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March 17, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:22:32
Believe Children
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join monorail all right everybody it's st.
Patrick's Day heads the Irish music *crickets* I have a special affection for the day.
It's the day I met my wife.
St. Patrick's Day.
I met her at a speech that I gave.
She was pushed by her friend to ask me a question.
At the very end when my speech ended and people lined up for selfies and comments and autographed books and whatever happens at the end of the speech.
And thank God she had a question.
It turned out to be a very tough one.
She had been getting my Bible tapes.
Though at the time, not Jewish.
The vast majority, I guess, of the people who get my Torah teachings are not Jewish because the vast majority of the country is not Jewish.
My view has always been either the Torah has something to say to everybody or it has nothing to say to Jews.
The idea that the book would only speak to Jews is to me actually an insult to the book.
That is the Torah, the first five books.
It renders it a little absurd.
It would be like saying vitamin C is only good for Presbyterians.
Well, if it's good for Presbyterians, it's good for everybody.
Okay, so listen to the Minnesota Lieutenant Governor, Peggy Flanagan, talking about children who say they are members of the opposite sex.
They are really the opposite sex.
Your 10-year-old girl says to you, might even be younger, and obviously might be older, says, Mom, Dad, I am a boy.
What should you do?
Here is the advice of another destructive woman in our society, the Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota.
Can we get the Lieutenant Governor?
Because, let's be clear, this is life-affirming and life-saving health care.
Right, so hold on there, hold on, hold on, please.
This is the Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota saying it is life-affirming and life-saving health care to give hormone blockers to, remember, prepubescence, because once you're in puberty, it's much tougher to do.
So if you give a 10-year-old hormone blockers because she says she's a boy, it's life-affirming.
These are the sick women who dominate this field.
A lot of men follow it too, but it is an overwhelmingly female proposition.
And she is one of them.
The damage that all of these people are doing to children is incalculable.
We live in a sick, sick age.
The majority of Minnesotans, even Democrats, do not agree with what they're doing to children, and yet they keep voting Democrat.
It is actually, I would say this, if you don't agree with what is being done to children, With regard to sex change operations and the like, and the hormone blockers, if you don't agree and vote Democrat, you're actually morally inferior to the person who believes in it and votes Democrat.
You know you're voting for evil and will still do so.
Continue, please.
When our children tell us who they are.
It is our job as grown-ups to listen and to believe them.
What does that even mean?
What does that mean when our children tell us who they are?
To give a slightly wacky example, my son, when he was about five, said he was Superman and wanted to jump out a window.
I give you my word.
And should I have listened to who he was?
No, you're not Superman.
Your five-year-old tells you that he is a girl and you listen and say, yes, of course you're a girl.
What the hell do I know?
I'm 40. I'm 35. I'm 50. What do I know?
You know much better than I know.
And that's the definition of a good parent to the left and the lieutenant governor of the state of Minnesota.
You don't know better.
Your child knows better.
What the hell does the child need you for?
If your child knows better about something as existentially significant as whether or not he or she is a boy or a girl, what is your role as a parent?
To say, yes, darling, you are a boy.
Of course you are.
I want you to imagine for a moment if the adults in America The doctors, the therapists, were actually adults and not the grown-up children that most of them are.
When you see a therapist in the United States of America, in most cases, not all by any means, you are seeing a child.
And they think like children.
And that thinking like a child is a very, very big part of what leftism is about.
So the child...
It doesn't get guidance from you, but I want you to imagine if all adults actually said the following to a ten-year-old.
A girl says she's a boy, and every therapist says, no, you can't be a boy.
There's no such thing.
You can't be a squirrel.
You can't be an extraterrestrial.
You can't be two people.
What if your child has multiple personality disorder?
Do you affirm?
Yes, you really are.
By the way, I had a wonderful human being.
I know something about multiple personality disorder where the individual was, I don't remember, about six different people, but truly was six different people.
It was a woman, and when she came to work, she was whatever her name was.
I don't recall it now.
She explained all this to me, and needless to say, my heart broke for her, as well as it was endlessly fascinating.
When she went home to her partner, who was a woman, she actually was a baby, and she entered a crib.
And she was truly a baby.
But at work, she was a perfectly...
Accurate worker.
And I asked her, how does that happen?
Why don't you come to work as a baby?
And she said, because all of us got together, the six personalities or whatever number it was, and we agreed we needed money.
We needed to make a living.
So one of us comes to work and that's the one you know.
So if your child says that I am three people and that exists, Do you say, of course you are?
What is the role of the parent if it's just, of course you are?
By the way, this is the genesis of leftism in the United States outside of ideology.
It is the pampering of children from post-World War II till today.
You are the center of life.
We live for you.
You don't have to take us seriously.
We have to take you seriously.
And the Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota is a perfect example of that.
Your daughter says she's a boy.
She's a boy.
End of issue.
But imagine a good world, not the sick one created by the left, the woke, whatever term you wish to use.
Imagine a healthy world.
Where every adult in that child's life said, no, I don't know where you got that idea from, maybe at school, maybe on the internet, social media, but you know what?
You're a girl.
That's the way it is.
It is a biological fact.
If you feel you are a boy, you are still a girl.
And you need to work that out, darling.
Or my dear, dear daughter, you need to work that out, and we're going to bring you to a therapist who's going to help you work through this.
We are not going to play around with your body permanently and affect you in ways that only God knows.
It is amazing the people who dismiss the after effects of hormone blockers as if it's taking an aspirin.
This is the sick world of the Democratic Party, and though the majority of Minnesotans know that we are abusing children in the name of loving them, they will still vote Democrat.
There is nothing the Democrats can do to hurt this country that would cause a significant number of Democrats to vote Republican.
They don't vote Democrat because the Democrats are good.
They vote Democrat because the Democrats are not Republican.
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Dennis Prager here.
Sure.
here.
You know why they oppose, or let's put it this way, they insist that biological males compete against women in sports?
There's a reason.
A, they don't care about the girls or the women, obviously, that that's a given.
But the reason is they realize that if that's not allowed, then in fact...
A boy has not become a girl.
So they fight tooth and nail to ruin female sports, to harm girls who have to compete against them, now even in powerlifting.
That's right, lifting.
Biological male says he's a girl, says he's a female, and he can compete.
He, she can compete.
Z. By the way, the Washington Post now uses Z, just for the record.
There is no limit to the destruction of the good moral norms of society.
There is none.
And if you advocate for them, like Amy Wack, professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, they work to even fire you, even though she has tenure.
The woman argued a few years ago, I covered it, I had her on the show, in an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer that good middle class American values were worth sustaining and advocating.
Basically, finish high school, get a job, get married, and only have children after you're married.
And she was hated, hated, hated by hundreds of her colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania.
Faculty.
Hated.
They hate her.
For advocating, if it's good, the left hates you.
But, does it matter?
They have this world of make-believe evil, and it works, like the lieutenant governor.
So you have to believe whatever your child tells you.
That's what she said.
Alright?
So you believe it, and then what?
Okay.
You're seven years old, you're a girl, and you say you're a boy.
You're a boy.
That's correct.
I won't tell you you're a girl because the lieutenant governor of Minnesota has told me that I have to listen to you.
So, okay, you are in fact a boy.
And now what does the lieutenant governor suggest?
That we give hormone blockers?
That at 17, 18, a healthy girl's breasts are cut off?
I want to know the upshot.
Of let's listen to our children.
Do you believe that biological males should be able to compete in powerlifting or any other sport with biological girls?
Do you believe that biological men should be in locker rooms with girls if they say that they are a female?
And they have male genitalia and they expose it.
So remember, in Minnesota, According to the Democratic Party, there and anywhere for that matter, here is the deal.
If a man exposes his genitals to a girl, or even a woman, but even a girl, he is arrested.
But if he says he's a girl, he is protected by the law, and you who complain about it, if not arrested, you just...
Might well be, as it happened at the YMCA in some city that I reported recently, thrown out of the YMCA. Young Men's Christian Association.
Wow, we have truly deteriorated.
The speed is quite remarkable.
Dr. Rachel Levine says changing kids' genders will soon be fully embraced.
Wheels will turn on this.
Gender-affirming care for minors has the highest support of the Biden administration.
Most vile administration in American presidential history.
Yes, Levine praised the she is a trans female.
Male who said she's a female.
Levine praised the gender-affirming care at the Pediatric Grand Rounds session at Connecticut Children's Medical Center in Hartford.
It's so horrible for me to think that when I hear Children's Hospital now, I think that a real percentage of its doctors are destructive morons.
You know how bad that is?
In some ways, I thank God I don't have young children now, but I have grandchildren.
But of course, my grandchildren live in Florida.
They're protected.
If your children live in Connecticut, they're not protected.
The state hurts your children in Connecticut.
Levine said, gender-affirming care for minors had the highest support of the Biden administration.
I'm a positive and optimistic person, and I choose to be positive, optimistic.
The wheels will turn on this.
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb of Do No Harm organization, you should be aware of Do No Harm, a national association of medical professionals that combats woke activism in the health care system, told Fox News Digital, That's pretty important.
A recent study from the University of Washington, he said, showed that there was absolutely no change in the psychological well-being of children with gender dysphoria treated with these medications.
There can be irrevocable harm being done to children by those pushing for these radical, ideologically-driven treatments.
Rep.
Andy Harris, a member of the House Doctors' Caucus, co-chair of the Pro-Life Caucus, said, It's reprehensible for a government official, let alone the assistant U.S. secretary of HHS, to promote the genital mutilation of minors As becoming a standard practice in the U.S. Well, at the very least, they can't do it.
They can't.
Democrats can no longer condemn the millions of Muslims who gently mutilate daughters as a procedure called clitoridectomy.
We return.
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Okay, everybody, happy St. Patrick's Day to you.
Everybody's Irish today.
Dennis O. Prager is my original name.
I don't know why they dropped the O. I liked it.
Oh, Prager.
He's here.
This country has experimented.
More than any other country in the history of the world with multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-religious people.
And it could have worked, but the left ruined it.
Because they said that that was important, more important than anything else about you as a human or as an American.
If E Pluribus Unum had worked, the melting pot had still been believed in, as it was when I was a child.
There would have been a magnificent experiment in unifying people, not on race, but on values.
But the left does not do that.
They unify people by race because the greatest racism in America today is from the left.
Black dorms, black graduation exercises.
Black.
I want to read to you something, by the way.
I hate looking it up in real time, but it is a live show.
And let's see.
United Airlines, Pilots, Women, and Black.
Let's see what comes up here.
Let's see.
Well, what came up was what I had actually said to you when it was originally announced.
And it's now being pursued, actually.
So they said that 50% of new pilots hired will be women or minorities to reflect passenger diversity.
Now, isn't that important?
Isn't that the thing you want most in your pilot?
Diversity?
I want to look like my pilot.
I told you they're children.
The childishness of that idea.
You want to look like your pilot?
Why?
Wow!
Well, United Airlines is another woke organization.
It's a very sad fact of life.
But this is playing with lives.
I don't want pilots to be chosen where race or sex is even considered.
I only want an excellent pilot.
It is inconceivable to me that there will not be more flight accidents as a result of the United Airlines policy.
It is inconceivable.
They are not taking the best.
They are acknowledging they're not taking the best.
Now, the best may well be a female, may well be a black.
That's a given.
But that's not how they choose.
Yep.
Our flight deck should reflect the diverse group of people on board our planes every day.
Really?
Really?
Who thinks that way?
Does the majority of Americans think that way?
If any of these woke ideas, these society-destroying ideas were actually put up to a vote, what would happen?
Wow.
United Airlines attempted to clarify their plans in a follow-up statement.
All the highly qualified candidates we accept into the academy, regardless of race or sex, will have met or exceeded the standards we set for admittance.
Well, you can't have...
So, in other words, then what does your announcement mean?
Will you take the best?
Or are they all tied for a best, and then you will take 50% male, excuse me, blacks and female?
Is that what United Airlines is telling us?
Hmm.
All right.
This is quite an extraordinary thing.
Talking about, this is a part of the destruction of the society.
New York State lowers minimum scores for student proficiency.
How is that?
Yes.
The change will see the proficiency threshold in tests, known as the cut score, reduced to ensure more students appear to be in good academic form.
Yes, there's learning loss between 2019 and 2022, but in some ways we don't want to keep going backwards.
What does that even mean?
That was one of the spokespeople.
I was against lockdowns, just remember that.
teachers unions were for them.
Yes, it is. .
It's the Happiness Hour on the Dennis Prager Show every Friday since 1999. Every single one that I've been on, which is about 48 times a year.
We do.
We do the Happiness Hour.
You know, happy people make the world better and the unhappy make it worse.
We have a moral obligation to act it even if we don't feel it.
And pursue happiness.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
What a beautiful trio in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.
Well, I have a thought-provoking topic for today's Happiness Hour.
In general, would you say that going to a psychotherapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist today, or for that matter, marital therapist, Would you say that in general it is helpful?
What was your experience?
Was it helpful?
So in this instance, I'm not only going to be taking your responses, I'm going to offer you my thesis at the outset.
I think most therapists hurt people in terms of their psychological health.
Some have...
Well, I'll put it this way.
One-third hurt people, one-third do no good, and one-third do good.
That's a lifetime of...
And by the way, I went to a psychotherapist many, many years ago.
I wanted to resolve some issues, and I thought it was very helpful, just for the record.
So this is not based on anything personal, neither based on not having ever gone.
And not based on not being helped.
It wasn't a long period of time, but it was.
He was a great man.
And I thought that he helped me with real insights.
And one of the reasons I believed it at the time was he caused me pain.
If all you do is feel good at a therapist, the odds are you're not being helped.
So that's the question on the table.
Do you agree with my one-third, one-third, one-third?
And I'll even go further.
I'll tell you why I think many of them do no good.
Two-thirds do no good, one-third do harm.
1-8 Prager, 7-7-6, 8-7-7, 2-4-3, triple-7-6.
That's my theory on the one-third, one-third, one-third.
Problem is, how do you know?
going in, which third are you getting?
It, uh...
Oh, well.
I mean, I can tell you stories in this regard that are painful from what I have heard from people intimately involved in my life.
Why do I think that so many do no good or do harm?
Two-thirds either harm or do no good?
Well...
The overriding reason is they don't tell you that you need to battle with you.
That whatever your problems in life, you still have to battle you.
Yesterday I had a PragerU young woman I forgot her age.
Was it 32?
A spectacular young woman.
32, thank you.
And she had a really, really difficult upbringing.
Her father was absent, and what was the mother issue?
Mother was in prison, yes.
The mother was in prison.
It was a bad combination.
No dad around, and a mother in prison, raised by a grandmother.
And she is now, she seems to be an embodiment of health and joy.
Not bubbly joy, just real, a deep, deep joy of the soul.
And she said that the biggest change in her took place when she realized that she was her biggest problem.
If a therapist does not teach you that you're your biggest problem, then you can't get help.
You can't be helped.
So, of course, there are exceptions.
I mean, obviously, if you're in a situation where you're being molested by an uncle, You have to get out of that.
That is clearly a big problem.
A horrible problem, indeed.
But in general, if you are not taught that you are the issue in your life, your therapist is very possibly doing you harm.
A lot of them lead from their heart, not from their mind.
I'll give you an example.
I know a couple.
One of whose adult children, he's about 40, does not speak to them.
The reasons, to the best of my knowledge, are invalid.
Let's put it that way.
And they went to the parents and the adult child went to a therapist.
And the parents, who tend liberal, by the way, Told me that all she did, the therapist, was side with the anger of the son.
That's it.
And he hasn't talked to them for years.
The offenses are trivial, in my opinion.
And the other children are quite attached to the parents.
But the therapist was on the side of the child who doesn't talk to the parents, as I would have expected, especially since the therapist and all of them live in a rather progressive area, and I'm sure she was of progressive thought, the therapist.
So that...
As my thesis, what is yours?
What is your experience with yourself or a child, for example?
I think that that is why the 12-step program is so terrific, so much better than so many therapists.
First of all, it tells you the chances of your getting better without belief in a higher power are minimal.
And God, is that true?
Is the root of all our ills.
The hopeless, meaningless ideology.
Only, as I point out frequently, and it's irrefutable, only secular people say men give birth.
There are secular people who deny it, but only secular people say it.
We live in the age of radical foolishness.
Of exponentially increasing foolishness.
First generations in history to grow up godless and the educated think, that's great.
Right?
What people have needed for all of human history in every culture, we don't need.
Alright?
You see the...
Results daily.
So how do you know what therapist to choose?
That I did, I think, I think many years ago I did cover that subject.
I'm not certain, but I think so.
And I remember what I said.
I said, if after four sessions, I'm just picking a random number, but after a certain number of sessions, you still blame others for all your problems.
Get rid of that therapist.
That's how I would put it.
There are exceptions to every rule.
I'm sure there are exceptions to that rule.
But overwhelmingly, that is the case.
1-8 Prager, 776-877-243-7776 And let's go to Jeff in Colorado Springs.
Hello, Jeff.
Hello, Dennis.
My wife and I were working overseas, and we were under a lot of pressure.
Our marriage was in trouble.
We came back to the U.S. for help, and I discovered that my expectations were killing my wife, my unrealistic expectations, and largely because I didn't know how to listen to her.
And so we had a wonderful therapist who sat me down and said, you're expecting Superlady, and she's just a human.
All right, stay on with me.
I'm very curious to know what you expected and what the listening issue was about.
Happiness Hour, Dennis Prager Show.
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This is the Happiness Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.
And the subject today is, does psychotherapy help?
And my own belief is, one-third of the time it neither helps nor hurts, one-third of the time it damages, and one-third of the time it helps.
And I got that from therapists that I respect and I've had on my show.
I've asked them all the same question.
What percentage of your colleagues in psychiatry or psychology are competent?
And it is never more than a third.
Sometimes they say a quarter.
Which is not a knock on...
Well, it is a knock on these people, obviously, but I'm not saying it to knock them.
I would say that that's probably true in many professions.
Except sports.
Because sports, we have objective excellence.
One-third of baseball players are not incompetent.
They wouldn't be playing.
So, the question on the table is, what's your view and your experience?
So, Jeff in Colorado says that he had issues, he's back on, and you had issues with your wife.
And you had a wonderful marital therapist who taught you two things.
One, you need to listen when she talks.
And second, that you had unrealistic expectations of her.
Am I summarizing you accurately?
Yes, very much.
Well, it shows that I listen.
Okay, so I have a question.
Give me an example of an unrealistic expectation you had of her.
Well, I thought she should be a super teacher, super mom, super wife, super lover.
Just all these things should be outstanding.
And then when things got hard and she wasn't outstanding, I think I even got more demanding.
And because I couldn't listen, because I was more or less self-absorbed and worried about what I wanted, what my needs were, I was not very good at having realistic expectations for a Christian and my therapist. I was not very good at having realistic expectations for How long ago was this?
That was 1995. Outstanding, yes.
What did you say about being Christian?
Well, I'm a Christian, and the therapist was a Christian, and she helped me zero in on selfishness and how that selfishness led to unrealistic expectations.
And selfishness also hindered my listening.
Was your wife in any way responsible for the downturn in the marriage, or was it really overwhelmingly you?
Oh man, 75-25?
Yeah, I was largely at fault, I think.
So both of you changed, but you more than she?
Yes.
Well, thank you for calling.
I'm very happy for you.
I would say that in marital therapy, the batting average is quite similar.
One-third help couples, one-third hurt couples, and one-third...
Do neither.
And by the way, if a couple divorces after marital therapy, that is not necessarily a knock on the therapist.
Some therapists have an attitude, and I think it's accurate actually.
If they can't help you have a good marriage, they can perhaps help you have a good divorce.
Restate something I have not stated in a while, but I used to say more often.
It is not divorce that hurts children.
It is what happens after the divorce.
Not that in an ideal world, no child would go through a parental divorce, obviously.
But we don't live in an ideal world.
Okay, let's go to Kathy in Philadelphia.
Hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
Hi, I wanted to share my story.
I realized after listening to this topic on your show for several times that I was incredibly lucky to find an excellent therapist who, and the reason I say that is because, and after I told her my story a few times, she said, yes, none of it is your fault.
It is your responsibility, though.
You know, that just took me and takes everyone, I think, right out of the victim position.
That's right.
So you and I are in total agreement.
Total agreement.
Right.
If you leave your therapist after, I don't know, a couple of months and you're still the victim, that's your perception of yourself, and they cultivate it, they're not a good therapist.
Well, how can you ever get well if you think you're...
You can't.
That is exactly, you can't.
And one thing about her, too, I want to say that she told me that she herself had gone through therapy because she thought it was essential to know her own neurosis backward and forward before she ever tried to help somebody else.
Well, that is true.
Yeah, I was very lucky.
You were indeed.
There's a lot of luck in life, my friends.
Religious people often find that difficult to hear.
I am religious, and part of being religious is a commitment to truth.
The truth is, there's a lot of luck in life.
The only alternative explanation, if you're religious, is that everything that happens to you, God has engineered.
But then we're robots, and that flies in the face of the entire biblical supposition.
That we are free to choose.
I have put before you today life and death, and you shall choose life.
One of the great lines in Deuteronomy.
Read it in my commentary on Deuteronomy called the Rational Bible.
All right, and let's see here.
Anne in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Hello, Anne of Erie.
Hi.
My daughter had a great counselor, but she moved out of town, and she wanted a quick fix for her weight.
She didn't want to just eat right and exercise.
So the doctor gave her drugs, and then she claimed she had all this anxiety, so the doctor gave her more drugs.
And the next thing I know, she calls me, and she's angry because I wouldn't give her her college money.
Yelled at me and hasn't talked to me in a year and a half.
So her old counselor thinks it's because the new one must be woke or something.
You know, she likes to be the victim, and I told her that...
Right, it's back to that.
It's back to that.
Does your therapist cultivate victimhood in you?
Then they're damaging you.
I'm sorry.
I'm really sorry.
But you have to be strong.
1-8 Prager 776. The Dennis Prager Show.
We're going for those pleasures in the night.
I want to love you, feel you, wrap myself around you.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here.
By the way, I will be getting my fellow 2.0 because I love the original one.
Just for the record, the promo code is Prager.
Hmm.
So, the Happiness Hour topic is therapy.
My belief is that one-third of therapists do harm, one-third of therapists do good, and one-third of therapists do neither.
Psychiatrists, psychologists, and marital therapists, whatever the psychotherapy group.
When I think of successful programs like 12-step, they have an ingredient in 12-step.
They have two ingredients that are not...
Normative in psychotherapy in the United States, probably for the last half century at least, and that is that in the 12-step programs, they are dependent upon a higher power for you to help yourself, and they are the antithesis of your thinking of yourself as a victim.
You, even though they say that alcoholism and other addictions are diseases, they still say you are in charge.
You are not a victim.
So if your therapist has not advocated, and your therapist could be an atheist and advocate it.
I know a secular psychiatrist.
Who is adamant about the efficacy of religion in helping people.
So it is possible.
But if your therapist says nothing about meaning slash religion and cultivates your victimhood status, you are being hurt.
You're certainly not being helped.
Okay, let's see.
I've got all sorts of different takes on this.
And that's good.
That's what I want.
Daytona Beach, Florida.
Nancy, hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
I was married for 16 years to a very abusive man.
We are both Christians.
Ironically, he insisted that we go to therapy our entire marriage.
We had many, many therapists.
I think that he was looking for someone to blame me so that he could say, see, I told you it's all your fault.
But he never found that, and he didn't listen to anything the therapist said.
One thing our therapist didn't know was that he was screaming at me all the way to the appointment and all the way home for numerous things, and I found them quite ineffective.
Did you mention the next time you saw the therapist, he screamed at me the whole way home?
Not in front of my husband.
Why?
Because I would be opening myself up for abuse.
I still had to live with him.
I'm curious.
Did I hear you correctly?
I'm not making a point here.
I'm just clarifying.
Did I hear you correctly?
You said you were married to a wonderful man?
No.
An abusive man.
Okay.
I'm glad I clarified that.
Why did you...
So, was it because you were Christian that you didn't want to divorce?
We had several children, and it just would break my heart.
I didn't know what I would do.
How would I support these kids?
So, what did happen?
The kids were...
He was starting to...
Manipulate the children against me.
Oh, that's...
He's just lost all my sympathy.
The parent who poisons children against the other parent is going to have to face God's wrath.
Or God is good.
Right.
So how are they now?
The boys are a mess.
The girls are okay.
Hey, nobody's...
I mean, my oldest...
All right, all right.
I've got to take a break.
I'm sorry.
I'm really, really sorry.
On a wonderful day like today.
So the issue today on the Happiness Hour is psychotherapy.
Psychologists, psychotherapists in general, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts.
which is a different story entirely in some ways.
Yes.
I mean, when you look at what the American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association have come out with, the truly absurd and society-stupid...
It's not odd that I would think that two-thirds of therapists don't help anybody.
That one-third hurt, one-third do no harm or good, and one-third do good.
After all, it's psychiatrists who make up the American Psychiatric Association.
If you walk around thinking you're a victim...
After a certain period of time with your therapist and the meaning issue has not been addressed, which in 12-step programs, the ones that work, it is always rooted in a higher power, then I don't know how you're going to get better.
Chicago and Denise.
Hello, Denise.
Hi, Dennis.
How are you?
I was supposed to be a Denise.
My father wanted a girl.
And I came out a boy in the days when they thought you actually came out of certain sex.
And so you said, all right, we'll call him Dennis.
Well, it's a good name.
Yeah, I'm luck.
Good.
Just a couple things.
First of all, I just want to say I don't believe in luck, but I'm also not a robot.
When you said that, I kind of thought, well, I just want to say that.
Well, it would be a fun discussion to have because I don't know if God determines everything that happens to you.
I don't know why you're not a robot.
Well, I think everything was ordained providentially by him.
Right, okay, fine.
So do you hold murderers responsible?
Absolutely.
I think we are responsible.
We have free will, but I think when we ask him for help, he will help us.
We have to discern it in a proper way.
Okay, all right.
Look, it's a fun discussion, but let's talk about therapy.
Yeah, so I went to a therapist for a few years.
I wound up getting a divorce in the end.
But I talked to, I'm Catholic, I'm a Roman Catholic.
I talked to my priest, a couple of different priests throughout the years about my marriage.
They suggested that I go to therapy and suggested a Catholic therapist.
So I think that if you're going to go to therapy and you are religious, you're practicing your faith, it's a good thing to go to a therapist.
First of all, that understands that if you can't find one that is of your own, you know, cut from the same cloth, so to speak.
Because the secular world, like you just said, with these therapists now, the gender nonsense and, you know, all the rest of it, you need to be able to talk to somebody who can guide you on the path of your faith.
I agree with you.
I thank you.
We don't agree on the luck, but we certainly agree on this one.
I have a close friend who is a psychiatrist, and he is a God-centered Jew, and he has a lot of Christian patience, and he is so helpful to them.
And they know that.
And just like, by the way, I think a Jew can go to a God-centered non-Jew and have good therapy.
If your therapist is tone-deaf to the role of God in a person's life, they may have great, great intentions, and they may even help.
I will say that.
It could happen.
I wouldn't rule out every secular therapist if I were religious, and I am religious.
I wouldn't rule out every secular therapist.
But if I didn't know that the person was really competent, on a toss of the dice, I would go to a God-centered therapist.
They'll know what I'm talking about, at least.
Okay, and let's see.
The sobriety issue is a different one.
And let's see here.
Hmm.
Tough to choose what to do, but here we go.
Oh, here's a therapist.
David in Manhattan.
Hello.
Yeah, I'd like to say that I found out the hard way that if you don't pay the therapist with your own money, you're taking a real risk.
Wait, I'm sorry.
You're not a therapist, correct?
No, I'm not.
Okay, sorry.
I misread the summary of your call.
Go ahead.
So if you don't pay with your own money, you're in trouble.
Why is that?
Well, if there's a third party paying, say, a parent or someone else, they're going to want to know how the therapy is going, and the therapist may talk to that person.
And so then the privacy issue is taken over, and it's not really therapy if it's not private.
It doesn't matter who's paying.
I mean, the privacy issue is supposed to be sacrosanct.
But what about if somebody in therapy says they're thinking of killing themselves?
Oh, okay.
I know that that breaks the silence rule.
I don't know who they tell that to.
Maybe the authorities.
But that's a separate issue, isn't it?
Let Dennis be Dennis.
Hi everybody!
This is the hour you set the agenda.
whatever is on your mind about you, about me, about life, about death, and, of course, fountain pens, cigars, audio equipment, photography equipment, and enjoy the music. and enjoy the music.
Classical music. .
Huh.
Alright everybody, this is it.
I enjoy this.
This is how my radio career began.
People called in on anything.
All three hours of my first shows.
There's an argument for both types of show, but this is the hour.
And...
Let's take your calls.
Okay.
That's a new city.
Fair Play, Colorado.
And Mark, hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
I just had a question for you, and will God be able to forget all the evil that's happened?
Do you ever struggle with that?
I know in Christianity, They say that God is going to make all things new, and it's...
I was just wondering what the difference between Christianity and Judaism when it comes to...
Well, I don't quite follow...
I don't know what you said.
I don't know what that means, so I can't describe a difference.
What does that mean, God will make all things...
Did you say anew?
What was the word you used?
Well, he...
God is going to make all things new.
He's going to erase all the tears, and I guess we're going to go to heaven.
That's what the Christian believes.
Okay, so let me deal with that, because it's an important subject.
With regard to...
Many subjects, it's very hard to say the Christian or the Jewish belief.
There are such things as normative Christian and normative Jewish belief, but very often, for example, I'll bet a lot of Christians think that hate the sin, love the sinner is a biblical verse.
And it isn't.
So it's like...
My father said to me when I was very young, don't confuse Jews and Judaism.
And I would say the same for any religion.
Don't confuse Christians and Christianity.
Some truly know what their religion stands for and try to live it, and some don't.
And many don't.
Anyway, I have no answer to any of those questions.
I know the following.
God is good and God is just, and therefore God judges people.
What that means, I do not know.
I can only say this, I would be an atheist if I believed that Hitler and Mother Teresa had the same fates.
I would not only be an atheist, to the extent that I even thought about God, I would be anti-God.
I would really believe a bad God had made the universe, which would really, really be a...
A source of sadness, if not depression, in my life.
If I thought a bad God made the universe.
But if indeed the evil and the good have the same fate, then a bad God made the world.
That's all I know.
The rest of my religious life, and it is an intensely religious life, wouldn't be writing for 10 years.
A Bible commentary on the first five books of the Bible if this were not the pillar of my life.
But my life's religiosity is 99%.
What does God want from me?
That's it.
That's my religious quest.
That's my religious preoccupation.
And I think other preoccupations are unworthy of you and your religion.
Okay, so I'll leave it at that, and let's move on, and I thank you.
Irvine, California.
David, hello.
Hi, can you hear me?
I can.
Excellent.
You mentioned in the previous hour that there was a consensus that one-third of psychotherapy is bad for patients.
No, yes, that's right.
If that was a pill, the FDA would not approve it.
Well, you can't measure psychotherapy like you can measure a pill.
Well, then, they should be.
I don't know.
I don't follow it.
Well, how would you do that?
Would you take a poll of thousands of people?
You do the standard, randomized.
Alright, fine.
Okay, and a lot of people say it wasn't helpful.
And then what?
Well, okay, you would measure something like marriage or divorce rates or unemployment or drug addiction.
You would measure...
Okay, fine.
Alright, let's say you did that.
And then what would you do?
Would you ban those therapists?
Like you would ban a drug?
That's the interesting question.
No, no, that isn't interesting because it's not possible.
I don't find the impossible interesting.
I'm sorry.
You don't think that...
Like conversion therapy for homosexuals, right?
That's been outlawed in places.
So they could certainly outlaw software speech-based therapy, not including psychiatry, which is medical.
But they could say that, look, In one-third of people, you're harmed, and that's not an acceptable rate for any kind of therapy.
Even I would be against that.
I would be against outlawing therapy because so much of it is a failure.
All I do is caveat emptor, buyer beware.
Please understand, folks, that if you still think you're a victim after a few months of therapy, you're probably being hurt.
By an incompetent therapist.
That's why I broadcast these things.
With a drug, there's an objective standard that is irrefutable.
You'd have a lot of people saying, I'm sure anyway, you'd have a lot of people saying that the therapist that I think is hurting people is actually helping them.
The example I gave of the family that went for therapy, The parents and the adult child who does not speak to the parents, and the parents told me they think it made things worse.
I am sure that if you spoke to the son, he would say it was a great therapist.
So, anyway, an interesting thought.
Let's go to Mountain View, Arkansas, and David, hello.
Hello, sir.
I'd like to talk about America as a melting pot.
You mentioned that in your previous hour.
Yes.
Yes.
The Immigration Act of 1790 says that American citizenship is for whites only.
And I'm kind of paraphrasing.
And also, you said that...
By the way, I'm not familiar with that, so I can't say you're right or wrong.
But if you're paraphrasing, it's a little dangerous.
Was that a national law that only whites can immigrate to the United States?
Is that what you're telling me?
Yes.
Okay.
All right.
Most of the time, people don't lie to me.
I'll look it up.
Go ahead.
Sure.
Great.
And secondly, you said the melting pot experiment could have worked if we would have allowed something about, you said, common values.
That's right.
Okay, fine.
I'd like to say that common values...
Do not necessarily, do not lead to a united society.
The most important thing first, first off, you must have a population of compatible personalities, of compatible people.
That comes first.
How are you compatible if you don't share values?
Well, by personality.
Okay, I don't find, I don't agree with you.
Let me give you an example.
I'll give you an example.
Okay.
When whites shop for homes, when they go home shopping, they shop in particular areas and they avoid other ones.
Even if there were no crime in the world, they would still avoid certain areas.
Why is that?
Because of the differences in personality.
Right.
So I don't have that same view as you do.
That's very interesting.
I live in a dead-end cul-de-sac.
I have two neighbors, Arab and Korean.
I like that.
I believe in the melting pot.
We all love America, and we share those values.
I'm not compatible with people who have nice personalities.
And who believe that the United States is systemically racist or that children should get hormone-blocking drugs.
Okay?
I am truly values-centered.
That's why I had no issue in adopting a child.
I don't give a damn about blood.
I don't give a damn about race.
I only care about values.
This is the hour you call in on whatever is on your mind.
I'm Dennis Prager in Tallahassee, Florida, and Tim.
Hello, Tim.
Hey, Dennis.
You are a big fan of Rick DeSantis.
I am.
This week he said in Iowa that not only was it not in the U.S. interest to defend Ukraine, but he called it a border dispute.
And you know that's Russian propaganda.
You know you don't capture another country's capital and replace its government in a border dispute, in addition to all the war crimes that Russia's committed.
I wanted to get your thoughts on what DeSantis said and whether or not that's a deal breaker for you.
It's not a deal breaker, and I believe that he, if he became president, he would not withdraw all support for the Ukrainian government.
What happened was, I didn't read the every word of it.
I trust your summary, but I didn't read every word of it.
Tucker Carlson sent a few questions to all the Republican candidates for president on Ukraine, and more or less unanimously, he reported they did not support the efforts to...
Support the Zelensky government.
Interestingly, when he actually read the words of any of these people, I don't believe any one of them said that we should stop aiding the government there.
I think border dispute is a poor term.
I agree.
So let me make something clear.
If I will only vote For candidates with whom I agree on every issue, I will vote for no one.
So I don't expect to agree on every issue.
The greatest threat to the United States of America, and again, I strongly support supporting Ukraine, the greatest threat to the United States of America is the left in the United States of America.
So if I have to choose someone who was strong on Ukraine and, on the other hand, supportive of the left, versus someone who will try to undo the staggering, almost fatal damage of the left and is weak on Ukraine, it is clear whom I would vote for.
Life does not always offer me perfect choices.
That would be an imperfect choice, but that is the choice I would make.
Because if the left wins in America, there will be nobody left to aid the Ukraines of the world when the Chinas and the Russas and the North Koreans start gobbling up places.
Okay, good.
And let's see.
Tedderfly, New Jersey in Stan.
Hello.
Yes, Dennis, thank you for taking my call.
I have always felt that one of the key things to life in general is humor, and today I watched Victor Borgia, and the other day Red Skeleton, and all the great comedians, and everyone used to laugh way back when, and everyone used to watch different shows, and everyone would be happy, and they would discuss who was funnier.
Yes.
Your point is well taken.
In fact, there is far more joy among conservatives than among people on the left, especially left.
Liberals may have some joy.
And the only laughter I really ever see on the left is at people, not with people.
By the way, it's Red Skelton, not skeleton, but just...
I'm a stickler for that stuff, forgive me.
That's a big difference.
Anyway, they've abolished humor.
The late night shows in the United States in the past wanted to give Americans something to laugh with.
Something lighthearted.
And now all the late night stuff is, let me tell you how crappy America is and how evil Trump is and how bad your future is with global warming.
The war on humor is like the war on academic excellence and the war on children.
Such it is.
I was going to make another comment on a previous call.
Hold on one second here.
Oh, yes.
The caller who called in about people wanting to live with compatible personalities, and I said, I choose values over personality.
How do you know what group is going to have a compatible personality?
The implication was that whites want to live with whites because of compatible personalities, which is an interesting thesis.
To me, it's like it's a no-brainer that if I could know the values of the people I was living with, the color would recede in importance totally.
It's white liberals who are destroying this country, or white leftists, to be precise.
The overwhelming majority of your teachers' union's heads and others are white.
They're destroying the schools of our country.
Are they compatible personalities?
Anyway, it was odd by mine, and I wanted to share that.
Okay, let's see.
Bill in La Cañada, California.
Hello.
Hey, Dennis.
Speaking of white leftists destroying school districts, I told you about some woke sex ed documents a few months ago advertising 12-year-olds to have safe sex in La Cañada School District.
So I sent photos of those documents to the school board member, and she claimed...
That all school documents are age-appropriate and that those documents just don't look familiar.
So either the $300,000 school superintendent doesn't know what the teachers are teaching or they're just lying or they actually believe in this stuff that there are seven genders according to these documents and that most 13-year-olds don't know if they're boys or girls.
It's just unbelievable.
You can't do anything about this stuff.
Send me that.
Obviously, I care about it for obvious reasons to you and others.
Yeah, well, I'll tell you this.
La Cañada is an affluent area 10 minutes from where I'm broadcasting in Glendale, California.
And it was really a haven.
Until the left started ruining its schools.
It was known for its good schools.
And then the left got in.
The left destroys everything it touches.
If you know that, you know half of what you need to know about the world since the Russian Revolution in 1917. My favorite piece of jazz ever written.
Take five.
I must have heard it a hundred times, and I don't get tired of it.
Okay, everybody, this is the hour you set the agenda.
March is fundraising month for PragerU.
It's a highlight every day that I speak, almost every day, to some young person affiliated with PragerU.
We have 19,000 now.
I thought it was 15. I learned differently.
I was corrected.
19,000 members of PragerForce around the world.
High school and college age individuals.
And I'm speaking now to Stan Alger.
We have never met Stan.
Is that correct?
We never met?
No, not officially.
This is the first time that I believe we are officially meeting.
Well, it's a delight.
So are you a member of Prager Forest?
Yes.
Yes, I am.
I've been a member since 2019. And how old are you?
I am 20. Almost 21. You know, it always cracks me up when I hear that.
You will soon reach the age where you will not say almost.
Yeah.
I abandoned that a while ago, I have to say.
So, what college are you going to?
I'm attending Loyola Marymount University.
And it's actually, it's not too far.
It's not too far away, and it's in a pretty nice place.
Is it woke?
Actually, in comparison, it's hard because you need to compare it to the other universities that are in the area.
It definitely has a woke presence, but I'll tell you, there is a significant and important conservative underground that has a very actually active voice and presence on campus, which I think is impressive.
How do you explain that?
When I first joined the chapter, they had a College Republicans chapter.
And actually, the president of that chapter, he was also the chairman of the state as well.
And they actually are also starting up with and lead with that chapter, a Turning Point USA presence as well on campus.
And then...
I would say the most important element that's held to preserve the conservative presence here is it's a Jesuit community.
There's definitely very present Catholic values on campus.
And there's always a mass every Sunday.
They're not shying away in teaching church history.
They don't shy away in preserving those important beliefs, ideals.
And, you know, they don't necessarily say, okay, the students have to.
To follow these.
But they do encourage it.
And they do have the students take at least one course that does help to preserve those values.
And how does the wokeness express itself?
There's always the social justice communities.
There's always the student groups.
And generally there is a small protest that goes on maybe on one of the front lawns or outside of the school itself.
At the same time, however, there's always generally a counter-protest.
There was a pro-life protest, actually, that took place last fall as well that was out front of the campus.
Has the transgender issue hit your campus?
Not as much.
Although, I will say, actually, there was an article released by our school university last year.
That had a bit of an issue with the fact that there were now tampons inside the men's restroom, which did cause a bit of controversy.
So, let me understand.
A Catholic, nominally Catholic, Jesuit university has tampons in men's rooms.
I believe it has since removed, but there was a period, yes, where that was the case.
Are you asked your preferred pronoun?
No.
All right, so it doesn't sound like the left has completely taken over your college.
No, and it's, I mean, it's a fight.
We definitely need to keep fighting for it, but right now, we have a good fortification.
How is the male-female social life on your campus?
Do kids date, or is that word antiquated?
Oh, people date.
People date, and actually, it's interesting.
I've noticed...
In my generation, at least on campus, when it comes to male and female couples, they actually want to be committed.
They actually want to go out on a date, try the waters, and then they want to stay loyal to each other.
There's no really casual dating that takes place, at least from what I've seen, which is kind of counterintuitive to what I've heard a lot that is going on in the country right now.
But I will say, hookup culture is not really that prevalent on LMU's campus.
Wow, sounds like a relatively healthy place compared to others.
All right, when we come back, I'd like to understand how PragerU has touched your life.
Back in a moment, Stan Alger is a Prager4 student.
He's at Loyola Marymount University.
Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
To hear the entire three hours of my radio show, commercial-free, every single day, You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives, as well as the daily show prep.
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