Excuse me, about how the vaccine is really damaging people.
In fact, I don't know if many of you are aware of this.
Of course, the media would never report on this.
But Great Britain, to their credit, is being honest by publishing a report that from April 1st to May 31st, 2022, this is according to Britain's Office of National Statistics, 94% of people in Britain who died from COVID during that time were vaccinated.
94% of the people who died in two months in 2022 from COVID were vaccinated.
And 90% of those people were double or triple vaccinated.
That should be on the cover of the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, you name it.
And I think this House report is coming out because they know this and they want to backtrack because you can't hide it for long.
Once this information starts coming out, you can't stop it.
And so I think they're trying to backpedal.
It really is remarkable to me, I think about this all the time, how much the Democrats flip on issues.
I think that they...
In their minds justify it.
And I know everyday leftists justify it because they're progressive.
Look at it in the very name.
Progressive.
It means you can change.
You can progress away from things.
But we need to hold people to principles.
There's nothing wrong with changing your stance and when you have new information, maybe modifying what you said or supported before.
But what we see with the Democrats is that they will unrelentingly Take a position and then change it if it benefits them.
Okay, so now they're doing this on COVID. I'm sure many of you know that Senators Clinton and Obama voted for a border wall back in 2006. And then, of course, when President Trump ran in 2016 and was talking about a border wall, it's horrible, it's xenophobic, it's racist, it's not going to do the job.
Okay, well, you guys voted for it 10 years ago.
How do you answer that?
They changed their position because they knew it was politically advantageous to do so, because the everyday left has gotten so woke that they don't like border walls.
So now the Democrats are against border walls, okay?
Actually, they're kind of not because President Biden just resumed building Trump's border wall, which is endlessly hilarious to me.
Democrats were also anti-gay marriage, they flipped, okay?
Joe Biden in the past was pro-crime, or not pro-crime, excuse me, pro-punishment for crime, and now he flipped.
And you know what?
When the Democrats flip this much, More than it shows the contempt they have for everyday Americans, I actually think it more so shows the contempt that they have for their supporters.
They know that their supporters, many of them, are so corrupt and so weak and so under their spell that they can literally one moment push the vaccine on you and the next moment say that it was rolled out too fast and the left will still follow in lockstep with them.
That's the Democrats for you.
Oh, we're ending again with Elton John.
I love it.
We'll be back.
Welcome back to The Dennis Prager Show.
We are here in the second hour of the program.
I'm Julie Hartman, the lucky 22-year-old recent college graduate who gets to guest host for Dennis today.
It is an honor.
It is also an honor to interview my next guest.
Here on the line, we have Heather McDonald, who is a prolific American conservative author.
She is a Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor to the City Journal.
She has written several books, including The War on Cops and The Burden of Bad Ideas.
I would just like to say that when I was, quote-unquote, discovering conservative ideas two years ago, during the summer of 2020, one of the first videos that I watched was Heather McDonald's PragerU video.
I think it was called, Are the Police Racist?
And it totally changed the way that I viewed policing and crime.
And it really started my journey to become a conservative.
So I owe a huge debt of gratitude to our guest here, Heather McDonald.
Hello, Ms. McDonald.
Thank you very much for your time today.
Julie, thank you so much for having me on.
And I guess you're a failure of the educational system if you were able to have your mind changed by facts.
Something went wrong, so you deserve your $100,000, $200,000 in tuition back.
You're funny.
Well, thank you for saying that.
I will just say really quickly, There are some conservatives at Harvard.
I clung to the few conservative professors.
One of them was Harvey Mansfield.
But you're right that I'm probably a failure by Harvard standards.
Maybe they're going to revoke my diploma.
I don't know.
We have yet to see.
But I think it's funny that you said that.
And thank you again for coming on.
Yeah, don't expect any recognition from your alma mater, believe me.
They will not be devoting a little article about you in the alumni magazine.
I can speak from experience.
Wow.
Oh, yes, you went to Yale, right?
So Yale just has completely gotten you away from their system?
Have they just wiped you off of the grid?
Yeah, me and a bunch of others.
I mean, I'm not claiming any particular dessert there, but far more prestigious colleagues are also just wiped out.
So that's the way it goes.
Well, you know what?
I wear it as a badge of honor if a woke institution says that they want to somehow get rid of me from their record.
And I'm sure that you feel the same way.
So today I want to talk to, I mean, so many things I want to ask you about.
Again, you're one of my heroes, and I know that sounds corny to say, but it's true.
But specifically, I want to discuss your recent City Journal article that just captivated me.
For those of you who haven't read it, Ms. McDonald published this article called The Corruption of Medicine just about a week or two ago.
And in it, she talks about how this boogeyman of white supremacy that the left says supposedly We're good to go.
Medicine and the practice of medicine, not just, again, the practice itself, but medical school admissions, the tests that people have to take to get into medical school.
I was reading that article and highlighting things, and my jaw was on the floor when I was reading it.
So, Ms. McDonald, I want to ask you if you would be willing to synopsize for our readers some of the things that you posit in that article and some of the evidence that you found.
Well, the main leaders of the medical profession have decided that the main characteristic of medicine is white privilege and white supremacy and racism.
And they have made it their mission to purge doctors of their racism.
They believe that if there's not proportional representation of so-called underrepresented minorities, that is, blacks and Hispanic students in medical school, it's because somehow...
Medical school admissions committees must be discriminating if there is not proportional representation of black and Hispanic researchers in cancer and Alzheimer's labs.
It must be because doctors are discriminating against qualified blacks and Hispanics.
Those propositions, Julie, are completely false.
The problem, the reason we don't have exact proportional representation in medicine or any other meritocratic field is because there is a massive academic skills gap.
And Asian scores, sadly, and this is uncomfortable for many Americans to hear about or talk about, but if they're going to accuse a country of racism, we have to fight back with the facts that explain this alleged unfair lack of proportional representation.
There is a massive skills gap, and that's why there isn't proportional representation.
So what the schools have done is say, we are going to admit...
Black and Hispanic students with medical school...
Hold it right there, Ms. McDonald.
I'm so sorry to interrupt you.
We have to go to break, but we will continue with Heather McDonald.
Hello, everyone.
Julie Hartman here.
We have Heather McDonald on the line.
I was just asking her to synopsize her findings.
In her recent City Journal article, which I highly encourage you all to read, called The Corruption of Medicine, and what she was saying was that when people are taking tests to get into medical school, if there are disparate results between whites and minorities, what happens is that these medical schools and the people running the test blame the test.
They say that the test must be racist or prejudiced.
So I want to let Ms. McDonald continue.
I'm so sorry that we had to cut you off during that break, but please go on.
Yes, Julie.
So a black medical school applicant with mediocre test score grades on the medical school admission test has a nine times higher chance of getting admitted to medical school than an Asian and a seven times higher chance of getting admitted to medical school than a white with similarly mediocre skills.
They're basically admitting blacks and Hispanics with academic skills that would be automatically disqualifying if presented by whites and Asians.
They predictably don't do as well as their peers, and that prejudices, if we were still being a meritocracy, those underrepresented minorities' chances of getting into competitive residencies.
So the next step in all of this is to change the standards of scoring.
So the very important step one in the medical school licensing exam, an exam that's given after the second year of medical school, has now gone, as of this year, to a pass-fail basis rather than handing out grades.
Because black and Hispanic students did so poorly on it.
The AMA, the American Association of Medical Colleges, is now insisting that faculty members in medical school show competence in their own white privilege theory, being able to say why they're racist.
They're demanding that schools offer courses and require courses in white privilege.
Well, learning is zero-sum.
And every minute that a student spends learning to regurgitate the utter vacuous and counterfactual bromides of critical race theory or white privilege theory is an hour and minute not spent learning how to save somebody who shows up with a near-fatal heart attack in the emergency room.
And so we are watering down medical knowledge, we're watering down medical competence, and we're also watering down...
Medical research because the research project is also encumbered with these completely unjustified racial quota mandates.
Yes, one of the things that you wrote about in the article, and you just talked about the Step 1 test, but you also said that they have changed the MCAT to reduce the performance gap between whites and blacks by having a quarter of the questions not be about medicine, but about social issues and psychology.
And you say that the MCAT now has this committee where if there's a huge racial variance in correct answers, those MCAT questions are eliminated.
I mean, this is medicine we're talking about.
This is, as you just so powerfully said, this is people's lives.
And you also mentioned that, you know, the funding is being allocated towards this diversity, equity, inclusion program.
You talk about the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which is one of the largest philanthropic funders of basic science.
It's put $1.5 billion to essentially make labs that are, quote, happy and diverse.
Needless to say, this is astounding.
The question I have for you is...
When did this really start and where do you think it's coming from?
You opened the City Journal article by talking about the earthquake caused by George Floyd's death.
Do you think it really started with that or did a lot of these changes predate George Floyd?
Julie, you're absolutely right in your suggestion.
They predated.
The mass hysteria on the part of the elite about phantom racism was certainly...
It's amplified exponentially by the George Floyd race riots.
But these trends have been a long time coming, and a bunch of us have been warning about it, and Americans have just turned their eyes away and said, oh, those silly schools, nothing matters.
But the effort to kind of pretend that the academic skills gap does not exist through the widespread use of racial preferences has been going on for decades.
The case, after all, that affirmed the constitutionality of racial preferences in colleges was Bakke.
That was the University of California Davis Medical School.
And a white guy, Alan Bakke, sued because he wasn't admitted, even though he had much higher grades and test scores than the black average applicant to the University of California Davis Medical School.
And to the eternal...
The destruction of any hope of racial equality and colorblind policy in the United States, Justice Powell came up with this ridiculous justification for outright racial preferences, which is, oh, it helps white students learn if they can be around black students.
That's the diversity rationale.
So this has been going on since at least the 1970s.
Right.
But it seems as though it really got bad with George Floyd.
I mean, a lot of this stuff, like changing the MCAT, I would imagine, really came with the racial reckoning, as they like to say it, with Floyd.
So another question I have for you is, you know, really on behalf of my listeners, and of course myself, when we are seeking medical care, I mean, how can we try to combat this?
Are there certain, you know...
Hospitals or companies or doctors that we should go to.
I mean, I don't want to go to a doctor who took an MCAT where the quarter of the questions on the test were about psychology and not medicine.
So how can the everyday person who needs medical care, how can they combat this or get around this?
Gee, I wish I had an answer to that, Julie.
I don't see any holdouts.
Individual doctors are terrified.
They see what's going on.
But I don't know a single medical school that is not struggling to one-up its competitors and say, we are the most woke medical school in the country.
Nobody is speaking out.
As I write about in my article, there's been a few doctors who have said racial preferences are destructive.
They're inimical to excellence, and they're also insulting to blacks, as you say.
But he was absolutely turned into a pariah.
Yeah, he was turned into a pariah.
Very hard to fight it.
I don't know.
I mean, speak out.
If you have a medical board, if you're a smaller community that has a hospital in it, and you have any opportunity, perhaps, to speak to the people who run it, say that, you know, we don't believe in this.
But I've talked to people within large Catholic hospital chains, for example, and they're all being pressured.
Yes.
To bring minorities into their management regardless of qualifications.
I know.
And those types of decisions matter.
I know.
The pressure, my God.
But we have to stick up or this will continue.
We'll be back with Heather McDonald.
Hey everybody, this is about as easy an intro as I've ever done.
Julie Hartman is...
You know what?
It's not easy.
Because I'm afraid you'll think I'm sort of exaggerating.
This very, very young woman is a phenomenon.
I thank God I found her.
She means the world to me.
And you will understand why.
You know, we do a podcast together every week, Dennis and Julie.
You can watch it on YouTube, and it's worth it.
Anyway, now just sit back and enjoy Julie Hartman sitting in for me today.
Hello, everybody.
It is the third hour of the program.
I am Julie Hartman, as Dennis just said, guest hosting for Dennis today as he is in Denver.
I love this job.
It is just so much fun.
To do this, to talk about these ideas.
Look who I just interviewed, Heather McDonald.
She was one of my heroes.
She helped me become a conservative, and now I get to sit here and interview her and hear from all of you listeners who call in.
Please know that it is not lost on me how fortunate I am to be in this position, and I really do know that I have a responsibility to use that good fortune.
To that point, I would like to spend this hour discussing What has made America so extraordinary and different from other countries?
As I mentioned at the start of the show, I have guest hosted.
This is my fourth time, actually, guest hosting national radio.
It's my third time hosting for Dennis, and then one other time I did a show for Mike Gallagher.
And I love history, as I've said, probably five or six times on this program.
And I really want to try, when I guest host, to dedicate...
Every third hour of the program to something pertaining to history.
And today I want to talk about what American exceptionalism is and some examples of it.
And this is inspired by a debate I actually had with a leftist about six months ago.
On this very topic of American exceptionalism, needless to say, I was supporting the idea that America is an aberration.
And this person who I was debating with, he was saying that America is not exceptional.
And so of course...
Obviously, he was asking me to identify some of the things that I believe makes America exceptional.
And I would say, well, look at our freedoms.
Look at freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion and the rights that are given to people who are accused of committing a crime.
Look how unique that is.
Most other countries don't have that.
And he would respond, well, Europe has that.
Many countries in Europe have many of those freedoms.
So America isn't exactly unique.
Sure, maybe not the entire world has the luxury of having those freedoms, but it happens in Europe and some countries.
And then I would go on to my next point, and I would say, well, look at our transfer of power.
Look how every four years we get a new presidential election, and the people elect their representatives.
I mean, a lot of nations around the world have dictatorial regimes.
And the same thing, the guy would say to me, well, look at Europe.
There are elections in Europe.
People get to choose their leaders in most countries in Europe.
And the point is, I realized that I really had to beef up on this subject because it was harder to argue than I had anticipated.
I think we conservatives, it's so obvious to us that America is exceptional, that we kind of get lazy sometimes with our arguments.
We just sort of refer to American exceptionalism like it's a given.
It's not a venture to say that half of this country does not think America is exceptional, so we've really got to get specific here.
And that is the goal of this hour.
I want to identify some things about the structure of this country, the way that it has been designed, and the way that we have behaved in history that truly sets us apart.
The first thing that I want to talk about actually pertains to the pre-founding of our nation, the colonial period.
And I know what some of you are probably thinking, you're going, boring.
And to be honest, I can understand that sentiment.
I mentioned that right now I'm in the middle of a masterful 1,000-page book written by the brilliant British historian Paul Johnson.
It's called A History of the American People.
And at the beginning of the book, the first 100 pages pertain to the colonial period.
And I remember when I opened the book, I just thought, Okay, Julie, you got to kind of slog through this part.
You know, it's really something that you should beef up on and know pretty well if you're going to be a conservative commentator who proclaims that they are a history buff.
And I have to tell you, I think that colonial period was the most fascinating part of the book to me so far because I think it says so much about our exceptionalism and the way that we...
Took such great things from Britain, but also made those things our own is truly extraordinary.
And so one of the things I want to highlight, and this is something that you can really bring up in a debate, this is what I want to do for my listeners.
I want to give you, I want to arm you with facts to put in your ammunition for a debate with a leftist, with that, you know, leftist sister of yours or your classmate.
I really want to arm you with facts.
And one of the things is that it's so unique that America was founded on the model of a population of self-governing small landowners.
Now this, I learned from Paul Johnson's book, this is very different from the European model of a small, concentrated class of hereditary owners of large land.
England was really, I mean, a brutally aristocratic system where if you had land, you gave it to your kids.
If you didn't have land, you were essentially destitute.
America from the beginning was so different.
Because there was all of this space in the New World, people could come here and everyday people, people of modest means, of course not everyone owned land, but a far greater percentage of everyday people than in Britain in America could own land.
That is huge.
That is huge for social mobility.
So that on its own is unique.
And then the thing that makes America doubly unique is that because America had all of these small landowners, these individuals by necessity had to think like owners.
They were the managers and the operators of their own land.
They oversaw everything.
They weren't serfs.
They weren't employees or, I mean, some of them were indentured servants, but a lot of people weren't indentured servants.
When you're a serf or an indentured servant, you have no idea of the basic economics underlying what you're doing.
When you're a landowner, you start to think like an owner, and you do understand the economics of what you're doing.
And I believe, and I would argue that Paul Johnson's points, although he doesn't say it as explicitly as I'm saying, support this.
I believe that this is what made the US a particularly fertile environment for modern investment capitalism.
We had all of these people who were thinking like owners, were thinking about things in terms of their economic attractiveness or their economic viability.
And so we in America, I mean, we did benefit from Britain's example of private companies.
For instance, Britain had the Virginia Company, which was a private company where people invested to settle in Virginia.
Actually, it's astounding.
I mean, America is born off of capitalism.
The reason why people came here is because of private companies.
So we did benefit from that example of Britain.
What made our form of capitalism different is that we had a class of people that could invest in private companies, could be owners of things, without having any direct connection to the day-to-day happenings of the company.
We kind of take this for granted in America.
We just think it's so common, but it's really an astounding thing.
If you think about Apple, for instance, most people who hold shares of Apple, they don't work at Apple.
They've never been to Apple's headquarters.
Some of them have probably not ever used Apple products.
But is this capitalist system in America that we were inspired?
I mean, it is just so unique.
And when you have people that are able to invest in companies, be owners of things that they really don't have any day-to-day connection to, that allows for enormous social mobility.
Because if you are shrewd enough and you think in terms of economic profitability and viability, you can really make a lot of money off of investment.
And it also benefits the people who are creating the company, because even if they have to sell parts of their company, if they're getting a lot of investors, they're going to make a pretty penny.
So again, this is really specific to America.
In England, there were private companies, but you had to get charters from kings, and a lot of the times you had to be aristocratic to participate.
It was our small land-owning population that allowed people to be owners in this form of capitalism to flourish.
That's what makes America exceptional.
We'll be back.
Hello, everybody.
Julie Hartman here.
It's the third hour of the Dennis Prager Show.
It is a joy to be with you today.
I think I mentioned this in the last hour, perhaps before, but I want to remind you that you can find out more about me on my website, julie-hartman.com, and you can email me at julie-hartman.com.
That's a bit of a tongue twister, but you can find that email on my website.
I really love reading emails.
I cannot promise that I can respond to all of you, but I can promise that I read each and every one, and they are very touching and helpful to me.
The good, the bad, and the ugly, I read all of it.
So please do let me know how you think the show is going and if you'd like to hear me talk about anything else.
And check out the Dennis and Julie podcast.
I'm telling you, it's unique stuff.
Speaking of unique, this hour I am attempting to answer the question, what has made America exceptional?
Now, I opened this hour by saying that we conservatives really need to beef up on this subject, A, because half of this country doesn't think it's exceptional, and B, we just kind of take it for granted and we don't always get specific.
So I am trying to arm you with some facts today that you can use in a debate on why America is exceptional, because a lot of the times the left will say, well, what about Europe?
Well, what about Scandinavian countries?
I'm trying to tell you things that make us different from those countries, just different in general, because America truly is exceptional.
I was just talking about the colonial period, and I was discussing our economic system that is so unique.
We had a system of self-governing small landowners, which stood in stark contrast to England's System of having a small class of very large landowners that pass their land on to their kids.
And I was saying that our system allowed for so much more social mobility because people could own their own land.
And also they were thinking in terms of being owners and thinking about things in terms of their economic viability, which of course impelled our modern-day form of capitalism where people can be at least Part-owners of companies without even knowing about the day-to-day happenings in that company.
So again, this is really unique to America, and it's an important point to stress in debates.
Another thing I want to bring up, and by the way, there are just so many.
I'm going to try to go through them in this hour as fast as possible because I want you to know about all of them.
America was and is uniquely a religiously pluralistic society.
You know, reading Paul Johnson's book of History of the American People, I think it just went over my head in high school and in college that the 13 colonies were really, each of them were distinct religiously.
Maryland, for instance, was Catholic.
Massachusetts, as we probably all know, was Puritan.
Pennsylvania was Quaker.
Rhode Island was founded by Roger Williams, who was an antinomian, and he made Rhode Island into a hub of religious toleration.
I mean, that's pretty incredible that many of the 13 colonies had distinct religions.
And the benefit of this system is that, and I think it's the benefit of our system of federalism, that is, the divide between the federal government and having a bunch of states, is that people can really self-segregate.
You know, we hear the term segregation a lot today, and obviously it goes without saying that the segregation back during the time of Jim Crow was bad.
But that doesn't mean segregation as an idea writ large is bad.
There are actually a lot of benefits to it.
And part, again, of having these 13 colonies with different religions is that people could go where they wanted to go.
And a great reason that the states exist today is that, again, people can kind of self-segregate.
We obviously know that Roe v.
Wade was just overturned.
And a lot of people think that's a bad thing.
And I actually think it's a good thing because if a state wants to practice it, they can.
And if a state doesn't want to practice it, they can.
And people who are really against abortion can live in states where there are restrictions on it.
And people who are for abortion can go to states where there aren't.
Now, of course, I'm sure I'm going to get callers in.
I would love callers, by the way.
Our number is 1-8 Prager-776.
I'm sure people are going to point out to me, well, Julie, a lot of people don't have the luxury just to be able to move to another state if they don't like the policies, and I understand that, okay?
But no system is perfect.
And I really think it is beneficial to have places where people can go where there are different policies.
Again, people can self-segregate, and it also allows these states to be hubs of ingenuity.
For instance, one of the benefits about our system of states, and having states kind of experiment with things first, You should point to this example, actually, when you're debating with a leftist.
They will kind of be blown away by this.
There is no way, absolutely no way, that gay marriage would have been legalized on the federal level had it not been first legalized in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts first legalized it, I believe, in, what was it, Sean, 2002 or 2003, early in the 2000s.
And because of our federal system, because of the Tenth Amendment, which says any powers that are not delegated to the federal government or prohibited by the Bill of Rights are reserved to the states, because of that, states, again, can be hubs of ingenuity and entrepreneurship.
And when gay marriage was passed in Massachusetts in the early 2000s, a lot of states saw, hey, okay, maybe this isn't so bad.
You know, having gay people get married.
My state should adopt that.
And then it got adopted on the federal level.
Again, that would not have happened without the system of federalism, which is very unique to the United States.
Tell the liberals to put that one in their pipe and smoke it.
They'll love that example.
It was May of 2004, okay, when Massachusetts passed gay marriage.
But I'm trying to draw a link here.
I hope...
Perhaps I'm not doing it too eloquently, but I'm trying to draw a link here between the way that our country was organized during the colonial period and now.
During the colonial period, each of the colonies could have their own religion.
And they did have their own religion and allowed people to self-segregate and try different things and find their own people.
And that is mirrored in the design of our state system now.
And again, that is what makes America really different and exceptional.
Now, of course, Germany and Switzerland, they do have a system of federalism.
That is, they have a federal government and then they have states that are bound by the rules of the federal government but do their own thing.
But I think that America, first of all, it's the preeminent example of federalism.
And second of all, their systems of federalism were modeled off of ours.
So many of us don't have an appreciation for how intricate and delicate and well thought out our system is and the many benefits it affords to liberals and conservatives alike.
And the thing that I just can't get over is that the left is trying to undermine the system that they benefited from.
Those who disparage states' rights, you have to tell them the gay marriage example.
They are undermining the system that they benefited from.
What a sick irony.
We're going to be back with more on what makes America exceptional and the list is long.
I'm Julie Hartman.
Julie Hartman here in for Dennis Prager.
I'm talking about some specific things about the design of our country and our history that has made America exceptional.
Okay, I'd like to take a caller.
Oh no, it looks like this caller dropped off.
We had a caller that said...
That something along the lines of there's no such thing as American exceptionalism.
I was really looking forward to taking that call.
Sean, do we have him back?
No, we don't have him back.
Okay, well, that's okay.
Why don't you guys call in?
1-8 Prager-776 and let me know what you think.
We do have some other callers here on this subject, but first I want to tell you...
Something pertaining to our history that I think makes America exceptional.
You know, I was just talking about the design of our country, our economic system, our system of federalism, how people can self-segregate.
But I want to tell you about some moments in history where we have behaved like no other nations have behaved.
The way that we treat our enemies, I think, is one of the principal things that makes this country exceptional.
And, of course, the biggest example of that, to me, is World War II. I don't need to tell you how horrible World War II was and how terribly Germany and Japan behaved in that war.
And when we won in 1945, we really, honestly, could have had the right to impose a Carthaginian peace.
Now, when I say Carthaginian peace, I'm referring to when Rome...
Plundered Carthage after they defeated Carthage in the, I believe it was the Third Punic War.
They destroyed Carthage.
They put salt in the earth so that nothing could grow there.
A Carthaginian peace means when you defeat someone and you totally obliterate the enemy.
Honestly, again, given how Germany and Japan behaved in World War II, we probably would have had a right to impose a Carthaginian peace onto them, certainly onto German and Japanese leaders.
But instead, what America did...
is that we helped to rebuild these countries.
We helped to rebuild Europe with the Marshall Plan.
Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars was given to Germany and other European countries to help rebuild after the devastation of the Nazis.
We also sent in many of our American advisors to Germany and helped them redraft a constitution and put in American soldiers to try to make things become stable again in the aftermath of Hitler.
And in Japan, many of you probably know that General Douglas MacArthur, who I believe in the 1940s was rightfully on the cover of Time magazine as the man of the year.
That's back when Time magazine wasn't a woke left-wing publication.
Douglas MacArthur went into Japan, and he also helped them redraft a constitution and rebuild their economy.
That is really remarkable.
Now let me ask you this.
Let's say Germany won World War II, or Japan won World War II. Do you think they would have treated us that way?
It really is a uniquely American thing, how well we treat our enemies.
Have we always treated our enemies well?
No.
I'm not saying America is perfect.
But these are some pretty astounding examples.
Another one I'll give you is the Vietnam War.
When we pulled out of Vietnam in 1975, there were all of these boat people, these poor Vietnamese who were fleeing persecution.
And we had American warships come and American planes come and take them to America.
In fact, my hairstylist, who I think is listening right now, was one of those boat people who was rescued.
That's my country, all right.
I am so proud to be an American.
We'll be back with more on what makes America exceptional.
Dennis Prager here.
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