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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
35:50
Nice People Electing Bad People
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Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
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Hi, everybody. everybody.
Welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
I hope you had a good weekend, a good Memorial Day weekend, a meaningful one as well as a good one.
I'm in Pennsylvania.
It's been a lot of travel the last ten days.
Alaska, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania.
I'm back to California tonight.
Well, I can only tell you I've been very, very lucky.
Not one canceled flight.
Puts me in a unique category among American flyers who do it frequently.
I have a thought for you.
I was in Massachusetts for a wedding.
Hadn't been to Boston in many years, actually.
Massachusetts is historically the most liberal state in the country.
You never hear about Massachusetts.
You hear about Oregon.
You hear about Washington and California.
But you don't hear much about Massachusetts for whatever reason.
Maybe people have just taken for granted it is so left-wing a state that, you know, there's nothing to report even.
But it is a completely left-wing state.
You look at its senators and representatives, and it was the only state.
Which election was that?
The only state that it voted Democrat.
Was it McGovern?
Yeah, McGovern.
It was the only state to vote for George McGovern.
This is how far back the leftism of Massachusetts is.
Why am I raising this with you?
A friend of mine who was also at the wedding was very perceptive.
Shall we say, rapporteur on the human condition said to me that he was struck by how friendly a lot of the people in Boston were.
And my limited interaction with the people wasn't there long.
I found the same thing.
People were quite friendly.
And I have now pretty much...
Concretized a theory of mine that is very, very important if correct.
So I established it with regard to Minnesota.
And I reported on this on a number of occasions.
There's such a thing as Minnesota nice.
People who visit Minnesota are often struck by how nice Minnesotans are.
And I have been to Minnesota at least 25 times.
In fact, I'll be returning next week.
So I have a lot of experience with Minnesotans and Minnesota, and have indeed found that to be the case.
And yet they vote some truly despicable people into office, and they vote for people who are ruining their own state, and in the case of Minneapolis, their own city.
Massachusetts votes for people who ruin this country.
You can't get more woke than Massachusetts.
And yet a lot of the people are nice.
So you have to ask yourself, how is that?
Well, either woke is a very wonderful, moral way to think, or there is a complete disconnect between being nice...
And having any wisdom with regard to society.
And that is what I have resolved.
That there is no connection between niceness and wisdom.
Or even niceness in the micro and niceness in the macro.
Well, there is a connection.
This is a very, very important subject.
And I need to spend some time on it with you.
How we can resolve the problem of nice people and horrible...
Governance.
I mean immoral governance.
How do nice people elect district attorneys who allow rapists, murderers, thieves, muggers out of prison?
How do nice people do that?
So, I've been working on this problem for years now because the disconnect seems so illogical.
How does this happen?
I think one of the answers is, well, one answer that I have offered, and it is without question clear to me, nice has nothing to do with wise.
Niceness, if you will, necessitates wisdom.
Micro-niceness does not.
Being polite and sweet and even kind does not involve any wisdom.
It is a behavioral thing.
I want to treat people nicely, and I do.
I'm courteous.
I thank them.
I open the door for them, etc., etc.
I smile.
That does not necessitate much wisdom.
Macro-niceness necessitates wisdom.
And when you have niceness without wisdom, you end up with evil.
Wisdom is the key to macro-niceness.
It is not as necessary in micro-niceness.
You don't have to have wisdom to be nice to the person sitting next to you on an airplane, to be nice to a customer who comes into your store, to get up and offer your seat to a pregnant woman, or of course a pregnant man.
How could I have even said a pregnant woman?
My God, how transphobic.
So you don't need any wisdom.
Or you don't need much wisdom for micro-niceness.
But for macro, how to run a society, or even how to raise a child.
See, you can't raise a child on micro-niceness.
You raise a child with wisdom.
There's a very big difference.
So, the reason number one, and it cannot be overstated in its importance.
Reason number one.
Is that the macro demands wisdom, the micro does not.
So that's one obvious, or not obvious, it's not obvious at all.
It took me a long time to realize that.
Another one is, people who are nice and think it important to be nice, think that you can apply being nice to the macro.
If nice is important in my relationships with people, then nice should be the way I govern.
So let's be nice to criminals, because what they lack is love and understanding.
Let's be nice becomes the dominant ideology of the people of the left.
They apply their micro-niceness to the macro realm and do a lot of human damage.
Let's be nice.
Let's give people free lunches.
That sounds nice, correct?
Ah, but it's not wise and therefore does a lot of harm.
1-8 Prager 776. This is one of the most important...
Things I can bring to your attention.
It hit me, finally, in Massachusetts.
The home of idiocy.
The center of stupidity.
And by the way, why is Massachusetts such a stupid state?
Because it has so many colleges.
Colleges are the center of idiocy.
Stupid ideas almost always have their genesis, from Marxism to Wokeism.
In the university.
Massachusetts probably has more universities per capita than any other state.
And so it is not surprising that Massachusetts is a state drowning in foolishness.
You cannot apply niceness ideas to the macro realm.
That, my friends, is the revelation of the day.
1-8 Prager 776 What's our time, Sean?
And we'll be back in a moment.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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Bye.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here.
What I just explained to you is extraordinary significance.
The difference between micro and macro niceness.
I think that explains most of what is going on in this country.
You don't need wisdom to be nice on a daily basis.
You do need wisdom to make a nice society.
There is no wisdom any longer in the country.
I mean, it is as obvious as just looking at the world where We think, for example, we think that giving kids participation trophies is a good thing because it makes them feel good about themselves.
But of course, unearned feeling good about yourself is worse than worthless.
So that's an example of a lack of wisdom policy.
So why do people do it?
Why do we give participation trophies?
Why do losers get trophies?
I can't put it more directly.
You lose, you win a trophy.
You win, you win a trophy.
So there's no difference between winning and losing.
And the reason is because we want to be nice.
The principle of nice applied to macro produces rottenness.
That's the case here.
We want to be nice to the transphobic, so we obliterate the distinction between male and female.
Excuse me, not the transphobic.
The transphobe.
Not transphobe.
Okay, sorry.
The trans, I guess that's the term that they are now using.
See, so on a micro basis, of course I want to be nice to a transgendered individual.
Of course.
Every human is created in God's image, including the transgender.
So I want to be nice to that person on the micro level.
But I don't want to obliterate the distinction between male and female or deny the obvious that there are males and there are females.
So that Disney has obliterated saying boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen.
Why?
They've applied the principle of micro niceness to the macro realm and caused chaos, moral and social chaos.
We have fools running our schools.
Fools.
Idiots.
Fools.
Whatever term you wish to use.
People devoid of wisdom.
But they're nice.
A lot of these teachers are nice.
A lot of these professors are nice.
Well, I don't know how many professors are nice.
I don't know the answer to that.
Maybe many are, maybe many are.
I have a feeling that there's a tremendous amount of pettiness in the academic world.
Nevertheless, even if every one of them were nice, the damage that they do Is immeasurable.
Applying the principles of being nice to the macro produce bad things.
That is the appeal of Marxism.
Oh, isn't it nice?
To each according to his needs, from each according to his ability.
Ah, that's nice!
Nice in the macro produces very, very bad things.
So that was my revelation in Massachusetts this past weekend.
It's not the first time I've spoken about it, but I am clearer on the issue than ever before.
Minnesota opened my eyes and Massachusetts confirmed my theory.
That is what has happened.
And that is the reason that the woke think conservatives are mean human beings.
Because they Believe that our macro policies are not nice.
You are not going to give kids free lunches and free breakfasts.
You're not going to give everybody free health care, free lunches, free breakfast, free daycare, free tuition.
Oh, then you are a bad person.
That's why they think we're bad, because they think that our policies are not nice.
And nice is the criterion.
That is why so many on the left think people are basically good.
Because it's not nice to think that human nature is not nice.
And they all think they're basically good.
So how could anybody believe that people are not basically good?
In light of this, by the way, I do want to remind you that a week from this Wednesday...
In Beverly Hills, California, I am debating a rabbi who says that people are basically good.
And I'm in this debate because I think it is one of the stupidest and most dangerous beliefs an adult can hold.
I'm actually angry that a rabbi holds this position because you expect more from rabbis, especially Orthodox rabbis, as I would expect more from an evangelical Christian.
From a Mormon in good standing in LDS and from a traditional Catholic.
So it happens to be that this is an Orthodox rabbi.
He is atypical for Orthodox rabbis, but I believe that a lot of secular ideas are making their way into modern Orthodoxy in Jewish life, just as they are making their way into parts of evangelical life.
Traditional Catholic life.
Look at what happened to Notre Dame decades ago.
It's not new.
So people like to believe sweet things.
They believe that sweetness is the answer even to crime.
We don't want to send all these people to prison.
Why not?
If it protects the innocent from being raped, mugged, beaten, and murdered, why don't we want to send them to prison?
You have a better idea?
Well, they do think they have a better idea.
Let them out.
That's their better idea.
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Okay, St. Paul, Minnesota.
Paul in St. Paul, hello.
Dennis, we've chatted many times.
Nice to chat with you.
You had your revelation this weekend.
I had mine about 20 years ago.
I'm a lifelong Minnesotan.
And I was a young father, and my wife and I took our three young kids to the Como Park Zoo in St. Paul, Minnesota.
And we come around the corner, and I witness a typical Minnesota woman.
She's in her mid-30s.
She's got prematurely gray hair, comfortable shoes, just a well-meaning, just a normal, everyday woman.
And for lack of a better word, she was husbanding around a woman.
I'm guessing it was a woman.
It could have been a man.
Now, recognize this is not long after 9-11.
They had full Muslim garb on to the point where you could only maybe see their eyeballs if you really tried, you know, the full head garb.
And this woman was kind of bringing this person about with a few of their friends, I guess.
And all I remember thinking to myself is, This is the most cognitively dissonant scene I've ever seen in my home state.
And this woman, I'm sure she was thinking she was, you know, doing the right thing, and indeed she was at face value.
But I remember thinking just something at the end of the day here isn't right.
And I think it's a perfect example of the Minnesota night.
Well, why did you think it wasn't right?
Did this person want to be at the zoo?
Did she or he know she was at the zoo?
It was so dissonant.
Yeah.
All right.
Look, I'm not sure.
We don't know the answer to that.
So maybe she did want to be at the zoo.
Anyway, you had your revelation 20 years ago.
I had my revelation over a much longer period of time.
And my Massachusetts visit this past weekend was the culmination of it all.
Glenn in Phoenix, Arizona.
Hello.
Yes, Mr. Prager.
Well, I told the call screener what my analysis is, is I have people in my life that preach this, but they're the most miserable people on earth.
What I find is it's a matter of two fronts.
It's a matter of projection and it's a matter of manipulation.
They want you to...
I'm losing my caller, Sean.
Thank you.
Yeah, too bad.
Sorry about that.
So let me, even on the basis of what I heard, let me react for a moment.
I don't think that, I think this is an example of where liberal and left Are different.
Leftists are all unhappy.
Liberals, like conservatives, some are happy, some are not happy, some are in the middle.
But leftists are unhappy people.
And unhappy people don't act nice, as a general rule.
So my theory is correct with regard to liberals and conservatives, or at least liberals, because They vote for the left.
They vote for the people whose policies hurt people.
But they, on an individual level, are often very nice.
So this is...
Most Americans who vote Democrat are not leftists.
I know this because so many in my extended family are liberal.
And Democrats.
My immediate family, thank God, they're conservative.
And I say thank God because I feel very lucky to have a wife and to have my kids and my stepkids to share my values.
Not everybody has that, and I understand how lucky that is.
But I know that when I tell these Wonderful liberals in my extended family.
Like, men give birth, they go, oh, that's crazy, come on.
What they do is, whenever I give them a policy, or Columbia has an all-black dorm, you go, oh, okay, so, you know, there's always an example.
I'll be back with that one.
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Yep, it's been revelatory, this issue... this issue...
About people confusing being nice in the micro with being nice in the macro.
It's part of the problem of evil in the last hundred years.
Communism came from people's belief that if you're nice in the macro, you'll produce a nice society.
Then they produced hell.
Hell.
H-E-L-L. Because they had no wisdom.
Wisdom is not taught at our colleges.
It is not taught in our high schools or elementary schools.
I believe the average 12-year-old 100 years ago was wiser than the average professor at Princeton today.
I swear before God Almighty that I believe that literally.
I'll say it again.
The average 12-year-old 100 years ago in America had more wisdom than the average Princeton professor today.
Because they were taught wisdom.
And we don't teach any wisdom.
Go by your heart.
Be nice.
Be nice to, and then fill in.
Yes.
Is it nice to blacks to give black kids their own dormitory?
It's not nice.
It's hurtful.
That's what it is.
Is it nice to lower standards for minorities, or is it hurtful?
Is it nice to obliterate the belief that there are men and women and boys and girls in the world, or is it hurtful?
Is it nice to keep printing money and create inflation in order to keep giving people more money not to work?
You know how hard it is to find people to work today?
Why is my local Starbucks closing earlier?
Because they can't find people to work.
I see this all over the country.
We're understaffed.
We're understaffed.
Why?
People don't want to come back to work.
They got paid not to work.
Is that nice?
Is it nice to tell people, go into debt and then others will pay your debt?
That's really nice, isn't it?
You go into debt to go to college and get a worthless degree and do nothing but be pampered for four years and then we'll have the guy who works his tail off and may have paid off his school debt or his kid's school debt, then he'll pay yours.
That's nice!
According to the Democratic Party, that's nice.
Get it?
Nice in the macro isn't nice.
That's the difference.
Thomas, we're going to get our Minnesota callers here.
Thomas in St. Paul, hello.
Thank you, Dennis.
I'm taping sheetrock as we speak.
You hit a nerve, so I thought, I got a call about this.
I am not from Minnesota.
I'm from Hackensack, New Jersey.
It's a standard snicker line when you're talking with someone else from out of state and you say, yeah, so what do you think about Minnesota Nice?
And both parties will start chuckling about the whole thing.
It was best summed up by a woman I worked with.
She had a seventh-grade daughter who had a mental breakdown Ignored, or I don't want to say abandoned, but all her Minnesota friends just cut her off, okay?
And she summed it up as, and this fits in exactly with what you're saying about the macro and the micro.
She said, Minnesota nice if it doesn't take any time or cost any money.
And I thought, boy.
And my wife is from Minnesota.
So wait a minute.
So do or don't agree with me.
I'm saying that Minnesota...
So they are nice.
No.
Well, no, then you don't agree with me, which is fine.
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I should have said that.
I agree with the micro and the macro.
But Minnesota is...
I mean, I don't...
After I retired, I built a house down in San Antonio, Texas.
I found the Texans way more.
Way more.
I'll give you an example.
Now, this might be a small example.
Like, if you're coming down a side street and there's cars parked on both sides, so one person has to give way to the other person.
You know, when someone does that to me, I raise my hand to sit, you know, say thank you.
Never.
Never does another Minnesota driver do that.
All right, so that's interesting.
So I get it.
You don't even think they're that nice in the micro.
Well, it is interesting.
Of this, I have no doubt.
The nicest are in the conservative states.
You can't get nicer than people in the South.
They are among the nicest people in the country.
I absolutely agree with that.
The rule remains, nice in the macro produces very, very terrible things.
You can't do it both ways.
Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Jerry, hello.
Hello, Dennis.
We tuned in a little bit late, and I heard that you're debating a rabbi.
Is that correct?
Yes.
Okay.
Well, I was led to believe that when, say you have five rabbis, and all five are in agreeance on a similar topic, that one of them actually has to take the reverse position and argue that for those who are incapable of debating...
Right.
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, that would be fine.
I'll explain in a moment.
All right, everybody.
Dennis Prager here to answer Jerry and Scranton about this debate that I'll be having a week from Wednesday.
I said, well, it's the rabbi I'm debating, and he heard that if there are five rabbis who all agree one should take the opposite position, there's a big difference in taking an opposite position that you don't believe in and taking an opposite position you do believe in.
I have no problem with people arguing so as to.
Elucidate greater truths and taking positions they don't hold in order to advance the cause of truth-seeking.
But if an Orthodox rabbi says that human nature is basically good, when the whole premise of all of Judaism is you need all these laws to become a decent human being, we are in trouble, real serious trouble, as is Christianity in real serious trouble.
As is Catholicism and Protestantism, the Pope says that capitalism is a bad thing, the only thing that has lifted billions of people from poverty.
He claims to give a damn about the poor.
You don't give a damn about the poor if you think capitalism is bad.
Okay?
Let's be clear about that.
You don't give a damn about the poor if you are anti-capitalism.
How do you think the Chinese are feeding their people?
on socialism?
Poverty was the human norm all through the history of the world until capitalism lifted billions from poverty.
But the truth is, no leftist gives a damn about the poor.
They don't give a damn about blacks.
They don't give a damn about women.
They give a damn about power.
They give a damn about feeling good about themselves.
They give a damn about taking positions that are contrary to Western civilization so that they have a meaningful life.
Because now they're fighting for something.
The end of the West.
Because after all, what did the West do other than lift people from poverty, create democracy, women's rights, minority rights, and a bill of rights in this country?
That's all it's done.
Why would anybody be pro-West?
That's what it's all about.
So, this is big stuff.
Wisdom is everything, my friends.
Wisdom is everything.
Good intentions without wisdom always produces bad.
The New York Times publishes a piece acknowledging that it's not fair for biological men to compete with biological women.
Shocking.
They didn't mean to, I don't think, but they are quoting a doctor.
Oh, if you quote a doctor, oh, oh, it's like our newest Supreme Court justice.
Asked to define a woman's...
Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
To hear the entire three hours of my radio show, commercial-free, every single day, become a member of PragerTopia.
You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives, as well as the daily show prep.
Subscribe at PragerTopia.
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