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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show

01:03:25

Miseducation

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	Dennis Prager here.
	Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
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	Hi, everybody.
	Welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
	I hope you had a good weekend.
	I'm headed to...
	Let's see, where am I headed to?
	Maryland and South Carolina this week.
	Maryland, because I will be going on a podcast, the Tim Pool podcast, which is very, very popular among young people, especially in their 20s.
	Get my ideas to more and more people.
	This is what has animated me my whole life.
	There really are solutions to most evils in the world, and we shy away from them, and there is now a frontal attack on the solutions to evil.
	What we have entered is the realm of thinking the following.
	This is what animates half of this country at this time.
	I mean well, therefore I do good.
	Good summary, no?
	I mean well, and that is all that counts.
	I'm good, I mean well, Therefore, I do good.
	That's why wisdom is not necessary, because you don't have to measure what you actually do against any standard.
	Forgive me, I want to write that down.
	I mean well.
	Therefore, I do good.
	That's it.
	That's why wisdom is unnecessary.
	So we live in the realm, this is what animates the left.
	They think they're good, they think they mean well, and therefore, if you oppose them, you obviously are not good and do not mean well.
	But I would of course say the same thing if that is the way the right felt.
	But speaking for...
	The right, as it were.
	We have standards to which we have to hold ourselves accountable as well.
	I never heard, I'm not saying this person doesn't exist, I'm sure that such conservatives exist, but I have not heard a conservative in my life say, I mean well, and that's it.
	I mean well.
	That's why conservatives speak about the Bible or the Constitution.
	There is a body of moral wisdom to which they are accountable.
	The left is not accountable to any body of wisdom, period.
	Whether it's Plato or Genesis or Shakespeare.
	It is how you feel.
	That is the whole issue.
	I have written about this all of my life.
	I don't know when I first wrote that we live in the age of feelings.
	But now you can tie it all together.
	I mean well.
	So when I bring in gender fluidity to kindergarten, I'm a kindergarten teacher, you can't attack me because I mean well.
	I want there to be...
	Diversity, equity, and inclusion, even in kindergarten.
	And transgender kids are hurting themselves, and so are queer kids.
	So we need to start as early as possible teaching children about sexual diversity, gender fluidity, and the like.
	So these people, there's no body of wisdom to which they hold themselves accountable.
	They're all old, fuddy, duddy texts that are irrelevant.
	All that is relevant is their heart.
	That is why women are in the forefront of the removal of innocence from children.
	It is largely a women's movement.
	The teachers are women, obviously, in virtually every case in elementary schools.
	They're the principals and the like.
	So they, as it is, men have to battle their predilection to violence and sexual predatory behavior.
	Women have to battle their tendency toward allowing emotions to dominate them.
	It's a struggle for both sexes to battle their nature.
	A point of wisdom that is completely foreign to people on the left.
	You don't battle yourself.
	You battle crappy America.
	You have a beautiful nature.
	Everything is inverted in the world of the left.
	I'm wonderful.
	America stinks.
	That's the way it is, whereas more likely is America has been wonderful with obvious exceptions because it's composed of flawed humans and I am the problem.
	Anyone who says America is beautiful and I am the problem is a conservative.
	Anyone who says America stinks and I am wonderful is on the left.
	Yes, all of this explains so much.
	That's why there's no reason to study any Shakespeare or Socrates or the Roman thinkers, let alone the Bible, which was the text of wisdom for America, until the universities stopped it.
	You had to know Hebrew.
	Until 1800 to graduate Harvard.
	The insignia of Yale is Hebrew from the Torah.
	These were Christians, not Jews, who put that up.
	So that's in a nutshell our issue.
	The Washington Redskins changed their name because people who demanded the change wanted to feel good about themselves.
	That for some reason Redskins was regarded as a racist name.
	even though the Washington Post, which was the biggest agitator to change the Washington team's name, Conducted a very, very intense survey of American Indians, of Native Americans, and asked them about Redskins.
	The vast majority couldn't care less about the name Redskins on the Washington football team.
	Nevertheless, they changed it.
	Because feeling good about themselves is what leftism is about.
	I feel that I'm doing good combating racism.
	So the question, are you doing good, is a wisdom question.
	Are you feeling good is a leftist question.
	And the left wins.
	Anyway, do you know the team's new name?
	I didn't know it until yesterday.
	The commanders.
	How many years was it to Washington Redskins?
	Since it began, I guess.
	Early 20th century?
	There's no concept of keeping traditions alive.
	What's the Cleveland Indians now?
	Cleveland what?
	Guardians.
	Wow.
	Certainly not guardians over wisdom or tradition.
	What's wrong with Indians?
	Is Indians a racist thing?
	Do American Indians live on Indian reservations?
	Maybe they should be changed to Guardian Reservations.
	They started out in Boston, the Washington team?
	In 1932, yeah.
	Okay.
	They relocated in the city of South America.
	Washington Commanders, listen to this.
	This is the Washington Redskins team, now called the Commanders.
	Find its defensive coordinator, Jack Del Rio, $100,000.
	after downplaying the events that took place last year at the Capitol.
	Del Rio compared the January 6th protests at the Capitol with the, quote, riots, looting, and burning, unquote, that destroyed thousands of businesses and cities during the summer of 2020. He was fined by his own team for saying that?
	So you're only allowed to say left-wing things if you're a coach.
	The two most truly awful human beings, the coach of the San Antonio Spurs and the Golden State Warriors, Did you hear what the Warriors coach was saying?
	I'll tell you what he said.
	When we return, the Dennis Prager Show.
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	So, the Washington commanders find its defensive coordinator, a man named Jack Del Rio.
	Washington Commanders is an NFL team, National Football League team.
	It was known as the Redskins for about 80 years until the left in...
	In an act of utter irrationality, got rid of the name, forced them to.
	Del Rio compared the January 6th protests at the Capitol with the, quote, riots, looting, and burning, unquote, that destroyed thousands of businesses and cities during the summer of 2020. This is what he said in a press conference earlier last week.
	Why are we not looking into those things?
	If we're going to talk about it, why are we not looking into those things?
	I see the images on TV. People's livelihoods are being destroyed.
	Businesses are being burned down.
	No problem.
	And then we have a dust-up at the Capitol.
	Nothing burned down.
	And we're going to make that a major deal.
	Every word he said is accurate.
	As I said, the Democrats use the January 6th.
	The way the National Socialists, as they were known in Germany, used the Reichstag fire as an excuse to impose draconian rule in the country.
	I'm not comparing the Democrats to the Nazis, obviously.
	I'm comparing tactic to tactic.
	Was referencing a tweet he made before the press conference in which he asked to hear the whole story on the so-called protests at the Capitol.
	Quote, would love to understand the whole story about why the summer of riots, looting, burning, and destruction of personal property is never discussed, but this is?
	Question mark, question mark, question mark.
	Hashtag common sense.
	Since his comments came under fire, he has since apologized after the team's head coach, Ron Rivera, issued a statement.
	So sad he apologized.
	It is so sad.
	Apologized.
	This is reminiscent of Communist China, where people recant truths that they said under Mao.
	Recanted.
	Ron Rivera, the coach of the team, issued this statement.
	I want to make it clear that our organization will not tolerate any equivalency between those who demanded justice in the wake of George Floyd's murder and the actions of those on January 6 who sought to topple our government.
	Oh, so the people burning down businesses and killing people and burning police cars, they were demanding justice.
	This is the official line of the left.
	Topple our government?
	Has any modern government been toppled by an unarmed mob that destroyed virtually nothing?
	Do you know that they keep repeating, like on CBS, that five officers were killed that day?
	Or killed by the events of January 6th?
	Nobody was.
	No officer was killed by those events.
	The only person killed was Ashley Bobbitt, an unarmed woman breaking in through a glass pane by an officer who has never been investigated.
	His comments do not...
	This is the coach of the Washington team.
	His comments do not reflect the organization's views and are extremely hurtful to our great community here in the DMV. What is DMV? Not the Department of Motor Vehicles.
	What is the DMV? Is that the area in Washington, D.C.? Is that some area?
	You don't know either?
	I usually can guess those things.
	As we saw last night in the hearings, what happened on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was an act of domestic terrorism.
	Guy wearing...
	What was the guy who sat in Nancy Pelosi's chair wearing?
	Remember that?
	He didn't sit...
	There was a guy in a moose hat.
	A guy in a moose hat, he didn't sit in her chair?
	Yes, that's really what you call an insurrection.
	Guy wearing a moose hat.
	A group of citizens attempted to overturn the results of a free and fair election, and as a result, lives were lost.
	Well, that's a lie.
	But it doesn't matter.
	Truth is not a left-wing value.
	So you're not even allowed to ask.
	Get that?
	You're not allowed to ask why is there silence for six months of rioting.
	Nobody's talking about the peaceful protests.
	We're talking about the rioting.
	It stands for District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia.
	District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia.
	Very nice.
	Okay.
	So the team, it's interesting, the team has a view.
	Did you notice that?
	It doesn't reflect the views of the team.
	Really?
	The Washington Commanders has a view.
	Wow.
	And he's fined?
	Is there...
	It's $100,000?
	Serious.
	Fine.
	Wow.
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	Back in a moment.
	The Dennis Prager Show.
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	Hope you had a good weekend.
	I'm Dennis Prager.
	As feminism made women stronger.
	That is the whole...
	Well, not the whole.
	It's one of the two parts of the whole.
	The other part is equal.
	But aside from the falsehood that women make, what, 70 cents to the dollar or 87 cents to the dollar, whatever the term is, The inequalities today are moving in the direction against males.
	colleges are now often 60-40 female-male.
	I actually welcome the development of fewer and fewer males or females going to college.
	That can only be a blessing to the society.
	So has feminism lived up to this great claim of, I am a woman, hear me roar.
	We are strong.
	Remember that?
	Why don't you play that, Sean?
	I am a woman, hear me roar.
	Who did that?
	Why do I think Helen Reddy?
	Yeah, I can't believe I remember that.
	Yeah, I am a woman, hear me roar.
	And I remember thinking...
	Any woman who has any dignity and strength would be so offended by that song.
	Anyway.
	Anyway.
	I am a woman.
	Hear me roar.
	In numbers too big to ignore.
	And I know too much to go back and pretend.
	Cause I've heard it all before.
	And I've been down there on the floor.
	No one's ever gonna keep me down again.
	Well, yes, I'm wise.
	But it's wisdom all the pain.
	Yes, I paid the price.
	But look how much I gained.
	If I have to, I can do anything.
	I am strong.
	I am invincible.
	I am woman.
	Isn't it amazing?
	I am strong, I am invincible.
	I remember, I was very young.
	I was in college.
	And I remember the songs.
	I was almost certain I remember the year.
	And this is the 70s.
	And I remember thinking, as I was 22 years old, and I remember thinking, this is so degrading to women.
	I am invincible.
	I can do anything.
	Hear me roar.
	I thought, whoa, God, it's so sad.
	I asked myself, could I imagine my mother singing that?
	Right?
	And is that a fair question?
	Hey, Ma, are you invincible?
	Do I hear you roar?
	My mother, for the record, was a full-time career woman.
	Contrary to what you might have suspected, I was not raised by a full-time mom.
	And she ran a 400-bed nursing home.
	She ran it somewhat like a tyrant, which is why it worked out so well.
	She did a great job.
	But the thought that she would go around singing I am invincible or hear me roar and I can do anything...
	Oh, God.
	Pathetic.
	But that was the claim of feminism.
	It made women strong.
	So I have a theory that feminism has, in fact, made women weak.
	I believe that In the last two generations, American women, by and large, of course, there are many, many exceptions, but as a generalization, which always allows for exceptions, women are weaker than ever in American history.
	So let me give you the latest example.
	It's the subject of my column this week that comes out tomorrow.
	Apparently the Washington Post is engaged in a real brouhaha, or was last week.
	Because a Washington Post reporter, Dave Weigel, retweeted a joke.
	Here is the joke.
	Every girl is bi, you just have to figure out if it's polar or sexual.
	He retweeted that joke.
	It's a funny joke.
	A healthy woman knows it's a funny joke and moves on with her life.
	But you can't joke about women.
	You can not only joke about men, you can say anything you want about men.
	You can condemn men in the most passionate, negative terms.
	And that's in fact the norm.
	But you can't even make a joke about women.
	Because women are weaker today than they were, my mother would have laughed.
	My wife would laugh.
	The wives of every man in my life would laugh.
	I don't know any weak women.
	Isn't that interesting?
	Do you?
	I mean, when I think of our wives, It's sort of preposterous to use the term, but they are hardly feminists.
	The joke was retweeted last week by Dave Weigel, a Washington Post reporter.
	He retweeted it because he thought it was funny.
	He thought it was funny because it is funny.
	But...
	Unless a joke is at the expense of straight white males, such humor is banned by the left.
	A real brouhaha at the Washington Post started when a colleague of Weigel's, Felicia Sonmez, complained that the tweet was misogynistic.
	On the Washington Post internal website, she wrote that Weigel's retweet sent, quote, A confusing message about what the Post's values are.
	The Post's chief spokesperson, Christine Karate, then issued a statement condemning Weigel.
	Quote, editors have made clear to the staff that the tweet was reprehensible and demeaning language.
	Why is this not clear?
	Editors have made clear to staff that the tweet was reprehensible.
	Oh, I see.
	There should have been a comma.
	And demeaning, but that's the way I got it from the Washington Post site, was reprehensible and demeaning language or actions like that will not be tolerated.
	Got it?
	It was reprehensible and demeaning.
	A joke.
	Just a joke.
	Every single person I will cite at the Washington Post in a position of power who condemned the joke, condemned Weigel for retweeting it, is a female.
	Just for the record.
	A weak female.
	Just for the record.
	The newspaper's national editor, Matea Gold, a female, wrote, I just want to assure all of you that the Post is committed to maintaining a respectful workplace for everyone.
	We do not tolerate demeaning language or actions.
	Yes.
	You're demeaned if there's a joke about women.
	The Post's executive editor, Sally Busby, added, The Washington Post is committed to an inclusive and respectful environment free of harassment, discrimination, or bias of any sort.
	This is harassment?
	This is harassment?
	This is discrimination?
	A joke!
	It's a joke!
	Post-video technician Brianna Meir supported Sonmez for, quote, speaking out against harassment, discrimination, and sexism.
	These tweets, retweets not only hurt women in our newsroom, But make it extremely difficult to do our best work.
	We'll be back.
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	Hi, everybody.
	So my question is, has feminism rendered women stronger?
	Which was along with equity.
	More equality, its aim.
	My contention is that feminism has made women weaker than ever before in American history.
	The women of my mother's generation, I suspect, were far stronger than the average woman today, especially the college-educated women, and especially those in academia and media.
	They're not strong.
	They're incredibly weak.
	Of the brouhaha in the Washington Post when a reporter retweeted a joke about women.
	It was a funny joke, actually.
	It's all it is.
	It's just a funny joke.
	All jokes are at the expense of somebody.
	It's just the way jokes work.
	If a joke had been told about men, it would be a non-issue.
	Men would regard it generally as a non-issue, though at the rate we're going, men will be as weak as feminism has rendered women.
	Probably are by now.
	Neither sex is exhibiting much strength.
	So I just read to you all the heads of the Washington Post, all female, condemning.
	The toxic work environment.
	The joke.
	A retweeted joke made a toxic work environment.
	Toxic.
	Poisonous.
	Destructive in the extreme.
	Harassment.
	Discrimination.
	Bias.
	So another post reporter.
	Finally we get to a male.
	Jose A. Del Real tweeted that Weigel's retweet of the joke was, quote, terrible and unacceptable, naturally.
	However, to his credit, Del Real added that because Weigel apologized, Weigel had immediately tweeted, I just removed a retweet of an offensive joke.
	I apologize and did not mean to cause any harm.
	Sanmez, the woman who led the charge against Weigel at the Washington Post and others should stop attacking him.
	As a result, Del Real was attacked, so much so that he temporarily deactivated his Twitter account.
	When he reactivated it, he posted a statement saying he had faced, quote, an unrelenting series of attacks intended to tarnish my professional and personal reputation.
	Why was he so attacked?
	For saying the man apologized, I think you should leave him alone and show some compassion.
	He also accused Sanmez of, quote, repeated and targeted public harassment of a colleague, namely Weigel.
	Apparently, additional Post employees began criticizing one another over the issue, and according to CNN, quote, by Monday morning, that's last Monday morning, tension at the Post was still high.
	Another left-wing site, the Daily Beast, put it this way, a multi-front war within WAPO, that's the Washington Post, is raging.
	Sonmez, who had previously sued the Washington Post for sexism, A suit she lost has since been let go by the paper.
	The Post had suspended Weigel for a month without pay.
	In addition to providing the nation with another example of the left's meanness, hypersensitivity, and war on humor unless directed at white males, this episode also reveals something important about feminism.
	I'm reading from my column that will come out tomorrow.
	In the true Orwellian spirit of the left, the overriding claim of feminists that feminism empowers women is the opposite of the truth.
	Over the past half-century, modern feminism has actually rendered generations of American women weak.
	It is worthy of note that except for Del Real, who called for civility and compassion toward Weigel, every Washington Post actor named in this story, Felicia Sanmez, Matea Gold, Chris Karate, Breonna Mir, That's why they were horrified by the joke.
	Few men, despite the fact that feminist activism has also rendered a great many American men weak, would find a similar joke about men offensive.
	Most men would actually find it funny.
	For the record, as I noted to you earlier, Every man I know is married to a strong woman.
	The notion that men are not attracted to or threatened or intimidated by strong women is a feminist lie.
	While undoubtedly some men seek weak women, the majority find weakness in women, as in men, quite unappealing.
	In feminist newspeak, Orwell's term for the totalitarian redefining of language, When applied to women, strong means easily offended, perceiving oneself as a victim, and easily intimidated by men.
	Tragically, many women, especially young women, have come to accept those definitions of strong.
	No wonder the depression rates among young women are the highest ever measured.
	That's correct.
	The fact that you can tell a joke that ribs men, but you can't tell a joke that ribs women, doesn't that reinforce old sexist ideas that women are hyper emotional?
	The irony is feminism has actually said to us, you really do need another standard for women.
	We're not that strong.
	It's really an example, another example, because it really is remarkable that this went so unspoken about.
	But who's going to speak about it?
	The left?
	Without consulting a single Miss America contestant, they dropped the swimsuit competition two years ago in the name of feminism.
	Women were rendered sex objects wearing swimsuits.
	So that's another example of women being weak, not strong.
	Ask the contestants.
	By the way, the whole notion a woman could do what she wants with her own body is another lie.
	Of course the left doesn't believe that.
	Had they put up for a vote with all the Miss America contestants, would you like a swimsuit competition or not?
	It probably would have won 47-3.
	I'm assuming three women would have objected.
	That's right.
	God forbid you should be seen in any way sexually.
	You're too fragile for that.
	We don't want that.
	It's just another example of feminist weakening of women.
	Back in a moment.
	The Dennis Prager Show.
	Hi, everybody.
	I'm Dennis Prager.
	One of my favorite people in the American media is Pete Hegseth.
	He's co-host of Fox& Friends Weekend, America's number one cable morning show.
	Talking about number one, his book, which is officially out tomorrow, is already number one on Amazon.
	I need you to understand, as I was just saying off the air to Pete, What an achievement that is, because on Amazon, it means of every single book published, that means fiction, nonfiction, cookbooks, children's books, erotic books.
	I don't know how much they're selling in that category these days.
	Hopefully not much.
	It depends.
	Anyway, the...
	The Achievement is worthy because it's a very important book, Pete.
	The Battle for the American Mind, Uprooting a Century of Miseducation.
	It is about what is happening in education.
	Pete, it's a delight to have you on the show.
	Always.
	Thank you so much, Dennis.
	I appreciate it.
	You know, let me say this first and foremost.
	Myself and my co-author, David Goodwin, stand on the shoulders of you.
	And what you do at Prager and what you have done to expose and what you have done to wake so many people up to the reality of not just higher education.
	Yes, we've all known.
	You'll notice the title of the book Battle for the American Mind, very similar to Closing of the American Mind.
	Alan Bloom wrote that in 1987 about what was happening in higher education.
	We're not purporting to say ours is at the same level, but we're trying to do the same thing on K through 12. This is not a higher ed problem.
	This is a kindergarten problem.
	An elementary, middle school, high school problem.
	And the key to any recovery is understanding the depth of your problem.
	And that's why we spend seven chapters laying out the unauthorized history of American education and how the progressives over 100 years ago intentionally targeted the ingredients of our Judeo-Christian Western background because they knew they had to remove that.
	In order to advance their atheistic societal control, which is ultimately manifesting today.
	So if you look at the lunacy of critical race theory and 1619 project and gender pronouns for six-year-olds, it seemed to happen so fast.
	But Hemingway once wrote, it happened gradually.
	And then suddenly.
	And they've so consolidated their power in the classroom, they feel emboldened to come out for who they really are, which is cultural Marxists.
	And we lay it all out in the book.
	That is a great summary of what you've done, and that's why it's so important.
	And I'm thrilled that it's number one.
	By the way, just as a side note, I'll be very curious if the New York Times lists your book as well.
	What do you think?
	You and me both.
	You and me both.
	Hopefully we make it big enough that they can't ignore it, and we're going to continue the blitz to get the word out.
	Yeah, things like that are nice, but I don't count on that.
	By the way, I will fly to New York and buy you a cigar if the New York Times reviews your book.
	Oh, wouldn't that be a goal?
	Well, you'd be a part of the reason they did if people buy enough copies of Battle for the American Mind.
	I will take you up on that, Dennis, for sure.
	But I'll tell you, the reaction we've had so far is a reflection.
	Of the thirst that people have for an answer to the lunacy and what they can do about it.
	And frankly, our side of the aisle, except for people like you, your organization, have largely ignored education as a key political issue.
	Even Donald Trump, and not until the end with the 1776 Commission, it's been one of these, well, we're kind of for vouchers or school choice, and that's it.
	There's never been really a concerted attempt to expose what the left has done.
	And as a result...
	We're losing big time.
	Is John Dewey the big villain?
	He's one of them.
	Obviously, he's the father of...
	Our progressive, not the public school system per se, but the progressive strain of our public school system.
	And how could he not be?
	He founded it.
	He wrote about it in the New Republic prolifically.
	He was at the Education Department at Columbia's Teachers College, the most prominent in the country.
	He was the founder of the American Federation of Teachers.
	He's the honorary life chair of the National Education Association, both of which went on to become the most powerful teachers unions in America.
	His atheist socialist He was a humanist, ultimately, is all over the initial trajectory and experiments of how the early progressives tried to use school to create societal change.
	He studied what the suffragettes and the prohibitionists did in 1870 when they put third grade curriculum in, anti-alcohol curriculum, and saw how successful that was that 40 years later it was a constitutional amendment to prohibition in our Constitution.
	They saw that the classroom was the key to societal change.
	So did John Dewey.
	But his work was picked up by critical theorists like Max Korkheimer and Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt School, who also landed at the Columbia Teachers College.
	enter the unions.
	You could go on and on.
	The Department of Education, enter Howard Zinn, enter Common Core.
	The whole timeline, once you put it together, and myself and the co-author did, it's not that one person had a grand conspiracy.
	It's that every aspect of that pipeline, they may not have known where it was going to end.
	But they knew where it wasn't going.
	And it wasn't going in the direction of our founding ideals.
	It wasn't going in the direction of our Judeo-Christian values.
	And they used whatever they needed to in the process to include a new pledge that didn't say under God, including a flag in the front of the classroom as incremental steps of removing other values so they could get to the point where we are today where they're scrapping it all and they're pressing their advantage.
	I don't even know if there's an answer to this, but I still want to ask you.
	What animated these people?
	That's the key question.
	And I've been asked this a few times.
	I ultimately believe when you dig down underneath the surface, these were all atheists.
	This is a religious battle.
	Ultimately, they were trying to they believe man was perfectible, that government could be the vehicle toward that.
	And it comes down to not believing in original sin, not believing in our fallen nature, not believing that we were in redemption, not understanding human nature, which our founders understood when they set up a government meant to both restrain it and channel it.
	And if you believe that man is perfectible and you want to be the engine of that and use science to do so, the first thing you have to do is strip away our fallen nature or the reflection that there is someone else, a higher power in charge.
	Marxists and others and their views of equity outcomes and using government in that direction took over.
	But at every step, these are atheists and humanists who reject God and believe they can be the decider of man's fate.
	And through schooling or through government control, they want to pull the levers.
	So it sounds simplistic, but the more research you do, you realize underlying it, they're rejecting the biblical narrative.
	I agree with every single word you said.
	Just earlier in my show, I was noting, because last week, and I'll let you know as soon as it's up, you'll find this fascinating.
	I debated, of all things, a rabbi.
	And I say of all things because I wouldn't have expected an Orthodox rabbi to take this position.
	But the subject of the debate was, are humans innately good?
	I said no.
	He said yes.
	And my...
	My contention is that that question is the second most important in life.
	The first is, is there a God?
	The second is, are humans innately good?
	So I am completely on board with you.
	I completely agree that it is ultimately a religious battle.
	Whether these people were atheists or not, it's a loathing of traditional Judeo-Christian values, and specifically of Christianity, and I say this as a committed Jew, that that is the last obstacle to the undoing of this country.
	And that's why I worry about the Christian community.
	Will it stay strong?
	Do you have any thoughts on that?
	Yes, I do.
	First of all, that's why the progressives targeted God first.
	Their early Gary plan and other schemes of Dewey created new schools that had pull-out periods so that parents wouldn't be too outraged because you still did religion, but it was off-site.
	And then they debated it and brought it to New York City.
	It was always about pushing God out of the classroom.
	They knew that from the beginning.
	Let me say this.
	1970s was the darkest place for Christian education in America because classical Christian education had been completely buried.
	Now, we're talking about the type of education our founders would have received.
	Steeped in history and the great books, Latin, Greek, they understood the ancient texts and the big ideas and grappled with them through their education.
	That had been buried in 1970 to the point, at least in K-12, where it didn't exist.
	There's a classical Christian education movement that's grown since then.
	It's up to 400, almost 500 brick and mortar schools across America.
	It's got hundreds of thousands in online, like much like what you do, co-ed or co-op homeschooling options.
	It's going to create a generation of young men and women who are at least grappling with the big ideas, who understand that we live in a kingdom, that it's not just school with a little bit of God.
	Let me remind everybody.
	I want everybody to read it.
	Battle for the American Mind.
	Pete Hegseth.
	It's up at DennisPrager.com.
	What should parents do is my next question.
	Pete Hegseth is a serious thinker and a major figure in cable news with co-host of Fox& Friends Weekend, Battle for the American Mind, Uprooting a Century of Miseducation.
	What has been done, everybody knows.
	Well, not everybody, unfortunately.
	A lot of people know what's happened to the universities.
	This is about K-12.
	Even your subtitle is important.
	Uprooting a century of miseducation.
	People don't know how long ago this began.
	It's another value in reading your book.
	Again, the battle for the American mind.
	It's up at DennisPrager.com.
	So I said I would ask you, because I am asked this any time the subject arises, by callers, even people stopping me at airports.
	What do I do?
	What do you recommend to people knowing the corruption of our schools?
	What should they do?
	Pull your kids and grandkids out.
	Pull them out of government schools.
	Okay, one minute.
	Pete Hexeth, I think I could spend four hours asking you questions and not find an area in which we disagree.
	Well, that's a compliment to me because I've been listening to you for a long time, so I appreciate that very much.
	Thank you.
	That means a lot.
	But we're all students.
	Of yours and others who came before us who helped wake us up to the reality of our moment.
	And I try to avoid momentism.
	Ours is the most urgent.
	But when you consider the history and understand what's been done and the full control of the educational industrial complex of the left-wing machine driven by atheists and Marxists and what's in a textbook in your kid's school, regardless of who you elect to the school board.
	You should be running out of there because you're running out of Democrat camp.
	And that's to put it kindly.
	Democrat camp.
	I love the term.
	Camp Democrat.
	It is.
	Yes.
	Where do you send your kid?
	Oh, I send my kid to a 10-month-a-year camp.
	That's what it is.
	And then you hope to deprogram it on Sunday morning or on Saturday over the evening meal.
	And you're not going to.
	In fact, early progressives wrote about that.
	They wrote, what hope do the theists have with their Sunday school versus our secular 40 hours of instruction each week?
	They knew that once they cornered the market.
	So I know it's difficult.
	I'll use another word of the left.
	Implicit bias.
	We all have our own.
	Biases toward public education or the warm glow of if it was good enough for us then it's good enough for our kids or I know the principal or I know a teacher who's a Christian or a patriot and my school district's not that bad or I pay the property taxes or I really want them to play sports.
	Those are all things that all of us have said at some point.
	But if you actually look at the only legacy you can leave it is whether or not you left.
	Your kids and grandkids an opportunity to fight for their republic.
	And right now, we're outsourcing that to people who have views antithetical to ours with no real solution to go up against it.
	And that's why, as a military person, when I looked at the scope of the problem with my co-author, David Goodman, by the way, he runs the Association of Classical Christian Schools, we said the best tactic we can use right now is tactical retreat.
	It's tactical retreat into an insurgency.
	It's a tactical retreat to regroup.
	And then what's the war of the weak against the strong?
	It's insurgency.
	And so we're in phase one.
	Mao wrote about insurgency.
	I studied it and I taught it in Afghanistan.
	We're in phase one.
	We're regrouping.
	We're identifying allies.
	We are building schools and building networks and creating an alternate ecosystem in which truth can flourish.
	Real liberal arts education can happen only then.
	We have a hope of creating a crop of young people who understand where our rights, where truth comes from.
	Then we can begin our comeback.
	But hoping we're going to protest at school boards.
	I liken it in the book, Dennis, to charging a machine gun nest, a fortified machine gun nest with Nerf guns.
	We salute your efforts, but you're all going to die.
	It's not going to work.
	It might feel good.
	My mom protested at school boards in the 1990s in a public school system.
	She pulled me out of certain things, but nothing changed at that middle school and high school.
	It's time to regroup and then politically prioritize education as conservatives as issue number one, whereas it's always been a secondary or third tier issue for us.
	We're winning wars, fighting wars and fighting for the economy while the left burrows into the education system.
	And now they control it all.
	What is the...
	I don't have an answer to this.
	Sometimes, obviously, anyone who interviews has an answer that they have.
	I don't have an answer to this.
	What does the average parent in America who has traditional American Judeo-Christian values think when they keep their kid in a regular private or public school?
	Do they think like, I guess, any one of us who flies regularly?
	You know, the odds are overwhelming that I won't get into a crash.
	The odds are overwhelming my child will not be ruined by this school.
	Is that their mindset?
	It is a question I have grappled with throughout this entire project because in my peer group, both from where I grew up and where I live now, there's lots of wonderful, patriotic, conservatively inclined, but not really political people who would agree with everything that we're saying, but still send their kids to the local public school.
	I think it's the whole, everything will be just fine.
	You know, we're good parents.
	We've got good kids.
	Yeah, so that's what it is.
	The teachers are nice.
	Right.
	My pilot is a good pilot.
	We'll be fine.
	That's it.
	And then you can't minimize the mountain of excuses, some legit and some not, of, you know, I pay the property taxes.
	I moved to this zip code.
	You know, I paid for the levy.
	This is what we're going to do.
	It was good enough for me.
	It's going to be good enough for them.
	And that's why we hope this book...
	It's a wake-up call.
	Some people can't move, can't change either.
	I get it.
	Finances are a real challenge.
	Life situations are a real challenge.
	But like anything else, if you want to make it happen, you can with enough intentionality.
	These people who say that they can't do it for financial reasons should talk to parents whose kids were estranged from the parents because of the schools.
	The book is Battle for the American Mind.
	Pete Hexeth will be back.
	The Dennis Prager Show.
	Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here, Pete Hegseth of Fox News, Fox and Friends Weekend, the number one cable morning show, and deservedly so.
	Pete Hegseth has written a very serious book.
	Why did I say serious?
	I want you to know, first of all, I love the word serious, but secondly, because you might think that having a popular show would mean that...
	One of the hosts would not, in fact, be involved in such a serious endeavor as writing about what has happened to education, K-12 specifically, in America in the last hundred years.
	But in fact, it's an extremely serious book.
	You will understand how deep the roots are.
	People don't know that.
	And Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin do.
	The book is Battle for the American Mind.
	It's already number one on Amazon.
	Which is a big deal, folks, because as I said earlier, the Amazon list is every single book published, fiction, nonfiction, etc.
	By the way, you'll get a kick out of this, Pete.
	One of my truly favorite achievements is that, I don't know if you know, but I'm writing a five-volume commentary on the first five books of the Bible called The Rational Bible.
	So Genesis and Exodus are out.
	Deuteronomy is coming out in October.
	Next year, Numbers, then finally, Leviticus.
	So it's a major, major work.
	Obviously, it's very difficult.
	And to my utter shock, I don't think you're shocked about how successful your book is.
	I was shocked.
	So the first volume that came out was Exodus, and it was number two on Amazon.
	Here is what you will really enjoy.
	Number one was a book about a gay rabbit.
	So there was a time in American history when the one and two books in America were about a gay rabbit and a commentary on the book of Exodus.
	That sounds about right.
	Yes.
	Doesn't it?
	Yes.
	It summarizes the time in which we live.
	At one suspect, it was not a crossover of readers.
	No.
	Fundamentally serious and fundamentally lunatic.
	Yes.
	That is...
	And mine, by the way, has been crisscrossing with a sort of a chiclet TikTok novel from 2016. TikTok is, you know, something will go viral on TikTok these days, and it's a love story, scurned fiction book that keeps...
	It's been out for six years, but it's gotten a new bump because of TikTok influencers.
	So that's what...
	You never know what you're up against.
	You never know.
	That is exactly right.
	Anyway, I was...
	Quite happy with number two for a commentary on the Bible.
	Anyway, battle for the American mind it is.
	And I asked Pete last segment, what should parents do?
	And as I did not know what he would say, I give you my word, but to the word it was what I have been begging people.
	And that is take your kids out of most schools.
	I want to deal with another aspect of schools.
	And I don't know if you cover it in the book, because I'm not done with it.
	I just really got it.
	But I will read every word of it.
	And that is Christian schools.
	Because even there, and Jewish schools, which I know better, even there now, you don't know what you're sending your kid to.
	Well, very much you don't.
	In fact, David Goodwin did a great job, and we both worked together on what happened inside the Christian movement once it abdicated its education responsibility.
	I will say the Catholic schools is the one place where they remain committed to education as part of the spiritual life of the church.
	What happened in Christianity is it split.
	It split about the time the progressives were going to work in the classrooms, and one half of it went in a social justice route, effectively enabling the progressives and supporting theirs.
	Sort of more humanistic causes.
	And the other one became more fundamentalist.
	And it became much more about the saving of souls, which is a great task.
	But if you're only interested in saving souls, you ignore the tilling of the soil of the kingdom.
	That exists here on Earth, and education became a secondary interest or component of those more evangelical churches.
	That's around the time that the concept of Sunday school came about.
	So Sunday school hasn't been around forever.
	It used to be the church was the school and the community all in one.
	Sunday school was a product of the church giving up the educational side of the spectrum, at least on the evangelical or Protestant side.
	And saying, instead, we're going to just do it on Sundays after the church service or while the church service is going on, and we're going to hand the function of education over to the newly formed public schools, which for now reflect our values, and therefore that's okay.
	And over time, that split and chasm just widened and widened and widened.
	I grew up in a very strong evangelical church in the state of Minnesota.
	It's grown to be a huge church there, and I think it does great work, but it does almost no work.
	On the educational side.
	All right, hold on there.
	I want to develop.
	Yes, I need to develop this theme with you.
	Battle for the American Mind is up at DennisPrager.com.
	Uprooting the century of miseducation.
	Pete Hexeth, my guest, and he's written it with David Goodwin.
	I want to remind you of a product that I strongly commend to your attention.
	Should you have tingling and...
	Numbness in your feet or hands.
	It's called nerve renew.
	It's a lousy condition.
	For some people, it's debilitating.
	It was never truly debilitating for me, but I've had it much of my life in my feet.
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	Dennis Prager here.
	Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
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