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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:22:47
Presidents Day
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Hello, everybody.
I would wish you a happy President's Day, but I might as well wish you a happy Amoeba Day.
Because this holiday...
It is about presidents like it is about amoeba.
I'll tell you, in my opinion, the movement away from Washington's birthday and Lincoln's birthday, which everyone of my generation and the next knew by heart, February 22 and February 12, respectively, Washington, Lincoln.
And it was the movement away from that to the amorphous...
Pablum, known as President's Day, which every young person thinks it honors all presidents.
So you should just know you're honoring James Buchanan.
And if you are a liberal, you're honoring Donald Trump.
And if you're a conservative, you're honoring Barack Obama.
Not to mention the current president, whom I refer to in hushed tones, or as they say in opera, sotto voce.
The movement away from Lincoln's birthday and Washington's birthday is the perfect microcosm of what has happened to our country today.
The lack of patriotism.
That has been fostered in succeeding generations after World War II. I went to a religious school, a Jewish school, Orthodox religious, and we put on Lincoln's birthday plays and Washington birthday plays.
It was in the DNA of schools.
To honor Lincoln and Washington.
And now it is a non-issue.
Every year I ask and every year I forget.
Was it done under Nixon's watch?
I don't remember.
Was it Ford?
Well, it wasn't before Nixon.
It wasn't Nixon.
Sorry?
Well, let's see.
1971. So it could have been...
I guess it was Nixon, right?
Well, I think we can take a look.
Yeah.
It is?
I'm going to confirm.
Yeah.
I'd love to know who came up with the idea.
If it was done under Nixon, it is truly an example.
And if he agreed to it, it is another example of...
The Republican Party not knowing what to do to preserve the country.
The Democrats have always been injurious, but Republicans have not been supportive very often.
They're certainly better than the alternative, but it is worth noting.
This country now has one day in which it honors an individual, Martin Luther King Day.
It also had Columbus Day, but that has been yanked by the left.
So we used to honor Columbus, and we used to honor George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
Now we only honor one person, Martin Luther King Jr., worthy of being honored, but not worthy of being the only person honored.
There shouldn't be any one person honored.
We should honor a number of people.
Virtually every country does, I assume.
It would be an interesting question.
Does France have any national holidays in honor of individuals?
I don't know the answer, but it's an interesting question.
Today, then, represents the decline of patriotism.
You cannot sustain a country if you do not...
Imbue the next generation with patriotic feeling.
When I was a kid, I mean really a kid, like 10, I don't think I was allowed to go to bed very late, but I think on weekends I was allowed.
In any event, I remember this.
There was no 24-hour television when I was a kid.
The broadcast day on any given channel ended at whatever time it ended.
I don't know, 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock, I don't know.
And it would always end in the playing a wonderful band in the background playing the national anthem and the flag waving.
And I got chills.
I was really moved as a kid.
Watching the flag and hearing the national anthem on those occasions when I was up late enough to hear the end of the broadcast day and hear the national anthem.
Here's another question, therefore, for the next generation.
Is there anything American that gives you the chills?
The Star Spangled Banner, the flag waving, the Marines planning the American flag on Iwo Jima, America the beautiful, God bless America.
America, is there anything American that moves you as an American?
And my suspicion is that there isn't.
So there's no God, there's no country in the God and country equation.
That has died in much of Europe and even more so in much of the United States.
What has supplanted it?
What do we give kids?
To give their lives meaning beyond their own life.
That's important.
Beyond their own life.
And the answer is that we don't.
If they don't get religion and they don't get patriotism, what we have is either preoccupation with self, that's all that's left, and or Other causes that transcend the self,
like anti-racism, like LGBTQ, like saving the world because of climate change.
That is what happens.
That is why the patriotic and the religious are not seduced.
By the Hate America anti-racism campaign or by the destroy the male-female distinction of the trans campaign or the destroy the economy and redo the world campaign of the Climate change activists.
That is the reason the left hates the patriotic right and the religious right.
Because we are not seduced by their substitutes for religion and patriotism.
Now it makes sense.
The left understands the threat of patriotism and religion much better.
Then the right does.
The right does not...
Most conservatives do not understand the existential threat that the left poses, not liberals.
Liberals vote for the left, which is inexcusable, but this is a separate subject.
The existential threat that leftism constitutes against...
Those of us who love the country and try to live by biblical principles.
A very term which is so mocked on the left that to say it is to open oneself up to mockery by the best educated.
That's their reaction.
Biblical principles.
Oh, this guy believes in fairy tales.
I see.
But if you believe in masks, you don't believe in a fairy tale.
If you believe men give birth, you are really rooted in reality.
1-8 Prager 776. Happy President's Day!
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The temporary idea of a President's Day came actually in a Democratic administration, not surprisingly.
me.
The federal, I'm sure the federal employee unions pushed for this.
That's what makes sense now.
And no Democrat says no to unions, no matter how injurious to the country.
Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which in itself was an act of spectacular foolishness.
Because the holiday loses its meaning.
What if Christmas were declared the last Monday in December?
Wouldn't it lose its meaning?
December 25th would no longer mean anything.
What if January 1st were declared the first Monday of January?
Then New Year's loses its meaning.
It's not New Year's.
It could be January 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. Designated certain government holidays, including Washington's birthday, Labor Day, and Memorial Day, to be observed on Monday.
The idea was to give federal employees more three-day weekends.
See, that's what counts.
Not preserving the meaning of a holiday, but giving federal employees three-day weekends.
That's what matters.
I'm blaming Nixon, but it was actually passed in the Lyndon Johnson era.
The idea was to give federal employees more three-day weekends.
Columbus Day, now often celebrated as Indigenous People's Day, became a federal holiday, too.
This is from the New York Times today, describing what the day is.
That's interesting.
Is there actually an article on it?
Yeah.
Really, send me the link to the article.
It's an economic motivation, Mr. Engel, whoever that is, said.
When they talked about the three-day weekend, they said this will be good for business.
They didn't sugarcoat it.
Good for federal employees and good for business.
I believe that.
Good for country doesn't mean a thing.
Good for shopping.
That's big.
The law went into effect in 1971. That's the Nixon era.
And soon enough, Americans began celebrating the nation's leaders by buying large appliances and mattresses.
Actually, that is fitting.
There are certain presidents that I would celebrate by buying a large appliance.
That's true.
Now that I think of it.
So this is in the New York Times today.
Let's see.
How one President's Day became President's Day.
The United States began celebrating its first president when he was still a general.
Nearly 300 years since George Washington's birth, the holiday has morphed into a celebration of the presidency.
How charming.
I'm celebrating the presidency today.
It's one of the reasons I'm broadcasting.
I'm not celebrating.
Does anybody even say anything today?
Nobody says happy holiday.
There's nothing.
It's nothing.
It's a nothing burger, as they say.
If there were a symbol of President's Day, it would be a nothing burger.
Well, too bad.
That's when the non-wise govern your country.
You know what conservatism is?
One of the many things that distinguishes itself from the left.
It asks, what will happen?
What are the consequences?
What is the price?
The moment you ask that question, you have crossed over into conservative territory.
What is the price paid?
Because everything has a price paid.
What is the price paid for eliminating Washington's and Lincoln's birthday and morphing it into the President's Day?
When you ask that, you have asked the key question about life in general, to be honest.
Yes, my friends.
This is interesting.
Kathy in Atlanta, Georgia.
Hello.
Hello.
Hi, Kathy.
Hi.
Happy President's Day.
I'm joking.
Go ahead.
Oh, happy President's Day to you, too.
I'm serious.
Right, fine.
I just wanted to share a quick piece of information that I learned over the weekend.
A friend of mine is selling her house in a very nice part of Atlanta, a million-dollar home, and her real estate agent came to her and asked her if she would please consider removing the American flag that she hangs outside of her house when the house goes on the market.
And my friend asked me, what should she do?
And I said, you tell her that you are keeping it up.
And there is no way that flag is going to be removed and that anybody asking her to do that, or if she did do that, everybody in this country should be afraid of that being posed to them when selling their house.
Every single person, I don't care what side of the aisle you reside on, to be asked to remove the flag to make the house more marketable.
Unbelievable.
That's a very important story you just told.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I believe it.
Do you not believe it?
I believe it.
I'm curious if others have experienced that in selling or buying a house recently.
1-8 Prager 776. You can't survive that.
A country cannot survive it.
Your house will be less sellable if you have an American flag in front of it.
By the way, I believe it.
I not only believe that it was told to her friend, I believe that it's probably true.
Hello everybody, I'm Dennis Prager, reflecting on the meaninglessness of President's Day, how it is par for the course in the dismantling of American patriotism,
The dismantling of religion and patriotism has left a generation so bereft of transcendent meanings that the left has filled the vacuum because the human being needs transcendent meaning.
So now it's Mother Earth.
And not the mother, well, we don't use motherland.
That's a European term.
We use father of our country.
We have a father of our country.
God, if you ask the average high school kid who's the father of our country, you would either get a blank stare or probably, or not probably, but possibly even opposition.
What do you mean father of the country?
Why not mother of the country?
Right?
But you can say the father of our country gave birth.
That would be allowable.
What the left does is destroy what is good to replace it with leftism.
That's what is done.
President's Day is symbolic of it, even though people on the right were completely on board because it was good for business.
You're not left with a lot of wise Americans, are you?
If the left destroys and the right doesn't understand what's being destroyed.
We do now.
There's far more conservative ideology and idealism today than there was 50 or 75 years ago.
There's really no comparison.
It was inertia.
Patriotism lived on inertia.
The generation called the greatest generation, the World War II generation, did an awful job in passing on patriotism and religion to their kids.
They passed on peace, to a certain extent, and affluence.
That was what they wanted.
We want to give our kids everything we didn't have.
That is why I repeat one of the ten most important things you could know about life.
Wisdom is the key to goodness.
You cannot be good if you don't have wisdom.
You cannot do good and therefore you cannot be good because you are good based on what you do, not on what you feel.
That is what is going on today.
So I'm very curious.
You heard this caller.
I forgot.
Where was she from?
The one with the real estate agent.
Atlanta.
Atlanta.
Thank you so much.
Who's that who said that?
Robert?
Robert, thank you.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
And I'm curious if any of you had a similar experience that you were told your house will sell better or you know if someone told this.
Your house will sell sooner if you take down your American flag.
Right now, in the United States of America, the American flag represents to the left essentially racism and fascism.
And they have succeeded in passing on That defamation to many, many, many young people.
Well, I remember in the early days of my broadcast, when I spoke about a university, I don't recall which, that actually took down its American flag.
You may recall it.
And remember the reason it gave?
It might offend foreign students.
Now you know why I say in order to be a college president, you need to be a fool and a coward.
Those are the two criteria for college presidency in the vast majority of cases.
There are exceptions, such as at Arizona State University, where the president is a major proponent of free speech.
So there are always exceptions.
All outliers, no.
All good is done by outliers.
Some of you know, some of you do not know, that Jews read a portion of the Torah every week in synagogue on the Sabbath.
And there are essentially 52 portions for 52 weeks.
The Torah, the five books of Moses, the basis of the Old Testament and of the New Testament.
Everything derives essentially from there.
The portion this week was from Exodus, and one of the verses was, Do not follow the majority to do evil.
Ha!
Can you get more pertinent?
When do you follow the majority to do good?
As a rule, that's pretty, pretty rare.
We continue on The Dennis Prager Show.
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Hello, everybody.
I wish you a happy President's Day, but it's actually an unhappy day because...
It came with the abolition of Washington's birthday and tangentially Lincoln's birthday.
I spoke about this the first hour and the decline of patriotism, and we went to a fascinating subject.
Realtors asking people to take down their American flags or flag if they have one or more at their house.
It's harder to sell a house with an American flag.
And then another caller called and said his friend had told him to take down religious objects from the, the realtor said that from the photos.
Well, in a nutshell, that really summarizes what the left has done very effectively.
They have given God and country a bad name.
We can substitute Mother Earth and the gods of the left.
Equity.
Anti-racism.
In whose name you can speak ill of every single white human being.
It's a remarkable thing.
If you're a biracial person, it just occurred to me, you're biracial.
One parent is black and one is white.
And all whites are racist.
That is actually what is claimed.
This is not an exaggeration.
That is what is claimed at DEI seminars, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion seminars.
It is the basic proposition of the left about whites.
All whites are racist, and the ones who deny it are the worst.
So they've got you coming and going.
So let's say you are raised by...
A white parent and a black parent.
So, are you half racist?
If you're half white, are you half racist?
To those who were raised, does Barack Obama believe his mother was a racist?
He was raised by a white mother.
Is she racist?
When you own the media and the schools, however, you can say anything.
And one of the things you can say is all whites are racist.
Anyway, today is the truly meaningless President's Day.
The President of the United States is in Ukraine.
I'm not sure he's there still.
He's on his way?
Well, alright.
He's on his way back, whatever.
He was just there.
More and more conservatives that I admire, and I still admire, you could say something I differ with and still have my admiration, are against the U.S. funding Ukraine.
The argument seems to be pretty consistent.
There are two.
They have to do with, we're not taking care of America.
Why are we taking care of Ukraine?
I don't quite understand why that resonates as a rational argument.
Do you think if we stopped aiding Ukraine, we would start aiding America with this president and the Democrats in charge?
Did we help America prior to helping Ukraine?
Then why is it an argument?
They're completely unrelated.
We don't have an open border because we're helping Ukraine.
We have an open border because the Democrats want to destroy the U.S. as we know it.
It's amazing that that's a controversial statement.
They hate this country.
If all whites are racist, how do you love a country whose majority group is despicable?
Don't gaslight me.
Don't hate America and then get angry if I say you hate America.
Then you're lying to the public, and you're lying to me, and worse, you're lying to you.
You hate the country.
That's why they have people take down the American flag when they try to sell their house.
But, of course, the dominance of foolishness Oh, I see.
It has nothing to do with it.
That's right.
The guys who planted the flag on Iwo Jima were really silly.
Well, gaslighting, that is an art.
I don't understand the conservative argument at all.
We have an open border here, so let's not take care of Ukraine's borders.
The president should be in East Palestine, not in Ukraine.
He's in Ukraine for a day.
He has 364 other days to go to East Palestine, and he didn't.
Ukraine has nothing to do with the utter and total neglect of that poor Trump-voting city, which is part of the reason that the government has paid no attention to it, or virtually no attention to it, unless pushed.
If it were a voting group, a group that votes Democrat, I promise you there would be a lot more concern with it.
If you think that America would benefit from allowing Russia to invade and conquer as much of Ukraine as it wants, and basically incorporate it into Mother Russia, then we have a different view.
I don't understand why that is in the long-term interest of the United States.
Isolationism is not an American ideal.
And on moral grounds, A lot of these people, these conservatives who want us to do nothing for Ukraine, are religious.
That's really a puzzle to me.
God or luck has given us the greatest armaments and the greatest strength in the world, but we are only to use it to protect ourselves directly?
That's a moral argument of a religious Christian or a religious Jew?
I don't follow that one.
If you differ with me, I'd be interested to hear from you.
1-8 Prager 776. I think a lot has to do with the hatred of Joe Biden, who is hateable.
He's a detestable human being.
So what?
I don't judge policies by whether or not I find the person contemptible or not.
I judge policies on their own grounds.
That is what the left did to Trump.
Trump had great policies and they didn't like him.
So they rejected his policies.
Why would we do what the left does?
I don't like the man, therefore the policy is wrong.
It's not a mature way of looking at life.
I can't stand the man.
There isn't a conservative who detests Joe Biden more than I do.
I'm sure many detest him as much as I do.
It's irrelevant.
Aiding Ukraine is correct even if a detestable human being is foreign.
Not sure why that's not dispositive, as the lawyers put it.
1-8 Prager 776 is the number.
And...
Let's take some calls here.
It's amazing, the stuff.
The things that you folks experience.
This is why talk radio is unique.
You learn what people think.
By the way, there's another place you learn what people think, and that's the comments section.
After many columns and articles on the internet, if I find the article important, left, right, or none, I go to the comments section.
And by the way, some of the comments are very intelligent.
Some of the comments, on the other hand, I'll give you an example.
I'm going to take your calls.
1-8 Prager 776. What I learned about many New York Times readers, they are so religious, and I mean it, religious in their environmentalism, that they wrote that they are proud of their child for not having children because of global warming, because of climate change.
I wrote a whole column on comments in the New York Times.
I'm proud of my daughter for not giving me a grandchild.
And not having a child of her own, of course.
Who wants to bring another carbon dioxide emitter into the world?
Or get killed by climate change?
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Hello, y'all.
I'm Dennis Prager on this meaningless President's Day, as all President's Days are meaningless.
Fascinating calls.
I've raised a lot of issues here, and here's a call that doesn't agree with me.
So he gets on first.
Asheville, North Carolina.
Rick, hello.
Oh, my God.
I'm so pleased to talk to you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I've been listening for 30 years.
Wow.
How was that possible?
Did you start in LA? I was in New York, WABC. Oh, wow.
You remember my WABC days?
Yeah.
Okay, thank you.
That's great.
So what's on your mind?
I do disagree with you.
I agree with you 95% of the time on this one.
I do not, and I am a Christian.
The big red flag.
Of Ukraine being declared, I think they said, the third most corrupt nation in the world some years back.
The other big red flag is President Donald Trump being impeached over asking questions about the corruption going on in there.
That's a huge problem to me.
The fact that we're invested now about 200 billion U.S. dollars into that place between equipment and cash.
I think I heard 10 billion or so.
They took our money and invested into that FTX scam.
We know where that went.
So I think the corruption is like the handwriting on the wall for number one.
Number two...
I don't know if you've kept up with some of the reports about BioLab over there.
Yeah, that's right.
That is, oh my God, and that is the biggest red flag for me.
Well, so let me understand.
Because of that, we should allow Putin to conquer Ukraine?
I'm not necessarily saying that.
I'm saying to you that...
I think that the corrupt politicians on the left and the right are fully invested in protecting their own corrupt interests there.
And I think they're happy in one way that Putin is doing what he's doing because it allows them to just pump more and more and more into their money laundering scene.
Okay, alright, so listen, forgive me for cutting you off, but only the time factor.
Every point you make has validity.
So, in a nutshell, I have no doubt that there's a lot of corruption in Ukraine.
The United States not only gave massive amounts of monetary and armaments aid to the South Korean government, In the early 50s, it sent over tens of thousands of men, 37,000 American men died in Korea, to help the corrupt government of South Korea.
We lost more than that to help the corrupt government of South Vietnam.
Ultimately, South Korea became the most successful economy in Asia with the exception of Japan.
You're using a South Korean phone if you're not using an iPhone.
You may well be driving a South Korean car.
You're probably using some South Korean appliances, which is an astonishing achievement.
I was in Korea.
South Korea in the 70s as a kid.
Well, not as a kid, in my 20s.
And it was poor.
I mean, it was a poor country.
What has happened in the last 50 years is quite astonishing.
So I don't find the corruption argument dispositive because we never would have come to the aid of a lot of countries.
If the issue was, are they corrupt or not?
The issue was, who are they fighting?
And is that fight worthy of our intervention?
And I don't mean with men, obviously.
The other argument on the corruption issue is, we're corrupt.
The left has utterly corrupted every American institution.
Art to music, to college, to high school, to elementary school, to much of mainstream Judaism, mainstream Catholicism, mainstream Protestantism, and the government itself.
It is the corruption in the American government, and even in the judicial system, the judges that Joe Biden has appointed are mostly corrupt.
So, unfortunately, we can no longer make the argument that the non-corrupt shouldn't help the corrupt.
Anyway, the caller acknowledged the corruption.
There are ties between Biden and Ukraine that are quite corrupt.
And by the way, I acknowledge the labs, the bio labs too.
This is a, it seems to be a fact.
None of them have anything to do with, do we allow Russia to gobble up a country?
Is Sweden a big fan of Ukraine?
Why does Sweden fear Russia now?
Sweden has been neutral.
All of its existence in the modern world, including World War II, they were neutral between the Nazis and Churchill, between the Nazis and the Allies.
Finland was neutral during the entire Cold War.
It wants to join NATO now.
Why are they so scared of Putin if this is just about American corruption?
Aiding or even laundering money, as was just said.
Clearly, they know what's going on better than we do because they live there.
It is stunning to me that Sweden and Finland want to join NATO. Stunning.
So, those are my arguments, plus the moral argument that I made earlier.
Palos Verdes and John, hello.
Palos Verdes, California, LA. Hi.
Hi, Doug.
Hi.
I've been listening to you for 22 years now.
I am a religious conservative, and I caught the tail end of your last call because I was on the phone with your screener, but I was going to say...
What I think is something similar to him, Ukraine has been a playground for corruption.
It has.
Hold on.
I'm not letting you go.
I've just got to take a break.
Back in a moment.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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Alright y'all, Dennis Prager here.
Back to L.A. and John Palos Verdes to be precise, but you'd have to live in L.A. to know where that is.
So go ahead.
You're agreeing with the last caller about Ukraine, but would like to add or restate what?
Right, yeah.
So the corruption is a big deal.
In 2014, I believe the U.S. was involved in the removal of Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian president.
We've got Hunter Biden on the board of Burisma, which seems pretty fishy.
We've got all kinds of things going on that indicate that there's a lot of U.S. corruption going on in Ukraine.
It's not so much that Ukraine is corrupt, and they are, but it's that we are doing our corruption in Ukraine.
And from that perspective, I think that the motivation for the invasion is that...
Putin does not want us on his border, the same way that you would not want to live next door to a left-winger.
And I think that there is a better solution here, rather than sending tens of billions of dollars and potentially risking American lives.
I think we need to stop using Ukraine as a playground for corruption.
So you would, so, look.
Either we aid Ukraine or we don't.
So you're against it, and then it will be conquered by Russia.
And you don't feel that that's a problem for the world or for America?
Or moral problem?
I don't think those are the only two choices.
Oh, really?
What's the third choice?
I think that there is a way that we can go in there and assure Putin.
That we are no longer going to use Ukraine as a playground for laundering, and there are probably steps that we can take to show that we're serious about that, and that we're addressing those things.
Well, listen, I respect you deeply.
I think that you're fooling yourself, which the human being does often.
If we said to Putin, we will...
We will leave Ukraine in the following ways that you want us to leave Ukraine.
If you leave Ukraine, I would be totally for it.
I think it's a pipe dream.
If he leaves Ukraine, it will be because he can't win.
I, however, I should have added earlier, I want peace as much as I want to stop his invasion.
I would compromise with him.
I think what Biden said, that we want a regime change, that Putin has to go, is par for the course with this despicable president, who is a fool in addition to being completely devoid of a moral conscience.
As I understand the concept of moral conscience.
I think he's a bad human being.
I've never said that of any president.
Not Clinton, not Obama.
And not the Republicans, obviously.
We're in a very, very bad situation.
I think the indication, though, that all these issues are secondary is the fact that...
Sweden and Finland now want to join NATO. I am against Ukraine.
If we said to Russia, no Ukraine and NATO, not even in the EU, I would be for that.
And if Zelensky opposed it, I'd say you either go along or we stop baiting you.
We're in the driver's seat with Zelensky.
And finally...
For some reason, the Ukrainians don't agree with all of this.
The staggering amount of death and destruction, watching their cities have missiles rain down upon them, and their willingness to die fighting Russians.
I guess people do die for corrupt regimes, but it's still pretty impressive.
That they think it's an existential threat to their country, Russia.
As for the notion of we wouldn't want a left-wing regime on our border, there's a left-wing regime right now in Mexico.
We seem to be doing fine with it.
Now, it's not left-like Castro, but we do have.
Castro is practically on our border.
He's a communist.
Yes, we invaded in the Kennedy administration, but since then we haven't.
Now, we don't allow missiles there, and by the way, let's not forget, our word is worthless if we don't back Ukraine.
Because we promised them, you give up your nuclear weapons and we'll defend you if you're invaded.
Not one opponent of aiding Ukraine has raised that issue.
Hi, everybody. - Ready?
Dennis Prager here.
On this meaningful day in American life, President's Day.
It's meaningless.
I devoted our number one to large talk about that.
The war on patriotism.
Abolishing Washington's birthday, no more Lincoln's birthday.
Instead, President's Day, honoring people like...
For example, John Tyler, whom you just heard about, if you just heard the end of hour number two, PragerU is coming out with the first ten of a five-minute video on every single president.
Fantastic way to learn American history, and it's fun.
And it's free.
How do you like that?
So, welcome indeed.
Spoke about Ukraine last hour.
And I will return to that another day.
So that's why we let your calls go.
A lot of you have strong feelings about not aiding Ukraine, and I had people on expressing that view.
I don't know if any of you who oppose it know that Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons after the breakup of the Soviet Union in exchange for a guarantee of its territorial integrity.
The United States signed on to that.
So if you're just asking what's in America's interest, I think it's in America's interest to honor its promises.
All right!
By the way, I'm getting feedback from realtors in my life saying that they would not ever say such a thing.
And that if they heard such a thing, I'll tell you what the thing is in a moment, they would just tell the realtor to utilize a screwdriver on himself.
And that is that some realtors are apparently saying it's best not to show the American flag when photographing your home.
And putting it on the market.
That's the theory.
And it may well be.
The destruction of patriotism exemplified by President's Day as opposed to actual President Washington and Lincoln.
And the no flags.
We don't want to bother people with flags.
Another example of the The left's war on civilization, and it's literally what it is.
They don't like civilization.
This is from the Wall Street Journal.
To increase equity, school districts eliminate honors classes.
Huh.
And where does it have its example?
Right near here.
Culver City, California.
A section of L.A., essentially.
Up to the lectern.
Tuesday night.
At a school board meeting in this middle class Los Angeles area city to push back against a racial equity initiative.
The high school, they argued, should reinstate honors English classes that were eliminated because they didn't roll enough black and Latino students.
Do you understand?
The wrongness of that approach?
Do you understand the contempt that the left has for study?
They would never do this to sports.
Hockey doesn't have enough black and Latino players.
The NBA doesn't have enough non-black players.
But they don't meddle with sports.
The left has never asked that there be equity.
On the field.
They want equity among owners, general managers, front office, etc.
But they don't call for it on the field.
The only thing they ever called for was more black quarterbacks, which they got in the Super Bowl.
So that's going to pretty much end that.
Or coaches, but never players.
That's because there are two reasons the left does not apply its equity standards to sports.
One, everyone, even leftists, will know that it ends sports as we know it.
So they don't want to be on record as having ended all interest in baseball, football, basketball, hockey, etc.
Well, that's really it.
They would destroy the sport.
And they know it.
Well, the other reason, though it's more the other upshot, or the upshot, is that they actually have more respect for football and basketball than they do for schools.
Which is obvious.
Damage done to children by left wing.
Teachers unions is immeasurable.
So we will play around with standards in schools, but we won't play around with standards in sports.
The district earlier this school year, I continue with the Wall Street Journal article, replaced the honors classes at Culver City High School with uniform courses.
There we go.
No honors classes, because there aren't enough black and Latino students in them.
This is true for everything in life, where there are not enough black or Latino, whatever it might be.
What the left says is, you don't raise blacks and Latinos.
Up to the standard, you lower the standard or just simply eliminate it.
Parents disagreed.
We really feel equity means offering opportunities to students of diverse backgrounds.
Opportunities.
Not taking away opportunities for advanced education and study.
Joanna Shaman, a Culver City parent, who helped sparehead the efforts set in the run-up to the meeting.
The parental pushback in Culver City mirrors resistance that has taken place in Wisconsin, Rhode Island, and elsewhere in California over the last year in response to schools stripping away the honors designation on some high school classes.
School districts doing away with honors classes argue students who don't take those classes from a young age start to see themselves in a different tier and come to think they aren't capable of enrolling in advanced placement classes that help with college admissions.
So let's analyze that.
The students who don't make the advanced placement classes will start seeing that they aren't capable of doing so.
Well, why isn't that applicable to sports?
The groups that don't qualify for the team will have a bad self-image.
So let's abolish standards and make sure that there is equity On the ball field, but they don't do that.
They are doing that at United Airlines, by the way.
They have, and United Airlines is now choosing many of its pilots based on their sex and their race, rather than their abilities.
They've acknowledged this.
They are reserving half the spaces at the United Airlines flight school for women and racial minorities.
Now, it doesn't necessarily mean that they are inferior as pilots.
It only means that they don't choose people based on how good a pilot they are.
That's United Airlines.
There is no doubt, as I sit here, that there will be very serious consequences to this policy of United Airlines.
So, they do it with everything but sports.
At United Airlines, they are very pro-keeping standards, even if there's a non-equity result in sports, just not in the cockpit.
Or flight deck, they don't like cockpit.
Black and Latino students are underrepresented in AP enrollment in the majority of states, according to the Education Trust, a nonprofit that studies equity in education.
Now, I want to give you some percentages here.
Listen to this.
Culver City English teachers presented data at a board meeting last year showing Latino students made up 13% of those in 12th grade advanced placement English.
Compared with 37% of the student body.
Get it?
They're only 13% of the AP class, even though they are 37% of the student body.
So I'm talking to you about this article in the Wall Street Journal about a school in Culver City, California.
It's part of L.A. And they have dropped honors classes, advanced placement classes, because they want equity.
So here are the data.
Latino students made up 13% of those in 12th grade advanced placement English, compared with 37% of the student body.
So the left says...
37% of the student body is Latino, therefore 37% of the advanced placement English class should be Latino.
Or, as the LA Times would put it, Latinx, as in Latin Kleenex.
There is no limit to the stupidity of the Los Angeles Times.
There is no limit.
If you're not a fool, I don't think you're allowed to work at the LA Times.
I'm sorry to say that.
I used to write for them regularly.
You know, actually, to give you an idea of how the Los Angeles Times has changed, somehow or other, I came across an article about me from about 35 or 30 years ago, and it was full of praise of me as a talk show host.
Isn't that amazing?
What the left has done to destroy newspapers in the last 30 years, and schools, and medicine, and art, and music.
I'm a perfect example.
They used to publish me regularly.
They would have column right, column left.
Bob Berger, he was the wonderful opinion page editor.
He wouldn't have a chance to have had a job there today.
The left has kidnapped society.
Anyway, so this is...
I got there because of Latinx.
That's the way they...
They don't say Latino at the LA Times.
13% of those in the 12th grade advanced placement class are Latino versus 37% of the student body.
So therefore, what do you do?
You don't raise the level of the other Latino kids.
You drop advanced placement classes.
Here's another one.
Asian students are 34% of the advanced class compared with 10% of students.
Uh-oh, Asians.
It's amazing that Asians vote Democrat.
I would say it is more perplexing even than Jews voting Democrat.
at.
Thank you.
Because there's nothing in common between leftism and Judaism.
But most Jews are not religious, so it's an irrelevant point, I guess.
But it's really perplexing that Asians vote Democrat.
They vote for the people who have contempt for them.
It's so important to be liked.
For people, and Asians come from a shame culture in Asia, so they really don't want to stick out.
And if the elite is left, I'm left.
So what if they hurt Asians?
So here's a perfect example.
They're 34 of the advanced placement class, but they're only 10% of the students.
So they're triple represented in honors classes.
And the left, therefore, wants to drop honors classes because there were too many Asians in them.
Simple as that.
Now, interesting, blacks are virtually exactly accurate.
Black students at this school represented 14% of advanced placement English, honors English, versus 15% of the student body.
So it's the same thing.
So the only group...
Well, so Asians are overrepresented and Latinos are underrepresented.
The board saw anonymous quotes from students not enrolled in honors classes saying they felt less motivated or successful.
One described students feeling, quote, unable to break out of the molds that they established when they were 11. Huh.
So...
That's the reason that the left-wing brain thinks this way.
It hurts the feelings of minority kids, I guess specifically Latino, because black kids are represented equitably, that they didn't make the advanced placement class.
And since feelings are the Dominant concern of the left.
You feel you're a boy, you're a boy.
You feel you're a girl, you're a girl.
That's why they drop standards.
Well, it'll be very interesting to see what happens at Culver High School.
Yeah, it's all about that they lose their drive to excel.
Because other kids are in the advanced placement class.
So if you don't make the major leagues, or you don't make the school football team, you stop being concerned with playing football.
Or you stop trying to make the team.
I think that would be a more obvious parallel.
I didn't make the team.
I'm no longer going to try out for the team.
I guess that's their thinking here.
There are some people who slow down the pace because they don't really do anything and aren't looking to try harder.
Emma Fregola, the ninth grader, said she was surprised and a little confused.
She's right by the decision to remove honors.
What does it say to the kids who do well?
We will give you no better courses no matter how you excel at school.
Back in a moment.
Very nice.
What is this music from?
Just added it.
What is it?
Piano version of a Beatles tune.
Which Beatles tune?
Is that a guess or a certitude?
Okay, we'll let you know.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager with you.
Tomorrow, I rarely do this, say what I'll talk about the next day, and we're not even done with this show, but it's important that you know this.
You were lied to.
Your mother should know.
That's the song.
You were lied to about masks and you were lied to about lockdowns.
And you need to know that.
The data is now out.
The left lie, follow the science.
The left does not follow the science.
If they followed the science and they really believed in global warming, they would be building nuclear reactors.
That would follow the science.
We would have nuclear power.
Remember, truth is not a left-wing value, and they've corrupted medicine as much as they have the universities and high schools.
I'm thinking of writing a public letter to the hospital where I've had four surgeries.
I have adored this hospital.
They have done such good work for me in my life.
I mean, these were all spine-related surgeries, and they were 100% successful.
I am pain-free and work out three days a week, and I'm fine.
I'm very grateful to this hospital.
It's in the Los Angeles area.
But they look like fools because they have a mask mandate in their hospital.
They don't give a damn about patients never seeing a nurse, never seeing a doctor's face.
It doesn't mean anything to them.
They go along with the lie that masks matter on viral issues.
Surgeons wear masks not because of viruses, which are too tiny, and get through masks anyway.
They wear masks because of fluids, in case they sneeze, cough, or something splatters up from the patient that they're...
Performing surgery on.
It's difficult for me to overstate the contempt I have for the medical profession at this time, going along as it does with cutting off girls' breasts at 18 or even younger, and lying to people about masks, endorsing masking two-year-olds, endorsing giving the vaccinations to young people.
Preview of tomorrow, the great, great Surgeon General, whom I'm going to have on tomorrow, Surgeon General of Florida.
He's actually attended a Shabbat dinner of mine, or we attended Shabbat dinner together.
He's not Jewish.
Joseph Ladapo, the Florida Surgeon General, sent a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Citing that there has been a 4,400% increase in reports of life-threatening conditions in Florida since the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Oh, man, I have data for you on that.
To make a long story short, the odds are your doctor was completely wrong, and I was completely right, and I'm not a doctor.
That should really be a lesson, a real important lesson, on who you should trust next time.
I was right about lockdowns.
I was right about masks.
I was right about the vaccine, especially for young people.
And we all know this.
Rochelle Walensky, I will talk about her tomorrow.
It's really a bad sign if a talk show host and theologian That's my other life.
Tells you the truth about medicine and your doctor doesn't.
It's a very, very serious problem.
Got to admit that.
Okay, let's see here.
Hmm.
I'm just looking at the lines here.
Then I will come to your calls.
Ah, just noted.
I don't want to interrupt your call.
I'll take them when we come back.
There's Prager here.
What a Prager 776. By the way, I guess there might still be tickets.
But tonight, I'm doing my...
Ask a Jew, Ask a Gentile program with Eric Metaxas.
One of us is the Jew and one of us is the Gentile.
I'm not telling you who.
And I've done it with many terrific Christians.
These are really wonderful evenings.
Honest, fun, intellectually stimulating.
This will certainly be such a case.
I assume that there is at DennisPrager.com a banner to get tickets there.
It'll be at a church in Pasadena, California.
Eric and I always have a lot of fun.
We really share values.
We're a perfect example of the concept of Judeo-Christian values.
Oh, Kenoki!
Let's see what you have to say, my friends.
And Mark in Denver, hello.
Oh, hey, Dennis.
Hi.
The left has one thing in common with all of the things that they care about have one thing in common, and that's power for itself.
Whether it's climate change, Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ, or honors.
Wait, how does the equity and honors classes translate into power for the left?
It doesn't.
Wait, you just said it does.
It does the way they want to do it.
Let me explain.
So what I'm saying is, behind every left-wing cause...
Is there a search for power?
That's what the left wing wants.
And if we do what the left wing wants, they get power.
The left gets power.
That's why they don't want to fool around with the equity on the basketball court or the football field.
Because if we did that, the left wouldn't gain anything.
All right, let me respond.
There is no question that the left is...
Power-driven and the right isn't.
It puts the right at a massive disadvantage, but it's inevitable.
The side that wants smaller government wants less power by definition.
There's no symmetry here.
They want bigger government, and that means more left-wing control.
However, I actually think that there is an even greater animating force on the left, and that is destruction.
And if they could destroy sports, they would.
And they're trying.
The playing of a second national anthem at football games is an example.
We will make sure that the sports fans do not have one national anthem.
But the aim to destroy is the single greatest aim in leftism.
They've done it to the arts, music, and high schools and colleges, Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism.
There is nothing the left touches it doesn't ultimately destroy.
That, believe it or not, is what animates them.
There is a sociopathy, if there's such a word, a sociopathological streak.
In all of leftism, not liberalism.
Liberalism is just weakness.
It was once strong, it is now weak.
It votes for those who hate it, the left.
So I agree that they want power more than anything, but there is something they want more than power, and that is to destroy Judeo-Christian civilization, American civilization, Western civilization.
Even though it will come crashing down on them, they don't care.
They don't think that way.
It's very hard for people to wrap their minds around that, but there is no other explanation.
There's no other explanation.
For what I read to you last week about the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Destroying everything that is noble about art.
They have an exhibit of a sculpture from the 19th century of a black woman partially in chains because the sculptor was...
Sculpting an anti-slavery sculpture.
And at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they are featuring it as an example of pro-slavery white supremacy.
Truth is not a left-wing value.
Laguna Beach, California.
Jerry, hello.
Hey, Dennis, how are you?
Well, thank you.
Well, I just want to point out that the left, which runs all of Hollywood, has made a couple of movies that fly in the face of what you're talking about.
One's called Stand and Deliver with James Olmos, where he is a calculus teacher in the inner city in Los Angeles and insists that the kids learn, and by and large, they all do.
And they all start passing the AAP calculus test because he insists that they work hard.
What year was it made?
1988. Exactly.
That's right.
I'm very happy you called.
I'm happy to know about the movie.
1988 is, let's see, 23 and 12 is 35 years ago.
You could make a movie about lifting blacks instead of dropping standards 35 years ago.
Today it would only be about dropping standards, about equity.
Anyway, most of the stuff coming out of Hollywood is just pablum.
It's a rerun of some comic strip or some horror movie or anything that doesn't deal with life's great issues.
I'm Dennis Prager, and we return...
Dennis Prager here.
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