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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:27:25
Elon Takes Twitter
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Dennis Prager here.
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Well, hello all.
I'm Dennis Prager and it is Friday.
Great to be with you.
As I have mentioned on many occasions, and it bears repetition.
If the Democrats and the left had not destroyed Election Day, we would have different results.
But is it half of Pennsylvania's Democrats or half of Pennsylvania's voters have voted already?
Prior to the sad, tragic, and farcical appearance of the candidate Fetterman?
That's the way it's done.
It's done through legal means, the shattering of society.
Legal and moral are not synonymous.
Worth noting.
Woman, 18, who detransitioned back from a boy slams president for pushing gender-affirming care by giving a White House interview to controversial trans TikTok star.
Had somebody predicted just five years ago that a president of the United States would do exactly what was just described, they would say you're out of your mind.
You're making up nonsense.
It's the ultimate in misinformation and disinformation.
Here's a question.
Has your local major paper, wherever you are, ever reported on the number or the cases or the tragedy of those who regret their quote-unquote transitioning?
I read to you a figure yesterday which blew my mind.
300,000 young people are transgender, twice as many as in 2017. That was 2020. So we might have doubled it again.
Transgender, wow.
What if a teacher said, this really is an interesting thought.
What if a teacher said in a public school classroom, or even most private schools, there are only two sexes, or two genders, if that's the preferred term, female and male.
That's it.
You're either a male or a female.
You cannot become the other.
You can act like the other.
You can appear like the other.
You cannot become the other.
It is fixed.
We're not talking about people with dual genitalia or ambiguous genitalia.
That is a separate issue entirely.
And it is so rare as to invalidate any generalization about life by taking the rarest of exceptions.
You should stop at a red light.
But if the passenger next to you or the passenger in your car has a heart attack and there are no cars coming at the light, you should go through the red light to get to a hospital.
That does not invalidate the fact that red light means stop.
End of issue.
End of issue.
That is what we are witnessing today.
In our troubled country.
Another observation, if I may.
In European country after European country, they are basically shutting down the gender-affirming care in the medical community.
The United States is the outlier.
So I want to tell you something.
It could be, and you know I'm very careful about exaggerating, It could be the saddest thing I've ever said in my 40 years of broadcasting.
The United States is no longer the beacon of liberty that it has been for all of its history.
It is no longer the exporter of noble principles.
Do you know that I wrote a book?
I consider it aside from my Bible commentary, the most important book I've written, Still the Best Hope, Why the World Needs American...
American values.
And I chose it very carefully.
American values.
You know who needs American values today?
Guess what country most needs American values today?
America.
There's a prayer set in my synagogue each week for the United States of America.
Someone is called upon.
It is done in English.
Most of the prayers are in Hebrew.
And the person who gave the prayer most recently changed the wording.
It begins, correct me if I'm wrong, Bless the United States of America, the beacon of liberty.
Is that how it begins?
In a troubled world.
Beacon of liberty in a troubled world.
In a darkened world.
In a darkened world.
And the reader of the prayer in our synagogue Omitted that sentence.
It is impossible for me to tell you how sad that is.
We take our prayers very seriously.
The man who omitted that sentence takes it particularly seriously.
that's why we call on him to recite that prayer.
I don't know what to add, my friends.
Yes.
Ronald Reagan didn't know how right he was.
Freedom is only one generation from being taken away.
However, there is good news.
And by the way, I don't rely on good news to fight.
I don't rely on bad news to fight.
I fight.
That's what you should do.
But if you want good news, Elon Musk has taken over Twitter and fired the damn human beings.
Who ran that censor-laden, anti-American, anti-human, anti-freedom, anti-all-that-is-good site.
I am so happy they are fired that I have to control my happiness.
I have to control my excitement.
These people ruined this country.
These people who ran Twitter.
They're thugs, every single one of them.
They deserve to be in a homeless encampment.
But they won't be.
They're very wealthy.
Elon Musk is proof only outliers do good.
Man is an eccentric.
You know what?
I'm a big fan of eccentrics.
Because eccentrics don't give a damn what people think.
They do what is right.
Some eccentrics do what is wrong.
But most interestingly, the people who ran Twitter were not eccentric.
They were sheep.
Cowardly, awful, America-hating, freedom-hating sheep.
It is so good that they were fired that it...
It gives one hope for this country.
We don't agree with you.
You can't tweet.
Isn't that amazing?
Former President of the United States cannot tweet.
He thinks that the last election was stolen.
Why is he not allowed to say that?
Why is he not allowed?
Hillary Clinton said the next election, the next election will be stolen.
She just said that two days ago.
Is she allowed to tweet?
You can't tweet that you think an election was stolen?
Even if you're out of your mind?
You can't tweet it?
And almost every Democrat agrees with the thugs at Twitter.
And that's what is so depressing.
45% of young Americans say they believe in hate speech.
Excuse me, in free speech.
But not for hate speech.
45% of Americans probably agreed.
Young Americans probably agreed with the thugs who ran Twitter.
With the Soviet-type totalitarians who ran Twitter.
that you suppress speech you don't agree with.
Yeah.
Yes.
This could be a big deal.
Makes me want to tweet.
Why did he walk into the headquarters with a sink?
What was his thing?
I'm going to sink these people.
Was that it?
It was a riot.
That's right.
The outlier.
I read a book many, many years ago about rescuers of Jews in the Holocaust.
And it gave four characteristics that it found, researchers found, in the people who risked their lives to save a Jew.
And the only one I remember, the other three, were stuff that I had sort of figured out.
But this one I didn't.
Eccentrics.
People who had been considered eccentric prior to the war were more likely to risk their lives to save a Jew.
Well, it made a permanent impression on me.
We return.
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Hey everybody, I'm Dennis Prager.
So talking about the thugs, a Twitter who were fired.
These are bad people.
It's very rare for me.
I usually say actions are bad.
These are bad people.
It is so rare in life to see justice done on this planet that these people were fired.
It's truly a moment to celebrate.
The bad rarely get punished in this life.
To use one of the major sites in the world, To suppress free speech because you don't agree with it?
They're bloody communists.
They're indistinguishable from communists.
Tell me how they're different from the Soviets.
Tell me.
Because they don't run a gulag?
I'll grant that.
They don't run a gulag.
That is quite a compliment.
That's true.
I acknowledge that.
So talking about it...
How these well-educated thugs run every institution.
Petition emerges to cancel Amy Coney Barrett's book deal.
This is from Daily Mail.
More than 470 members of the writing, publishing, and literary community have signed a petition opposing Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett's upcoming book.
A Supreme Court Justice should not be published.
Get it?
The better educated you are, the more likely you are to suppress freedom, to loathe everything good that this country stands for, to be so arrogant as to think that what you believe in is the only thing that can be stated.
This thing gets worse.
I want you to hear the convoluted way in which they think that they're for free speech, but they want Amy Coney Barrett's book.
Suppressed.
The damning petition was signed by various members of the, quote, literary community.
I love it.
Community, whenever I see that word.
I have a feeling that something totalitarian is taking place.
Including editors, authors, and publishers for Random Penguin House, whose imprint, Sentinel, signed Barrett to a $2 million book deal in 2021. Petitioners argue that Barrett's position in the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v.
Wade violates parent company Bertelsmann's code of conduct.
This is a first, right?
Is that correct?
Have you ever heard of that?
A Supreme Court justice's book should not be published because they don't agree with how she voted?
Woo, boy!
That code follows and adheres to the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declares access to abortion as a human right.
Well, now you know why people who love freedom are very afraid of these world bodies.
They sound so good, and they control everything.
If possible.
That's it.
That's a good example, isn't it?
This is a fatwa.
This is the left's version of a fatwa.
You have no idea how much the Islamists in Iran and the left have in common.
One is secular and one is religious.
And that's the only difference.
Many of us...
So listen to their self-perception.
Many of us work daily with books we find disagreeable to our personal politics.
Rather, this is a case where a corporation has privately funded the destruction of human rights with obscene profits.
Okay?
That's it.
So, oh, we're not against publishing books we differ with, unless it's about abortion.
That's it.
Yet, according to the petition, this premise contradicts the decision Barrett made when overturning Roe v. Wade.
Wade.
It seems this is exactly what Coney Barrett has done, inflicting her own religious and moral agenda upon all Americans, while appropriating the rhetoric of even-handedness, and Penguin Random House has agreed to pay her a sum of $2 million to do it.
This is another leftist gigantic lie in its war against the Judeo-Christian religions.
So, she is a Catholic, and she believes that abortion Unless it's to save the life of the mother is taking an innocent life.
What a stupid idea!
You've got to be Catholic to believe that, right?
That's ridiculous.
You're not taking an innocent human life with an abortion.
Of course not.
It's a pimple.
That's the position of every leftist.
It's a pimple.
Get it?
It's not even a dog.
Dogs have more rights than the unborn.
You have to be Catholic or Christian in order to believe that you're taking an innocent life for no valid moral reason?
Is that right?
You have to be a Christian?
If that's the case, what a credit to Christianity.
And I'm a Jew saying this.
Why can't an atheist say this?
What the hell does this have to do with religion?
The child can live outside the body of the woman, at least in the third trimester.
What are you killing?
Are you killing anything, O ye of the left?
O ye at Random House?
Are you killing anything?
Answer the question.
Forget religion.
You crap on religion, but you don't crap on science.
What is it?
Is that a fair question?
What the hell is it?
To every leftist, it is a pimple.
It has no more rights than a pimple.
And telling a woman that she can't exterminate that life is equivalent to saying to her, you cannot remove a pimple.
And that is what we are supposed to believe.
It is in the realm of men menstruate.
That's right.
It is as absurd as men menstruate.
But if you went to Harvard or Yale or Princeton, you believe it.
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Hello there.
Part of the wall of lies of the left, by the way, I swear before the God I believe in that what I'm about to tell you I believe.
Now I know.
If truth dominated, there would be no left.
There would be liberals, there would be conservatives, there would be no left.
It has always been built on lies.
It continues to be.
The whole attack on Donald Trump is this liar, thousands of lies the Washington Post documented.
It doesn't compare to left-wing lies.
I said this on Bill Maher's show three years ago.
You can see it.
It's gone viral because of my statement that men menstruate is something the left says, and he laughed at me because he had never heard of it.
Biden falsely says the price of gas was more than $5 when he took office.
By the way, so this is in the Daily Mail.
Is this reported that he told the blatant lie, our lying president, in any left-wing newspaper, New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Seattle Post-Intelligence, or Los Angeles Times?
No?
No.
Because they lie by omission, even more than by commission.
Do you know what the price of gas was when the lying president took office?
$2.39.
He has been lying all his life.
I don't believe he has a functioning moral conscience, to be honest.
Joe Biden was in office all his life, to be in office.
I don't know if he could have done anything else successfully.
except get elected senator from Delaware.
Do you know that what bothers me more than the fact that Biden lies almost every day is that the press doesn't report it?
Thank you.
The American media are as likely to report this lie As Pravda would have reported, a lie spoken by Brezhnev, who was in office...
Oh, God, when I think about it, that I have to explain who Brezhnev was.
It's very sad.
What percentage of Harvard seniors could identify Leonid Brezhnev?
What do you think?
It'd be very low.
Very low.
That's pretty important.
Okay, what about Nikita Khrushchev?
Any post-Soviet, any post-Stalin leader?
In other words, if I were to ask a Harvard senior, name one Soviet leader other than Lenin and Stalin, and you don't think I have a right to be upset that they couldn't name one?
No, no, maybe I'm wrong.
I'm totally okay with that.
You think it's too heavy a load.
Okay, how about this?
Should a Harvard senior be able to identify Pol Pot?
I mean, that's...
If you can't name all the genocidal leaders, and they're like five of the 20th century, that's a lacuna.
I think it's a lacuna.
Lacuna means hole, for those of you who graduated college.
Anyway, that's how they function, the media.
It's an astonishing thing.
He went to Syracuse and he just said, what are his words?
Yeah, the most common price of gas in America is $3.39, down from over $5 when I took office.
Did you know that, folks?
If this is not gaslighting, about gas, then gaslighting doesn't exist.
You have the clip.
So he'll say it better than I did.
Take it away.
The most common price of gas in America is $3.39, down from over $5 when I took office.
Over $5.
Yeah, I read that.
So the question is, did anybody in the audience, they're all supporters, think, hmm, he just told a bald-faced lie?
They might have, and you know what they think?
It doesn't matter.
That's the key.
Remember my phrase, truth is not a left-wing value.
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On behalf of Sean McConnell, I welcome you to The Dennis Prager Show.
He asked me to say that, and if you saw the confused look on his face, you would know that I live for these moments.
The New York Times published an opinion piece on behalf of capital punishment for murder.
That, I salute the New York Times for doing.
I have a few comments about this piece.
It's a great piece, by the way.
It is a cosmic injustice that there are no murderers whose lives are taken.
It drives me crazy, actually.
And it drives other people crazy that we take the life of murderers.
You could take a child, you could rape her, torture her, cut her up, burn her alive.
And the opponents of capital punishment think that that guy deserves to live.
Some even think he has the right to get married while in prison.
I've always said there is no greater gulf than the capital punishment issue.
I don't understand the heart or mind of people who think every murderer should be allowed to live, and they don't understand my heart and mine.
Hey, Sean, you have that thing from years ago when I was on Larry King on CNN, when CNN used to have me, where the guy yells at me that I love bloodshed.
Who was it?
It was some actor.
You remember the guy's name?
Mike Farris?
Does anybody know the name?
Farrell.
You should go to the punishment room, Sean.
No, no.
No, no, no, no.
Alan said you shouldn't.
Okay.
All right.
No, you should, but it takes too much time.
I was just talking to my producer, co-founder of PragerU.
Really the founder, but he's called co-founder for tactical reasons.
We're going to do a preview video with a parent of a murdered kid.
And maybe one from the 17 students killed in Parkland, remember?
The Florida School 2018. 17 kids murdered by this guy.
Oh, you got that?
The Mike Farrell thing?
Okay, let's see.
I just mentioned that the note is made that he has done a lot of good, and I don't deny that.
He may well have.
Norman Mailer, the famous novelist, felt that there was a convicted murderer in prison a number of years ago who had done a lot of good.
He had written a book.
He was a great author.
Great writer.
Great writer.
And prevailed to get him out on the grounds that we need great artists in society.
And a few weeks later, he murdered an aspiring actor.
A newlywed man, waiter, at the waiter's father's restaurant.
So I just need people to understand.
What difference does that make when you're talking about life without parole versus the death penalty?
Nobody's asking me to get out.
That's correct.
They're saying that you don't kill him.
You're right.
So when you resurrect, you can always come up with some boogeyman kind of parade of horrible story as to why it was.
As you come up with boogeymen about innocents who were killed.
You've got more boogeymen than I do.
Boogeymen are 140 strong.
No, no, no.
That's 140 and counting of people who have been on death row, who have been...
We've gone through the system for more than 10 years and then are exonerated.
That's right.
And not one was executed.
Well, we have one from 1993 that's right up there that we've got a, it appears now, is somebody who was executed 10 years ago.
Every time I debate this, it's always it appears.
They never have a name.
It always appears.
We've been executing people in this country who was exonerated.
But honestly, would you say to say, innocent people have been executed by logic.
By logic, the odds are someone was innocent.
Yeah, but don't bother him with that.
No, no.
No, I do care, but you don't care about the convicted murderers who murder in prison.
If it's a convicted murderer whose life without, what are you talking about?
Oh, for God's sake, Mike, what exactly is, oh, for God's sake?
Do murderers murder again?
If, oh, for God's sake, is you sit there and lick your lips about the death of a human being, you disgust me.
Okay, all right, fine.
You disgust me.
So it's mutual.
Thank you.
Anyway, this was on.
CNN, oh my god, it was 15 years ago or so, more, when Larry King had a show on May He Rest in Peace.
See, Larry King, by the way, was a liberal, not a leftist.
That was an example.
I wonder what he would have thought about men menstruate.
So, the interesting thing about the professor writing this piece in the New York Times, there are two interesting things.
Aside from the fact that the New York Times published it.
One is, he's a professor emeritus at New York Law School.
Almost always you get truth, that is, anything the left differs with, from professors who are retired.
Emeritus means essentially retired.
Because a professor who's not retired is afraid to say anything the left differs with at almost any college.
Almost every professor who sheds any doubt on the panic over global warming is a professor emeritus of climatology or some other science.
That's one fascinating aspect.
Another is, for reasons I cannot understand, the New York Times did not allow comments on this article.
Virtually every opinion piece in the New York Times has a comments section.
So my theory, and it's completely just theory, is that they were afraid that there would be a lot of comments of people who agree.
I can't think of another reason they did that.
But we are going to do that.
But we're going to make a video of a parent of a child who wants the murderer dead like we do, who care about this issue.
It's the happy, happy, happy, happy hour.
Yes, it is.
It's the happy hour.
On the Dennis Prager Show.
It is it.
Oh, that's bad.
Hey, everybody!
Happiness is a moral obligation.
Yes, the happy make the world better, the unhappy make it worse.
Even if you don't feel it acted, I'll explain that.
Take it away.
Yes, it is.
Since 1999, every single Friday has been devoted to happiness.
Hard to imagine a happiness hour on a left-wing show.
I may be wrong.
I would like them to have one.
But it's very hard for the ungrateful to be happy.
And ingratitude characterizes most college graduates.
Because you get a BA in ingratitude, and you can't be happy if you're not grateful.
Gratitude is the mother of goodness and happiness.
That's how important gratitude is.
That's right.
That is true for everyone.
Parents who have their kids talk about what they're grateful for before they eat are raising a better child.
Or to be more precise, they're raising a better adult.
Since most of your life, at least chronologically, you're an adult.
Well, today I decided to do a classic.
I haven't done this in a long time.
And I am doing a series of major...
Talks for the Daily Wire.
What do they call it?
The Master Series?
Is that what it's called?
Master Course.
Master Course.
Are they starting with me?
Am I the first person?
That's a real honor.
And I just recorded Happiness is a Moral Obligation.
So I'm going to review that with you.
Do you know that when I meet a person who has a happy disposition, and by the way, it doesn't matter what age, if they're 10 or they're 90, I immediately have a good impression about the person.
Just as if I meet a kind person, Impression.
Happiness is a virtue, not just an emotion.
Wow.
When did you hear that at school?
Answer?
Never.
Happiness is a virtue.
The pursuit of happiness is equivalent morally to the pursuit of goodness.
Kindness and integrity.
Happiness, again, is a virtue.
We don't teach virtues anymore.
I don't think that one-third of high school kids could even define the word virtue.
They have never heard it.
They know about preferred pronouns, but they don't know about virtues.
Poor kids a hundred years ago knew all about virtues and never heard preferred pronouns.
Poor them.
What a loss to their lives.
It is a virtue, and one way of proving this, of proving that it is a moral obligation to be happy, or at least to act as happy as possible, Is that every single person, including the unhappy, prefer to be in the presence of a happy person.
That is why the moody never marry another moody.
Unmoodies marry unmoodies.
Unmoodies marry moodies.
Moodies marry unmoodies.
But moodies never marry moodies.
And my punchline on that in many of my speeches is, the moody may be miserable, but they're not stupid.
They never marry one of their own.
It's a line I came up with many years ago, and it's a good one.
And it's a good one because it's true.
Moody's don't marry moody's.
I want to do a male-female hour on why non-moodies marry moodies.
I have a lot of theories on that.
I know why the moodies marry the non-moody.
They can't stand themselves.
And they don't want to marry somebody like them.
So the question is, why does the non-moody marry the moody?
And we will take that into consideration on a male-female hour.
Here's another thing that you will find of interest.
A lot of unhappy people think when they meet a happy person, or a person with a happy disposition to be more precise, that they are meeting somebody who has not suffered as much as they have.
This is a very common belief among the unhappy.
The happy Don't have it as bad as I do.
And the response to that is wrong.
That's not true.
There is almost no correlation between disposition and suffering.
There are people who have had very, very difficult, even Job-like lives and who have a happy disposition.
There are people who have suffered very little and walk around miserable.
I would say that that characterizes a fair number of college students.
Most of them have had it pretty, pretty easy.
They haven't lived enough to have real tragedy yet, in most cases.
In most cases.
But there's a lot of anger and unhappiness on campus.
You know why?
Well, there are many reasons.
I told you the ingratitude one.
I remember at one university, I spoke.
So I would ask them to line up at the microphones after my speech, especially those who differ with me to go first.
A young woman stood at the microphone and said, Are you telling me women are not persecuted in this country?
And I had to travel from the Twilight Zone into reality with great speed.
And I said, that is correct.
In the history of womankind, no one has had it better than you, an American female, circa 2020, 2018, whenever the speech was.
That's right.
When you make up that you are a suffering individual, you won't be happy.
Because for reasons that I don't know, you have wanted to believe that you are persecuted.
So, that's another proof that it is an achievement, happiness.
Because there are people who have really suffered and do not walk around with a bitter, angry, unhappy disposition.
Number three, in my making the case that it is a moral obligation to at least act happy.
You owe it to your children.
You owe it to your parents.
You owe it to your siblings.
You owe it to your friends.
You owe it to your co-workers.
And you especially owe it to your spouse.
Hence, that famous phrase, Happy wife, happy life.
Now, why did they come up with it?
How come they didn't say, beautiful wife, beautiful life?
Good question, eh?
You don't hear that one.
Happy wife, happy life.
By the way, happy husband, happy life.
But husband doesn't rhyme.
With life.
No, we landed...
Oh, that's...
No, I actually...
That's interesting what you just said, and I will repeat it for all of you since I'm the only one in the universe who heard it.
So I came up with one, since nothing rhymes with husband, I came up with one.
Rational spouse, happy house.
That was my response to happy wife, happy life.
So you have happy spouse, happy house.
That's what he said into my earphones.
You think a listener came up with it and not you?
That's very humble of you to have acknowledged that.
We return.
All right, everybody.
Dennis Prager here.
Ah, very nice, very nice.
1-8-Prager-776-877-243-776 Happiness Hour, second hour Friday.
I review a basic principle of my life, which I know has changed many, many lives.
I wish I knew the number, but it's not available to me.
But it's in the many thousands.
Maybe many tens of thousands.
Maybe hundreds of thousands.
I hope so.
People don't think of happiness as a moral obligation.
They think of it as an emotion.
You're either happy or not happy.
The idea that you owe it to others to act happy, or even be happy if you can, is unheard of.
But it's a biggie.
And as I've always said, Noted, all you need to do for proof is ask someone who grew up in a home with an unhappy parent, or for that matter, even an unhappy sibling.
Ask parents what it's like to have a chronically unhappy child.
And of course, ask people married to a chronically unhappy person.
It doesn't even work in a work setting.
If the person in the desk At the desk next to you is chronically unhappy.
It's a shadow cast over thee.
Every day you go into work.
I have always felt this concept of happiness as a moral obligation.
And I think it is fair to say that if you were to ask the people who work with me at my home radio station, Is the aura surrounding my radio show a happy one?
I think they would say yes.
There are people from other departments who come into the studio at some time just to have a laugh.
Generally they're laughing at Sean, but sometimes it's just having a laugh.
I remind you folks that when men insult other men, it is because they really like them.
That is, by the way, one of the prime examples of the difference, a difference between men and women.
If a woman insults a woman, that's it.
It's over, baby.
When a man insults a man, he laughs.
By the way, they do not come in to laugh at Sean.
It was a joke.
But, as all humor as I have learned is surprise and victim.
That was a perfect example.
You didn't expect it.
And there was a victim.
Sean.
Yes, you owe it to people.
So, If you're religious, you owe it to God.
As I have often noted, the most effective argument on behalf of secularism and even atheism is an unhappy religious person.
Because if religion is supposed to be doing its job, you should be happier.
So either you're doing your religion wrong, or your religion makes unhappy people.
Which is possible.
Which is very possible.
There are so many arguments for the moral obligation of happiness and how you should teach your children this when you raise them.
I don't want to see a moody countenance at the dinner table, Tommy.
I know a guy who just had a son named him Tom, Thomas.
It still exists.
What's the equivalent of a female to Tommy?
I don't know.
But if you know one.
So what do you think, my friends?
Does this resonate with you, that happiness is a moral obligation?
Did you teach your children that?
Do you deny it?
When I tell people to act happy, especially young people, It drives them crazy because I'm telling them that their feelings are second in importance to their behavior.
But we live in the age of feelings, so they are taught that how they feel is paramount.
It's a secular sacrament.
That's a good one.
A secular sacrament.
I'm thinking of my friend Mike, who is probably texting me.
Some Latin phrase right now.
Yep, raise your kids like that.
Challenge them.
Your feelings can't dominate the way you behave, my dear daughter, my dear son, since I believe in sons and daughters and the binary nature of human sexuality.
That is what I say.
All right, Dallas, Texas, and Don.
Hello, Don.
Are we on with my callers?
Hello?
All right, thank you, Don.
Can you hear me?
Well.
Okay, so first I just want to say, continuing to read through Genesis, and I want to thank you for that.
I think one of the greatest things I've learned from that is kind of the highest level of spirituality is to be respectful of other people.
But I told your caller when we were talking about the morality of happiness, I'm beginning to understand that, and I thank you.
At my age, that's a great gift.
But I still struggle with the fact that, you know, when I treat people morally well, In this world and it doesn't come back to me, then I get resentful.
That's just an easy way to put it.
So that was my comment.
I look forward to Deuteronomy.
I just want to throw that in there.
So that's my next year book.
It means the world to me.
I'm putting my life into these five volumes.
Yes, and thank you.
Thank you.
So, let me understand.
Who do you have in mind when you say, for example, that it's not reciprocated?
Family, wife, parents, you know, just people.
People in general.
Well, no, people in general.
Yeah, you're right, but it...
You know, I understand what you're saying.
That's kind of a surface level for me, but when it gets deeper, when it's...
The ones that I'm closest to most of the day.
Well, no.
Look, I can only say I feel for you.
If the people you're closest to are not treating you kindly, it's a real issue.
It doesn't negate anything I've said about happiness, but I wish they would listen to this happiness hour.
I'm sorry to hear that.
We'll be back It's hard to measure the joy this brings Sean McConnell,
ladies and gentlemen.
It's only equal to the joy it does not bring me.
However, I want you to enjoy the music, and then I will tell you what this hour is about.
Here it goes.
I'm Dennis Prager, and this is the hour each week, the end of the week hour. - Over.
Next week...
Yeah, next week at this hour, I will be in Denmark.
I'll be speaking at the Danish Parliament building.
I'm getting an award on free speech.
I don't normally take awards, but I want to get my message everywhere.
Anyway, that's where I will be exactly at this time next week in...
Denmark.
And the subject today is whatever is on your mind.
That's the third hour on Friday.
About you, about me, about life, about death.
And, of course, about cigars, audio equipment, photography, fountain pens, and classical music.
Not bad, eh, Sean?
I even take other calls.
By the way, if I drop your call, do not be offended.
As I have often pointed out, people choose whether to be offended.
Don't choose it.
So let me go to your calls.
What is on your mind?
And this is a lot of very interesting stuff.
Emma.
Now, Emma is in Ohio.
What is the name of your city, Emma?
Caden, Idaho.
I'm your friend.
Ah, you are?
Why does it say Hayden, Ohio?
Uh-oh.
Oh, sorry.
You are going to learn to be more professional.
That's what you're going to do.
Emma, I don't want you to feel responsible for the fact.
Okay.
All right, Emma of Idaho, I know you for many years.
Yes, you do.
We've met a couple of times.
All right.
You probably don't remember.
I'm listening to these people.
Anyway, my youngest daughter is adopted from China.
She'll be 21 in April.
And I've always said this, Dennis, otherwise I'll give you the credit.
I've always said, I have five kids, but I forget which one is adopted.
And she says that is racist, and I can't say it anymore.
Her brothers always call her little Asian, and she even has them on her license plate.
And now she's taking it off, and she moved to Portland.
right now.
Wait, so I'm confused.
There are two separate examples here of what she thinks are racist.
So she says that if you say, I don't remember which one of my kids is adopted, that's racist?
Yes.
Okay, so I'm not even going to say whether I agree or not, at least I won't now, but I don't understand the charge.
I don't either.
She couldn't explain it.
So if you say, oh well, this is, what's her name?
Mary.
So this is Mary, my adopted daughter, then it's not racist.
Yes.
But this is Mary, my daughter is racist.
Oh, I'll tell you, in a convoluted way, I think I understand it, but it is convoluted, and that is, I may be wrong, but I think if you don't affirm the fact that she is a different race or ethnicity than you, you are being racist.
We don't.
That's right.
Her brothers call her Little Asian.
Well, wait, so yeah, so that's what I don't understand.
She wants her Asian ethnicity affirmed, but her brothers are affirming it.
So you don't affirm it, you're racist.
They do affirm it, they're racist.
Absolutely.
Doesn't make any sense.
Well, she probably went to college.
No, she didn't, but she's being soon fed by her older sister who lives in Portland.
Oh, Portland.
That's dangerous.
Yeah, Portland.
Oregon.
Not Maine.
Oregon.
Let me just say this.
I wish I could have a one-on-one with Mary.
I would love that.
I'm sure you would, okay?
I love it.
So her brother's called a little Asian.
That's racist.
Her mother just says she's my daughter.
That's racist.
Get it, folks?
Are you on board?
All right, let's go to another call here.
All right.
Greenville, South Carolina.
Josh.
Hello, Josh.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
I wanted to ask you about a man I've heard of in the news.
Now, if I mess his name up, forgive me.
The Yanuka Rav Shlomo Yahuda.
They say he is the Jewish Messiah.
He's doing miracles.
He's proficient in the Torah.
Have you heard of this guy?
No.
I'm fascinated.
I'm going to look it up after the hour or even during the break.
I thought if anyone knew, it would be you.
Yeah, you're right.
It's a reasonable assumption.
So let me react, though, just on the basis of what you said.
In the course of Jewish history, Jews have believed at different times in any number of Jews as being the Messiah.
So this would not be a new development.
That's number one.
Number two, I am not a big miracle believer.
In other words, I deeply believe in miracles, but I'm not a believer that they're determinant, and I have the Bible as my basis.
According to the Bible, no one saw as many miracles as the generation of Israelites who left Egypt.
They saw ten plagues.
Any one of them would have been a spectacular miracle.
But all ten?
And all ten were directed against Egyptian gods.
This is written in there.
You can get all of this in my series called The Rational Bible.
Genesis, Exodus, and Deuteronomy have been published.
I have two more to go.
And then they saw the sea split.
They walked through it in dry land.
Then it closed in on the Egyptian army.
Then they were fed miraculously in the desert.
Manna from heaven.
And then they were guided at night by a divine light.
Etc.
Etc.
Then the Ten Commandments.
And they then said, we'd rather go back to Egypt.
And built a golden calf.
Miracles do not make people believers.
It's an interesting and important thing to know.
A lot of people think, oh, if only God did X or Y or Z, oh, then I would be a big believer in God.
You would for about a week.
It may be a year even, but that's it.
Anyway, if you don't see all of this life as a miracle, nothing will help.
Okie doke!
Let's see here now.
Yes, Burbank, California and Klaus or Klaus in America.
Hi!
No, it's Klaus.
It's Klaus.
I said Klaus.
I couldn't agree more.
Okay.
So before I get onto the topic on hand, could we get a product going for you guys to sell of a miniature bust of you so I could put it on my desk as like, man, this guy is admirable.
He gets me through the day.
Like those miniature ones that are sold at the Ronald Reagan Library.
Okay, I would be a little too self-conscious if it busted me.
If they do it posthumously, hopefully many decades from now, that's fine.
But we were thinking of a bobblehead.
I could live with that.
Oh, yeah.
Gotta get on those.
Okay, so I am deeply troubled, Dennis.
You're my second favorite rabbi, first being Jesus.
And I am for capital punishment for murderers, first-degree murderers.
I am for severe punishment of arsonists.
And I have...
I truly have hatred for those who destroy and defame artwork and historical artifacts.
Yeah, so let me explain.
This is happening now in Britain, I believe, where young people will throw food, usually, onto the most treasured paintings in the museum, some worth millions of dollars, great works of art.
Because of global warming.
These are sick puppies.
And my friends, what's on your mind is the hour.
The last caller raised this issue, I don't know if you've been following it, of these young, brainwashed, sick, bored kids who need meaning in their lives.
Splattering Million Dollar Monet and other great paintings with, why was it, mashed potato, tomato soup, and then putting glue on their hands and attaching themselves to the wall.
Anyone who sees them do it should just yell at them.
You are sick puppies.
You are narcissists.
You have meaningless lives that you have filled with idiotic meaning.
You're saving the world from hunger.
That is what they believe.
They believe all the crap of the panickers because anything else is banned from most of our sites with regard to global warming.
Every 12 years, the world is going to come to an end since Al Gore and his idiotic book, Earth and the Balance, in 1990. Every 12 years, it's going to die.
Nothing happened by 2002. They were showing it to you on the video.
These lost puppies.
They think they're great.
Yes, it's really...
People are starving.
People are freezing.
People are dying.
Wait, people are freezing?
I thought it was global warming.
We are in a climate catastrophe, but we're not.
And all of you who are afraid of is tomato soup or mashed potatoes on a painting.
Oh my God.
I'm afraid because science tells us that we won't be able to feed our families in 2050. Oh, they've upped it.
Now it's 26 years.
Wow, isn't that something?
You won't be able to feed your families in 26 years.
You know, it's hard.
When...
When the world is coming to an end in 26 years, you pretty much can't be proven wrong for a long time.
They've upped it now to 26 years from 12. They're smart.
I hope these kids are arrested.
I hope they're put in jail.
I hope they're mocked.
I wonder what their parents think.
Eh, about half their parents probably think their kids are heroic.
Okay, let's see here.
Carson, California.
Bob.
Hello, Bob.
Yes, Dennis.
I have a question.
I know you're a cigar smoker, but what are you going to say when you get your stage 4 diagnosis with a prognosis of a few months?
Because like you say, you probably won't get lung cancer because you don't inhale, but oral cancer is certainly a possibility, and we can't afford to lose the rush.
That's very sweet of you.
So what will I say?
I'll say I had bad luck because 99.9% of cigar smokers don't get oral cancer.
Isn't that what killed Russ?
I don't know what killed him.
That's interesting.
I'm pretty sure it's lung cancer.
Well, wait, wait, wait, wait.
You just switched it.
Wait, wait, wait.
You said you admitted you don't inhale cigars, so you don't get lung cancer.
So if he died of lung cancer, it has nothing to do with his cigar smoking.
He didn't die of lung cancer.
He died of oral cancer.
Oh, okay.
Really?
I'm 99% sure.
Okay, if he did that, I simply don't know what cancer it was.
I'm going to look it up.
I do find that interesting.
You're right, then it was bad luck.
I have known people who have died or have contracted breast cancer, skin cancer, brain cancer, pancreatic cancer.
Liver cancer.
Lung cancer, if I didn't say it.
And I've known no one who had oral cancer.
Doesn't mean no one did.
Of course, some people do, but it's really rare.
You take risks in life for the things that bring you great joy.
So I will have, I hope, been a mature man.
And if I contract oral cancer, I will say I had 50 years of great pleasure from cigars, and I was in that tiny percentage who contracted oral cancer as a result of it.
And that's what I will say, I think.
I hope that that's what I will say.
All right, I thank you for calling.
Louisville.
Really?
There's a Louisville, South Carolina?
Are you in Louisville, South Carolina?
No, I'm in Louisville, Kentucky.
The only Louisville I know.
Oh, no.
You are going to learn to be more professional!
That's what you're going to do, bro!
Not a good day.
Okay, that's what I thought.
Hello, Louisville, Kentucky, and Brett.
Yes, sir.
My question has to do with Exodus, and it says when Moses saw the bush, he turned to investigate, something to that effect.
Only then did God speak to him and tell him to move his shoes.
So I've always wondered, what if Moses didn't turn to investigate?
Would God have pursued, been the pursuer then, after Moses?
Would he have found someone else to free the slaves?
Because God can't be thwarted.
So why did God wait for Moses to...
It's an excellent question, actually.
I have a number of answers.
First, I can never know what God would do in any situation, not being God.
But there is a lesson here, and that is that God waits for us to seek Him.
And that's a fact that's in Deuteronomy.
If you seek Him, you will find Him.
People think that they can just sort of intuit God or feel God or God will appear to them some way.
That's not my take.
My take is, like everything that is important in life, it has to be sought.
And so that's the way I would answer your question.
So theoretically, that's right, if he had not turned around...
God might have chosen somebody else to take the Israelites out.
That's right, everybody.
Everyone should know.
There are burning bushes in your life.
In everybody's life.
The question is whether you'll turn around and look.
That's the key.
To know what to seek is the great project of life.
We return.
The Dennis Prager Show.
Well, I looked it up back Actually, Rush Limbaugh did not die of oral cancer.
So that answers my last caller.
I told you how extremely rare it is, including among cigar smokers who died of lung cancer.
Whether it was related to the cigar smoke or not, I would bet that it was not.
Many people who don't smoke get lung cancer, just like they get brain cancer, pancreatic cancer, and other cancers.
Cigarette smokers who get lung cancer probably got it because of the cigarette smoking.
Those who do not distinguish between cigar and cigarette smoking don't know what they're talking about.
But in America today, you're allowed to lie.
If you think that you're improving people's health.
That's why there were so many lies about the vaccine and so many lies about masks.
In the name of health, you can lie all you want.
That's it.
That's the way it works.
Sad to say.
Okay!
This is the arrow whatever is on your mind.
And let's see.
Uh...
Eileen in Woodland Thrills, California.
Hello.
Hello, Dennis.
Hi.
So nice to hear your voice.
Thank you.
So nice to speak to you.
Thank you.
And I adore you.
Thank you again.
I wanted to speak to you about luck because you have often said that you feel that you are extremely lucky in your life in many, many areas.
And one of the things that I'm thinking is that you also are very rare in the fact that you know what you want, you know what you like and love, and what you do is that you follow it.
That's correct.
Whether it was the music.
Yes, that's right.
Or the camera.
Or trying to influence people to the good, what I wrote in my diary in high school.
I knew in high school what I wanted to do with my life.
That is exactly.
I heard you say that on the air, that you knew in high school what you wanted.
So there is a Henry David Thoreau quote, which you probably know.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, He will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Well, I don't agree with the quote.
Sometimes it's true, and sometimes it's not.
You and I live in Los Angeles, a city filled with people whose dreams were to be Hollywood stars, and they are most of the time waiting on tables, which I consider a great profession, actually.
But it's not their dream.
So, by the way, I've been lucky.
I don't only believe that my life is luck, but I've been lucky.
I've been lucky that just in my health, that I've been able to do what I needed to do and didn't contract cancer at some point.
That's luck?
Yes.
I don't say that...
I mean, I think a lot of your luck has been made by you.
Yes, I agree.
But a lot of it was not made by me, and I recognize that.
I had a child, one of my children was...
Was born to a meth addict.
My late wife and I adopted him.
And he had addiction issues for many years.
I'm lucky he didn't die of fentanyl.
And he would be the first to acknowledge that.
He's doing great now.
And I consider that a stroke of luck.
There is luck.
A friend of mine lost a child to fentanyl.
So I'm really aware of the luck factor.
People don't want, and I don't blame them, they don't want to acknowledge the power of luck.
The religious think it diminishes God's sovereignty, and the irreligious find it depressing.
It doesn't diminish God's sovereignty.
It created a world where that's...
That's an inevitability.
If you're stung by a bee and you're allergic to bee stings, it's bad luck.
Well, I'm glad you're called.
Well, hello all.
What's on your mind is the theme of the last hour of the broadcast week of the Dennis Prager Show.
And we certainly have a potpourri, which I love because I'm interested in so many things, so I love it.
San Diego, California, and Steve.
Hello, Steve.
Hey, Dennis, you're my man.
Thank you.
I was very fortunate.
I grew up in a household where my parents exposed me to a wide variety of music, and I fell in love with classical music.
And the thing that kicked that off was The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky.
And I've always considered Stravinsky the heavy metal of classical music.
I want to get your take on Stravinsky and his work.
The Rite of Spring is a great ballet.
It is.
My issue with Stravinsky, he has a great violin concerto too, my issue with Stravinsky is that I never choose to hear him.
If it was played live in a concert, I think I would find it interesting.
And by the way, this is not a comment on whether he's great or not, it's a comment on my taste.
So, my suspicion is that among the hundred Most frequently listened to classical pieces of music.
None of Stravinsky's is on the list.
I would agree.
Alright, so there you go.
But it's fun.
Good choice, Sean.
Yeah, it's good.
Now my wife is listening and is covering her ears.
I know that.
By the way, I told you, I want to repeat it because it's such a highlight in my life.
My wife and I are crazy about two symphonies by a man named Bruckner, Anton Bruckner, the fifth and the eighth.
He wrote nine.
He wrote really more than nine, but there were nine numbered.
He has a number zero and an even double zero.
This is strange, but it doesn't matter.
So when the fifth and eighth are played anywhere in America, we go there.
If it's played, you know, by a great orchestra.
However, if I came home and said, honey, they're doing Stravinsky's Rite of Spring with the...
New York Philharmonic.
She would say that's fascinating and immediately would assume, God forbid, I had a brain tumor.
All right!
Let's see here.
Simi Valley, California.
James, hello.
Yeah, hello, Dennis.
Thanks for taking my call.
I was just interested in your perspective of Joseph in the sense that I was wondering how he's revered from the Jewish perspective.
One of the things I think about him is he's partially responsible for the survival of Israel and Egypt at a point in his life with providing for the famine and thing.
Joseph, outside of Moses, and even maybe including Moses, is the most developed character in the Torah, the first five books.
And he is the only character, to the best of my knowledge, Who is called a tzaddik, which is Hebrew for righteous person.
It's the highest appellation in Judaism, a tzaddik.
And he has declared that.
He is a complex character.
First of all, he starts out as a narcissist, complete narcissist, with his dreams about the rest of the family bowing down to him.
And that's why the brothers hate him and his father.
He messed it up because he showed such favoritism to Joseph over the other sons.
And then he becomes a man of God.
He constantly refers to God, and he is never once spoken to by God, which is a fascinating insight unto itself.
And then he leads Egypt into...
Enables Egypt to survive, but he also creates a totalitarian state.
So he is...
The story, even if you're an atheist, the story is great.
It was a great call.
I'm glad you asked.
It's all in my Rational Bible series, the one on Genesis, obviously.
That's where Joseph appears.
And that Joseph, the scene of Joseph...
Revealing who he is, he's the second most powerful man in Egypt.
His brothers thought he was dead.
They had thrown him into a pit.
And then sold him as a slave.
They were sure he was dead.
And instead he was the second most powerful man in Egypt.
And then when he reveals who he is to his brothers, I am your brother Joseph.
In all of literature, sacred or secular, I don't think there is a more moving scene.
I am your brother Joseph.
I think it was Pope John XXIII who said that to a Jewish delegation.
I am your brother Joseph.
It's powerful stuff, but if you don't study the Bible, you wouldn't know how powerful it is.
Okay.
Jonathan in Prescott, Arizona.
Hello.
Hey, Dennis.
Short-time listener, long-time caller.
I keep calling in, and I love when you take my call.
It's great.
Sometimes I agree with you.
A lot of times I agree with you.
Sometimes I disagree.
Something you said last hour, and it was almost like an afterthought.
You said that we can only make ourselves happy, but other people can make us unhappy.
And that last part of it, I disagree with, because if you can make yourself happy, no matter how miserable other people make you, or how effective you are by other people's situations, you can still make yourself happy.
I agree with that.
That's entirely accurate.
A man with a happy wife will still be happier than a man with an unhappy wife.
I 100% agree with you.
Okay, alright.
So that was my point, that's all.
Otherwise, we agree.
Why don't you pick this one?
Where is this?
I like it, actually.
We used to play it?
I mean, when I did the show in Tanzania?
Yeah.
Five years ago?
Really?
Hi, everybody.
Dennis Prager.
This is the final segment of the final hour of the final show of the week.
That is dramatic, eh?
Hey, hey, hey, hey.
Stevenson, Virginia.
One of my favorite places.
Christopher, hello.
Good afternoon, sir.
How are you?
I find it funny that you laughed.
Are you laughing because you think I never heard of Stevenson, Virginia?
You probably have not.
That is correct.
Oh, you are a good listener.
That's it, folk.
He did it.
You know, if I gave out cigars for Coles, you'd get one.
That'd be great.
Thank you.
I'd love your perspective on a brief question I have.
So reading through the Bible, and particularly the first couple books, I see a lot of people take certain verses and portray it as something that's applicable to them specifically today, whereas if I read the whole book, it's kind of directive or applicable whereas if I read the whole book, it's kind of directive or applicable to the Hebrews
So how much is the first five books of the Bible specific in historical context, and is it okay to take some liberty at saying, well, this is also applicable today to us?
Regarding the last question, I've devoted so much of my life, and especially the last ten years, to writing my commentary on these books, those very first five books, because they are completely relevant.
They direct my life.
They are the major source of wisdom in my life, those five books.
Otherwise, I wouldn't devote such time.
I'll give you an example.
I could give hundreds, and I do, obviously.
So Jews around the world read the five books in the course of the year.
So they just started, or we just started with Genesis last week, and now we're in a portion called Noah.
It says that God saves Noah, destroys the world, saves Noah, and it says Noah was a righteous man in his generations.
Why doesn't it say just Noah was a righteous man?
Because it teaches us you must judge people in their generations.
And that's the answer to the question of the slave-owning founders of this country.
They were giants in their generation, and that is how you judge them.
Actually, I think they were giants in any generation.
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