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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:06:13
Different Worlds
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Hi, everybody.
A good day to you, a good Thursday.
I'm Dennis Prager.
Last night I debated the subject, Are People Innately Good?
I hope to put that up so that you can see it.
If you didn't go last night, some 400 or so people came in Beverly Hills, California.
I won't say more about it other than...
Every one of you should see it, and every one of your children should see it.
I think I need to do an ultimate issues hour, not on the subject, are people basically good, but why do people want to believe that?
That is as much worthy of attention.
Why do people want to believe the obviously wrong?
Now, of course, I don't believe people are innately evil either.
We can go in either direction, but we're not basically good is the more important thing to realize.
All right, welcome to the show.
The point has been made, I have been making it much of my life, left and right do not live in the same mental, psychological, even empirical universes.
Here's a perfect example.
Every instinct is left-wing.
Ezra Klein in the New York Times.
Opinion columnist.
Listen to the opening of his column today.
When was it?
Okay.
Well, I'll get the date here.
The date was June 5th.
What is today?
June 9th.
Four days ago.
Actually, three days ago, if you counted in the physical paper.
Over the past few years, I've been asked one question, this is how it opens, more than any other.
Now, folks, before I read further, I would like you to try to guess, what does this man of the left, he's not a liberal, what does this man of the left say he is asked more than any other question after he gives a speech?
Oh, Joel, you didn't hear what the question was?
So you're thinking?
Yeah.
Oh, good.
So we actually have an in-studio person to whom I can address the question.
I don't think you would...
Do you think you would have guessed it?
No.
I don't think so.
Yeah.
I don't know if I would have guessed it either.
The moment you hear it, my friends, you will go, oh, yeah, of course, he speaks to left-wing audiences.
Here it goes.
It comes up at speeches, not just at speeches, at the dinners, in conversation.
It's the most popular query when I open my podcast to suggestions, time and again.
And I'm prefacing this with the statement, we live in completely different mental universes.
There is nothing in common between left and right.
Our values, our thinking, our priorities, our passions, we have nothing in common except the biological.
We all eat to live, we drink to live, we sleep, etc.
That's it.
It comes in two forms.
The first, should I have kids given the climate crisis they will face?
Okay, what's the second then?
Should I have kids knowing they will contribute to the climate crisis the world faces?
Oh yes, I see.
So it's a twofer.
Because the first is, they're going to die, Ezra Klein.
Why would I have kids who will die?
And the other is, why will I have kids who will contribute to everybody else dying?
They will be breathing.
On occasion, they will even flatulate.
That's right.
Kids do that.
This is the world in which New York Times columnists live, my friends.
I did an entire hour and I did an entire column.
I wrote an entire column.
On this subject, a few months ago, when the subject arose in another New York Times column, and people wrote in, you can't write in, you can't write a comment unless you're a New York Times subscriber, about how they are proud of their child for not having children, as much as they ached to have grandchildren.
Now do you understand how deep the brainwash is of the left?
If all you consume is the New York Times, if you went to college or graduate school, you don't think normally.
You have a sick pattern of thought.
You are happy not to have grandchildren.
You're sick.
Leftism renders you sick.
Morally sick.
Psychologically sick.
If this isn't proof, then you're a leftist.
Only a leftist can go, yeah, oh, wow, that's my question.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
It's been an existential threat to life, global warming, since at least 1990, when we were told by Al Gore that we have 12 years, and then it's too late.
And then in...
2002, we were told we have 12 years, and then it's too late.
And then in 2014, we were told we have 12 years, and then it's too late.
That means 2026, just four years from now.
Three and a half, actually.
That's it.
That's all we have.
Do you understand?
You become a sick person going to college and graduate school in the moral sense and in the rational sense.
This is sick.
This is the most frequent question this crackpot gets.
And he thinks it's valid.
And it's not just me.
A 2020 morning consult poll found that a quarter of adults without children say climate change is part of the reason they didn't have children.
Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you what I pray he answers.
So this is heartfelt as recline.
Here is a rare arena where left and right can agree.
You must, for the sake of the planet and the lives of these people's would-be children, say, no, don't have children.
Why would we want the sick to have children?
I say this with sadness, because I wish more Americans, I wish more Westerners had children.
It has nothing to do with race.
It has to do with culture.
I wish the Japanese had more children, just to be clear.
Japan is disappearing.
A Morgan Stanley analysis found that the decision, quote, to not have children owing to fears over climate change is growing and impacting fertility rates quicker than any preceding trend in the field of fertility decline.
Jews whose entire families were wiped out by the Nazis had children.
But the spoiled brats of the affluent secular West, they can't do it.
Just can't do it.
Climate change.
Climate change.
Wow.
And he writes an interesting thing.
One thing I've noticed, however, after years of reporting on climate change, the people who have devoted their lives to combating climate change keep having children.
I hear them playing in the background of our calls.
I see them when we Zoom.
Huh.
Why would they do that?
Did you read the whole piece?
I unequivocally reject scientifically and personally the notion that children are somehow doomed to an unhappy life, Kate Marvel, a climate scientist at Columbia told me.
This is a classic example of they send out messages that ruin people's lives and don't live by them themselves.
You're in no way responsible, Kate Marvel, right, for people making this decision.
Your children will die.
Your children will pollute the world.
But I'm having children.
It's like, you shouldn't have guns, but I, Nancy Pelosi, have an armed guard with me.
Nothing they believe applies to everybody else.
They live in their own fake universe.
They buy coastal properties.
That's right.
Which amazingly are going up in value.
Don't they know they'll be drowning any day now in their living rooms?
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The Dennis Prager Show.
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So this is Ezra Klein.
who...
Quite fittingly, as a New York Times columnist, notes that the most frequent question he receives is, should I have children?
They will pollute the world and they will die anyway.
So he says, no, no, you shouldn't think that way.
Because so many more electric cars now, so many more solar panels.
So I'm going to read to you from an article about electric cars.
And I can only say, if it's true, the dishonesty in promoting electric cars as moral, as a moral act, is apparently total.
I mean, it's totally dishonest.
I did not know what I'm about to read to you, so I want to give an if.
If what I'm about to read to you is true.
Are you familiar with the article I'm about to read?
Did you send it to me?
And I assume you're familiar with it.
What a C fact.
Do you know what a C fact?
Climate fact.
Is it ethical to purchase a lithium battery powered EV? Electric vehicle.
So we get the lithium from mines.
That's how we get all our metals.
Yeah, that's how we get all our metals.
100% organic material is pumped out of the ground, taking up around 500 to 1,000 square feet.
Then it flows in pipelines, safely transporting the oil to refineries to be manufactured into usable oil derivatives.
He's talking about the oil.
Now he's going to compare it to what it takes to make, for example, a lithium battery for a car.
Each mine This is a lithium supply mine.
Each mine usually consists of 35 to 40 humongous 797 Caterpillar haul trucks, along with hundreds of other large equipment.
I'm sorry?
Right.
Oh, you're saying what I don't know is true, but this one I know is true.
Right.
Each 797 uses around half a million gallons of diesel a year.
So with an inventory of just 35, the haul trucks alone are using 17.5 million gallons of fuel a year for just one lithium site.
Again, folks, if this is not true, this man should never be read again.
If it is true, The environmentalist movement is lying to us so deeply as to constitute a moral crime.
Just the 35 haul trucks alone use 17.5 million gallons of fuel.
So what you need to understand is how much fuel it takes to make a lithium battery for an electric car that you consider clean.
There is virtually nonexisting transparency of the environmental degradation and the human rights abuses occurring in developing countries with yellow, brown, and black-skinned people.
Both human rights abuses and environmental degradation are directly connected to the mixing, excuse me, the mining, of the exotic materials and metals that are required to manufacture Wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries.
Today, a typical EV battery weighs 1,000 pounds.
It contains 25 pounds of lithium, 60 pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds Of cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, or aluminum as it is written, steel, and plastic.
Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.
It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining.
For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, You must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper.
All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the Earth's crust for just one battery.
What's wrong with that?
Well, that's really the point.
It is very bad, very bad.
Why don't we know this?
It's breathtaking, what we're not told.
In developing countries, these mining operations exploit child labor.
And are responsible for the most egregious human rights violations of vulnerable minority populations.
These operations are also directly destroying the planet through environmental degradation.
The 2022 Pulitzer Prize-nominated book, Clean Energy Exploitations, Helping Citizens Understand the Environmental and Humanity Abuses that Support Clean Energy.
Does an excellent job of discussing the lack of transparency to the world of the Green Movement's impact upon humanity.
So the next time you are thinking about purchasing an electric vehicle or driving your EV car, before congratulating yourself on saving the environment, remember that it came at a cost of entire mountains in developing countries, thousands of square miles of land, and...
Billions of gallons of oil and fuel.
To say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid, as 80% of the electricity generated to charge the batteries is from coal, natural gas, and nuclear.
Are we putting this piece up?
It's up at DennisPrager.com, and I'd be very interested...
To hear refutations of it, because I don't know enough to say I know this to be true.
But if it is true, the lie at the basis of the movement to electric vehicles is extraordinary.
I'm Dennis Prager.
We return.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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Hello, my friends.
Dennis Prager here.
Dory in Los Angeles, California.
Hello.
Good morning, Dennis.
How was John Church?
It was wonderful, thank you.
He's asking how my Jewish holiday was.
They're all great.
Thank you.
Dennis, I heard your talk on gun control.
So I'll ask you a question.
Do you have the guts to go down to the people in Texas whose kids were killed, the kids in the high school in Florida, and the ones that say, tell them to their faces that their request for gun control on certain things and everything else is wrong and that they're leftists?
Have you got the guts to tell them to their faces that what they're feeling is wrong and you're right?
Of course, I would be honored to speak to them and tell them they're wrong.
Honored.
It would be one of the highlights of my life to talk to these grieving people and tell them that their reactions, though completely understandable, will do nothing to prevent other kids and other parents from the same suffering.
It would be my honor to speak to them.
Florida and Texas.
That is correct.
Well, why don't you do that, Dennis?
Because they're not going to come to my talk, okay?
Let's live in reality.
I hereby announce to everyone listening in Florida and Texas, it would be my honor, I would humbly go before grieving parents and tell them that the issue in America is values, not guns.
Would you call them lefties?
No.
I would call the idea, if they asked me, do you think that the concentration on guns rather than evil is a left-wing idea, I would say that has been the left's view since Vladimir Lenin.
Do you know that in Dodge and Deadwood and other towns in the West in the 19th century had gun control laws where you had to leave your gun at the sheriff's office?
Are you aware of that?
Yeah, that's a dispositive argument.
You've changed my mind.
What they did in Dodge in the 19th century, I have no idea that that's so, and if it is so, it has no effect on me.
I can only tell you that before 1970, when there were far few such shootings, there were far more lenient gun laws in America.
The relationship...
Let me ask you a question.
Sure.
I'll ask you two questions.
I'm really happy you called, which is why I took your call.
So, question number one.
If you had a choice in the United States of America where you had draconian gun laws or every kid was raised with a father in his life, which would you choose and which do you think would be more effective in preventing shootings?
Of course they would want a child with their father in their lives, but my father wasn't much of one either.
Okay, the second part is not relevant.
So in light of that fact, would you go, would you have the guts to go to Florida and Texas and say, folks, what kids need are fathers more than gun laws?
Would you say that to them?
No.
So you would say it to me, but not to them?
I'd say that to you.
But not to them.
No, and I'll tell you why.
Because their view happens to be my view.
I mean, suppose you put guns in teachers...
But it's not your...
Wait a minute.
You're changing the subject, which is fine.
I'll go to any subject you want, but you told me you think that more fathers would be more effective than more gun laws, but you were not willing to tell this to the people whose kids were killed.
No, I wouldn't have the courage nor the heart to do that.
Well, all right, you know what?
You're an honest man.
You are, and I salute you for that.
I've got to take a break.
I am very happy you called.
I always go to calls that differ first.
It is an interesting thing.
I think that this is a common problem, that people don't want to tell groups something that might be painful to say, but which is far more helpful to say.
Is the inner city, which is largely minority, racial and ethnic minorities, is it suffering the crime rates that it suffers because of lax gun laws or because so few have fathers in their lives? is it suffering the crime rates that it suffers because Thank you.
Thank you.
But there isn't a single leftist who will say this to black America.
Not a single.
Because cowardice is a major part of leftism.
It's one of the chief components.
The desire to say what will make you popular.
Joe Biden is the living example of it.
He will say anything and has his whole life, depending on where the political winds were blowing.
But if you don't tell people painful truths, and most truths are painful, you can do no good on this earth.
And again, I want to say this, and everyone who knows me, which is many of you, know I'm very sincere in saying this.
My caller's honesty.
It was impressive.
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Hi everybody.
Welcome to Hour 2 of the Dennis Prager Show.
This is a three-hour show.
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For the first time in my life, I have a broadcast with a co-host, as it were, with a 22-year-old woman who is truly remarkable.
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If you want to watch it, go to YouTube and put in Dennis and Julie Podcast.
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Last night I debated, as it happens, a rabbi.
In Beverly Hills, California, nice turnout of people on the subject of are people innately good?
He said yes, I said no.
For those of you uninitiated into my view on the matter, I believe it is the second most important question humans need to Answer.
The first is, is there a God?
And the second is, are people innately good?
I do not believe we're innately evil.
If I believed we were innately evil, all of my efforts to promote goodness would be absurd.
It would be like, if everybody were tone deaf, how could I get them to sing?
Right?
But we're not innately good.
That's fundamental to life, to understanding the human condition.
So I'd like to raise a question, not the question of, are we innately good?
Given how obvious it is that every person who wants to be good has to control himself, which proves my point, right?
Why would we have to control ourselves if we're innately good?
Why would there be a Ten Commandments?
If we were innately good, whether you believe God gave them or not, I believe God did, but if you believe Moses did or anybody did, if we're innately good, why tell people do not murder?
Do we tell people eat?
Is there a commandment to eat?
Why is there no commandment to eat so that you may live?
Because we innately eat.
But we don't innately not murder.
Therefore we need a commandment.
Every time there is a law, right?
Doesn't the existence of any law presume that we need the law?
Otherwise we would not do what the law commands?
Isn't that obvious?
Is there a law?
If you are cold...
Put on a coat.
There is no such law.
Because that is natural to us.
Believe it or not, it is not natural to us not to murder, let alone not to steal.
Or as I pointed out last night to the discomfort of some of the women in the audience, and I have noted this all of my broadcast life, it is quite natural for men to rape.
What does rape mean?
It means not natural to torture.
That's true.
That's an extreme.
But to take a woman, or if you are gay, to take a man that you want and have sex with this person, whether or not they have consented, is natural.
That's why there are so many laws against rape.
It's also why there are so many rapes.
How many German women were raped by Russian soldiers in World War II? A million?
I think more than a million.
I listed last night what was done to animals in the 19th century.
I read this enormously long book on the Enlightenment.
So I listened to it and then I got it on Kindle just so that I could have the quotes about how animals were tortured for fun.
People would gather in large groups to see cats burned alive and to see dogs attack bulls and grab them by their testicles.
And the people would cheer.
Many, many years ago, like in high school, I read books about the Roman gladiatorial games.
The joy that the crowd had at watching people kill each other.
Women raped by animals.
So, I'm not going to discuss now the question of whether or not people are innately good.
It is so obvious that we are not innately good.
I'll leave that for another time, and I will do it again, because as I said, it's the second most important question.
If you think people are basically good, you cannot make a good world.
It's as simple as that.
You will not teach goodness and you will blame all evil on outside forces.
Why would a basically good person murder?
Clearly it's because of poverty or racism or inequality or whatever you would argue is anything but the person to be blamed.
That's why the belief That people are basically good is far more found on the left, and indeed the secular left, in particular, most leftists are secular, than it is among the religious and among conservatives.
It's another reason I believe in religion, the Judeo-Christian religions in America, because they produce more wisdom.
There is no wisdom in the belief that people are basically good.
So my question to you is, why does anybody want to believe it?
That is my new question.
All of my life I've discussed, are we basically good?
But I've never discussed, why do people want to believe it?
Or why do people believe it?
This is something I would often discuss on the Ultimate Issues Hour, but since it's so immediate in my mind, having debated this last night, and we'll put the debate up on the Internet.
It's being edited as I speak.
But I've never grappled with this question, and I don't know the full answer, although I did have Dr. Stephen Marmer, the psychiatrist from UCLA, who's been on...
The Happiness Hour, and who has actually done a couple of PragerU videos.
A remarkable man and profound psychiatrist, which is almost an oxymoron today.
Psychiatry has been profoundly, deleteriously affected by the left.
By the way, this is not new.
Remember the number of psychiatrists who said Barry Goldwater was mentally ill and not capable of being president?
Psychiatry was taken over by woke before the word woke was ever thought of other than being awakened by an alarm clock.
The left has dominated psychiatry all of my life.
And it has hurt the profession tremendously.
Anyway, he's a clear thinker, Dr. Marmer, and he wrote to me.
A letter.
Actually, was it to you?
It was to me, because you got the one from the professor in Israel, right?
I got the one from Dr. Marmer.
And he offered some reasons why a people...
Want to believe or do believe that people are basically good.
It is a very important question to ask.
Why do people believe nonsense?
There's got to be a reason.
They're not stupid.
So there has to be a reason.
Why do people believe America is systemically racist?
Right?
Why?
1-8 Prager 776. Boy, is that ever true.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager.
Just a side note before I continue exploring the subject that I have opened this hour with.
I was just discussing here the predictions of economic downturn, of serious economic downturn, quite possibly.
A recession leading to even a depression.
I was widely mocked, which almost always tells me that I am right.
When in April 2020, you can see it on the internet, I announced, I tweeted, and I wrote a column that the worldwide lockdowns were the greatest mistake in history, greatest worldwide mistake.
And when you see what happened to children, the damage may be permanent to vast numbers of American children because of the closing of schools advocated by the people who least care about children, teachers and teachers' unions, and of course the New York Times and the rest of the left, because they're always wrong.
It's an amazing thing.
How do you be consistently wrong?
Most people, individually, are periodically wrong.
And now the economic consequences of the lockdown coupled with the damage to energy done by the environmentalist left, the wackos.
They are wackos.
Rich white people.
That's the irony.
That's who constitute the environmentalist movement.
Bored, secular, rich people.
Nothing like saving the world to make you feel good about yourself.
Anyway, I'm posing a question based on my debate last night on the subject, Are People Innately Good?
As I said, I believe it's the second most important question in life.
Is there a God as number one?
And number two is, is human nature innately good?
It's so obvious that the answer is no.
Again, for the thousandth time, I'm not saying we're innately evil.
If we were innately evil, any appeals to goodness would be absurd.
But we're not innately good.
So the question is, why do people believe it?
I got a letter or an email from Dr. Stephen Marmer, UCLA psychiatrist in private practice in LA, major thinker, as well as a great psychiatrist.
And he had four reasons why people believe this.
The initial reason for wanting to believe everyone is basically good comes from the very beginning of life.
A newborn will not survive without those in his world being good.
The psychological survival as well as the physical survival depend on having a good mother and, if possible, a whole family.
When things are consistent, the baby can be in a calm state.
If things are inconsistent, if mother is not dependable, or if she has her own psychiatric illness, or is an addict, or anything else that takes away from her consistent good treatment of the baby, the child will be in a state of anxiety or depression which will lead to physical and emotional dysregulation.
In this childhood period of development, the baby needs to do nothing in particular to earn the goodness around him.
Only later in development does the child learn that he has to take initiative and he has to exhibit goodness to induce others to be good to him.
So the first one, to rephrase it in my language, That people are innately good is that there is apparently a deep yearning in many humans to remain childlike.
Children need to believe that.
That was the first argument of the psychiatrist I'm reading to you.
Children need to believe, given how helpless they are, That the ones with the power, the parents, are good.
Otherwise, the world is chaos.
So, we have an interesting thing here, which I don't know if I've noted.
I think I've noted it, but not often.
In the chaos that reigns today, In our country and in many other Western countries, especially English-speaking ones, but especially in America, we have this inversion of robbing children of their innocence and wanting to keep adults innocent.
It's very, very...
This is related to the issue of wanting to believe people are basically good, but it is not just that.
And it seems to be that if you are not allowed your period of innocence as a child, you will want to have that period of innocence as an adult.
It's a theory.
I don't know if that's true.
But what I do know is true is that we're robbing children of innocence.
Drag queen story hour for five-year-olds and gender fluidity for seven-year-olds.
At the same time, adults are trying to be as innocent as possible.
A man tells an off-color joke at work and women report him to HR. As having sexually harassed them.
That in and of itself is worthy of an entire hour.
How feminism has rendered women weaklings.
A woman hears an off-color joke, that is, a joke with a sexual theme, and it shattered her.
My mother would hear such a joke and she'd either find it funny or not funny.
The thought that it would have ruined her day would have struck her as bizarre.
There's no question my mother was stronger than the average college-educated woman today.
And my mother didn't go to college.
She did run a 400-bed nursing home, however.
Hardly a weakling, my mother.
But that's what we produce today.
No more swimsuit competition in the Miss America contest.
We don't want to rob women of their innocence.
No, women should never be seen as sexualized.
Back in a moment. Back in a moment.
Here's a question for you.
If your kid is in any American high school or elementary school, forget college, it's an obvious, the answer is obvious, but even in elementary or high school, ask your child, have you learned about any American heroes?
Just, you know, curious.
Did they teach you about any heroic Americans?
So, we have a new book out that does just that.
And it's not a group that you know almost anything, or in many cases anything about.
It's titled The 56. Liberty Lessons from Those Who Risked All to Sign the Declaration of Independence.
Fifty-six men signed the Declaration of Independence.
Many at great risk to themselves and even to their lives.
And it's a...
An important read, a man who's committed to the belief that this is the liberty-loving country, or at least was.
Douglas MacKinnon is the author.
The book is up at DennisPrager.com, The 56. And he is a former White House and Pentagon official.
And Douglas MacKinnon, welcome to The Dennis Prager Show.
Dennis, thanks so much for having me back on.
I really appreciate it.
How did you find out about the 56?
Some of them are pretty unknown.
Yeah, so what happened was, and Dennis, sort of the subtitle of that book, by the way, is Before They and the Fourth of July Are Banned.
And what happened was, literally, basically a year ago now, on the Fourth of July, I was just doing a little bit of research to write a column about how important and courageous these men were, and I took a little bit of a tour to some of the more liberal media outlets, and there are a number of them, Dennis, no surprise to you.
We're far left voices calling for the cancellation of the 4th of July and the cancellation of our founding fathers.
And my first thought was, ultimately, what if they're successful?
So I had no plans, ultimately.
Other than being a fan of these 56, I had no plans to write the book.
But then I immediately just called my purpose and said, what happened?
And I decided, again, to your point about, they don't teach this anymore in school.
They don't teach it in high school.
They don't teach it in middle school.
They don't teach it in elementary school.
And to your point also, these men were so heroic, they were so courageous, they created the greatest nation on the face of the earth, and so many folks on the far left seriously want to cancel them.
That's correct.
So, given the paucity of literature on them, I do return, because I'm so curious, how did you do research on each of them?
So what I decided to do also, and probably no surprise to you, Dennis, is because for the last, unfortunately, 20 or 30 years, what I've said before in the past, and I think you agree with this, over the last 40 or 50 years, maybe, the far left and the left has gotten control of what I call the five major megaphones of our nation, meaning the media, academia, entertainment, and of late, as we've seen, science and medicine.
And so because of that also...
So many of the quote-unquote historians of our time, all the ones that pop up on the liberal networks, tend to only favor one political party, and many of them are biased against our founding fathers.
And so what I decided to do, what I had to do, was go as far back in time as humanly possible to try to do hopefully honest, real research on these 56 men that aren't being smeared by some of the quote-unquote historians of today.
Do you have any favorites?
So one of the surprises, and I tried to invert this a little bit, Dennis, is because everybody knows Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Hancock.
But the surprise to me when I was doing research for the book was Richard Henry Lee of Virginia.
Because in reality, Richard Henry Lee was the driving force behind the Declaration of Independence.
He was the driving force behind the liberty movement to get out from under the tyranny of the crown.
And what happened was he was going to be the chairman of the Committee of Five to draft the Declaration of Independence, and he probably would have been then the person assigned to draft the Declaration of Independence.
But on June 10, 1776, his wife took deathly ill.
He had to lead the Continental Congress, and he said, don't wait on me.
So Thomas Jefferson stepped into that group to become the main drafter of the Declaration.
What I discovered is Richard Henry Lee deserves a lot more credit than we've given him over the last 250 years.
It is said, and tell me if it is true, that there was some real risk to property and even life in signing the declaration.
And that's another thing too, Dennis, and that's what's so sort of horrifying, that so many people on the left want to cancel these men, because the courage they had, every single one of them.
New, the second they signed that Declaration of Independence, they were signing their death law, right?
And so many Americans probably aren't, especially school children, school children are not taught that on July 4th, 1776, only one person signed the Declaration.
That was John Hancock.
Most of the 56 then signed it on August 2nd of that year.
But many dentists waited until November of that year.
Why?
Because they had to get their affairs in order because they were pretty sure they were going to lose their lives.
And so what happened was, so many of these 56 men had their homes burned to the ground, had their livestock slaughtered, were in prison, had their wives in prison, had their wives sexually abused, had their children in prison, had their children murdered before their eyes.
And these are the men that the far left want to cancel and smear?
Oh, yeah.
Well, that's a given.
Moral midgets hate moral giants.
That is a rule of history, and we are seeing that enacted in our time.
So, this, by the way, I just want to say on a purely narcissistic note, August 2nd is my birthday, so now I actually have something significant that happened.
Yes.
Most of them signed the declaration on August 2nd, 1776. Is that true?
That is true.
That is 100% correct.
Exactly.
Well, what do you think of that?
I get a kick out of that.
That's wonderful.
So, when did the book come out?
So, it just came out about two weeks ago.
And so, again, it's one of these things where if people know about it, you know, there's obviously 75 or 80 million Americans that would deeply care about this, deeply care about this history, deeply care about not having...
Our national birthday canceled, not having the 56 men who signed the declaration canceled.
And it was one of these things, too, where, you know, one of the people I spoke with, I went up to Washington, D.C. to give a speech on the book at the Institute of World Politics about a week ago.
And I was asked, you know, why did you write the book?
And, Dennis, I swear, my honest answer was because I felt it was my sort of patriotic duty to the nation to try to do this, to try to get the word out.
And, again, ultimately, I'm not taking a dime from this.
What I'm trying to do is create a foundation with two other former government officials.
To try to protect the history of these men and to try to protect the reputation of these men.
And, you know, when I was at that event, somebody said, well, this is a little bit like Common Sense by Thomas Paine.
Well, that was a gross exaggeration.
I appreciate the kindness.
There is some truth to it in the sense that I am trying to draw the parallels of the tyranny of the crown from 1776 to the tyranny of the left of today.
And I will tell you, Dennis, and I think you probably agree.
The tyranny of today is exponentially much more dangerous because of how sinister it really is.
Well, this is the greatest threat to free speech, and therefore freedom.
That's the fundamental freedom than at any time, not only in American history, but as you're pointing out, in colonial history.
So, in light of that, I have a question.
I grapple with this a lot, and my listeners know that.
Are you surprised that half of the inhabitants of the land of the brave and the home of the free don't value freedom?
I'm not surprised by it anymore.
I'm saddened by it because, again, I think going back to those five major megaphones and how they've been indoctrinated for the last number of decades, right?
But I do think, again, this is something that we still control, Dennis, because, again, what the 56 men believed.
Unless and until they imprisoned them.
Unless and until they took their lives.
They still had their voices.
They could still spread the word.
And we can do that.
One of my favorite speeches, and I suspect one of yours, is Teddy Roosevelt's Man in the Arena speech that he gave in 1910, right?
And it's one of these things where, you know, one of the messages of the book is, I don't believe anyone's coming to save us.
We have to save ourselves.
We have to realize that we are responsible for our own lives.
We're responsible for our own freedom.
We're responsible for our own rights.
We can't wait for the cavalry to come across the horizon to save us.
And I believe it's incumbent upon all of us to jump into that arena that Teddy Roosevelt talked about and get sweaty and get beaten up and get bloodied and stand back up again and fight for our rights.
And I believe we can do it.
And guess what?
These 56 men left the blueprint.
It's still there.
The left wants to hide it.
But it exists, and we just have to dust it off and look at it again.
Well, that's one of the reasons that I've had you on, was to publicize this wonderful book.
It's called The 56, Before They and the Fourth of July Are Banned.
That's the subtitle.
I salute you, Douglas MacKinnon.
We're kindred spirits.
And again, folks, the book is The 56. It's up at DennisPrager.com.
Sir, keep fighting, and I'm there with you.
Thanks so much, Dennis.
It's been an honor.
Thank you.
appreciate that.
The Dennis Prager Show.
It's not uncommon on my program for an issue to arise as a side issue and then become a I was talking about the executives at Disney and others who are woke and destroying the society.
And do they really believe, in other words, does the average Disney executive, I'm not talking about young employees, does the average Disney executive believe that it is immoral to say ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, in announcements at the Disney parks?
And it's hard for me to believe that they do.
They're scared of their employees.
They're scared of the left, generally, so they pay protection money.
Much of this is about that.
The left is mafia-like, and they will destroy you if you don't go along with them.
It is not enough to keep silent.
Remember that.
They say this.
That was the attack on the Disney executives by their woke leftist employees.
You can't keep quiet.
You're in Florida.
You cannot desist from attacking Governor DeSantis.
If you are silent about talking to five-year-olds in schools about gender fluidity, then you are our enemy.
If you do not advocate robbing children of their sexual innocence, you are the enemy of the left.
That is the message.
And the sheep that they are, because the human condition is sheep-like, they went along with it.
So my question was, do any of the executives really believe in that?
Do Disney executives really believe it is immoral to say, welcome to Disneyland, boys and girls?
Because they've dropped that, of course.
So that's the question.
And then I got on to the subject of people being influenced by their spouses and children.
And further, the issue of what I call the emotional blackmail.
Like if you have a gay son or daughter, you are fearful that should you continue to believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, You will lose their love.
And that's, in my opinion, the gay child who does, in fact, engage in that emotional blackmail is not a good, decent human being.
You are going to stop talking to your parents because they believe that, even though they love you and they love, for that matter, your same-sex spouse?
That's not enough.
That's why it's totalitarian, the left.
It's not enough that your parent treat you and your same-sex spouse beautifully.
They have to change their mind.
That's why the left is so dangerous.
All leftism is totalitarian.
There's no exception.
Wherever they can, they become totalitarian.
Liberals are anti-totalitarian, but they're pro-left.
Go figure.
Never underestimate the power of sheep-like behavior.
Littleton, Colorado, and Kathy, thank you for calling.
Hello.
Can't hear you, Kathy.
Still can't hear you, Kathy.
You sound like you're in interplanetary communication.
Okay, we'll have to...
Put this call on hold.
Sorry, Kathy.
Stay on and try to fix that.
I was really curious to hear what you had to say.
Let's see.
We had some very important calls on this subject.
Some of them just gave up.
Woodbury, New Jersey.
John, hello.
Hello, John.
Are we having telephone problems?
I feel like I am in a truly technologically challenged universe.
Kathy is ready?
Alright, we'll give Kathy a try.
Hi, Kathy!
No, Kathy's not ready.
Okay.
I don't think it's your fault, Kathy.
I think...
I truly adore my employer, but it is technologically challenged very often, and I don't know why.
Some very fine people involved here.
Let me give it another try to Woodbury, New Jersey, and John.
Otherwise, I'll just continue without calls.
Hello?
Yeah, you could tell by the hiss there that there's something wrong once again with our telephone lines.
Before we got sophisticated, it was always easy to talk to people.
Any idea, Sean, what's going on here?
He has no idea.
What are we going to do here?
One more try elsewhere.
Dallas, Texas, Domingo, hello.
Mr. Prager!
Well, how do you like that?
Alright, I am Mr. Prager, hello.
How you doing, sir?
I'm well, thank you.
I just wanted to interject an opinion about, you know, having a child, a sibling, or whatever, who is homosexual.
To express your opinion on your disapproval upon them, you can alienate them, and in other words, if you don't accept them, you're going to lose them.
Well, I understand that.
You should accept them.
You don't have to compromise your belief, though, that marriage, for example, should be between a man and a woman.
But you should accept them.
That's a perfectly legitimate response.
Look, if I'm a gay child and my parent rejects me, then you can't blame me for rejecting my parent.
Exactly.
Okay, alright, so yes, that's clear.
I always, always, always thought it was wrong for parents to in any way diminish their love for a gay child.
It's your child, my dear friends.
And they didn't do anything that was criminal in this regard.
They didn't hold up a bank.
I need to make a few things clear in light of the last discussion.
When I was talking about child, I wasn't talking about a five-year-old.
I wasn't talking about transgender issues.
I was just talking about your adult child says that he or she is gay.
You don't have to change your positions on, let's say, same-sex marriage, but you must not in any way reject your child.
So that's been my position all along for decades.
You love your child.
That's not the same.
I was not talking about transgender.
Your five-year-old says he is a girl.
I would reassure my five-year-old boy that he was a boy.
Or my five-year-old girl that she was a girl.
They're not the same things.
There have always been gays.
Always.
But there have not always been, and certainly not in our society, children who have said that they were the other sex.
This is a new phenomenon.
It is 99% induced by schools and by media, social media.
This is not natural to the human being, to say that they are not who they are in terms of sex.
Gender is largely a manufactured substitute for sex, so as to deny that sex is fixed.
However, today, if you tell your five-year-old who says that he is a girl or she is a boy, If you say, no, no, no, you really are a boy, you really are a girl, you open yourself up to having your child taken away by child protective services.
Yes?
That is what we call totalitarianism.
One of its first characteristics is the undermining of parental authority in society.
I have, at different times in my life, regarded different commandments as the most important of the Ten Commandments.
My current favorite is honor your father and mother, given how widespread the dishonor of fathers and mothers is.
When is a Father's Day, by the way?
Is it this Sunday?
Or is it the following Sunday?
Because I'd like to promote it.
So it's the following Sunday.
Should be promoted.
If you're lucky enough to have a father.
Let's put it that way.
As is increasingly not the case.
But, do not despair.
There are so many Americans fighting for this country and for a reason we may well prevail.
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