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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:02:55
Make an Adult
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hello there, everybody.
Dennis Prager with you from Miami.
Day number four.
Here all week.
And I've been able to endure the weather.
You know, it's a good example of my theory that if you have low expectations, you have a much happier life.
It's actually one of the biggest...
Ideas that I adapted or adopted in my life at a very early age, in college actually, in England where I studied for my junior year.
I had a Buddhist professor, an Englishman who was a Buddhist, a major scholar of religion named Trevor Ling.
And when he said that the Buddhist teaching is that all pain in life comes from desires and expectations unfulfilled, I sort of had an explosion take place in my mind.
I adopted half.
I did not drop desires, but I did drop expectations.
And it has been a major help in my own enduring happiness because I'm constantly pleasantly surprised and almost never disappointed.
So on a very small level...
That's what happened here coming to Florida in the summer.
Middle of the summer, I might add.
I expected really painful humidity and heat.
And it's not been that humid.
It's been hot, but it's hot everywhere in the summer.
Expectations, they're a very big problem.
I want to talk to you about another big problem.
Thinking about the human condition, as I have been wont to do since about eighth grade, I wanted to leave this world with as good an understanding as possible of human beings.
That was a big dream of mine, along with going to as many countries as possible.
So here's one that I have been mulling.
Over for some time in the recent past, there's a massive outbreak of narcissism among young people.
It's not an attack on young people.
It's a description.
If anything, it's an attack on...
So I... Sorry, there was a technical glitch for a second, so I have to restart here.
Most families have been one or two children, and as a result...
Parents have devoted massive amounts of time to their child or children.
Well, in either case, to their child.
You know the term helicopter parent.
It's hard to imagine, aside from actual abuse, a more destructive idea than the helicopter parent.
The task of a parent...
Is to raise an adult.
And very few parents have thought about that.
They thought their task is to shower their child with attention and love.
And that's not how you make an adult.
An adult meaning an independent human being.
Once again, the Bible is so much wiser than Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley.
University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, Emory, Duke, all put together.
And therefore man shall leave his mother and father, no, father and mother, yeah, and cling unto his wife and they shall be as one flesh.
You have to leave your parents to be able to love properly, to become an adult.
And that's not what has been prepared.
We have a notion of independence, but it's backwards.
I want to be independent of a spouse.
That's a bad idea.
You should be independent of your parents.
That's a good idea.
So it's all backwards.
It's like robbing children of their innocence.
This is what we're doing now with this gender talk and genitalia talk to kindergartners.
I'll have another report on that during the show today from one of the sickest places on earth, Portland, Oregon.
And instead, while we rob children of sexual innocence, we try to make adults innocent.
So we can't have a swimsuit competition at the Miss America contest.
That's too much sexualization.
But we can sexualize children in kindergarten.
Everything is upside down.
Everything.
The idea of the helicopter parent is what I'm going to address.
Repeatedly on the show, because you say something once, it is almost as if you didn't say it, except for the handful of people that hear a good idea once, and it stays with them for the rest of their lives.
I've tried to do that in my life, but I've had to hear things multiple times.
But I've tried to, when hearing a great idea, go, whoa, I have to incorporate that, like I did with the Buddhist professor.
On the issue of expectations.
My parents never came to...
My parents came to one basketball game in high school that I played in.
I didn't want them to come.
It had nothing to do with my not wanting to be in my parents' lives.
It just...
I wanted...
I thought that if they came to the games, it was a statement that I wasn't a man yet.
That, you know...
Look, Mommy and Daddy are row 10. That's the way I thought, and I'm happy I thought that way, and I'm happy they thought that way.
It never occurred to them that they had to come to all of my ballgames, and yet to a parent today who doesn't go to every soccer game, it's equivalent to child abuse, child neglect.
That's probably more accurate.
You didn't go to your kid's soccer game?
You tell people, you could be invited to one of the most important meetings in your work or with friends, but, oh, no, no, no, no, no, my daughter's soccer game, my son's soccer game.
Then everybody goes, oh, of course, of course, your child's soccer game.
I don't understand that.
Why do you have to go?
I think it's partially because parents ache to be loved at all times.
And that's the key, the at all times.
Every parent wants their child to love them.
It's normal.
But you can't operate with that goal in mind.
The goal in mind is to make an adult, not to be loved by a child.
And if you make an adult, you will reap the positive consequences.
So I've been thinking about that.
I've been spending a lot of time here in Miami with Dr. Jordan Peterson, one of the luminary minds of our time.
And we were talking about that at dinner last night.
The parental role is to make an independent, responsible adult.
Period.
Not to shower the child with love.
I'm grateful to my parents.
They were not particularly loving, but they produced a loving adult, an independent adult, a successful adult, a happy adult.
I asked my parents at the age of 15, this is going to really sound bizarre, and I admit it.
I admit it.
It sounds bizarre, and I always march to the beat of a different drummer.
At the age of 15...
I asked my parents if Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights I would not have to eat at home because I wanted to go from Brooklyn to Manhattan to go to bookstores and concerts and all sorts of places that I loved in Manhattan.
They said, fine.
They gave me money to eat out four nights a week.
I became an adult pretty early.
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I am Dennis Pragerd.
Dot Dennis Prager.
There is no such thing, Dennis Prager, dot Dennis Prager.
So I've been talking to you about this deep realization that has hit me about the narcissism of our time and how it's related to the helicopter parent.
See, this is what I mean when I say we don't have wisdom.
You have to learn wisdom.
People have intuited, they've sort of guessed their way into life and not known what the best way to raise a child.
The assumption was accepted.
The more you attend to them and the more you shower them with attention and love.
The results are there for you to see the staggering confusion.
The most depressed, literally, this is by statistics, it's the most depressed young generation, college age, probably high school as well, in American history.
And I would love to see the data.
You couldn't figure it out, but I'd like to see.
Well, you could, actually.
If somebody did this study, I'd like to see the number of depressed kids in families of five kids or more versus the number of depressed kids in families of two kids or less.
We'll leave three and four alone.
I would like to see if this you couldn't do, obviously.
The amount of attention given to a child growing up and the amount of maturity and happiness go together.
In the child later.
It takes a tremendous amount of narcissism to think that you know better than this whole society, than the founders of this society.
I am better than Washington, Madison, Jefferson.
It's an astonishing, it boggles my mind to think that whole generation of teachers From college to elementary school think they're better human beings than the founders of this country because they don't own slaves.
Do you understand the level of idiocy that that entails?
I don't own slaves, so I am better than the people who founded the freest country in the history of the world.
Wow.
You're a giant.
You don't own slaves.
Very impressive.
Kent in Michigan.
Eric, hello.
How do you do?
One second.
Sean, I don't have control of my mouse.
Did I lose you?
Yeah, but I need it.
Okay.
Yes.
Hello, Eric.
Hi, Dennis.
It's a pleasure to speak to you.
I really appreciate your wisdom.
And I'd love to meet you someday.
That would be nice.
Thank you so much.
Yes, I'm curious.
I kind of tend to agree with your philosophy, and showering children with love is probably not the best option.
I'm just curious, though.
You said your parents weren't particularly loving.
did you what was your key to becoming a loving adult I my nature is to gravitate to people I I'm a people person.
So when I realized that I wouldn't get that much, and none of this is, I feel bad because I don't want to depict my parents as anything less than the truly stellar people that they were.
But they were loving parents, and I say it because, A, I believe in transparency.
B, I think that others can learn from my experience.
Most people want love, obviously.
So if you don't find it, this is what I realized, that in elementary school, if I'm not going to get much home, then I'll get it from friends.
So friends and other relatives, for that matter, played a tremendous role in my love life, as it were.
Since sixth grade, I've always had at least one male friend whom I loved.
That's why I'm such a big fan of friendship as an indispensable element to a happy life.
And so I didn't lack for love.
I just lacked for love at home.
But I didn't lack for love.
So does that answer your question?
Yeah, it does.
And I don't want to explain this thing the wrong way.
I believe in showing your children love, but the way that you phrased it.
With the going to every game and helicopter parenting, that's what I meant by I don't particularly agree with that.
I was just curious because I'm raising young children myself.
So I think...
Right.
Well, I think that if you are guided by I'm raising an adult to at least two guidelines.
I'm not raising a child.
I'm raising an adult.
And two...
I cannot think, will they love me at every moment?
You can't be a good parent if you want to be loved at every moment.
By the way, I could not be a good talk show host if I wanted to be loved at every moment.
A politician cannot be a decent leader if they want to be loved at every moment.
A teacher can't be a good teacher.
We should want to be loved at every moment by friends and our spouse.
End of issue.
So those guidelines, I'm raising an adult.
Well, I'll give you a third guideline if you want.
Kids need security, a sense that they are secure more than they even need love.
And by the way, that I got.
I got a very strong sense of security in my childhood.
It was a very stable home, and there were guidelines about how to live, and those were precious.
Beyond attending my basketball games.
Well, thank you.
I think that, and then also your idea of not wanting to be your child's friend.
Oh, yes.
Huge.
That's right.
I've heard you say that in the past, and that has definitely helped me with raising my own kids, because it's true.
Well, thank you for telling me that.
I've got to take a break, but thank you for telling me that.
Because everybody should hear that.
I like to know what I say that has an impact on you.
This is always helpful to me and to, obviously, others.
Back in a moment.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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MyPillow.com, promo code PRAGER. This is a big deal for me, the guest that I'm about to introduce to you, Stephen Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute.
He doesn't remember, and I'm not troubled by it at all, but I had him on about 30 years ago on my radio show, at least 30 years ago.
Because he was a revelatory, even a prophetic voice about what was happening in China.
He was allowed into rural China.
I remember your articles were in National Review at the beginning.
Is that correct?
Yeah, I don't...
Wall Street Journal and...
New York Times editorializing on behalf of this American scholar, myself, who had revealed massive human rights abuses, including forced abortions, performed in the seventh, eighth, and ninth month of pregnancy and the killing of babies after birth.
So it was a rare time of unanimity between the New York Times and the Washington Post.
But Stanford didn't listen.
Stanford decided that I was not to receive my Ph.D. and I was...
Not to go on to teach at the university level.
But I found something better to do with my life.
You certainly have.
And folks, a major work is out now.
I love these politically incorrect guides.
I have learned an immense amount from them.
And you have now written...
When was it published?
Just this week?
Last week?
Last month?
Hot off the presses.
The publication date was this week.
Great.
So the politically incorrect guy to pandemics.
I love it.
There's no doubt it is now on my list to read because it's you and because it's the subject.
So give me some examples of a politically incorrect take on pandemics.
Well, first of all, people need to know that China is the great breeding ground of pandemics, especially under the Chinese Communist Party.
That back in 1958, there was something called the Asian Flu.
It killed a million people around the world.
Why?
Because when it originated in South China, in the province of Guizhou, in the southwest of China, the Chinese Communist Party covered it up.
It did not see fit to notify the World Health Organization that there was a dangerous new virus on the loose, that tens of thousands of Chinese were dying, and it became a pandemic and spread around the world.
Only later...
Did genetic evidence trace it back to China?
Far too late to do any good in terms of curbing the pandemic.
Same thing happened again, same playbook, 1967-68, with what was called the Hong Kong flu.
Now, Dennis, it wasn't the Hong Kong flu.
It was the mainland China flu.
The people of Hong Kong were furious at having it mislabeled.
But China did the same thing.
The Chinese Communist Party did not notify the World Health Organization.
Covered up the epidemic.
Let it spread around the world until over a million people died.
But the real troubling episode and the one that should have clued us into the danger from China as the great breeding ground of pandemics happened in 2002-2003.
This was the SARS-1 coronavirus epidemic.
We're living through the SARS-2.
SARS-1 began in November 16th of 2002 when a snake seller In the southern Chinese province of Guangdong became ill with a coronavirus, a snake coronavirus in that case, not a bat coronavirus.
And he died fairly quickly after that.
Thousands of people died in China in the months following.
And what did China do?
The Chinese Communist Party hid the breakout of this deadly coronavirus.
It silenced whistleblowers.
It did not notify the World Health Organization.
And it was only when Canadian intelligence, thank God, Canadian intelligence services picked up wire transmissions in China about the spread of a dangerous new virus that the world went to China and said, what's going on?
And China belatedly admitted that it had an epidemic on its hands before it became a pandemic.
Otherwise, millions of people would have died in 2003. And what did China say?
What did the Communist Party say when it was called on the epidemic?
It said a foreign agent has released a bioweapon in China.
That was their cover story.
Now, does that sound familiar?
Does that sound like the playbook they followed in 2019?
It certainly does to me.
Do these pandemics begin in China deliberately or carelessly?
Well, that's a very interesting question.
The pandemic in 58 and 68 and the near pandemic in SARS-1 2002-2003 were true zoonoses, right?
This was an animal virus that managed, because of close contact with humanity in China, to cross over the species barrier and infect human beings.
You know, I went through a PhD program.
Keep that thought, because I want to remind people what the book is, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Pandemics.
It is up at DennisPrager.com.
I'm going to continue with Stephen Mosher in a moment.
I love these politically incorrect guides, and you can't get more important than this subject right now.
Hi, everybody.
I'm Dennis Prager, reading to you about the latest developments in Portland public schools.
It gets worse, but I'm going to take a couple of calls, especially when they differ.
Montgomery, Alabama, Don, hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Boy, you have to have Dr. Mosher back on.
I really am curious about that book.
But my difference would be that oftentimes when you use the term love, you often couch it as an emotion.
Before I became a believer, I did the same.
Now I term it more in the ideal of an act.
And I would say that your parents were actually loving you by not helicopter parenting you.
Most often, when we use it as an emotion, yes, it could be good or bad, but I don't think there is such thing as bad love, because when God speaks of Himself, He says He's a God of compassion, or He's a God of mercy.
But what He says about love is He says He is love.
Therefore, love, by its very definition, is good.
So let me ask you a question.
Sure.
How many Germans loved Hitler, and how many Russians loved Stalin?
I would say they could love Hitler by wanting his death, because that would be the best interest.
Okay, you're changing your...
Yeah, but the vast majority of Germans loved him and wanted him to live.
The denial that love can be used for bad is a denial of reality, and it's not good for religious people to sound like we live in a fairytale land.
Everything on Earth can be used for bad.
Everything.
I would say that that wasn't love, that the people said they loved Hitler.
They could say that it was love, but I don't believe it was love.
I do believe it was love.
All right.
Look, once you define a term as only possibly being used for good, then obviously any time the term comes up, you'll say, well, it's not my definition of love.
Masses of Germans loved Hitler, like you love your wife, like you love your kids, like you love God.
Masses of Russians loved Stalin.
So many people attended his funeral, and not all of them were forced to do so.
So many people attended his funeral, many were stomped to death in the massive onslaught of humanity.
The ability of people to love scum?
Is as great as the ability of people to love beauty.
Okay?
That's why everything must be morally directed.
You can't rely on emotions.
And to deny that love is an emotion, well, then we get into another...
It's not only an emotion, it's behavior as well.
I agree.
It's a very important lesson, in my opinion, that everything could be used for good or for bad.
Like guns.
It's the idiocy of the left that guns should be banned to the extent that they can.
Guns can be used for good.
Guns can be used for bad.
Just like everything else in the world.
Okay, that was important and I appreciate it.
We'll continue now with what's going on in Portland.
The curriculum begins in kindergarten with an anatomy lesson featuring graphic drawings of children's genitalia.
Now, my biggest question, bigger than who are these sick teachers?
Sick, and I mean sick.
They are morally and mentally and psychologically sick human beings doing this to children.
I have my theory on these teachers, overwhelmingly female, but I'll leave that aside for now.
I have a bigger question.
Why do parents keep their kids in those schools?
Do you want your five-year-old to see pictures of five-year-old's genitalia?
Listen to this.
The lesson avoids the terms boy and girl in favor of the gender-neutral variance.
Are you ready?
Person with a penis.
Or a person with a vulva.
Because according to the curriculum, some girls can have penises and some boys can have vulvas.
Any quote, this is from a direct quote from the Portland school's curriculum.
Any gender and kid can have any type of body.
There you go.
That's right.
Wow.
A parent who sends their child to a public school in Portland that has this curriculum is at least as guilty of child abuse as the Portland schools and their sick teachers are.
Send a copy of this to somebody you know in Portland.
I'm telling you now what they're teaching in the Portland public schools.
They got a copy, as Christopher Rufo did, at ChristopherRufo.com.
It's up at DennisPrager.com.
And what they're teaching, kindergartners to fifth graders, that there are no boys and girls.
There are just people with penises and people with vulva.
Why they're talking about penises and vulva to begin with.
Even if they got it right, it's unbelievable.
Those of you who were not exposed to sex talk in kindergarten to fifth grade, are you the worst for it?
Tell me how it is a good thing to do this.
Do you know how many teachers are sick or psychologically sick?
I've got to believe about half.
There's no other explanation for doing this to young children.
In first and second grade, students are introduced to the key tenets of gender identity theory.
Quote, gender is something adults came up with to sort people into groups.
Wow.
It's pretty direct, isn't it?
Gender is something adults came up with.
So if the adults of all of history were wrong, how do we know that the idiot teaching your child is right?
This is an adult.
She's probably an idiot.
She's probably a bad idiot at that.
You're bad if you do this to children.
You may mean well, although that means nothing.
Mean well is as important to morality as breathing.
Breathing is unrelated to whether you're decent or indecent.
So are good intentions.
Gender is something adults came up with to sort people into groups.
Many people think there are only two genders, girls and boys, but this is not true.
There are many ways to be a boy, a girl, both or neither.
Both or neither.
Yes.
Hey, kiddies, you could be both a boy and a girl.
Or neither.
Gender identity is about how you feel about yourself inside.
That's right.
Why aren't all identities about how you feel about yourself?
Why isn't racial identity?
If I feel black, why aren't I black?
That's meant seriously.
It is not meant as an absurdity.
Next, students work through a lesson called Our Names, Genders, and Pronouns.
Probably the only time they're ever taught what a pronoun means, actually.
The lesson tells them that, quote, gender is like outer space because there are as many ways to be different genders as there are stars in the sky.
Shame on any parent who sends their child to a Portland public school that has this curriculum.
The parents are as guilty as the teachers.
Many of you know people in Portland, You must get them this article, or you must get them this broadcast.
By the way, you can have every broadcast without commercials at pragertopia.com.
Simple as that.
PragerTopia.
You can get 10, 20 years of broadcast there, too.
PragerTopia.com The lesson tells them that, quote, I told you that.
Outer space.
As many ways to be different genders as there are stars in the sky.
Well, there are trillions of stars.
Trillions of ways.
To be a gender.
Students, the curriculum explains, can, quote, change their name to match who they are, like their gender, culture, or just what they like better.
They can be boys, girls, cisgender, transgender, or non-binary, and experiment with pronouns such as they, them, and zezere, according to their personal preference.
Yeah.
When you're five, you can really make these decisions well.
Quote, only you can know what your gender is, they are told.
In third through fifth grade, the district begins lessons on LGBTQIA2S plus activism.
The addition of the letter, let's see, lesbian, gay, Bisexual, transgender, queer.
What's IA2? What's I? What's A? Asexual?
No, that couldn't be.
I've got to look it up.
The curriculum presents the categories of man and woman as manifestations of the, quote, dominant culture, quote, unquote, that has used sexual norms to oppress minorities.
Anybody explain that?
Men and women oppresses minorities?
Isn't that like an insult to minorities?
If you're non-white, are you oppressed by the notion that the human species is divided between men and women?
Wow.
The culture, quote, the culture, systems, and assumptions that everyone is straight is called heteronormative.
Who assumes everyone is straight?
The culture, systems, and assumptions that everyone is cisgender is called cisnormative.
Cisgender means you identify with your biological sex.
That's true.
We're cisnormative.
We should remain cisnormative.
Therefore, the culture, systems, and assumptions that everyone is straight and cis is called cisheteronormativity.
That must be the longest word that kids in third grade in Portland know.
Cisheteronormativity.
Wow.
Yes.
So basically it means that it is a bad idea that the society hold up as its normative ideal that people identify with their biological sex.
That's a bad idea.
The system, according to the lesson plan, is a form of oppression designed to benefit white, straight, cis boys and to punish LGBTQIA2S plus people.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager with you.
If you would ask any 7-year-old Maybe six-year-old, maybe five-year-old.
If we have fewer policemen, do you think there will be more bad things happening?
Everyone who understood the question would say yes.
It takes a college degree to teach you that it is a good idea to have fewer police.
College or high school to teach you that the fewer people in prison, the safer the society will be.
It is part of the upside-down, truly upside-down world in which we live, and the power of media and schooling to have people believe what is upside-down is apparently infinite.
So, two days ago, a book was published, Criminal Injustice, What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most.
Raphael Mangual is the author.
He is the head of research for these issues of justice and policing at the Great Manhattan Institute.
The book Criminal Injustice is up at DennisPrager.com.
Rafael Mangual also does a couple of videos for PragerU, so he's no stranger to me, although I don't think we've personally met till now.
Rafael, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's so great to be here.
And I have been on this show once before, shortly after one of my Prager videos.
That's right.
Now that you mention it, I blew that one.
Anyway, welcome back.
No, that's alright.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
So, you come from, we were talking before, Dominican and Puerto Rican ancestry.
In the minds of left-wing Americans, Hispanics are supportive of them in the belief That there were too many people in jail and there were too many policemen, etc.
Do you believe that that is true?
I don't.
Certainly not from my experience as a lifelong member of the Latino community.
I can tell you that there's very much a disconnect between what the dominant narrative is in kind of mainstream media America about crime, justice, policing, and incarceration.
You know, people who live in low-income minority communities actually believe.
And there's, you know, frankly, a lot of support for traditional institutions of law enforcement to play a major role in the provision of public safety for communities.
And I think lots of people, certainly lots of members of my family, lots of friends are dismayed by what they're seeing when they read these stories of really heinous offenses committed by people.
Who have, you know, 15, 20, 30 prior arrests, in some cases 100 prior arrests, you know, 5, 10 prior convictions who are out on parole, out on probation, out on pretrial release.
You know, they always ask the same question, which is what on earth were these individuals doing out on the street?
And what I think that reveals is a sense of belief in the role that, you know, policing, incarceration should play in providing public safety to all of us.
So who demographically supports the idea of fewer people in prison and fewer police?
Well, I think the idea of fewer people in prison resonates a lot with a large segment of the general public.
Based on a lack of real knowledge.
There was a really interesting poll that came out in 2016. I think it was a box and morning consult poll.
And it found widespread support for decarceration and criminal justice reform and sentencing reforms.
But that support for reform was eroded significantly once the questions got a bit more specific.
For example, when you ask people whether or not they supported releasing people who were convicted of violent offenses, support goes down through the floor.
When you ask people whether or not they support releasing people who have been convicted of nonviolent offenses but who pose a high risk of reoffending if released, again, support goes through the floor.
The reality is that the vast majority of people incarcerated in the United States today are people who have not been denied second chances but have been given second, third, and tenth chances.
Right.
The average released state prisoner has more than 10 prior arrests and about five prior convictions.
And also, you know, the recidivism rate of our state prison population hovers between 80 and 83 percent.
In other words, the vast majority of people incarcerated in the United States today are precisely the sorts of people that the vast majority of Americans of all demographic say they don't support releasing.
And so I think a lot of people think.
That they support decarceration on some level, but the second you get into the details and tell them what that would actually entail, that support erodes quite a bit.
I mean, you hear so much about the United States being unfavorably compared to Western European democracies when it comes to incarceration, right?
You hear, we've got 5% of the world's population, 25% of its prisoners, you know, the UK, Germany, all incarcerated rates far lower than the United States.
That's true.
But we also have a lot more serious crime.
And so for us to actually achieve parity with our Western European counterparts on the incarceration front, that would require us to release about 75 to 80 percent of people incarcerated today.
Now, when you consider the fact that more than 60 percent of the state incarcerated population is incarcerated primarily for a violent or weapons offense, these are not the sorts of people for whom release is a risk-free endeavor.
And when we talk about the risk, it's important to talk about who bears that risk.
And it's not all of us evenly, right?
Crime is very hyper-concentrated, both demographically and geographically.
So take a city like New York, for example, a minimum, a minimum of 95% of all shooting victims every single year for which we have data, we've been tracking this since 2008, are either Black or Hispanic, almost all of them male.
It's one of the starkest, most persistent racial disparities in the criminal justice data.
And you hear almost nothing about it from the left wing.
And so what I wanted to do with this book was sort of highlight the risks associated with the decarceration program, with the de-policing program, but also really implore people to understand and internalize.
These are risks that we are imposing on communities that most of us don't live in, most of us would never send our kids to school in, and most of us would never dare walk in at night.
And, you know, I really feel for these communities.
I have experience living in these communities.
I have family in these communities.
I think it's really long past time for Americans to really understand what exactly is entailed in living in a place like West Garfield Park in Chicago.
Which has a murder rate of 131 per 100,000 compared to the national murder rate of about 6. So in effect, the people who want decarceration want the murderers of minorities out of prison.
Yeah, I think that's certainly one way of putting it.
I don't think they genuinely...
Believe that.
I do like to assume the best of my attention.
Wait, forgive me.
How does that...
I don't understand that.
What does it mean they don't genuinely believe that?
Or is the concept of truth now dead as well?
I think they have convinced themselves.
That a large-scale decarceration program is, in fact, congruous with public safety.
And they've really twisted themselves up into pretzels to do this.
And so I found your intro a bit amusing because you're right, it does kind of take an advanced degree to come to terms with this kind of idea that belies both common sense and the data that I go through in the book.
But there is a literature that shows that for some people, for some people...
Incarceration can produce higher rates of criminality upon release than we would have seen had the individual not been incarcerated.
And so if I can take just a couple of minutes to go into this, I do think it's important for people to understand because it's an argument that the left really leans into.
So the decision to incarcerate is almost never random.
So when we're trying to assess the impact of something like incarceration, we want to figure out a population for people for whom the decision to incarcerate is essentially random or quasi-random.
So what these studies do is that they find a population of offenders who are engaged in conduct that isn't so bad that it would obviously lead to their incarceration, but isn't so low level that it would obviously lead to their diversion from incarceration.
And once you've identified that pool of offenders, then you look at judges and you categorize them as either really lenient, really harsh, or somewhere in the middle.
You take out all the judges in the middle and you only look at the marginal offenders who have been assigned to harsh judges and lenient judges, and then you compare their outcomes.
And when you do that, you do find some evidence that for these types of offenders, incarceration produces worse results in the way of more crime, which in turn harms public safety.
The problem is that the left has grafted this research onto a body of offenders that the individuals that are studied in these papers don't actually represent, right?
There's a huge difference.
Between the typical person incarcerated in jail or in prison in the United States today and the sort of offender that constitutes the body of individuals analyzed in these sorts of studies.
And so I think what we're seeing is just a kind of confirmation bias at play where they take this body of...
Good.
We're going to explore that further.
All right.
The book, folks, is Criminal Injustice.
Why the push for decarceration and depolicing.
What it gets wrong.
And who it hurts most.
Raphael Mangual.
Book is up at DennisPrager.com.
Hi, everybody.
I'm speaking with Manhattan Institute Scholar, their great Manhattan Institute.
They publish City Journal, which is one of the one or two most important journals being published regularly today.
The book is titled Criminal Injustice.
Injustice.
What the push for decarceration and depolicing gets wrong and who it hurts most?
Rafael Mangual.
Book is up at DennisPrager.com.
You can watch him and me at Salem News Channel.
I want to understand this because I didn't fully understand this.
There is evidence that...
That incarceration increases the recidivism rate.
In other words, putting people in jail increases the likelihood of that person committing a crime as opposed to not imprisoning that person.
So let me get this clear in my layman's brain.
Is that true for murderers?
Is that true for rapists?
Is that true for child molesters?
Is that true for burglars?
Who is it true for that if they were not imprisoned, they'd be less likely to commit the crime again?
I'm not hearing him, Sean.
There's no sound.
One minute, Raphael.
Sean, can we get sound?
Well, are you hearing me?
That's a good question.
I am.
Yes, I am hearing you.
All right.
So I don't know why we weren't hearing you.
It drives me crazy.
Go ahead.
So it is not true for all of those groups that you described.
It is only true for a very, very small and unique slice of the criminal offending population.
And the problem is...
Is that the studies that have shown this, which are interesting, right?
These are interesting, worthwhile analyses.
They've been sort of launched and grafted onto the broader population of criminal offenders to make the case for much broader scale decarceration.
You see, the left has figured out that they can no longer get away with the lie that our prisons are teeming with low-level, non-violent.
Or because they're black.
Or because they're a minority.
Exactly.
They have been forced to acknowledge that prison is largely reserved for chronic offenders who commit serious violent crimes and who pose a real risk of committing violent crime in the future.
And so they needed another way to justify the large scale incarceration program that it would take, again, to get us on par with other Western European democracies that we're often compared to.
And how do they do this?
They do this by expanding the population of people for whom decarceration might make some sense.
Right, so who are these people?
These are, you know, very truly low-level offenders, often first- or second-time offenders, people who don't have chronic criminal histories, who don't pose a serious violent risk, who have, you know, substance use disorders and, you know, maybe are engaging in low-level theft to sustain those habits.
But these are not the sorts of people that prison is reserved for.
People have it in their minds that incarceration is a common response to criminal behavior.
It's not.
Only 40% of state-level felony convictions result in a post-conviction sentence.
And that's felony.
That's That's felony.
And that's felony.
Right.
That's exactly right.
Oh, okay.
So for the group that I listed, murderers, rapists, burglars, child molesters, spouse beaters, or partner beaters, that is not true for them.
Is that correct?
Yes, correct.
That is not at all true for them.
I recently spoke to a group of high school students, most of whom loathed me.
It was a fascinating experience.
And one of their arguments, which was amazing to me, that in high school, this had already become a widespread argument among high school kids, that in order to get more blacks into prison, They changed the rules some decades ago about which drug crime one would go to jail for.
Would you expand on that for me so I would know what they're referring to?
Yes, I'm very familiar with this argument.
So this is, you know, an argument about the distinction in sentencing disparities for crack and powder cocaine.
Crack cocaine has long been associated with high use rates in low income black communities, whereas powder cocaine is more commonly found in upper income white communities.
And so what we saw, particularly with the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, this was a piece of federal legislation.
Signed by Ronald Reagan in 1986 that established a 100 to 1 sentencing ratio disparity between crack and powder cocaine.
Now, lots of people look at this and they say, well, here, this is prima facie evidence of bias against low-income black communities on the part of the federal government with respect to its drug war.
And we know this because crack cocaine is more prominent in low-income black communities.
What they don't tell you is that...
16 of the 19 members of the Congressional Black Caucus at the time co-sponsored, not just voted for it, but co-sponsored.
Oh, God, I wish I knew that when I spoke to these high school kids.
That's exactly right.
All right, and why did they co-sponsor it, knowing that it would affect blacks more?
Because there was a lot of violence associated with the crack trade that, again, was disproportionately affecting low-income black communities, and the good, law-abiding people in those communities were tired of it.
Okay, forgive me.
So is there more violent crime associated with crack cocaine than powder cocaine?
That's exactly right.
And that's why that 100 to 1 sentencing disparity was put into place in the first place.
Now, we can argue about whether that was a justifiable response to those disparate rates of violent crime associated with those two trades.
But the idea that this was motivated by racial animus, I think, is just completely at odds with reality.
And it's not just the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. A great scholar named Michael J. Fortner wrote a fantastic book called Black Silent Majority that details the role that the black community played here in New York with the development of the Rockefeller drug laws, which developed similar mandatory minimums for crack cocaine compared to powder cocaine.
And what you'll find is you can go back to 1990 and on PBS you can watch William F. Buckley debate Charles Rangel.
On ending the drug war, and you will hear Charles Rangel, the black congressman from East Harlem, say that he supports life in prison for certain crack dealers, right?
So there was a lot of support within the black community for harsh penalties for crack cocaine dealing.
The idea that this was just motivated by racial animus is not true.
It's historically false.
What do you know to be the data?
I'll get your answer when we come back.
But I want to pose the question now, lest I forget to pose it when we return.
What is the number that you have come to believe in of incidents of white police killing unarmed blacks?
We'll get to the policing issue, therefore, via that question.
The book is Criminal Injustice.
Raphael Mangual, the author.
it is up at my website and of course Amazon and everywhere books are sold.
The book is Criminal Injustice.
What the push for decarceration and depolicing gets wrong, and who it hurts most?
Rafael Mangual of the Manhattan Institute is the author.
The book was just published, and he's on with me.
I want to review something with you and then get your answer to the number of unarmed blacks killed by police in a given year.
The reason I want to review it is to make sure I heard it right, and I'm going to make a point that I think my listeners will find more interesting than you do, but I'll say it in any event.
I don't have a particularly good memory, but I have a good memory for one thing.
And that is concepts, as opposed to names, for example.
I'm not terrible on names.
So I think I remember everything you answered on the left-wing argument that is so often offered, how racist it was to change the laws of incarceration with regarding to drugs.
Powder cocaine was the preferred form of cocaine among whites.
And crack cocaine among lower-income blacks.
Lower-income blacks were incarcerated for a much longer time because they were the users of crack cocaine.
But crack cocaine is associated with violence far more than powder cocaine.
And 16 members of the Black Caucus voted for that change in 1986 or 87. I don't remember the year.
Did I get that exactly right?
Almost exactly right.
It was 16 of the 19 members of the Congressional Black Caucus co-sponsored, not just voted for it, but co-sponsored that legislation.
Good.
It is now etched in my mind.
When the left offers that argument, they must know this.
So this is not at all a rhetorical question.
I'm curious what you'll answer.
If they're told this, do they say, hmm, good point, I won't use that argument again?
Or what will they say if offered this argument?
Sometimes they will concede the point or shift into another one.
One response that I've got that was always curious to me was, well, you know, this was unwitting support.
They didn't really know what this was going to do until later.
And I think that's actually insulting of the intelligence of the members of the black community who I think knew exactly what they were doing and had good reasons for doing so again.
In hindsight, we can argue about whether we overcorrect it in the punitive direction with respect to drugs.
But, you know, the idea that these were just kind of unwitting people who have been hoodwinked is, I think, an insulting one.
Well, I could even argue, let's say they knew, yes, tragically, blacks tend to use crack more than powder cocaine.
Crack cocaine is associated with violence.
Ergo, there will be more blacks incarcerated for drug use than whites.
But it will save black lives if we do that.
Why couldn't one argue that?
I think that's exactly what the argument was back then.
And if you, you know, again, just look at the arguments that were offered out of the black community in the late 1970s through the 80s with respect to crack cocaine, that's exactly what they were talking about.
There was a complete erosion of any sense of tolerance for the harm that drugs were doing in low-income black communities.
By the way, is that law still in place?
Greater incarceration rates for crack?
No.
So that disparity was eliminated through federal legislation, I think, in 2010, and it was made retroactive shortly thereafter.
So lots of people have since petitioned courts for earlier release than they otherwise would have had and have been granted earlier release on the grounds that that law had subsequently been changed.
And do we know the recidivism rates of those people?
Unfortunately, we don't.
And this is one of my beasts with a lot of the federal sentencing reforms that we've seen, including the First Step Act, which was signed under President Trump.
You know, there are some good things in there.
There are some things in there, I think, maybe misguided.
But to me, it was a real missed opportunity to actually impose some requirements to get the data so that we can actually track the outcomes that we care about, so that we can have a better idea for future decision making of what kind of risks we're imposing and where those risks are going to be most pronounced.
So before we go, I want to get the time frame.
Sean, what is our time frame?
Okay, so now when we come back, Rafael, you'll tell me the answer to the question of unarmed blacks killed by police.
But I'm so happy I learned this drug issue because it's so often been raised.
Criminal Injustice is the book.
And it is up at DennisPrager.com and available anywhere you buy books.
Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
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