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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:28:12
Gun Control
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Hi, everybody.
Wow.
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to the Dennis Prager Show, to the Friday edition.
How's the weeks?
Pass by with the great rapidity.
So, what's your philosophy of life?
Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die.
Or, because tomorrow you may die, do as much good in this life as possible.
They are both rational.
That is why reason alone cannot dictate a good life.
However, a life without reason, and you end up...
Hmm, where America is today.
Reason is necessary, but not sufficient.
Just like oxygen is necessary, but not sufficient.
We need much more to sustain biological life.
In any event, I welcome you, as I always do.
The answer to the mass gun shootings and the slaughter that is entailed is a very difficult one to arrive at.
There is an interesting question.
Let's try to work this through purely on a rational basis, okay?
Reason has to be number one.
It can't be the only thing, but it has to be number one, or we can't speak to one another.
If we do not share the laws of reason, of rationality, then there's no possibility of speaking to one another.
The subject should simply be avoided.
I'm using reason, you're not, or you're using reason, I'm not.
And that ends all discussion.
So it has to begin with reason.
What can we agree on?
So, for example, let us say the only guns owned in the United States were owned by the police, the armed forces, and a selected handful of guards, private guards.
And individuals given a special permit because they have particularly dangerous work or are targets for assassination, and a handful of hunters.
So that would reduce the citizenship ownership of guns by, let us say, 95%.
So that is the world that people on the progressive side, the leftist side, that is what they would like.
Almost nobody would own a weapon, as in Australia, which we're always compared to in this regard.
All right?
So let us say that were to take place, that confiscation.
I will use reason to even deal with the issue of whether the confiscation is possible.
But let us say that happened.
A special magnet that only attracted guns and could withstand the blockage of a roof would get these weapons away while people were at work or otherwise preoccupied.
So then what would happen?
Well, since that is not possible, that's magic, what could reduce gun ownership massively?
I don't know.
I don't know.
And it's worth calling in, those of you involved in the gun issue, what is proposed so that this would be massively reduced?
I keep hearing banning assault weapons.
I have looked up assault weapons for decades.
There is no definition.
The term is meaningless.
Since automatic weapons are already banned, what does an assault weapon mean?
That it looks mean?
Okay, that's silly.
So I don't know what that means.
But, of course, we continue down the avenue of reason, and we get to the following.
That it would be impossible to confiscate guns from people who are criminally intent on having them.
They have already stolen them or got them legally and are hiding them and then what will happen, presumably, is that bad people will have weapons far more than good people will have weapons.
Then we have another issue That has to be addressed.
And that issue is why there is gun ownership in the Bill of Rights.
Why do we have that?
Why does the Second Amendment exist?
It exists because the founders of this country had a profound mistrust of human beings, which is one of the reasons they were wise.
If you think well of the human race and human nature, you are a fool and disqualified from policymaking.
However, because life in America has been so good for so long, for so many, people became naive and assumed that this is normal.
It is not normal.
Excuse me.
Peaceful, affluent, and free society is the abnorm, not the norm.
So they got naive and started to believe, oh, people are basically good, because look at how good life is here.
But then they developed the idea that all whites are racist.
And I'll get back to guns in a moment, but I want to show you the incoherence of this thinking.
We believe people are basically good, but all whites are racist.
Wow!
That's quite an oxymoronic concept to balance.
If people are basically good, why do you say all whites are racist?
And they say all.
People are basically good, except for whites.
Whites get a different nature than non-whites.
Non-whites did not engage in massive slavery and torture in history.
You have to be spectacularly ignorant, aside from somewhat of a scummy human being, to say all whites are racist, which is as pure a form of racism as exists.
Back to the Second Amendment.
The founders of this country, who did not trust human beings, that's how I went off on the tangent of human nature, did not trust human beings, and did not trust human beings especially with power, realized that there might come a time when the only way to secure and preserve freedom is through fighting for it.
Should a tyranny arise, then The citizen will have weapons with which to protect liberty.
That was why they wrote this amendment.
It wasn't on behalf of hunting.
As the proponents of gun ownership say, the Second Amendment protects the first.
The first is not protected at this time, neither by guns nor by anything else.
Wherever the left takes power, there is no exception to this rule, since Vladimir Ilyich Lenin started the Bolshevik Communist Revolution in Russia in 1917. And indeed,
it is not a cliché to say that the first thing that tyrannical regimes do when they gain power is confiscate weapons.
If you are a proponent of banning guns, how do you answer that?
This is an honest, open question.
How do you answer the charge that tyrannies first confiscate weapons?
And therefore, should a tyranny ever arise in America, Americans will be armed to protect liberty.
How do you answer that question?
Well, let's see.
One possible answer is, tyranny will not arise because there are elections.
Okay?
There were elections in Nazi Germany, and tyranny arose through the electoral process.
Tyrannies don't wait to be unelected.
Tyrants take over.
We are living in a graduated tyranny in the United States as fewer and fewer rights are honored.
The least honored right at this time is free speech.
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I'm talking to you about guns.
I don't talk to you about guns that often.
The shootings that take place are very disturbing.
And the simple mind always goes to guns.
They never note what law could have been passed that would have prevented the shooting.
I always ask that.
I am open.
They always say common sense gun laws.
I'm all for common sense gun laws.
But...
Given the record of the left, I don't trust that they have common sense.
People who believe men give birth are not to be entrusted with common sense on anything.
People who thought that elementary schools should be locked down should be trusted with nothing.
They're fools, and fools are fools almost in every arena of life.
They're wrong all the time.
They've destroyed everything.
Why should we listen to them on guns?
The track record of the left is zero, zero, zero.
They're not right like a broken clock twice a day.
Because their clock is moving.
It's not static.
So it's always wrong.
Isn't that an issue?
Isn't your batting average?
On morality?
On decency?
On integrity?
On logic?
On reason?
Isn't your batting average relevant?
Don't we all have what we call a moral, what I call a moral bank account?
Isn't the moral bank account of the left deeply, deeply in the red?
Why would we listen to them on guns because they were so right about COVID and about children and non-binary and drag queen story hours because they were so right on marijuana?
What were they right about that all of a sudden we are going to listen to them on guns?
You have a track record and it is completely wrong all the time.
I read to you last week.
From Fox News, Israel to expedite gun licenses after deadly shooting near Jerusalem Synagogue.
Huh.
Now, why would Israel do that?
Israel is poised to speed up gun applications in response to a shooting in East Jerusalem over the weekend that left seven people, including a 70-year-old woman, dead.
The measure was among several that Israel's Security Cabinet announced Saturday evening.
Firearm licensing will be expedited and expanded in order to enable thousands of additional citizens to carry weapons, read a statement on the Facebook page of the Prime Minister of Israel.
Huh.
And finally, how's this for a radical idea?
I mean, it's mind-blowing in its common sense.
They say common sense?
I'm with the left on that, but their track record with common sense is not good.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir told reporters over the weekend, quote, when civilians have guns, they can defend themselves.
Well, that's a radical notion, is it not?
Leftists view you as a cog.
For all intents and purposes, if you were replaced by an AI, artificial intelligence robot that looked just like you, on the left that would be fine.
They would have your vote.
They would have your cooperation.
You would live in a small apartment in a big city.
You would bicycle to work or take public transportation.
You would use no gas stove.
You would keep your home in the winter at, let's say, 67 and in the summer at 75. And they would have many other laws to control you and then you're fine.
You will not speak up.
You will not protest.
And that's the ideal from the left point of view.
In some make-believe fairytale land that people will get all the power they need from turbines and solar panels.
That's it.
Common sense.
And then if you do defend yourself, as in the case that Tucker Carlson has made known, if you do defend yourself, they will arrest you.
But that's another issue.
In the meantime, I want good people to arm themselves.
What if...
Vast number of people were trained in the use of arms and were almost everywhere.
So that the bad human beings that kill, and they're bad, to say they're mentally ill is simply to avoid the question of why Why don't mentally ill people regularly shoot people?
Given that the vast majority of mentally ill people do not murder, why is it enough to say mentally ill?
Is there an answer to that question?
I mean, that's really another open question.
Maybe a list of open questions ought to be one of my next columns.
The answer of mental illness just evades the problem that is the real problem in America.
And that is any doctrine of self-control.
Well, hello!
Whoa.
We'll be right back.
I'm Dennis Prager.
Great to be with you.
I devoted the first half of the opening hour to the issue of guns.
And I ended it with the note that Israel is distributing more guns to its citizens to defend themselves.
Final question.
Thank you.
Would more gun laws or more good people with guns stop more mass shootings?
Since the left claims to want common sense to prevail, that's a common sense question.
Onward, but not necessarily upward.
Los Angeles Times has an article It's precious.
California population dropped by 500,000 in two years as Exodus continues.
By the way, I don't even know if it's only 500,000 because they count people who move in, but I don't know if they count everyone who moves in, including non-citizens.
I didn't see that mentioned.
Anyway, 500,000 at least.
The number of residents leaving surpassing those moving by nearly 700,000.
So why does it say 500,000?
Okay, so between 500,000 and 700,000 have left.
First time that California's population has diminished, I believe, in the history of California.
So here is the Los Angeles Times, not a deep newspaper, and...
Another writer writing the usual pablum about any issue.
And here is, why are people leaving California?
So that's in the third paragraph.
Completely understandably, that would be an issue.
The primary reason for the exodus is the state's high housing costs.
That's the primary reason.
High housing costs.
Really.
You know how long there has been the problem of high housing costs in California?
Why now has it prevented people from staying in California?
High housing costs.
Even with high housing costs, people would in fact stay for a whole host of reasons.
Perhaps primarily the weather.
It is impossible to overstate.
How good the weather is in California.
I live here.
I have since 1976. And it is almost unique on Earth how good the weather is in California.
Especially Southern California, but not only Southern California.
Anyway, so that's the primary reason given the state's high housing costs.
But other reasons...
Include long commutes and crowds.
Long commutes and crowds.
You will uproot and go to where you know no one.
You will leave friends, community, church or synagogue should you attend one, and even perhaps family.
Because of long commutes and crowds?
Huh.
I don't think so.
I don't think that that is a big reason.
And it's been that way since I came here in 1976. And people were still moving in.
The long commute was worth it.
Anyway, long commutes make talk radio possible.
Crime and pollution.
Oh, now we're getting closer.
Crime.
Oh, now that is new.
The amount of crime in the big cities of California is a very serious issue, as it is in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, which are also losing people.
And there, it is not because of long commutes.
And if they do have long commutes, Which they do, by the way.
I know all these cities pretty well.
I've driven in all of them.
Getting into Philly in rush hour and getting out rush hour is very tough.
It may have the narrowest freeways, not freeways, the narrowest highways in the United States.
They're almost all two lanes, which is an astonishing thing if you come from California, where they have four lanes.
I have reasons why they're leaving.
I'll come to them when we return.
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So does the author of this piece in the Los Angeles Times, describing the fact that the largest exodus in California history, the first time there is a net, Reduction in population in California history.
Does this author, who is the author of this piece?
I'm curious.
Terry Castleman.
I don't know if that's a male or a female.
Does Terry Castleman know that what he or she wrote is only half of the truth?
Maybe a quarter of the truth?
People are leaving because Of high housing costs?
When have there not been high housing costs in California?
And since you can remotely work more often now, you can buy a house in California from an area that is further away from your work than before, and therefore a lower house price.
Right?
Right.
Not only that, but here's the end of the article that shows how untrue the article is.
The states with the highest population increases between 2020 and 2022 were Texas and Florida.
Oh, so wait a minute.
They don't have high housing prices in Texas and Florida?
My son lives in Florida.
His house has probably doubled in a couple of years.
We're close to doubled in just a few years.
What are we talking about?
You don't move to Florida or Texas for low housing prices.
You want a low house cost?
Go to North Dakota, South Dakota.
You don't like the cold?
Go to Alabama.
Go to Mississippi.
But it's Florida and Texas that people are moving to.
They don't have long commutes in those cities, in Dallas, in Houston, San Antonio, Miami.
They don't have long commutes.
Try the I-95 in South Florida during rush hour.
Or almost any hour during the day.
Now, I'll tell you why they're moving.
They're moving for any number of reasons.
They don't even mention taxes, for example.
Is the fact that Florida has no income tax, and in California it's about 13%?
It's not even mentioned in the article that people are moving from states like New York and California, where they're moving the most, to states with no income tax.
It's not even mentioned in the article.
These are propaganda organs, the New York Times, Washington Post, and LA Times.
Often they don't even know it.
They are so out of touch with reality because reality, if you believe men give birth, reality does not matter to you.
What you believe matters.
Long commutes and high housing prices.
That's the reason.
Not taxes, for example.
Not the fact that the schools stink in California.
Stink.
And in every big city.
That your kid is likely to learn almost nothing but be indoctrinated into non-binary gender identity.
You're not a boy or a girl.
You will decide.
And you may not be either.
You may just simply be they.
I got a text from a man I deeply trust.
Let me see if I can find this.
Here, phone.
Here, phone.
Yep, that did it.
So, I am going to...
Here we go.
My son, I won't give his name, is in the 7th grade at an LAUSD, Los Angeles Unified School District Middle School.
This week, he said...
This was his text to me.
The father.
I feel bad for the boys in my class.
Half the girls say they are gay, but none of the boys are.
Half the girls say they are gay.
Or non-binary.
Or bisexual.
Seventh grade?
By the way, I believe this kid.
But I'll bet you that that is not the case.
In Boise, Idaho Unified School District, if that is the name of their school district.
Yes.
The quality of life in California has deteriorated.
You cannot trust the state.
How about this?
People are moving to Florida, not just because there's no income tax, but because there's freedom.
When I went in 2020 to Florida and saw people eating without masks at open restaurants, A, the restaurant was open, B, they didn't have masks on, I got up and I took a picture.
And somebody came over to me, did not know who I was, and just said, I'll bet you're from California.
Obviously, I will never forget that.
I'll bet you're from California.
That's right.
So it is worthy of taking a photo of an open restaurant.
We have them here in Florida.
Maybe because really, really, really bad frauds run California, like Gavin Newsom.
You shut your restaurant and go out of business.
You all have to wear masks.
Not I. I will go to an open restaurant and not wear a mask.
Because I'm lying to you for the sake of control, but he doesn't even know it.
The nature of the leftist is they often don't know that they are lying to you.
How you eat in a restaurant without a mask while making restaurants shut down and forcing people into masks is one of the great psychological questions one can pose.
The great philosophical one is, do you know that you're a phony?
That you are ruining the state with a policy that you yourself don't live by.
That's why they're leaving California.
Los Angeles Times.
It's the happy, happy, happy, happy egg.
Yes, it is.
You know, we're in a dark time in the world and the United States.
Darkest since the Civil War.
And yet, it is mandatory to work on happiness.
I'll give you some reasons, and then we'll get into our topic.
Alright, give me the band.
Let's go, band.
It's the happy, happy, happy, happy house.
It's the happy, happy, happy, happy house.
The happy make the world better, and the unhappy make it worse.
Happiness is a moral issue, not an emotional issue alone.
It is a big moral issue.
We are morally obligated to be in presentable moods.
Wash away bad moods like you wash away bad breath.
That's the way I put it and have for many years.
People don't think of happiness as a moral issue.
Ask kids who were raised by unhappy parents.
If happiness is a moral issue, and that will end that question.
Ask people married to an unhappy spouse whether it is a moral issue, and that will answer that question.
Ask parents with unhappy children, and the list goes on.
So it does.
You cannot despair.
Despair is a sin.
If the guys charging Normandy Beach on D-Day didn't despair, what right do you have?
Because you'll be attacked on Twitter?
I hope that point is made.
So, today's happiness topic is one that has been preoccupying me of late.
Now, I have talked about this on many occasions, but never quite.
In the way it has become clearer and clearer to me, and you might say, wait a minute, you just realized that?
You didn't realize that 40 years ago when you began broadcasting?
And it would be a fair question, by the way.
Certain things that I realized later in life, and I think I came to a lot of realizations early in life.
I wrote my first book when I was 25. Nevertheless, that's true, some things don't become clear till they become clear, which is, needless to say, somewhat redundant, but nevertheless, I said it.
For the good book tells us redundancy in the name of pedagogy is efficacious.
That's in Prager 4.11.
Sometimes I get away with it if I go, that's in Habakkuk 3.6.
Because the number of people who know what's in Habakkuk 3.6 is not large.
The number of people who know who Habakkuk is is also not large.
All right.
It's about human nature.
And on Dennis and Julie, which is a truly, truly...
Powerful, long-form show every week that Julie and I do.
She's 23. There is a very large age gap, but there is not a values gap.
She is extraordinary, and the broadcast is Dennis and Julie.
You can watch it, and I think that's worth watching.
Obviously, it's worth hearing.
That's the primary goal.
If you go to the Dennis Prager Show on YouTube, you can find it.
Or just go to Dennis and Julie at Salem News Channel.
Is that correct, Sean?
How do they hear it?
Can they hear it on Spotify?
Anywhere you get podcasts.
Dennis and Julie.
So, we just did one.
It comes out on Monday.
They all come out on Monday.
On this issue, so I have come to the realization that there are two human natures that everyone has.
That's new.
That's a new insight.
I'm not saying it's a new insight in the world, but it's a new insight for me.
And those, what are the two human natures?
There is the human nature that we all share, that human beings share, that the aboriginal individual in the jungles of New Guinea and I share certain aspects of human nature that are simply universal.
And that has to be channeled into good directions.
We share the ability or the tendency to laziness, to infidelity, to steal, to covet.
I mean, you name it, these are universal problems.
Part of the universal human nature.
However, we also have another nature.
And that is our own.
That is not the same as others.
And that's the one that I wish to address today.
Whenever I have talked about human nature...
I have talked about universal human nature, the one all people share, and dealing with those issues which you have to do in order to attain happiness.
However, there's a double whammy in the human species because you also have to deal with your particular nature.
That's a double whammy that people may or may not think about that often.
Thank you.
We all have a certain nature, a nature produced either at or even before birth.
We are born with a certain nature.
Everyone who has a child knows that.
But we also form our nature in early years, unbeknownst to us.
I mean, if, God forbid, you are sexually abused as a child, that will create a certain human nature in you, the individual part of your human nature.
It may not affect the universal human nature in you, but it will affect your nature.
So you have to battle two things, to be a good person and to be a happy person.
And they generally work together.
I don't think bad people are as happy as good people.
But that's a very interesting question that I'll have to ask God one day.
By the way, my argument for bad people not being as happy as good people is not just a throwaway line.
I believe that because of this.
Bad people don't attract, as a general rule, good people into their lives and it's very hard to be happy Without good people in your life.
Which enable you to have serious bonds of friendship with people.
There's another reason I don't think bad people are as happy as good people.
And that is they don't trust anyone.
Because they assume everybody is like them.
I learned this very early on.
When I... I encountered, he was a member of the board of directors of this institute that brought me out to California.
It was a non-profit.
And I liked him, actually, but I learned that he was not particularly honest in his business dealings.
And one day, he said to me, you know, Dennis, I don't trust anybody.
They're all out to cheat me.
And I realized, whoa, what a consequence of his cheating.
He assumes that everybody is cheating him.
All right, anyway, that's a separate issue of whether it makes you happy or not.
Whether it makes you a good person or not, I should say, and does goodness lead to happiness.
I think it does.
But in any event, I need to talk to you today.
About dealing with your nature, not the universal human nature.
You can start calling in if you acknowledge the problems of your own nature, your individual nature, and have overcome them.
You can help a lot of people, or for that matter, not overcome them.
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I am discussing a very important aspect of happiness on the Happiness Hour.
more.
You and I both have two natures.
We have universal human nature, and we have our own human nature.
Here's a good analogy, I think.
It just came to my mind.
We all have fingers.
That's universal.
But we all have individual fingerprints.
That's particular.
So, I'm talking about your nature, your fingerprint nature.
Your nature print, if you will.
And you have to know both.
The universal human nature and your own in order to strive to be a happier human being.
Because there are impediments in both universal human nature and in your own.
There are also strengths in your own.
I was talking about this with the producer of my show, known aka, also known as The Living Martyr.
Who's the most disciplined person, the most self-disciplined person I know.
So I asked him if that was part of his nature, and he said yes.
Which I assumed is true.
It's not part of my nature, incidentally.
Nevertheless, he pointed out he still does a lot of things that are not all that comfortable.
He abstains from...
Virtually every sweet food, and he loves it.
He said he could have ice cream sundaes and cheesecake all day, which is astonishing if you'd see him and see how thin he is.
But he works on it.
He takes cold showers, which presumably help the immune system.
Whether they do or not, that's what he does.
So he has the discipline to do these things, but it doesn't make them pleasant.
He'd rather have a warm shower than a freezing cold shower.
But he takes a freezing cold shower.
He's not the only one.
Apparently it has caught on with a number of people.
So he has a self-discipline within his nature print, as in fingerprint.
But he has other things that are not necessarily...
As much an additive, an ingredient of happiness.
This conversation that he and I had was prompted by my statement to him out of nowhere when I came into the studio.
He comes in earlier than I do, to say the least.
And I said to him, you know, I pretty much wake up every day in a good mood.
And it's clear that at this point, at any rate, that's my nature.
Certainly has been for most of my life.
That is not true for a lot of people.
It's not true for him.
It's not that he wakes up in a grouchy mood every day, but his temperament is a different one than mine.
So you have to deal with, as I said, universal human nature and your own.
All right, let's see here.
Renee in Kingman, Arizona.
Hello.
Thank you, Jesus.
Oh, thank you, Dennis.
Yes, I've been judged, gagged by a judge not to speak about this on social media, so am I allowed to be a whistleblower here and tell the world about the corruption in the courts that Trump warned us about?
Yeah, but that would be better on the third hour.
That's not the happiness.
So you could stay.
What you should do is call as soon as this hour ends.
I'm sorry about that.
I saw Happy in the description.
Okay, let's see here.
Akron, Ohio.
George, hello.
Oh, hello.
Yes, sir.
I told the screener I grew up in a home with an angry father and a submissive mother.
And somewhere in my early teen years, when I saw my brother step between my dad and my mom to keep him from hitting her, that influenced me enough that somewhere in the rest of my teen years, I decided I did not want to be an angry person.
I wanted to be a happy person and a peacemaker.
And it worked.
Wow.
Wow.
That's it.
I chose that path, and I think I'm probably known as that.
A calm man.
Yes.
And in the business world, I would be invited to meetings where they expected conflict, and because I was there, the conflict went away.
So I'm curious, though, prior to that decision, Were you like your father?
To the best of my memory, no.
I was not.
So maybe it's not the result of a decision as much as it just wasn't your nature to be as combative and aggressive as your father.
That's very possible, yes.
Okay, alright.
Well, that's why my first commitment here is to honesty.
And as much as I am aching to hear people who have battled their nature, he may not be an example of that.
But on a conscious level, he was.
On a conscious level, he battled tendencies that his father had.
The question is, were they tendencies that his nature had?
And they may not have been.
David, however, in Rockford, Illinois, might be an example of that.
Hello.
Hello, sir.
How are you?
I'm well, thank you.
So, my natural nature is aggressive, and that stems from a very similar situation to the previous guy.
I experienced a lot of bad things.
I grew up in foster homes.
I watched my biological mother be beaten by police.
I felt very powerless.
It made me very, very angry.
And all I wanted to do was fight things and fight people.
I was small.
People tried to fight me and I would fight back because I wasn't going to have it.
Then I became naturally aggressive.
Right, so I have a question for you.
Stay on.
Hi everybody, I'm Dennis Prager.
This is the Happiness Hour every Friday, the second hour of the show.
I'll remind you at PragerTopia.com you can hear all 23 years of the Happiness Hour, all the years of the Male-Female Hour, the Ultimate Issues Hour, and every other hour.
PragerTopia.com and all without commercials.
It's a big, big deal.
PragerTopia.
That's Utopia with a Prager.com.
The subject today is that we are the possessors of two natures.
I've never put it this way before.
As much as I've talked about human nature as a problem in happiness and in goodness, there's a lot to fight.
But I've always talked about universal human nature.
By the way, and this is an important by the way, the reason that I believe the Bible is eternally relevant is that it is based on human nature.
And human nature doesn't change.
The human nature of Egyptians, Canaanites, Israelites, Midianites, and others in the early Bible are identical to the human nature of a modern Swede, Japanese, or American.
So being rooted in human nature, it's timeless.
The second nature that we all have is our own.
Again, like fingerprints are our own.
We all have fingers, but we also have individual fingerprints.
So you have two things you need to know about.
Universal human nature and your nature.
And they have to be fought.
And by the way, your human nature might actually work in your favor.
Anyway, David in Illinois, I just want to establish here, you mentioned having an aggressive nature, correct?
Yes, sir.
So, do you believe you were born with it, or did it develop because of external influences?
I can't say whether or not I was born with it, but I have great certainty that my external influences were a major factor in its development.
And give one example.
And I threw that at them.
And I got taken away to foster care.
Not because of me throwing it.
But because they took my mom away.
And so I just remember those types of things.
And many others.
That made me very angry.
Growing up as a kid, I was in foster homes.
I had to fight.
But you sure can work in our favor?
It has.
It's made me a protector.
So I don't have any legal issues with my aggression, but I have to fight myself every day in different ways so that my aggression doesn't come out and get myself fired or impact my family or coworkers or other people in a negative way.
Wow.
Well, that was a good call.
I appreciate it.
Now I'll tell you stuff about me that I've never said.
And I'm very open about myself.
It was a risk I took 40 years ago, and it's paid off.
Because I feel that the less you feel is hidden about me, the more trust you'll have in what I say and my authenticity.
So here's something.
Even Sean will find this fascinating.
When I was a young kid, I was devastated emotionally by reading about suffering.
And I realized at an early age that if I didn't toughen up, I would melt.
I guess that's the way I would put it.
And I developed the attitude that instead of crying, as it were, I would fight.
And that is big animating impulse in me.
I told you many times, I hate evil.
My favorite verse in the Bible is those of you who love God must hate evil.
If you don't hate evil, you don't love God.
It's a good one.
Back in a moment.
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Let Dennis be Dennis.
All right, everybody.
This is the area.
You set the agenda.
Whatever is on your mind about you, about me, about life, about death, and, of course, about fountain pens, classical music,
audio equipment, photography equipment, I said classical music, didn't I? Oh, anyway.
Whatever!
Excuse me!
It's the almonds.
I shouldn't eat them during the break.
They're very healthy for you, though.
Anyway, my friends, this is the hour you set the agenda.
Whatever is on your mind.
If I don't take your call, don't be insulted.
Because I'm not doing it to insult you.
It's just because it's a topic I just don't think I want to talk about now because I do a lot or because I never do or because I know nothing about it.
Or because anything is possible.
So don't take it personally if I let your call go.
All right.
Is it Dr. Hussey in Crown Point, Indiana?
Actually, it's Dr. Hussey.
So it's a common mistake.
Okay.
Hi there.
Hi.
Is that your last name or your first name?
My first name is Ustred.
Really?
Spell it.
A-S-T-R-I-D. Oh, so are you Danish?
Actually, Norwegian.
Oh, so did you hear the Astrid from Denmark that I had on my show?
Previously?
Yeah.
Yes, I have heard.
One of the most remarkable human beings I ever met.
We even had her on a fireside chat for an hour.
So I have a great affection for your name.
Okay, go ahead.
Well, I'm calling because you mentioned something about wanting to talk to someone who knew something about homeschooling.
That's right.
And I am a lifespan developmental psychologist.
And I have had the pleasure of having five children whom I have homeschooled all of them.
Now, not for the entirety of their schooling, but I have homeschooled them.
Pretty much began with my oldest son, who I had during my graduate school training.
And I'm studying, or I did study at that time.
My research was in the development of intelligence.
And so here I had all this research, all this information, and I wanted to implement it.
But there were no schools out there that offered any of that.
And so I created my own school.
And in the process of doing that, I had a long wait list and people who had children who were too old.
And that's how my homeschool consulting work began, because people were asking me continually, well, you know, what do you do?
How do you do this?
What can I do for my child to help them in this area or remediate or enrich them?
And so it just grew naturally out of the success I was having.
Well, look, okay, this is all truly fascinating, and I mean that, but I have one question.
Can you, and maybe you can't now, maybe you'd have to be a second call, can you make the case that almost anybody can successfully do it?
People are afraid.
Of trying homeschooling.
They think they will lose massive income.
They think they will have to teach their child all day.
They think they will have to learn algebra when they don't know any algebra or history if they don't know any history or whatever the subject is.
So what...
The homeschooling community has to do is send out one message.
It's a lot easier than you think.
If that's a lie, they should not say it.
But if it's true, that has to be the message.
And it is my message.
It is absolutely much easier than you think.
And the payout is astronomical.
Everybody knows the payout.
The question...
People who send their kids to a regular school in this country...
Are so playing with dynamite with their own children that it boggles the mind.
But why do they do it?
Because they are afraid of the wonderful alternative called homeschooling.
So that's the point.
And what they're really afraid of is they believe that they can't teach.
That's right.
And the fact is they can't.
I couldn't teach algebra.
I fully acknowledge it.
But you don't need to, because there are so many resources available.
That's the point.
And, I mean, I send parents all the time, you know, if you don't know algebra yourself, go to BYU and sign your kid up for an online course.
That's right.
And they can learn it on their own time.
Right.
And it's highly successful.
And they can do that for any number of courses that they want.
And they can get school credit.
I mean, there's not even an issue of that.
Or, you know, I mean, there's all kinds of resources out there, whether it's co-ops or, you know, just, you know, Khan Academy, Hillsdale College.
I mean, there's just so many.
And it just really depends on what you want your child to learn.
That's right.
Okay, thank you.
Right.
That's the key.
Please understand, folks, it's doable.
There are so many resources today that didn't exist even 10 years ago.
Just have your kids watch PragerU videos, and since they're free, I'm not saying this at all for monetary reasons, I wouldn't anyway, but I just want you to know, just that alone will give them, there are over 500 of them, and there's also for little kids, and that's just PragerU, I mean, there are so many massive resources, so many groups you could join, where there are fine people who will be in the life of your child.
Do you really want New York City to raise your child?
Are you out of your mind?
You want Los Angeles?
This wasteland in which I live?
Well, I live in the environs.
But that's the point.
If I had children now, I mean young children, you'd think I'd send them to an L.A. school?
I would have to have lost my mind.
People are afraid of their kids diving off diving boards.
You know that the chances of your child's life being ruined by an American school are so much greater than being ruined by a diving board?
People are hyper on monkey bars and seesaws and diving boards.
And then they send their kid to a regular school to learn when they're five that they may not be a boy or a girl.
That it's all made up.
There's no such thing as boy or girl.
It doesn't objectively exist.
You learn that at an L.A. school when you're six.
There is no excuse for sending your child to a regular American school in most cities today.
Maybe if you live in rural Montana, it's a non-issue, and I mean that sincerely.
But it's probably an issue in Helena, Montana.
It's amazing.
Then their kid comes home and says that they're non-binary.
And you know what happens then?
You realize you should have taken my advice.
Not because it's my advice, but because it's good advice.
People don't do what is good for them.
They do what is easy.
That's back to the old human nature issue.
Okay, let's see.
Prescott, Arizona.
Steve, hello.
Hello, Dennis.
Actually, Prescott Valley, but right next door.
Thank you.
I know that you are not concerned at all with being a celebrity, but I wanted to let you know you have a celebrity admirer in the rocker Ted Nugent, our local radio station that carries you.
They replayed an interview from 2014, and they got into politics, of course, because Ted Nugent is a very well-known conservative.
He quoted you with your famous, liberals want to feel good, whereas conservatives want to do good.
And they made a big smile on my face.
Well, thank you for telling me, and I appreciate that.
That is exactly correct.
The whole woke world is feel good.
I'm so morally superior to George Washington because he had slaves.
Well, you're a moral idiot because George Washington probably runs rings around you as a moral human being.
And you're a moral idiot because you don't understand.
You judge people and their generation.
You don't judge them 200 years later.
But, look, foolishness is not a monopoly of the left, but it is a sine qua non.
It is an indispensable element of it.
Okay, what is on your mind here?
Uh, LA and Beth.
Hello, Beth of LA. Hello, Dennis.
Hi.
Yeah, so I called because you were speaking about homeschooling and I just finished homeschooling both of my kids all the way through high school.
But...
Unfortunately, and I'm a huge proponent of homeschooling, but unfortunately it's no guarantee that children won't basically still be susceptible to this social contagion that is transgenderism because we have a few kids in our small homeschool group who were girls, friends of my daughter's, who became boys in their teenage years.
So as much as homeschooling is a wonderful thing, and I would encourage everyone to do it, there's actually more work to be done, I think, to keep your kids safe from that contagion.
That's really something.
It was very deliberate that I took your call.
I don't want people to ever think I only take calls that support what I say.
Anyway, people know that, but I just wanted to note it publicly again.
So, this is so interesting.
So, in your larger homeschool circles, you are familiar with two girls who say they're boys at high school age?
Yeah, in our homeschool group that we were a part of for pretty much my children's career.
And how many kids are in that group?
I'd say in my, it was at one time a pretty big group, maybe 20 or 30 families.
Right, but still, even 2 out of 20 is a lot.
Or even 2 out of 30 is a lot.
Well, families.
So, I'm curious.
Do you know the girls who say they're boys?
Oh, yeah.
One was a very close friend of my daughter's.
But also, this particular group was not a religiously affiliated homeschool group.
It was a general homeschool group.
We were also involved in another group.
Intensely involved, but involved over a period of years with a group that was a Christian group.
So I think your values at home and what you teach your children at home and how much social media they get exposed to is...
So when did they come out as boys?
How long ago?
One was maybe about 15, and then...
Well, I don't know how long ago that is.
Oh, how long ago?
Maybe about...
Four to five years ago.
Have you followed her movement in life?
Does she still say she's a boy?
She still does, and her mom says she's still happy with her decision.
Has she had her breast removed?
That one, I'm not sure.
The other one, yes.
That one, I'm not actually sure.
The one who has had her breast removed, are you familiar with her, him, today?
Yes.
Not closely, but somewhat.
And does, well, say he, does he strike you as happy?
Um, you know, I haven't actually, I actually haven't...
I've seen this person in person for a while.
I only see sort of pictures on Facebook and things like that.
Do you know what the parents' reactions were to these girls when they first announced it?
Did they say, oh, we love you, and even though there's not an issue to us, we believe you're a boy?
Right, yes.
That's what they said?
Okay, yeah, well, eventually I understand the support.
If my 15-year-old daughter said she was a boy, I would say you're a girl.
God made you a girl.
Nature made you a girl.
Your chromosomes are that of a girl.
Your organs are that of a girl.
Your brain is that of a girl.
You have been sadly affected by a society that is deeply in crisis.
Now, if the girl persisted and persisted and persisted, I wouldn't, of course, I would not disown the child or anything like that.
But I would not immediately say, oh, of course, you're a boy.
This is all socially induced, folks.
This is not natural to the individual.
This was not happening as recently as 10 years ago, let alone 100 years ago.
It gives you an idea of how unhealthy Los Angeles is, that even in a homeschooled group this happened.
You're born a girl, you're born a boy.
I agree.
You can certainly look like, act like the other sex.
I fully acknowledge that, and it's none of my business what you were born.
I don't ask any man I met, were you born a boy or a girl?
If you look like a man, I treat you like a man.
And so does everybody else.
But if you have a beard and you wear a skirt, I am not your ally.
You're tampering with the most important division in the human race, the male-female distinction.
All right Okay, we've got a lot of calls on that so I'm not going to just devote the time to that I So if I let you go, please don't, as I always say, be offended.
She did note that it was probably not...
Well, she noted it was not religiously affiliated, that homeschool group.
I wonder if that would have mattered.
I don't know for a fact, but it's a worthy question.
We return in a moment.
This is the hour you set the agenda, whatever is on your mind.
And let's go to Renee in Kingman, Arizona.
Hello.
Thank you.
Thank you, God.
Thank you, Dennis, so much.
Thank you.
My name is Renee Cranin, and at 825-2020, just like Kyle Rittenhouse, I was arrested by a corrupt court, by the world's most interesting man's daughter.
Her name is Carrie Cook.
She is not on his Wikipedia.
And I was a business owner at Aloha Water Store, right next to Cook's family practice, when she called police to have my husband arrested.
And when they could not arrest him because they had conflicting stories, and by the way, this was 825-2020 in their Cook family practice.
She is a nurse practitioner, and none of them had masks on.
I have video of five people in the office with no masks.
However, after her husband got us evicted unrighteously by the out-of-state landlord, I walked next door to ask a question.
And it took me seven seconds to clear the door.
I saw her front office girl who has since...
Forgive me, I'm really lost.
What is this about?
I can prove the mask is a lie.
I can prove the courts are corrupt.
Okay, I'm with you.
I'm with you.
But it'll probably take a little too long for right now.
I think it's important.
When I walk into a hospital, which I rarely do, but when I do and I see everyone masked, It further diminishes my respect for the medical profession of the United States of America, which is already at a low point.
I just did a podcast with two medical doctors, Jeffrey Burke and Mark McDonald.
And there are a handful of doctors who actually take medicine seriously.
And not what the AMA says.
The AMA and medicine are mutually exclusive right now, as are almost all medical groups.
There's no reason for people to be masked in hospitals.
The thought of being a patient in a hospital today and never seeing the face of my nurse, never seeing the face of my doctor, no one seeing my face, and you...
In the hospital industry are going to tell me this is a good idea?
Are you morons?
I don't think they're morons.
I think they're sheep.
Everybody's afraid of what the newspapers will say or of a lawsuit.
Because courage is the rarest of all the good human traits.
There is no courage in the medical profession.
There is sheep-like behavior like at the children's hospitals that remove girls' breasts if the girl says she's a boy.
Until three years ago, it never occurred to me to have contempt for the American medical profession.
They now have you take...
Either in addition to or instead of the Hippocratic Oath at the University of Minnesota Medical School and at Columbia University's Medical School, you now take an oath to diversity, equity, and inclusivity.
The deterioration in the medical profession that you will experience as a patient in the next generation will be so dramatic as to be breathtaking.
We're not producing people who are dedicated to medicine.
We're producing people dedicated to racial equity.
Okay.
You get what you pay for, my friends.
That the doctors went along with keeping kids out of school for two years, that alone should have you breed contempt in you for the medical profession.
Not for all doctors.
Just for the profession.
But there is no reason to assume doctors are any more courageous or any more committed to truth than plumbers or lawyers or anybody else.
Too bad.
That's correct.
Alright, let's go to Watts.
In the L.A. area.
Also Renee.
That's rare.
Two Renees in a row.
Hello.
Hi, Dennis.
I just want to tell you, I just had some workers come and do work on my house outside.
And the guy came up masked.
And I was like, dude, take the mask off.
You're outside.
And he looked at me and we were like, he didn't know what to do.
But there's a couple of things I want to say to you.
First of all, I want to thank you for having Dr. Richmond on.
He's been our doctor since I've heard him on your show.
And then I just want to thank you.
I was able to come to your...
When you had that meeting in Beverly Hills with Dr. Peterson, I was able to save my money.
All right, hold on.
Good, good, good.
Hold on.
I'm going to keep you on.
All right, everybody.
Dennis Prager here.
Back to Renee.
Okay, so go ahead, Renee.
You called in about black conservatives, so why don't we talk about that?
Yep, that's what I wanted to say to you.
I'm a black Christian conservative, and I heard last Wednesday you had two back-to-back calls, one of an African or black woman and a black man.
And I just want to let you know, or...
That we're out here.
We're listening to you, and I'm hoping that maybe one day you can spend some time, you know, calling us, not calling us, but having us call in just to let you know we're out here.
We're ready to support you.
I'm going to go see, I'm coming to Ask a Jew, Ask a Gentile on Monday, so we're out here.
And I just wanted to let you know that.
And by the way, I'm a homeschooling mom of six kids.
So I ask you, as I do, believe me, I know there are many black conservatives, and many of them call my show.
So I will ask you when I ask every black conservative who calls, how does your extended family regard you?
They keep me at arms, babe, because they know that I have the arguments on my side.
And as a matter of fact, the closest person to me is my sister, and we're the total opposites.
She's a flaming liberal, will defend any liberal, no, leftist point to the hilt, to the point where she acknowledges that she's willfully ignorant and chooses to be like that.
So, you know, not to keep peace, but we just...
Well, to keep your sister.
Yes, I agree with you.
I understand.
I have a guilty conscience over this issue because many years ago, like 20 years ago, I asked black conservatives to write to me and obviously give me their email address so that I could have a group and have black conservatives...
Meet one another and give each other strength.
Outliers need to meet other outliers.
And as you know, my theory, which I know to be true, it's not just a theory, almost all good in history is done by outliers.
The odds are, if you're part of the sheep, as most professors, teachers, doctors, lawyers, it doesn't matter what the group, the odds are you're wrong.
You're in it because you're a sheep, not because you have the conviction independently arrived at through reason and morality.
Anyway, I wanted to have all the black conservatives get together, you know, have some way, they just contact each other.
But I can't do everything, which bothers me, because I would like to do everything.
So I have a guilty conscience over having announced that and never followed through.
But that is something I would love to do.
Okay, let's see.
South Lion, Michigan, and Susan.
Hello.
Hello.
Hi, Dennis.
I just want to thank you for presenting the ridiculousness of wearing masks.
I was a nurse for 44 years, and people need to understand that transmission of disease is mainly by touch.
You know, I'll be standing in the grocery line, and the fellow in front of me wears glasses, and he's got his protective mask on, and yet I see him, you know, rubbing his eye.
He's at the, you know, the filthy counter with all of our foods and products, and he moves his glasses over to rub his eye, but doggone, he's got that mask on, and I want to say, sir.
Do you realize how much infection you possibly could have just transmitted to your own mucous membranes?
And that's where you're going to get sick, not by me standing six feet behind you.
I always told my husband, everybody should have to go to nursing school.
Of course, that's the way that when I went, that's the way to have gone.
Because you learn legality, you learn microbiology, you learn transmission of disease.
I don't think that's true now because I've got nurses in the family and their standards are, I hate to say it, but...
You know, a one on my scale of ten.
That's right.
Well, the fact is that librarians and nurses are probably among the most left-wing woke groups in the United States.
It's very sad.
Remember everything the left touches, it ruins.
If you know that, you know a lot.
Clearwater, Florida.
Richard, hello.
One of my heroes, Dennis, how are you, my friend?
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm well.
I called in about the happiness hour, but it kind of relates to some other subjects that you had.
I grew up in the 50s and 60s in Westchester, Los Angeles, prior to the Salk vaccination, and I contracted polio at the age of 13 months.
As I was growing up, my father would look at me and say, I don't want to hear any excuses out of you, son.
Now do your stretching exercises.
And my mom was an angel to put up with my father.
He put us in visitation at Westchester at the Catholic school.
As I was growing up, I realized I really had bad polio.
And I was in Cabot-Kaiser for three years.
And I got rid of my crutches at about five years old, right before first grade.
And as I was growing up, I realized I didn't want anybody to know that I had this because I didn't want pity.
And I fought like heck to get on every sport team that you could possibly imagine.
And I challenged myself because I didn't want to be...
A victim.
Yes.
And my father did not allow me to be a victim.
So in retrospect, are you still annoyed with your father?
Absolutely not.
Thank you.
That was the punchline for me.
I long ago established a rule for parents, and it goes as follows.
Your children are going to hate you anyway, so you might as well do the right thing.
The root of so much of what is wrong in this country, of the spoiled brats that were raised since World War II, three generations of spoiled children who think they're three generations of spoiled children who think they're the center of the
Because they were raised by parents whose greatest goal in life was that their child, two greatest goals, their child experienced no pain and that they loved them, the parents, all the time.
Dennis Prager here.
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