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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
43:35
War on the West
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Dennis Prager here.
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subscribe at prager topia.com well my friends we Whoa!
Ho, ho!
A cracked voice indeed!
Hello, my friends!
Smoking gun number 206 of the left's loathing of free speech is the reaction to Twitter.
See, if you own, if the left owns, the left owns, The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, virtually every major Philadelphia Inquirer.
I can't think of a major city, major newspaper that it doesn't own.
It owns Facebook, it owns Instagram, it owns Google, it owns YouTube.
It's not enough!
I've said all of my life, every leftist is a totalitarian, not every liberal.
Liberals vote for totalitarians, but they are not.
So the sum total of liberal voting is identical to left-wing voting, that is correct, but they are ideologically voting for their enemy when they vote left.
Liberals who vote for Democrats are voting for those who loathe liberalism.
Yes.
It's a painful realization because so many people that I know so well are in that category.
The loathing of the takeover of Twitter by a non-leftist.
The hysteria.
Remember, hysteria is the oxygen of left-wing biological life.
Really, ideological life.
The hysteria.
You realize the ease with which the term racist or white supremacist is used?
Elon Musk is all of a sudden a racist.
Racist for the left means you don't agree with us.
That's all it means.
In fact, You only have to support free speech.
I'm going to read to you from some of their opposition, some of the hysteria that has been published, and you will see what the loathing of free speech is.
They don't make...
They don't in any way hide it.
But so many people have gone through college and graduate school and therefore...
Don't give a crap about free speech.
They think it's a vehicle to misogyny and racism.
That is what free speech is.
Who wants misogyny or racism, right?
There was the pieces that I have read here.
Here, this is from Anand Girid Haradas, Anand Giridharadas, publisher of the Inc.
Newsletter.
And, by the way, it is a phenomenon.
I'm going to have Dinesh D'Souza on, because he's, of course, from an Indian immigrant family.
The disproportionate number of children of Indian immigrants who have major positions on the left is a phenomenon.
And I don't know why it is.
But this person is an example of the chief lawyer of Twitter who cried over the Musk takeover.
Her parents, I believe, came from India.
I find it just fascinating.
By the way, the issue is not anti-Indian.
In fact, when people ask me of the 130 countries I've been to where I would most recommend people visit, I tell them India and Israel.
I've been to India four times.
I would love to go back a fifth.
It's a truly spectacularly fascinating country.
But it is a phenomenon.
Anyway, I don't understand how children of immigrants to America, people who came here for opportunity and liberty, wish to destroy its fundamental freedom.
It's like the head of Google.
One of the two heads of Google is a child of Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union.
How do you get so twisted?
I don't know the answer, by the way.
I don't know the answer.
Your parents came to America for liberty, and you are in a spectacularly powerful position to ruin it.
Aside from being ingrates, they're twisted.
There's something twisted.
Do the parents agree?
Hey, here I am in America.
Let's shut down liberty.
I don't know the answers.
I don't know.
I only know that these are questions.
So, this person, I looked up, the parents came from India.
Anand Giridharadas.
I love foreign names, actually.
Elon Musk is a problem masquerading as a solution.
That's the title of the piece.
So it's a very long piece, and I'm going to read to you excerpts.
Social media, including Twitter, came along and promised to change that.
That isn't important.
But when it became a cesspit of hate and harassment for women and people of color in particular, it began to offer a miserable bargain.
You can be free to say what you wish.
But your life can be made unrelentingly painful if you so dare.
Get that?
Now, it's interesting.
I happen to be married to a woman, a cisgender female, with the pronouns she and her.
And let me see here.
Has she felt...
Has she gone through unrelenting pain?
What woman goes through unrelenting pain because of free speech on the Internet?
Do you know what this person is talking about?
I don't.
It's particularly painful for women if the Internet is free, allows free speech.
Oh, and of course, not just women, people of color.
People of color.
They write nonsense, and it's printed in the greatest purveyor of nonsense, the New York Times.
It has acknowledged it has a problem.
It has recognized positive freedom of speech.
This is a new term, by the way.
There's negative freedom of speech and positive freedom of speech.
Positive freedom of speech is anything that the left agrees with.
The creation of a safe and non-life-ruining environment for the airing of thoughts.
Well, let's see.
The life-ruining environment has really been used to ruin the lives of people who are conservative.
My life has not been ruined, but I reported to you two days ago.
In the small city of La Kenyatta, which is ten minutes from where I'm broadcasting in California, west of Pasadena, I'm giving a speech on Mother's Day on raising moral leaders, how to raise good kids.
The leftists who run the parent, the most popular Facebook page in that little city, They have banned on the La Kenyatta Parents Facebook page, they have banned any mention of my speech.
And I'm speaking for the first Jewish organization to establish itself, I think, in La Kenyatta history.
That's why I'm doing it, to support the Chabad House.
These people are non-political.
They are always assets in communities.
They bring deeply needed spirituality, religiosity into cities.
They are supportive of Democrats, of Republicans, whoever governs.
They are very, very respectful of.
So I'm giving a speech in La Cañada, California on Mother's Day.
On Raising Good Children, Moral Leaders is the title, and it cannot be promoted on the Facebook page in La Cunada.
Because Dennis Prager is Dennis Prager.
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I was only walking through your neighborhood Saw your light on honey in the cold ice I'm pregnant.
This is the male-female hour.
Every Wednesday, the second hour of the program.
What's the biggest mistake people make?
And you'll probably answer, what is the biggest mistake you made?
Which is fine.
It's actually probably better.
Because then you're speaking from your own experience.
Now, all the lines lit up immediately.
Clearly hit a...
Topic that a lot of people have thought on.
And they're very different answers, which is exactly correct, because I don't think there is one biggest mistake.
It's easy to make mistakes.
It's hard to choose a spouse.
It's easy to choose a spouse, to be precise.
It's hard to choose a good spouse.
All righty, Robin in Manuka, Illinois.
The famous Robin of Manuka.
Hello.
Hi, how are you?
I'm well, thank you.
So, I didn't make this mistake when I married, but previously, when I was dating, two times it happened.
I fell for the family and put up with a lot of junk.
From the guy I was dating.
I understand that.
I resonate to it.
It's very tempting if you have a loving family that you would be marrying into, a happy, healthy, loving family.
It's a big, big enticement, especially if yours wasn't.
Is that the case with you?
Yes, I came from a very dysfunctional family.
Exactly.
But no, I've been married now 45 years.
How old are you?
I'm 65. Oh, you married very young.
Yes, almost when we were 20. We both married.
And it's worked out?
Yeah, not because we had to, but because we wanted to.
Yes.
You know, it's not been perfect.
There is no perfect marriage.
But it's been great, 45 years this July.
Wow.
What was the rockiest period?
I don't mean what caused it, just in terms of the years.
The 30th year, the 20th year, the 10th year.
We were, I would say it was our 20th.
25th year was the hardest.
And we were just going in different directions.
We were trying to start a business.
Our children were in junior high school, very active.
And, yeah, things just kind of fell apart there for a couple of years.
How is it today?
Very strong.
We're both getting ready to retire and very strong, very happy.
Are your kids married?
Yes, my daughter's married, has three kids, my son is married, has two daughters, and yes, everybody is strong, and we were able to come out of a dysfunctional family, but created a functional family.
Well, you're a joy to talk to.
Thank you.
That is a good one.
There is a real lure.
When the person you are dating has a wonderful family and you have a chemistry with them.
By the way, it should be a lure.
It should not be so powerful a magnet that you overlook the issues, some real issues with the person you're marrying.
But if you can get a wonderful family in the bargain...
That's a great blessing.
Hal in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Hi there.
I'm very happy to talk to you.
I'm happy to talk to you.
How do you like that?
That's good.
I believe there's different reasons between men and women.
I think men today, not years ago, but today, I think attractiveness is...
Hold on, it sounds like there's a wind behind you.
Are you speaking outside?
Yeah.
I'm really enjoying the sound effects.
Attractiveness, I believe, is 65-70% the motivation for men today, not in the last, I'd say, 20-25 years.
That's not the case for women.
I think for women today, in the last 25, 30 years, it's somewhat attractive, but I think the overwhelming...
I'd say 50% attractive, and the other is their status and life in terms of their job and their income.
I think women look at that a lot.
And when I said today, last 20 or 30 years, it was way different years ago.
I think prior to 1970, men and women both married for more traditional reasons.
They didn't look at the money, I don't think, status.
I think it was more love.
I think the love attraction got them together and kept them together.
What about your own case?
Are you married?
That's a beautiful statement.
And so you didn't fall into this trap?
I came from a poor family.
I put myself through college, paid for it by myself.
She worked at a college, the community college I went to.
I happened to run into her.
We both went to the same high school, but I never knew her.
I just happened to run into her at the college when I was there for a year.
And we started dating, but I wrote her a letter, which she still has.
Now, we dated four years, married 41, so she's had this letter for at least 44 years, 45 years.
And the letter simply stated that when...
If we're still together when I get out of school, I'll marry you.
Holy crow.
That's amazing.
And she still has that letter.
I love it.
I really do.
He's right, though.
That's another big mistake where attractiveness in a woman and income in a man overshadow everything else.
And they're pretty equal magnets or lures.
Women's looks and men's income or status.
That is correct.
They're both significant, but they cannot be the primary issue.
Thoughts on that when we return.
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Male-female hour every Wednesday, second hour.
What's the biggest mistake people make in choosing a spouse?
Which really comes down to what is the biggest mistake you probably think, or you think you probably made.
So the last call is intelligent about how men can be blinded by looks and women can be blinded by income slash status.
That is correct on both accounts, but neither sex should think that they are not significant.
I think I need to address that on its own male-female hour.
The looks in women and the status in men.
I just note one thing that is not often noted with regard to both of those.
What women want to see in a man is hard work and ambition.
And what men want to see in a woman on the looks issue is that she cares to be attractive.
Not so much the objective attractiveness, but that she cares to be attractive.
Wants to be.
It's very rarely put that way.
We continue here.
And let's see.
That's a very funny line.
Michael in Orlando, California says, infidelity, but that comes after the marriage.
Married twice.
Apparently, at least one of the women, quote, wanted to inseminate North America.
That's worthy of a slight chuckle.
All right, anyway, I won't be able to take that.
I thank you for the call, only because...
That's not a mistake people make, infidelity.
Obviously, infidelity is a mistake, but when you choose a spouse, unless they're unfaithful during a relationship, but even then, I don't know if that's a given.
I won't address that now because it's its own complex issue.
Okay, let's see.
Crown Point, Indiana.
Janet, hello.
Hi, Mr. Craker.
I think you are a very wise man, and I admire you very much.
Thank you for both.
That having been said, you hit the nail on the head.
The first two suggestions that you made, the mistakes that people make, sex and not seeing yellow flags.
I went to an all-girl Catholic high school.
When I got to college, my hair lit on fire.
I was free and wowie kazowie.
I met a senior.
He had a sports car.
He was kind of a man about town.
And I just went nuts.
And my parents didn't really care for him that much.
I didn't care.
And I saw yellow flags, and I still didn't care.
And being a good Catholic girl, I got married, and we had kids, and it had its ups and downs, and a lot of downs, and divorced after 25 years.
The upside is that I then met, I had a friend at work, and he's just a friend.
It turned into much more than friendship, and we got married and were married for almost 17 years.
How did you remarry in the church?
No, no, I didn't remarry in the church.
Oh, okay.
No, he did.
Actually, my first husband got our 25-year, three-children marriage annulled so he could remarry.
And that lasted about 15 minutes because she realized what a jerk he was.
But I remarried a few years after I got divorced and did not marry in the church.
I see.
And it was perfect.
I was happier than I thought possible.
And it was a friendship.
It was wonderful.
Well, thank you.
I've got a break.
Thank you.
I'm very happy for that.
I should talk about that on an Ultimate Issues Hour.
As you well know, I'm a big fan of Catholics, Protestants, and Mormons.
I'm Jewish.
I wish them all great success.
We need religion.
We need you to have Christian values.
It's the one area I never understood, though, the position on divorce.
I think I'll do an hour on that.
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Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here.
I'm speaking with Douglas Murray and his brand new, extremely significant book, The War on the West, The Hatred of Whites, as he just quoted from a Some visitor to Yale, which is a wasteland, Yale.
I would pay $40,000.
I would give my kid $40,000 not to go to Yale.
And I mean that literally.
I want to just develop this point.
The hatred of the white is, as I said, a euphemism for the hatred of the West.
See, the fact of the matter is...
Western classical music is the greatest music ever written, and they resent whites for having written it.
Just as there was a great non-Jewish thinker, his name will come to my mind momentarily, he wrote The Jewish Mystique, Ernest von Den Haag.
He used to write for National Review.
He was a brilliant thinker.
And he wrote, and this is an area I have some expertise in, Anti-Semitism.
I taught Jewish history on the college level, and I wrote this book.
Vanden Haag said the Jews were hated for bringing into the world a judging God.
And the whites are hated not for slavery.
If slavery meant you would be hated, there would be far more hatred of the Islamic and Arab worlds.
That's the point I bring across in the book, by the way.
I deliberately bring in information like that, which I think almost nobody in America knows.
You know, the transatlantic slave trade was an appalling, vile trade.
It was also totally typical of the time.
Everybody was selling and buying slaves.
Of course, as Voltaire famously said in the 18th century, the only thing more wicked...
And what Europeans were doing to the Africans was what the Africans were doing to their brother and sister Africans in stealing them and selling them and then trading in them.
But put that aside for a second.
Does one in a million Americans know that if maybe 10 million people, poor souls, were trafficked across the Atlantic during the transatlantic slave trade, does one in a million Americans know that up to 18 million, 18 million African slaves...
We're traded east to the Arab countries in the same period.
Why then are there no descendants in Arabia?
Because the Arabs, unlike the Americans and Europeans, castrated every male so that there would not be another generation of blacks in the continent.
So this was an actually genocidal movement.
Does anyone in the West who beats up on the West the undoubted evils of the slave trade know that everybody did this?
If we are to tear down things that slaves built or were built on the backs of slaves, we should start to tear down the pyramids in Egypt because the workers there didn't get a fair day's wage for a fair day's labour.
We would have to pull down the Parthenon in Athens because does anyone think...
But it was Alcibiades himself who took the stones to the top of the mountain.
And as for the tradition, as you just mentioned, of classical music, there's something which you know, Dennis, but some listeners may not, which is that at Oxford University, my own alma mater, and again, we mustn't get stuck on universities because this is all spilled out into the wider world.
As Andrew Sullivan said, we all live on campus now.
But at my own old University of Oxford...
The music faculty is discussing stopping the teaching of the Western notation system because it is the creation of dead white males.
And here is the thing that you know, Dennis, again, very few people do know this, that there are other notation systems in the world.
The Chinese have a version.
There is an Indian notation system that does the two things of working out how to put on the page time and pitch.
But if you played today...
To somebody using any notation system other than the Western notation system.
If you played a Haydn symphony and somebody wrote it down in these systems, they could not play back to you something that would even remotely sound like what was played.
Whereas, American musicologists and others for years traveled to places like Bali and wrote down the local music using the Western notation system.
In other words, what I'm saying is...
Just as the Western system of mathematics works, not because it's for white people, because it works.
Just as the Western system of science and the scientific method...
Not because it was created by white people, but because it works.
So the Western system of music notation is not just one of many, but the best system.
And not because it was created by white people, but because it works.
And we are in the process of destroying all of these things in the name of anti-racism.
The War on the West, Douglas Murray, and it is up at DennisPrager.com.
The Dennis Prager Show.
Hi everybody, speaking to a kindred spirit, a man who's courageous and profound, Douglas Murray.
The book is The War on the West, second bestseller in the UK, fifth in the United States.
And by the way, Amazon means anything.
Children's books, fiction, silly books, as in both of our cases, beat us out by one.
You will get a boost from this show because my listeners know that I am very serious about important books and I don't just recommend anything.
Again, it's The War on the West with Douglas Murray.
I have a question you've probably not asked much.
It actually haunts me, this question, and my answer, I have an answer, but I'm not happy with it.
The question I have is, what makes a person like you, or to be honest, a person like me, what makes us?
I mean, we're both outliers in our own world.
And I have come to the conclusion that there's no answer.
It's sort of built in.
We can't...
There are people who can't stand lies.
Yes.
And I think you're one of them.
I think I'm one of them.
And we are being told to say the biggest lies ever.
Not just the two and two may not be four, but that what the West has made is not better.
That's a gigantic lie.
It is better.
Yes.
So why...
Not what.
What made you?
I don't have an answer, by the way.
I don't know what made me.
So it just seems that nature or God throws out certain people who can't abide by the mediocre, by the lie, and there's no rhyme or reason.
Do you have a theory?
I have two theories.
One is what you just described, Dennis.
I always struggle because I'm British by birth with ever saying anything sort of about myself.
I'm not used to it.
No, no, I don't find it easy either, but we have to do it.
Yeah, we have to.
Some years ago somebody asked me, you know, what drives you?
And I was umming and ahhing in a very British way.
And a British journalist called Melanie Phillips, you may well know.
Oh, yeah.
And she leapt in and she said, Douglas has a very low tolerance threshold for lies.
There you go.
And so I've used that ever since with attribution.
So that's the first thing.
I'll tell you what I think the second thing is, and this is something I don't think I very often have ever said.
I think that I'm driven by a vision of what a good life is and what a good...
What the world looks like?
And that isn't the same thing as a perfect world, and it isn't the same thing as a John Lennon-like imagined dream.
It is that there is an optimal situation, which I believe I have seen, seen versions of, a type of civilization which is as good as it can get.
Now, you might say, what exactly is that?
And as I say at one point in the book, if you asked me what I loved about Western civilization, I could spend the first hour just listing cities.
Paris, Rome, Florence, Venice, Barcelona, Madrid, on and on and on.
So I believe that I was lucky to be brought up in a moment when a vision of When Western civilization was still visible, when it was still discernible, albeit through murk, through mist and much more, through a smog, you might say.
But I saw it, and I believe in it, and I admire it, and I want, crucially, to retain it.
I don't want to destroy it.
I don't want to do what the Cultural Revolutionaries do and tear it down in the belief that what I could put up afterwards would be better.
I believe that the purpose of life is to a great extent to be found in locating that which is beautiful and good and desiring to not just continue it but to add to it if you can.
And that vision, at any rate, is one of the things that drives me and I would suspect is one of the things that drives you as well.
That's why...
There's no question.
That's why...
I don't think there is an answer.
My question may simply almost even be naive.
We're outliers.
By the way, you will find this of interest.
I have mentioned this not in your presence on a few occasions.
If you look at the leading, what is known as public intellectuals of the right, or conservative public intellectuals, A disproportionate number of them are blacks, Jews, and gays.
Isn't that interesting?
Yes.
Well, for a movement entirely comprised of bigots, of course.
Yes, and homophobes and anti-Semites.
Yeah, yeah.
No, when you look at the list, I could send you the list I've compiled.
Very funny.
It is, it is.
I mean, it's truly outliers.
In each of those communities, the dominant strain is on the left.
Yes, it's possible that that itself throws up anomalies.
My belief is, by the way, and some of your listeners, particularly younger listeners, might find this encouraging, is that if you walk through one fire, you will find it easier to walk through the next one, and on and on.
Until you become a quite practiced firewalker.
And that's one of my experiences in life, is that the first times you sort of start to dip your feet into it, you are very sensitive, you are fearful, understandably.
But it just gets easier and easier.
And in fact, you can end up, you must never enjoy the firewalk too much, because that's a temptation in itself.
But you can become hardened to it without being...
A hardened and tough and unpleasant person.
You can be hardened to the brickbats of the world, as I am.
And as I always say, I seek the approval of a small number of people.
Back in a moment, forgive me.
Unfortunately, we're at the final segment of our dialogue.
Douglas Murray's book, The War on the West, is truly significant.
By the way, Douglas, are you living in Britain?
Have you left Britain?
Have you done your own Brexit?
I've done my own Brexit.
I live in America now.
Interesting.
I'm a refugee for my own country for the time being.
Why did you pick New York?
I'll tell you why.
Because my view is that throughout much of my life and much of your life...
Europe and Britain have been the net exporters of bad ideas into America, and that in recent years that situation has reversed.
America is now the world's net exporter of bad ideas.
The things that I write against in the war on the West, the anti-white racism, the hatred of our history, the attempt to pull down the Judeo-Christian religion, And the secular traditions of the West, the desire to politicize all art and culture.
These are all things that have come from America in recent years.
Now, my own country of birth, Britain suffers from this, undoubtedly suffers from this.
It's one of the reasons why Britain has a war on Winston Churchill going on at the moment, which I describe in the book, an unfathomable thing only a few years ago.
But here's the point, is that America is the place that has exported these ideas.
And my belief is...
There is very little point in dealing with a secondary virus, the primary thought virus of our day, and indeed the ethical and moral disaster of our day, such as the re-racialization of society in the name of anti-racism, such as the leveling of all of our heroes, the pulling down, literally, of our heroes, our founders, and much more.
These things have come from America.
And if they're not addressed in America, they can't be addressed anywhere.
So I want to be...
You went to the belly of the beast.
I decided to go to the belly of the beast.
I could have an easier life, but I don't want one.
This is the absolute...
One of the key struggles of our time is to sustain what we have received from our forebears without wrecking it.
And in order to do that, we have to be able to solve this question and address it in America.
And that's why in the war on the West, I try to arm people with facts, arm people with the things we need to know, say back at the people who would destroy everything we have that is good.
Well, on that note, Douglas Murray, God bless you.
The book is The War on the West.
It is up at my website, ladies and gentlemen.
It's important.
And I want you to know, people like Douglas Murray give me strength, as many of you say I give you.
We all need each other.
We're fighting for the best thing ever made.
The Dennis Prager Show, live from the Relief Factor Pain-Free Studio.
Dennis Prager here.
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You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives, as well as the daily show prep.
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