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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:10:23
Meaning from Destruction
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hello, my friends.
I'm Dennis Prager, and yes, I hope you had a good weekend.
I am blessed.
My weekends are good.
I don't take anything for granted.
Hmm.
Which makes me think about something.
Just having said, I don't take anything for granted.
By definition, that means I cannot be a leftist.
I can be a liberal.
I can be a conservative.
A defining characteristic of the left is taking everything for granted.
Specifically, the blessings of America.
It takes a certain psychopathology to speak of this country as evil.
It is psychopathologic.
There is no reason in terms of political science, morality, sociology...
To have that attitude toward America.
It comes from a psychopathologic place in a person's soul.
And I don't know where that is because I can certainly relate to sin.
I don't have a pure nature.
That's why I've tried to work on my nature as I was taught to do in my yeshiva, in my religious Jewish training until I was 19. I don't get that one.
It comes from the great problem as described in the French word of ennui, which is more than boredom.
It's sort of a death of a soul.
It is so bored with the status quo that it seeks excitement, in this case, in anti-racism.
All the good people are anti-racist.
But to be anti-racist in America is to be fighting a fight that should not be on the front of our agenda of evils to fight because there is so little racism in America and most of what there is is from the left.
When you support things like black dormitories, lower standards for blacks as blacks, You are the racist.
This is all basic.
It's all obvious.
If you're not burdened by a psychopathologic yearning for meaning by destroying.
Meaning through destruction.
How's that?
My friend Mike, who's listening, sent it to me in Latin.
Meaning through destruction.
Telos.
Oh, I think I might have hit.
No, telos is Greek.
Oh, bummer.
Yeah, I can't say it.
Meaning through destruction.
I want to write that one down.
I'm not sure that it quite works.
You don't think what quite works?
Meaning through destruction.
You don't think that it works in what sense?
Well, can you have meaning?
Can you destroy and have meaning at the same time?
Oh, yeah.
Can you destroy and have meaning at the same time?
Of course.
Because destruction implies a lack of meaning.
Oh, they have a lack of meaning.
Yes, it implies a lack of meaning, but they have a lack of meaning.
Of course, I'm dialoguing with my producer.
And, oh, that's to destroy...
Look, I think that was true of a lot of horrible movements.
I'm not saying they're Nazis, I'm not comparing them to Nazis, but one of their slogans is, I never feel so alive is when I'm killing.
The reason my producer has a problem with that concept...
Of meaning through destruction.
It's so alien to him, it would be like saying to him, something that would be so alien to his nature.
It would be like saying, because I know him, fitness through sleeping.
Fitness through TV watching.
So it makes no sense to him.
But I understand it.
When you're burning a police car, when you take over a district in Seattle, when you destroy the university and every other good thing in the country, you feel important.
It's not only meaning through destruction, it is importance through destruction.
My meaningless life now takes on adrenaline-producing meaning.
I think that one of the emotions or one of the characteristics of the human being that I have in the past neglected to appreciate its significance is excitement.
Is an adrenaline producer.
Is an endorphin producer.
And those are highs.
People seek excitement.
They want to be excited.
American middle class, bourgeois, make a family, have kids, go to the PTA meeting, go to church on Sunday.
Root for your favorite team.
That strikes those who identify as left, as woke, as progressive, as the quintessence of boredom.
Why do you think change is such an important word for people on the left?
Change is exciting.
Status quo is boring.
They have no excitement that is healthy.
So they yearn for any excitement.
I'll tell you, the watching, the destruction, that brings a major level of meaning to these people.
I'll say this for my producer's benefit.
It is like the arsonist who hangs around to watch the fire.
That's a thrill.
It may even be an erotic thrill.
Why do they so often want to see the fire that they have started?
Ah, now I have importance.
I am an insignificant nothing.
But when I make a fire, when I destroy, I have made a difference.
People yearn to make a difference.
If the difference is awful or not, Is of no consequence, the pyromaniac does not ask, is my fire beneficial?
No leftist asks, is defunding the police beneficial?
Is teaching five-year-olds that they're not a boy or a girl, they'll decide one day if they'll decide at all?
Is that beneficial?
Is it beneficial to have rendered our universities?
Closed-minded, narrow-focused institutions where truth is of no consequence?
That doesn't matter.
When you ask those questions, you leave the left.
All because I said I don't take having good weekends for granted.
I have this ability to follow the train of thought, even if the train has gone a hundred miles in a different direction.
But life is interrelated.
What is their favorite word?
Not interrelated.
What is their word?
Intersectional.
Oh, God, that's so right.
Life is intersectional.
There you go.
It was said with difficulty.
I get alerts on my name to see what people are saying, what things of mine are being spread.
And you know what I find the most interesting about the ones who really can't stand me, loathe me, hate me, is how helpful they are, in most cases, to my spreading My word.
Whenever I am quoted for more than a minute, as opposed to one sentence out of context, which they're professionally adept at doing as well, I feel good.
People who have never heard me got a chance to actually hear something I said.
It was one of the things that was up this weekend on one of these sites that devotes time.
To me and to PragerU, I have a lot to report to you, including the latest from the man charged with murder in New York for defending his life.
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Hello, my friends.
My two spouses differ with each other on this one.
It's a rare time.
I know I joke about it that I'm married both to Alan Estrin and to my wife, but in very, very many ways there's a lot of truth to that.
I don't say it as cute, it's actually beautiful.
And I'm sure I'm not the only one in life who has that same-sex friend bond and a wife or a husband where you have...
A girlfriend, a female friend that close.
Anyway, I wasn't kidding when I said to him his soul is so pure that he can't relate to the idea that people find meaning in destruction.
But this is my wife's I am.
I don't follow.
What doesn't he agree with?
He doesn't think others can find meaning by destroying?
This is very rare that it's two against one.
So, you know, if it ever happens, it's two against me.
That's not uncommon.
Oh, wow.
Hi, everybody.
That's right.
Oh, so she looked it up, and she got Idest Propter Exitium.
Or idest propter interitus.
If you don't love Latin, you're deaf.
That's my view.
I lovest Latinest.
Oh, Latinx.
That's it.
Latinx.
The New York Times uses Latinx, doesn't it?
Check that out.
I don't need to vilify the New York Times more than it does it to itself.
But I think it does.
Latinx?
God.
The destruction of English.
So last week I covered the story of a bodega owner.
How would you describe a bodega to those who are not familiar?
Small store?
Convenience store?
In New York City, I think in the Harlem area.
He's been there for many years.
He came to America from the Dominican Republic and is widely regarded as a beautiful man.
61 years old, and a woman came in with her daughter, and multiple attempts with her government card to pay for the potato chips, and she wouldn't have the girl put back the potato chips, Took the potato chips back.
And she started cursing him and said she's going to call, amazingly, her N-word friend to come and take care of him.
Guy has a rap sheet of violent defenses.
So here is the latest, because I had a call last week.
Sweet guy.
And he thought maybe the story is more morally complex than I had depicted it.
But it turns out it is not more morally complex than I had depicted it.
And if I can find, here it is, I found it.
You know, there is a rule in life that what you're looking for is always the last.
But there is one exception.
What is the exception to the rule that the paper you're looking for is the last one?
You'll love it.
If you look first at the last one, it's the first one.
That's the one exception.
Daily Mail, July 10. New video footage reveals that a New York City bodega worker charged with murder.
That's why I covered it.
Charged with murder by the Soros-funded despicable human being, as all these district attorneys.
These are despicable people, funded by a despicable man named George Soros, a man whose life is devoted to meaning through destruction.
I have a theory on the man.
I won't offer it now, but I have written it up.
I wrote it up about ten years ago, maybe longer.
Look up Dennis Prager, George Soros, and you will see my theory about what animates him.
New video footage reveals that a New York City bodega worker charged with murder.
$250,000 bond for defending his life against the man attacking him.
He tried to calm an angry customer when he ended up stabbing to death in self-defense when the man came behind the counter and attacked him.
Jose Alba.
61 was freed from jail last week after his bail was allowed following a public outcry.
Alba is charged with second-degree murder after fatally stabbing 37-year-old career criminal Austin Simon.
Video obtained by the New York Post reveals the bodega worker.
New York Post does a lot of good work.
A shout-out to the New York Post.
Was trying to avoid confrontation with Simon in the minutes leading up to the July 1st stabbing.
Papa, I don't want a problem, Papa.
Alba calmly tells Simon as the man angrily storms into the Hamilton Heights bodega and walks around the counter to confront the clerk.
Simon charged into the Blue Moon convenience store.
Minutes after his girlfriend tried to buy a bag of chips for her daughter, but her benefits card was declined.
The woman who claimed Alba snatched the bag of chips from the child is heard on the video asking Alba, Did you put food?
Alba responds that he'll try her card another time.
In other words, did you put in it for food?
Because the card doesn't allow for you to buy a watch.
Okay.
Did you put food?
Okay, Mama.
Let me do it another time.
My God, he says to her as she insists, there's money on there.
But he scans the card multiple times and hands it back to her, telling her it's not working.
By the way, just let me ask all of you, if your card were declined, Would you then still take the item?
You would be annoyed at your card company, at the bank, but you can't take it out on the person who is then out of product and money.
It's not the restaurant's fault or the convenience store's fault.
The edited footage cuts to show other customers in the bodega as the woman is heard yelling out of the camera, out of view of the camera.
I'll tell you what she yelled.
We'll have to do some beeping out.
We'll be back.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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Howdy, my friends!
And even those of you who don't consider yourself a friend, howdy to you too.
I'm continuing to read to you about this poor guy.
His life is somewhat ruined here.
Even if he's not going to continue to be in jail, he fears for his life, for having protected himself.
Against a man who attacked him who is black.
So the mother, and it's about midnight, she has a benefits card, and it doesn't work, the card, the government benefits card.
It won't take it.
So the edited footage cuts to show other customers in the bodega as the woman is heard yelling out of you from the camera, "You can't touch my daughter, don't snatch that out of my daughter, you effing piece of you effing piece of S." A word on that.
This girl Scream curses.
I'm curious.
How many of you did your mother or father scream at a stranger, you effing piece of S? Do you know when I receive mail, and it's not often, I won't make that clear, and I don't get to read all my mail to begin with, but...
I try to skim a fair amount.
And so whenever I receive a mail from someone who says that to me, you're an effing piece of S. That will be actually the content of the email.
And if they actually have their name, most people are too cowardly to have a real name as their email address or their signature.
But those who do, I have on occasion written back to them.
And I've written back something to this effect.
I'm just curious, are you a parent?
You have a child.
The reason I ask is that I don't think you are a parent.
Because...
I don't think you would want your child to know the types of emails you write.
I've seen my parents angry, but I never saw them call anybody that.
Did you ever see that with your parents?
Does this girl have a father in her life?
Why not?
This is not a condemnation of all single mothers.
I married a single mother.
But when you have an 80% out of wedlock rate among blacks, if you care about blacks at all, you have to lament that fact.
So let's presume the girl doesn't have a father in her life.
She might.
Why is she in a convenience store at midnight at that age to begin with?
Probably because there's so little discipline at home.
And this is what she sees her mother do.
I'm not done.
The woman had reported that Alba snatched the bag of chips from her daughter's hands when they couldn't pay.
She continues, I'm going to bring my N-word.
Isn't that amazing?
This is quite a woman.
I'm going to bring my...
By the way, just for the record, the fact that we have to say N-word when citing a quote does not help the cause of reality and truth.
To call somebody the N-word is awful.
To read it in a quote Just like, well, be better as it may.
It doesn't matter.
It matters, but it is what it is.
I'm going to bring my N-word down here, and he's going to F you up.
My N-word is going to come down here right now and F you up.
Of course, she uses the N-word and the F-word.
Alba tells her it's not his fault that the card is not working.
Another woman asks, did they take something from you?
Alba replied, no, I take it back.
And I will continue momentarily.
Well, I have more on the bodega, but I want to take a call here.
Hmm?
Lansing, Michigan.
It's funny that it's from Lansing because last night I was...
On the...
What is the...
Duo is for the non-iPhone users.
What is it called again?
It's iPhone and what's the other?
FaceTime?
No, no, no.
The type of phone you use.
There's iPhone and there's Android.
Thank you.
So for Android, it's Duo.
For iPhone, what is it when it's face-to-face?
FaceTime, yeah.
So we did that.
He's six.
He now knows 27 capitals.
And the first one was Michigan.
So here we go.
Life works that way.
Lansing, Michigan.
And Matthew, hello.
Hi, Dennis.
It's an honor to speak with you.
I've had this idea for a while about reducing crime.
You can pay everybody that is earning under $30,000 a year.
A thousand a month to not commit a crime or use illegal drugs.
If they use illegal drugs or they do commit a crime, they're off for four years or whatever, three years, they get back on it.
This would reduce the crime rate.
People would say, I'm not going to rob that convenience store.
I lose my thousand a month.
I'm not going to mug that person.
That's a very interesting idea.
I have to tell you, I did not expect that.
I thought you were talking welfare with no conditions.
I'm totally in favor of bribing people.
I raised my kids with bribes.
It works.
Well, bribes work, but has anybody tried what you're advocating?
They've tried it in California, but they paid the criminal that already committed a crime not to commit a crime.
You have to pay them before they commit a crime, not to be bad, so more people would want to do bad things to get on the...
So you have to do it before they commit the crime, not after.
Well, so, oh, and it's people earning under $30,000.
Obviously, you arbitrarily picked a sum, which is fine.
You have to arbitrarily pick a sum.
Did you come up with this idea, or you read about it?
Yeah, I came up with this idea.
But the deal is we spent about $85 billion on jail and prison system.
And if you pay people that amount, add up to the same amount paying people that make under $30,000 a year.
Now, if you made $35,000, they wouldn't want you to be punished for that, so they would boost you up to the $42,000, and you have to stay on the system yourself, too.
So wait, if you earn $35,000, I didn't follow what happens.
You don't get $1,000 a month, you get $800 a month, what?
You get booted up to exactly what they would be getting, $42,000.
Oh, so the issue is you will boost...
Well, all right, that means you give...
Then it's not just $1,000 a month.
It might be $2,000 to boost somebody up to $42,000.
It might be...
Yeah, go on.
No, no.
No, no.
See, if they're making $35,000, you would boost them up to $1,000.
What if they're making nothing?
You get $1,000 a month.
Right, so...
Then where did you come up with the number $42,000?
I'm not challenging you.
I like your idea.
No, I understand you're not challenging me.
It's that you can't punish those that are making $35,000 and give someone that's making $29,000.
So you have to make up a difference.
It would be less.
It wouldn't be more.
Okay.
So the $42,000 comes into play if you earn more than $30,000.
Right.
Okay.
Anyway.
It's an idea worth thinking about.
If you don't commit a crime, would misdemeanors count as crimes?
Because now if you rob under $950 in California, it's not a felony.
Yeah, there are problems.
So that's an immediate problem.
Administrative problems.
Yeah, well, anyway, it's an interesting idea.
I didn't know what the call would be about.
I'm continuing with the story of the man, Jose Alba, who killed the man.
So the woman screams at him, my N-word is going to come down here right now and F you up.
Simon, that's her boyfriend, The guy with the criminal record.
Can then be seen on the video storming into the store and walking behind the counter where he confronts Jose Alba.
What's up with you?
N-word.
What is wrong with you?
Odd thing to call anybody that if you're black or if you're white or anything.
But especially not a fellow black.
Okay.
N-word.
What is wrong with you?
The video is edited and cuts to Simon already having been stabbed.
In previous footage that was released, the fight between the two men breaks out when Simon goes behind the counter and is seen pushing Alba into a chair.
Alba grabbed the store's box-cutting knife to stab him in the neck and chest.
Simon later died in the hospital.
Osama Aldabiani, 35, who owns the bodega, told the New York Post that he was haunted by what has happened and worried about possible retaliation from Simon's friends after.
Simon's friends after.
He claims that he saw two of them in a car outside the store I'm scared for my life, he said.
Alba's fellow bodega workers said they will not let him return to work because they fear the victim's friends will come to harm him.
We're not letting him come back, a Blue Moon convenience store worker named Wilson told the New York Post.
Alba is barred from leaving New York City and had to surrender his passport, which means he will not be able to go on a previously planned trip to the Dominican Republic.
Again, that's where he's from.
But Alba's release is a small victory for the 62-year-old, who many say should never have been arrested in the first place.
No kidding.
Alba, who is beloved in the local community, has worked there for decades and has no criminal record.
Surveillance footage shows Simon charging into the store in a $350 Amiri shirt, standing over Alba and then fighting with him.
A $350 shirt.
My friends...
I hope you had a good weekend.
Started me off on a whole thesis of the last hour.
I won't repeat it now, but it'll be worthy of repetition.
One of my services to you, and I hope I render many to you, Is that I read the destroyers of our civilization regularly.
Namely, people on the left.
Not liberals, but leftists.
And anyway, there are very few liberals left who write.
There are liberals who vote, but there aren't many liberals who write.
Name me a liberal who is not a leftist.
Alan Dershowitz.
I think is the only one that I can think of.
Can you think of one?
A liberal who is writing who is not a leftist.
Well, Barry Weiss is not a leftist.
But would she say she's a liberal?
Barry Weiss is the name he gave me.
Look, okay, fine.
By the way, I hope you're right.
I'm dying to meet liberal anti-leftists.
She's very anti-left.
Anyway, there aren't many.
Why would you call Bret Stephens?
Would you say he's conservative, liberal?
Very hard to say.
It's hard to say, right.
Exactly.
Certainly not a leftist.
Right.
But anyway, they're very rare.
So basically, reading any columnist in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, is to read the leftist.
So my service to you is that I read them.
I read them for reasons of excellence of the show and my understanding what animates and what they think those who wish to destroy this country and have destroyed every institution.
By the way, talking about the left destroys everything it touches, I used to say the left ruins everything it touches.
I understated it.
It destroys everything it touches.
One of the phenomena of left-wing destruction is in the arts.
And there is one form of art that I am very well aware of and competent in.
It's music.
I conduct orchestras, as you probably know, periodically.
I wonder if I'm the only non-professional conductor to have conducted an orchestra at the Disney Concert Hall.
I don't know.
I just say I wonder.
I conducted a Haydn symphony there.
It was one of the great evenings of my life.
So I follow music and I have a passion with regard to music, specifically classical music.
It is fascinating in a very dark way how little regard for preserving classical music.
The heads of every major orchestra in this country are.
Or virtually every guy.
Everyone I'm aware of.
Whether it's the Metropolitan Opera.
What is the guy?
Gelb.
I don't know his first name.
His contempt for the arts, for the art of music is so deep.
See, what they're doing is they're crushing.
That which they've been entrusted to preserve, that's a shockeroo to a lot of people, even to me.
You would think that the people who run the Philadelphia Orchestra are truly committed to the greatest music ever written, the Western classical canon.
And it's not even, in my opinion, a debatable fact that it's the greatest music written, if you can indeed attribute greatness to anything, which the left would not.
As the truly woke, destructive chief music critic of the New York Times, Anthony Tomasini, is a gigantic fool.
The one who has come out against blind auditions.
Yes, blind auditions.
He's actually come out against it.
Meaning, to get to be a member of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, for example, everyone plays the instrument behind a curtain so that their race and their sex cannot be known.
Nothing known.
Are they good-looking?
Are they ugly?
Anything.
You can't know anything physical about them.
It is purely how do they play their instrument.
He's against it because not enough blacks are members of the New York Philharmonic.
It might be because not many blacks take up the oboe.
That might be one of the reasons.
No, no, no.
It's racism.
You would think that the music critics of this country would be the great defenders of the canon, but they are the first to crap on it.
In other words, classical music has produced leaders who have utter contempt for the very art they were entrusted with.
It also proves a thesis that It was the most painful thesis of my life, because I love classical music so much.
And that is that Bach and Beethoven and Mozart and Brahms and so on, they don't appear to ennoble people necessarily.
They can, but they don't appear to have done so.
You can love and play Beethoven beautifully and be a moral idiot, as so many members of our orchestras unfortunately are, and certainly the heads of the orchestras.
I find it almost impossible to believe that you can hear a Bach cantata And stay an a-hole.
I knew this because I knew of the history of how many bad people have loved classical music.
But I know that it has played an ennobling role in my life.
Bach, as I say, I have three favorite composers.
I can't say one.
Bach, Beethoven, and Haydn.
And Bach brings me closer to God, and I mean that.
And Haydn brings me joy, just a joie de vivre, a love of life exuded in his music, especially his symphonies.
And you want to get a taste of Haydn, H-A-Y-D-N. Listen to his trumpet concerto.
And then Beethoven just inspires.
And it has no effect on these people.
The destruction of our arts is coming from museum curators, is coming from chairman of the boards of orchestras.
Heads of the orchestras.
From the musicians themselves.
Okay.
A thought for the day.
So, back to my reading of left-wing columnists.
Here's one.
Nicholas Goldberg, Los Angeles Times.
Titled, Hate the Supreme Court?
Our problems actually start with the Constitution.
So you're unhappy with the Supreme Court justices who turn back the clock on environmental protection, abortion, school prayer, and guns?
Let's analyze that for a moment.
Turn back the clock.
That's the worst for a leftist.
The thought that the past might have been right and they're wrong, this causes them a serious rise in blood pressure.
The past is a pack of fools.
We leftists are the summation of all good, the summum bonum, as Aquinas would put it, the greatest good.
That's what the left thinks of itself.
So let's analyze this.
Turn back the clock on environmental protection.
No, what the court said was the EPA cannot direct companies and the country.
The Congress does that.
An agency can't.
That's what the court did.
We'll be back in a moment.
Hello, my friends.
I'm reading to you another left-wing columnist, Nicholas Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times.
Talking about the Supreme Court and the problem is really the Constitution.
So here again, the first sentence.
So you're unhappy with the Supreme Court justices who turn back the clock.
Again, I pointed out there is nothing worse than turning back the clock because the past is filled with a-holes.
The only terrific people in history are living today and all of them are leftists.
Turn back the clock on environmental protection.
I explained what they're referring to as the Supreme Court simply said, it is not for the EPA to tell people how to live their lives.
Congress passes laws, not an agency.
Abortion.
Turn back the clock.
Maybe the clock was wrong.
Maybe the decision of Roe v.
Wade was an incorrect decision.
There are some liberal justices who have written on that.
Lawrence Tribe wrote about that.
He might even be a leftist.
He's a leftist.
And he even wrote, maybe he would not write it today, that it was a bad decision.
School prayer.
Why did they turn back the clock on school prayer?
Oh, the coach who prayed on the 50-yard line.
So it's an interesting thing.
So if you kneel to God, that's illegal.
But if you kneel for BLM, that's worthy of praise.
That's the left insurance Nicholas Goldberg.
Now, what else?
Let's see.
Flexing their muscles to eliminate rights.
Well, flexing their muscles.
The point that they're saying is the government should not flex its muscles.
Weaken government.
That is correct.
I can't think of a better idea.
The United States of America was, until recently, the freest country in the world for all of its existence because the government was limited.
But to the Goldbergs of the world, there is no such thing as limiting government.
And endanger the planet.
Okay.
Me too.
They're reprehensible.
But let's be honest.
The problem isn't just with the justices.
The problem, or at least a substantial part of it, lies with the U.S. Constitution itself.
This is where the left is at.
The Constitution stinks.
This is a big new theme.
That is exactly right.
I'm glad that they're coming out of the closet.
They have crapped on the Constitution.
By definition, since every leftist has.
Yes, the hallowed Constitution.
Now, get how he describes the Constitution.
The document hammered out in 1787 by 55 bewigged men in Philadelphia.
Doesn't that automatically render it a silly document?
Men with wigs?
Right?
They're deep.
You've got to hand this to the left.
The moral and intellectual depth is quite remarkable.
I would love feedback.
I'm going to ask my producer what he thinks.
I'm thinking of now devoting a number of my columns per year to one left-wing column.
What do you think of that idea?
See, nobody answers these people.
The shallowness and the anger and the meanness, like Charles Blow, and I don't even remember her name at the LA Times, who said that Larry Elder was the black face of white supremacy.
Erica D. Smith.
Yes, with a K in Erica.
Yes.
That's right.
And they never, of course, they never publish other ideas in these papers.
The Washington Post, LA Times, New York Times.
So you're ambivalent?
You don't know if it's a good idea?
Yeah, I'm a little ambivalent.
Because you don't think it'll attract a great deal of interest?
No, I'm just...
Alright, he'll tell me afterwards.
These days, the Constitution is showing its age.
So then he quote, David S. Law, professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.
It was written by a small group of white male landowners clustered along the eastern seaboard.
Whoa, that came from nowhere.
Sorry.
Let's see.
In a largely agrarian society in the late 1700s.
Well, everybody was clustered on the eastern seaport.
Well, yes, everybody's clustered on the eastern seaport.
That's a good point.
But aside from that, so what?
This is a perfect example of where the left does not battle ideas.
It battles the originators of the ideas.
They wore wigs and they were white landowners.
So that ends the issue, right?
This is the war on truth of the left.
You don't ask, is it true?
You don't ask, is it correct?
You don't ask, is it worthwhile?
You ask, who wrote it?
Meaning, what was their sex?
What was their economic status?
And what was their race?
This goes for intellectual depth.
Sounds like a fool, this professor.
Well, who else would Nicholas Goldberg?
Quote, How could it possibly fit the needs of a highly diverse country of 300 plus million people in the 21st century?
Really?
Ideas are universal.
Good ideas are universal.
The fact that we have a lot more non-whites in the country is irrelevant.
A good idea is a good idea.
Good music is good music.
Good art is good art.
Good science is good science.
They're racists.
The only true, large-scale racism in the country is on the left.
How could this constitution possibly fit the needs of a highly diverse country of 300 plus million people in the 21st century?
Yeah, it was written in the 18th century.
A military and economic superpower in a globalized world.
What does that have to do with anything?
It's written for humans.
Human nature hasn't changed.
That's why the Bible is eternal.
It's rooted in human nature.
Human nature is the same today as it was in 1200 BC. Or for the easily offended BCE. A highly developed post-industrial nation that stretches from sea to shining sea.
Yeah.
How could the Constitution possibly be relevant to a superpower when it was written by people just living on the eastern seaboard?
That's a real battle of ideas, isn't it?
Who wrote it and when?
Not is it great.
I'm Dennis Prager and we return...
The Dennis Prager Show.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here. - Later.
As you know, I read left-wing columnists regularly.
Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times in particular.
On occasion, I even read conservative columnists.
One of them is Kurt Schlichter, who has a new book out, We'll Be Back, The Fall and Rise of America.
It's actually an optimistic title.
I'm curious how optimistic he is.
Kurt, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
It's great to be back, Dennis.
Thanks for having me.
By the way, I want to announce to those of you who do not see us, You can watch us at, what is it, the Salem News Channel?
You can watch my show.
And Kurt is wearing a jacket and tie.
I noted to him prior to coming on that I thought that that was a beautiful gesture on his part, and he clarified that it had nothing to do with me.
You know, I'm a trial lawyer.
I have to slip into this every once in a while.
And I'm very grateful to you because you've let me guest host your show.
And you didn't hold it against me that I used the Sex Pistols as bumper music.
I think you're just a classy guy.
You used the Sex Pistols as bumper music?
Sean told me...
I asked Sean, because I was traveling that day, usually why I take off, and he said you did Mozart.
It's easy to get them confused.
Sid Vicious.
You know, Amadeus.
It's a scale.
I hear you.
I'm glad you did the Sex Pistols.
It's good, actually.
Anyway, Kurt, you have a column out today titled, Are We Looking at Another Civil War?
It's a theme, of course, that I have talked about for decades.
And you wonder whether, in my case, It was a non-violent civil war.
You're wondering if it might end up violent.
You want to expound on that?
Well, look, Dennis, let me go into my background a little.
I am from Pennsylvania, or at least my family is, Chambersburg, burned down by the Confederates.
My relatives fought for the Union.
One of my earliest memories is being at Gettysburg.
My grandmother had Lincoln's picture up on the wall, literally.
She knew people who had fought in the Civil War.
So I kind of have that personal connection, but I have two others that I think are significant.
The first is I was a soldier on the streets of Los Angeles for three weeks with the infantry during the Rodney King riot.
And I saw, you know, how civilization is really kind of a facade, a Potemkin village, if you will, that can fall away at a moment's notice.
It's maintained by People agreeing to follow norms and rules.
And if not, it's got to be maintained by guys with bayonets.
The last thing is I served in Kosovo.
Now, there was a civil war there.
It was completely inexplicable to us.
All the ethnicities hated each other, going back thousands of years.
And we couldn't tell them apart.
We were just normal American folks dropped in the middle of it.
But what struck me was the hatred.
The hatred of how you would...
See some villages.
Sorry, lost me for a second.
How you would see villages that existed next to each other for centuries, and then they destroyed each other.
Destroyed each other for reasons we can't even fathom.
But factionalism, ethnic hatred, balkanization.
Well, of course, that's where the term came from.
And I see that happening here.
And I got to tell you.
I'm worried that people are turning to force and power over the procedures and norms that our Constitution embodies.
And we've seen it before.
We saw it in the early 70s with a low-grade urban insurgency, Weathermen, Black Panthers, SLA. Could we see something like that again or worse?
I think we could, and we've got to look it in the eye and stop it.
Kurt's book is We'll Be Back.
The Fall and Rise of America.
The book is up at DennisPrager.com and he has a column out today.
We're in effect discussing him in general and his views.
So, do you think...
I don't normally ask people predictions and I don't ever make any, but given that you've written about it...
Is that part of the fall, a civil war, in the subtitle of your book?
And then we will rise like a phoenix from the damage of the war?
What is your take?
It could have been part of a...
It could have been.
Or it could be.
It's a possibility.
But we've been falling for a while.
I think I was there at the pinnacle in time and space.
I was at 7th Corps headquarters in Desert Storm.
We were the armored force that came in from Germany and destroyed the Republican Guard.
It was 100,000 soldiers, probably the most powerful military force of all time, with a victory of historic proportions.
And I was then in there at the place where America was unchallenged, Dennis.
The Soviets basically threw in the towel.
The Chinese said, we can't compete against that right now.
It's going to take us, oh, at least three decades to overcome this advantage.
And we Americans, at the top of our game, economically, socially, militarily, we just kind of stopped.
We stopped crying.
And it's been, with a few bumps upward, it's been a long decline ever since.
And I think it can go farther as people give up.
On what our Constitution says, as people give up on the norms that we've had for 250 years that made us the greatest nation in the history of mankind, you know, if they choose violence, if they choose power over persuasion and procedures, it could get very, very ugly.
And I talk about that in great detail in the book.
Again, the book is We'll Be Back.
Kurt Schlichter is the author.
I just want to note, you have ancestors who fought in the Civil War for the North, for the Union, and against the Confederacy, which was protecting slavery.
So why exactly are you guilty being white when you did more, your ancestors did more to abolish slavery?
I reject the entire premise.
What my ancestors did, it means nothing to me personally.
I don't have blood on my hands from them, nor do I have glory.
They did what they did, and they did the right thing, and I'm proud of them, but it doesn't reflect on me.
I'm not a bad person because my ancestors came from Germany and Scotland, nor am I a good person because my ancestors did some good things.
I demand to be judged on my own merits, my own character, and that's how I'm going to judge other people.
Isn't that what Martin Luther King said?
Judge us on the content of our character.
Not ancestry, not ethnicity, not nonsense.
Who are you?
What have you done?
This kind of racial corruption of blood nonsense.
I can't think of anything more damaging.
And moreover, I can't think of anything more evil.
It is blaspheming to do that.
It's just awful on every single level.
I love your answer.
I love it.
We are who we are, and I'm not good because my ancestors were good, and I'm not bad because my ancestors were bad.
It's the motto of my life.
You will love this if you didn't hear this.
Viktor Frankl wrote the book that influenced me, Second to the Bible, Man's Search for Meaning.
He was a Jewish psychoanalyst, an Austrian, and he went through the Holocaust, survived somehow, but lost his wife.
She was murdered by the Nazis and other relatives.
And he was asked after the war, Do you hate the German race?
That's the way they put the question.
And he said, no.
The world is divided between the decent and the indecent.
Those are the only races that I recognize.
That's exactly your answer.
That's exactly Martin Luther King's answer.
And it is exactly what the left is rejecting.
That's so true, Dennis.
And it's so important to confront evil.
Just before I went off to Desert Storm, I was stationed in Germany, mobilized out of there.
My parents came over, my mom, my late father, Lieutenant Commander Schlichter, who I decade the book to.
And we went down from Stuttgart to Munich, and we walked through Dachau.
And then a few years ago, I took my family back to Germany.
I made sure we went to Munich.
And I took my kids through Dachau because I wanted them to look in the eyes of evil.
I wanted them to see it up close.
So it wasn't something abstract.
It was real.
And it was there and in front of them.
So they understood why I spent so much time as a soldier away from my family.
Why so many Americans have done it.
Now I'm proud of my country.
And I'm proud that my country liberated Dachau.
And I'm proud that my country...
Good.
All right.
Hold that thought, Kurt.
Once again, we'll be back as his book.
It is up at DennisPrager.com.
All right, everybody.
If only my parents had lived long enough to know that I was a password.
They finally would have had joy for me.
Kurt Schlichter is my guest.
Hey, Kurt, did your parents live long enough to have joy from you?
My father passed away last April, and my mom is still around.
I'm going to go see her later today.
She was about four miles away.
She's a retired judge.
I joined the Army to get a break.
That's a good one.
He's really something, Kurt Schlichter.
The book is We'll Be Back.
So let me get to that.
We will be back?
Did you write that with confidence that this fall will be stopped and we will return to America the beautiful?
I think this fall is part of a process that's going on.
Look, I'm a natural optimist.
I think that comes with being an American, especially an American who grew up in the California suburbs.
I moved to California with my family, I think it was about six or seven.
When Ronald Reagan was president, and California was this golden land where you can do whatever you want.
It never occurred to me that I couldn't.
And I stayed, went through college, went off to war, came back, became a lawyer like I wanted.
I became a stand-up comic like I wanted.
I started a law firm like I wanted.
I became a writer like I wanted.
I published books like I wanted.
It never occurred to me that the answer is no.
And that's what America should be.
So I'm an optimistic guy.
And I think, like they say in those home improvement shows, Dennis, America has strong bones.
We have the greatest constitution ever put on paper.
We have great people, great resources.
And as bad as things look, and the book talks about bad things.
I talk about civil wars and national divorces and kind of dying out through low birth rates.
All sorts of horrible things that could happen.
But in the end, I... I see light at the end of the tunnel.
I can't allow myself to give up.
I can't allow myself to be pessimistic.
Because what can I do with pessimism?
Then I've lost.
I'm not going to lose.
They didn't teach me how to retreat at Fort Benning.
They taught me how to attack.
And we've got to look at the things that are going our way.
Glenn Youngkin's election in a blue state.
That's an indicator.
Look at our Latinx.
Friends.
Half of American Hispanics are now supporting Republicans and a conservative Republican party.
That's amazing.
The Democrats went all in, hoping they could create this surf class that would forever be taking scraps from their table.
And these great Americans, these family-oriented, faith-oriented, flag-oriented patriots, and I married into a family of Hispanic immigrants, refused to do it.
They came for the American dream.
Democrat progressive nightmare and they're going to bring us back.
Look, if you look at all the pieces on the board, it's all in our favor, but we got a tough fight ahead and we dare not give up.
We dare not shirk our responsibility and we dare not back down in the face of these whining sissies.
I'd like to bounce a thought off you since you raised the issue of your being an optimist.
So my take on this, and I'm not differing from you, but I would just like your reaction.
So my take in speeches is that I'm not a fan of optimism or pessimism because both can lead to people not fighting.
The pessimist thinks things will turn out lousy.
Why fight?
The optimist thinks things will turn out great.
Why fight?
So if you're an optimist, why fight?
Well, you've got to combine...
Look, I'm not...
I was an infantry officer.
I commanded a cavalry squadron.
My job was to tell 20-year-olds, you've got to go up on that hill where there are people with guns, and they're going to try and kill you.
And you've got to take that hill.
And you can do it, because you're the best.
You're an American soldier.
You're backed by the best equipment, the best integrated firepower, the best command and control.
Nobody can stop you.
Let's get this done.
Follow me.
Okay?
It's about morale.
And I... And to me, optimism is simply the beginning.
Optimism is a necessary but not sufficient component of winning the fight.
Good.
Talking about the armed forces, they're going woke, is that correct?
It's a disgrace.
The armed forces today, an absolute disgrace.
I talk a lot about it in We'll Be Back, Fall and Rise of America.
I also talk about a plan to get rid of it.
People are surprised that the military fell so quickly.
I'm not.
Because the military is a hierarchical organization that responds to the intent of the commander.
We have a saying.
Soldiers do what commanders check.
If a commander checks wokeness, you will have people creating wokeness.
And it will happen fast.
But it can be undone quickly.
And I think the next president should do that.
The next president should focus on the military.
Now, that's going to take time.
Remember, as a commander, I could get you beans, bullets, fuel.
I could get you more people.
I could get you anything but time.
So time is a huge and valuable resource, and for no one more than a president.
But he's got to spend a couple hours of the day dragging in generals after he's fired the Joint Chiefs, dragging him in, saying, gentlemen, this is my intent.
Three days from now, you're going to come back and brief me.
You've completed it.
My first order to you.
I want you to cancel every program with the word diversity, inclusion, or equity in it.
We're having no more blank months.
We're having no more celebration of people's ridiculous identities.
You are the United States military.
Army, you are green.
Air Force, you are blue.
Space Force, I don't know what the heck you are, but you're that.
That is how it's going to be.
Get in here at...
9 a.m.
on Friday, you brief me, you've done it, bring your deputy, because I'm going to relieve you if you haven't followed my intent.
In the macro, it's no different than when I walked in and took over a new battalion that had had problems.
The military is just fine in the sense that there are no bad troops.
There are bad leaders.
And we've got them now, and we've got to fix it before more people get killed.
Well, now you have a taste, folks, of what you'll get in this book.
We'll Be Back is the book, The Fall and Rise of America.
It's a delight to work with you, Kurt.
Thanks and congratulations on the book.
Thank you so much, Dennis.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
The Dennis Prager Show.
Dennis Prager here.
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