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March 22, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:17:02
Praise Unworthy
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
I have a non-political subject I'd like to open with because we truly do talk about everything in life.
I don't know how you cannot talk about everything in life, even if you have a political show, because everything bears on the political.
It doesn't live in a compartment, politics.
In fact, politics are the result, in most instances, one's political, macro, social views are a product of one's psychological state more than they are, and I wish this weren't true, but more than they are of a rational inquiry into truth, justice, and the American way.
By the way, did you know that Superman is coming back with that?
Can you explain that?
Are there new owners?
I mean, that's a very big deal, because I have made a big deal all of these years about how Superman dropped its motto of truth, justice, and the American way.
And what did it become?
Truth, justice, and the better way, I think that was.
And Superman renounced his American citizenship, I don't know, about 12 years ago.
In front of the United Nations, he announced that he is a citizen of the world, which means nothing.
It is like saying, I, Superman, hereby announce that his nanodora is equivalent to I am a citizen of the world.
So you see, there is, and I'm not being cute, there is good news.
Fight the never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way.
Well, I'll tell you, you know what?
You know what I never realized until this moment?
The never-ending battle.
How true.
That was prophetic.
The never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way.
Just the battle for truth will end up giving you justice and the American way.
Truth is almost everything.
Evil comes from lies.
So here's my question that I've been thinking about.
My ideas percolate at all times.
My brain, for better or worse, if you like what comes out of it, it's for better.
If you don't, it's for worse.
But it is an idea machine.
Always has been.
I want to understand life before I leave it.
And so far, I think that I have a handle on life.
And a big part of my ability to do so comes from having a talk show and interacting with more people than I think anyone living.
I haven't spoken to more people than anyone living.
In any State of the Union address, the President of the United States speaks to more people than I have spoken to.
But with, and I think I hold the world record after 40 years of talk radio.
I mean it.
It's an interesting world record to hold.
By the way, do you think that that would apply?
Can I apply to Guinness?
Why isn't that a world record possibility?
It has to be verified.
Well, it's very easy to verify.
Here is the number of years I've been a talk show host, and every talk show involves interaction with people calling in.
It's not a toughie.
In order for someone to have talked with more people, not two, with more people, the person would have had to have...
Done more talk shows than I did, and I don't know of such a person, and I don't know any other country that has the same medium.
So anyway, here is the subject.
For a very long time, I have been aware of the danger of over-praising your child.
Or of you having been overpraised.
Compared to the past, and probably all of the human past, this young generation and the previous generation are the two most praised generations in the history of the world.
I think Guinness could verify that too.
Most praised generation for no good reason.
One would have to add that, but you don't even have to.
It became de rigueur, as they say.
It became, what is de rigueur?
Emphatically necessary for people to praise their child constantly because of the...
Truly moronic idea that emanated, needless to say, from California in the 1970s.
I remember the man who came up with it, shockingly, a liberal Democrat, John Vasconcelos.
I interviewed Vasconcelos at a time when liberals would actually come on conservative shows.
And his theory, he started the...
The commission, or whatever the term was, in California for increase in self-esteem to make a better society.
Self-esteem.
By the way, he even explained it came from his life.
He had been a Catholic and grew up with what he held was a bad self-image owing to Catholic guilt.
And went through therapy where he learned to feel good about himself, and that was a great development in his life.
And so he decided to start the self-esteem movement, and he did with a grant.
I think it was a state grant of $250,000, which in today's dollars is approximately $4 trillion.
That was the grant that he got, and he explained, as I said, to me why he founded it.
Self-esteem played such a good role in his psychological health.
So that's what he wanted.
So we went from that to participation trophies.
We want you to feel good about yourself.
You didn't win.
You may not have even played in the game.
But you got a trophy nevertheless.
You stopped getting trophies for winning.
You got trophies for breathing.
That's what they should have had on it, actually.
I remember when I first learned about it, it was through my own child, whose team, in good Prager tradition, came in last in baseball, and he got a trophy.
And I looked at him and I said, your team lost.
How come you got a trophy?
And completely innocently said for participating.
And I explained that I didn't think he deserved a trophy for participating.
I had this quaint notion that one should get a trophy for winning.
But...
Winning became a very, very dirty word as people became more and more progressive in their thinking.
In Massachusetts, for example, up until a certain age, they banned...
They actually eliminated winners and losers from soccer, from elementary school soccer.
You just played and no score was kept.
Do you remember that?
The no score era.
And then there was another rule, widely observed, that you can't win by more than X number of runs in baseball or points in other sports.
You don't want to hurt the feelings.
Of the losers.
So what we did was raise a generation that could not lose and we're all winners.
You're all special.
What was the thing that the left really got angry at me for?
Because I saw a sign which I thought was in a fifth grade class about you make the world better or something like that.
Remember that sign?
And so, of course, in good honest fashion, Prager attacks 5th graders.
The lying on the left is actually at times humorous in the absurdity.
I'm attacking 5th graders.
No, I'm attacking the teachers for telling every 5th grader that the world is a better place because you're in it.
It may be, and it may not be.
By the way, if the left believes that every kid makes the world better, why aren't they for more kids?
But you see, they never ask themselves.
Self-inquiry is not a left-wing characteristic.
Gee, if every kid makes the world better, wouldn't it be great if we had more kids?
The people who were having more kids, ironically, are not likely to say to every single kid, the world is better because you're in it.
You know what we should say?
You, every one of you, can make the world better.
Be a good person.
That's a good one.
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I'm talking to you about the origins of the overpraised generation, which is...
Definitely at the root, a part of the root, of the catastrophe that we are now seeing unfolding of the demolition of culture and civilization as we know it.
And why are they related?
Because people expect a painless life.
Because that's what their parents, for two generations, not just one, That's what their parents had tried to give them.
A painless, always feel good about yourself no matter how undeserving that feel good about yourself is.
But the response of the progressive is, it's precisely the kid who doesn't accomplish much who needs all that praise.
So do you praise before?
And hope for good results, or do you praise after once you have had good results?
So I want to pose this question to you about your childhood, not your children, your childhood.
So whether you have children or not, what is clear is everyone has had a childhood.
So on that basis, what would you say?
Is it better to praise too much or criticize too much?
Now, even if you say both are bad, that would be an improvement over the current situation wherein there is such over-praising.
I watch parents with kids and there must be a word of praise or sentence of praise.
Maybe 25 times a day.
Great job.
Oh, you're terrific.
Oh, you're...
And then you fill in the positive term.
So between the two, are they equally bad?
Is one worse than the other?
And my sense is that overpraise does more damage.
I have said to you on many occasions, or a number of occasions, I don't know about many, because I decided in the beginning of my career to be quite open about my life, because I and I will repeat it now, I'm not a talk show host, I'm a human being with a talk show.
So here's a human being part of my work, and that is...
As I've mentioned, my father told me frequently that I was lazy.
And I admit that it hurt a little because I was a kid.
It did.
But it's interesting.
I also remember thinking, he might be right.
And I therefore decided to devote my life to working hard to overcome this innate issue.
And since every single human being has innate issues, the parent who does not point them out to his or her child is doing the child a major disservice.
It is paralyzing.
Can you imagine?
Let's take sports, the only arena where you're still allowed to critique.
By the way, it's an interesting analogy.
Do you get more out of a professional player by praising him or critiquing him?
Interesting, isn't that?
It's a good question.
Coaches have to ask themselves...
Coaches ask themselves, yeah, they would ask themselves regularly.
But let's put it this way.
If it's quite imbalanced toward praise, you're not going to get a good player.
Let's take a baseball player and the hitting coach.
You know, you're putting much too much pressure on your left leg if you're a right-handed battle, let's say, and you lean into the left leg.
That's too much.
Or, you know, your golf swing.
Let me explain to you why.
So often your ball ends up in a little pond.
And for that matter, what do you want from your coach or trainer?
Do you want praise?
So it's interesting.
I work out three times a week and had this trainer for years.
I would say, I told her very early on, please don't give me trainer talk.
Oh, great job.
I am much more interested in doing it right than being praised for doing it right.
In fact, it's somewhat of a running joke.
On one occasion in the last couple of years, after I did some set of some disgusting exercise, she said to me, not too shabby.
And I actually believed she meant it.
Not too shabby was, in my opinion, much more real than great job.
1-8 Prager 776, that's the number.
So, what do you think serves your child better?
Now, if you say 50-50, you could say 50-50.
But do you agree with me that we've gone way overboard in the praise arena?
That's my question for today.
And you know why parents praise a lot?
A, because they have bought into the self-esteem movement.
And therapy has become about self-esteem, not self-improvement.
And B, they want their kid to like them.
A big topic here, ladies and gentlemen.
And it totally ties into the current state of affairs in the United States.
The over-praising of children.
I wonder if there is any progressive, as they call themselves, talk show host or writer or columnist or teacher who has ever raised the issue of over-praising children.
It ties into the progressive mindset and it is part of what has produced a very lost generation morally, intellectually, psychologically.
Lost.
You need to understand that you have to battle yourself in order to be a good person.
You need to understand you have to battle yourself to understand that the battle for a good world starts with battling yourself, not battling, in our case, America.
The over-praising has also led to their belief that they can That whatever they think or feel is just beautiful and profound and moral, etc., etc.
It has been a calamity.
Over-criticizing is also wrong, but it is not as damaging.
I mean, at a certain point.
I mean, if you insult and humiliate a child, that's awful.
That's truly awful.
Criticizing is not the same as humiliating.
I might add.
Yes, another reason parents do it.
There are so many reasons, and it's worthy of its own exploration.
Why do people overpraise their child?
One of the reasons is they want the child to like them at all, or love them at all times.
You are not going to be as loved when you criticize your child as when you praise your child.
That is just human nature.
I am a better person because I received critiques.
I received very little praise from my parents.
I sought it, interestingly, to the extent that people seek it, and most everybody does, seek positive reactions to you from outside of the home.
Where you have to earn it, one might add.
You have to earn it.
Let's see what you have to say about this.
This is such an important subject.
Carlos in Minooka, Illinois.
The famous Carlos of Minooka.
Hi, Dennis.
Long-time listener, first-time caller.
Always appreciate your insights in your show.
Great.
Thank you.
So I'm finding, as I'm listening to today's topic, a connection with your show, almost recent, on evil and how we struggle with accepting that evil is reality.
And I'm thinking we live in a culture and a world that refuses to accept that there are bad people, there are bad things, that people can be evil.
And I'm thinking once being a child and I'm a parent.
Now, I'm a grandparent, that I think, from my perspective, we don't want to deal with the tension of what it means to be human, which means we have this great capacity for good, a great capacity for wonder, but also an equally great capacity to be a rotten person, to be a jerk.
You're good.
You are the famous Carlos of Manuka.
Let me ask you, are you religious?
Yes, I'm a pastor.
Okay.
So, you should know, sometimes I make a bet with myself prior to asking.
Sometimes I ask a caller, are you married?
Do you have children?
Are you religious?
Well, you're obviously a regular listener, a pastor.
So, by the way, if you're a pastor, I'm not so far from being the famous Carlos of Manuka.
I mean, you have a following.
Are you the pastor of a church?
I'm a worship pastor, discipleship pastor of a church here in town, yeah.
I've been here in this assignment for 19 years now.
Well, God bless you.
You see, why did I know you're religious?
Because it is so basic to the Judeo-Christian worldview that we have to work on ourselves.
Yes.
The secular world is the praise world.
Right.
I have to approach the world from the understanding that I am probably...
Well, I know I am not as good as I think I am, and I'm way worse than I think I am.
Well, all right.
Now you're entering a realm of hair shirts.
Psychological hair shirts.
I think, I personally think you are better than you think you are.
Well, I appreciate that very much.
Thank you.
God bless you.
That's a good example of why I so enjoy my work.
If I didn't have this job, would I have ever spoken to Pastor Carlos of Manuka?
No.
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Hello, everybody.
Dennis Prager here.
I want to thank the hockey team, the San Jose Sharks, for proving that my belief that the left is trying to decimate Western civilization is accurate.
I mean, literally accurate.
They don't even know it because they are so far gone.
The crappy education that they got at whatever college they went to at the San Jose Sharks reinforced the idiotic and evil belief that Western civilization is no better than any other.
So I have proof for you.
It's again a National Hockey League team.
I love hockey.
I will admit that if I lived in San Jose, it would become difficult for me.
To go to a shark game and support people who are actively undoing Western civilization.
So here is the story.
It's from Fox News, but not but.
The but was only that you can get it from any number of places.
The San Jose Sharks touted the existence of a third quote.
This is a direct quote.
A third or even fourth and fifth gender.
In non-Western cultures on Twitter, sparking questions after critics pointed out one ancient culture the hockey team was referencing participated in human sacrifice.
It's a very important point, one I have thought about often.
The hockey team wrote on Twitter, This past Saturday, today is Tuesday.
Worldwide, gender diversity is seen far differently than that in the Western world, or as you may know it.
That's right.
That is correct.
Most of us are familiar with the male, female, and transgender labels.
But in other cultures, the existence of the third gender, or even fourth and fifth genders, is common.
The hockey team wrote on Twitter Saturday.
So, for example, the Twitter thread threat added.
Threat, that's a riot.
It is threat.
Thread.
The MUX, M-U-X-E, gender, is a respected third gender in Zapotec cultures in Oaxaca, Mexico, that has existed for centuries.
Oaxaca?
Oaxaca?
How do you know that?
Alright.
I think I could reveal that some of your ancestors come from Oaxaca. .
The McCoddles of Oaxaca.
So, a well-known family in Oaxaca.
So, do you understand what the morons at the San Jose Sharks have tweeted?
Who are we?
Who divide the world between male and female?
Who are we in Western civilization that does that?
You don't realize that centuries, for centuries, the Zapotec culture in Huaca, Huaca, had a respected third gender, the Miukes gender.
Then they give more examples.
Guna'a are those who were born as men but who identify as women and are attracted to men.
The Ngui are those who were born as men and are attracted to other men.
The San Jose sharks.
Okay, so this is really important.
I mean, it doesn't get more important than this.
As I've told you, Western civilization is rooted in the Bible.
Even if you're an atheist, all you need to be is honest.
You don't need to be a believer to state that.
What I said is either true or not true.
It has nothing to do with the state of your religiosity.
You don't have to be religious to know that the Bible formed Western civilization.
And the Bible is based on distinctions.
God and man.
Man and animal, male and female, good and evil, holy and profane, life and death.
It is a world of distinctions.
In fact, the Hebrew word for distinct is the same as the Hebrew word for holy.
That is how important distinctions are.
And God created Adam, the human being, not the man.
Male and female, he created them.
That's what we are.
We are male and female.
That is a biological fact, even if there are mucs in the Zapotec culture.
So here, a tweeter noted, Greg Price, the San Jose Sharks won a...
To take cultural advice from an ancient Mexican civilization that participated in child sacrifice.
He is exactly correct.
The San Jose Sharks, as woke, I guess, a team as exists, in hockey at least, their thesis is, we are no better than Zapotec culture.
As you know, many of you, I am sure, have, for example, taken life-saving drugs developed in Zapotec culture.
Am I mocking Zapotecs?
No.
Am I stating that Zapotec culture is not a moral, scientific, economic, social justice?
Not social justice.
Social, just as plain as Western civilization?
Yes, I am.
Western civilization is the morally most advanced.
Are there evil people in the West?
Of course there are.
Many of them are shattering the West right now.
Of course there have been evil people in the West.
Massively evil.
If Russia is part of the West, think of Stalin.
Germany was part of the West, think of Hitler.
But they weren't exactly advocates of Western culture.
They were Westerners, not Western cultured.
In any event, we produced the hospital, the modern hospital.
We have raised people from the undignified state of an animal-like existence to a...
An elevated state as a human whose basic needs were met without being in the fields all day and then sacrificing a child to a god that relished human blood.
The Zapotec civilization was an ancient population living in southern Mexico.
That is believed to have participated in human sacrifice according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Okay, that's important.
I don't know, I know that there were a few Indian cultures, Native American cultures in the Western Hemisphere that did not have human sacrifice.
Most did.
The San Jose Sharks hosted its Pride Night Saturday and shared on Twitter that throughout the night they would be sharing information and facts about LGBTQIA plus topics.
You know, it's funny, they do this in the name of inclusion, which is a lie, because they're certainly excluding people who believe that there are only two sexes.
You are fully excluded.
If there are any religious people at a San Jose Sharks game, religious in the Judeo-Christian sense of the word religious, they are certainly excluded from such celebrations.
The team's thread also mentioned the Nino Poskiti Pitskite.
You think I'm kidding, right?
You thought I made that up.
I will spell it for you.
N-I-N-A-U-P-O-S-K-I-T-Z-I-P-X-P-E During the break, Sean, I would ask you to please put this in the computer and have them pronounce it.
I take that very seriously.
We shall return to the San Jose Sharks against the West.
Hello, y'all.
I'm Dennis Prager.
I want to thank the San Jose Sharks for so groveling to wokeism that they actually made it clear what this is all about, and it is the undoing of Western civilization.
It is no better than any other.
They said so because they used ancient...
South American and Central American tribes as examples of people with more than two genders.
And, of course, those were the cultures that retained child sacrifice and never developed.
They developed nothing.
They may have had interesting and even developed forms of architecture, you might say, or at least...
In Machu Picchu, you know, the remarkable steps of fields that they created.
But it never went anywhere, certainly not morally.
There was not a single member of the San Jose Sharks, this destructive management, that would like to live in that culture.
So it's a gigantic lie that the West is not best.
It's a lie.
It's a gigantic moral, economic, scientific, medicinal lie.
And yet they use them to say, you see, they had more than one gender, which only proved two genders.
That only proves to me, maybe having two genders is in fact a root of advanced civilization.
So, they give another example in the team's thread, Twitter thread.
They mentioned the Ninnabetskij, who were, quote, honored as a third gender in the North Pagan tribe of Blackfoot Confederacy in northern Montana and southern Alberta, Canada.
Now, that's another group we should emulate.
So this third gender in the North Pagan, or Pagan, P-E-I-G-A-N, tribe, we finally got the pronunciation.
Here it is direct from artificial intelligence.
Now that I heard it, I know it's an old song.
Now, bus, kit, zip, khep, b.
Okay, thank you, Sean.
The audience is getting the message.
This happens to Sean.
It's a psychological issue.
He's working on it.
He's taking Smith Brothers' cough drops for the condition, and we hope they help.
So, yes, the Ninapuzis-Tipsiabcha were honored as a third gender in the North Pygan tribe of the Blackfoot Confederacy.
Roughly translated, this is the thread.
This is the San Jose Sharks thread, educating us on primitive.
Yes, primitive.
But you can't use primitive today.
Anywhere at a university or any other school, primitive is a...
What would they say?
It would be a Western-centric, even racist, although it has nothing zero to do with race, but everything they don't like is called racist.
Claim.
Because there is a lot to emulate in those cultures.
I can't think of...
Just about anything, but they want to undo the West.
Roughly translated, means manly-hearted woman.
This is part of their quote, though, and is defined as a biological female who did not necessarily dress in a masculine mode, but was unrestricted by the social constraints placed on other women in the Blackfoot society.
In some Native American cultures, the umbrella term to describe a third gender is two-spirit.
That's true.
In South Asia, it's Hydras.
In Thailand, it's Kathois.
In Ethiopia, it's Ashtim.
In Polynesia, it's Fa'afin.
And many more.
That's correct!
It only makes my point that having only male and female, which is biologically accurate, And socially necessary is the way to advance culture.
I am finishing the fourth volume of my five-volume commentary on the first five books of the Bible.
I've already written 20,000 words for Leviticus on one verse.
Almost a book length or a short book on one verse, and that is male homosexuality.
Because it is one of the reasons vast numbers of people reject the Bible, because it has a heterosexual, or if you will, heteronormative ideal.
By the way, you could be gay and have a heteronormative ideal.
You could be single and have a family ideal.
It is narcissistic to think that because you can't live by an ideal, and may often be not your fault whatsoever, there is no ideal.
One of the gay couples with whom my wife and I are extremely close said that.
One of the two spouses said it straight to me, and the other spouse agreed.
The ideal is a man and a woman, but they couldn't do it.
The issue is, do you shatter ideals?
The issue, what people personally practice.
is less significant than does society hold up an ideal.
That's what the left is destroying.
The ideal.
If you watch on YouTube, you could see Kamala Harris, currently the Vice President of the United States when she was running for Attorney General of California.
I was on with her on Larry King, the late Larry King on CNN. When CNN used to invite me before it became radically left and was just foolishly liberal.
And I asked her, what was the subject?
I said, if you could choose, you were the head of an adoption agency.
And there were two terrific couples, terrific in every way, same income, same psychological health, etc.
One was a man married to a woman, one was a man married to a man, or a woman married to a woman.
Which would you take?
And she didn't answer the question.
Because you cannot assert the ideal.
1-8 Prager 7-7-6 If you want to defend Western civilization, donate to PragerU.
March is fundraising month, and this week, whatever you give will actually be tripled.
Generous donors have made that possible.
If you give $100, it's $300.
That is pretty serious.
If you want to defend the West, let's put it that way.
In a very sophisticated and effective manner.
We have over a billion views a year.
PragerU.com 833-PRAGER-U So while the San Jose Sharks are extolling the virtues of cultures that had human sacrifice and no medicine and no science and no equal rights and no judicial system comparable to ours in any way,
Then there was a member of that hockey team on the same Saturday night that they put out these tweets this past Saturday night.
It was Pride Night.
Please understand, it's not Tolerance Night.
The left never asks you to tolerate.
They ask you to celebrate.
That is why all leftism is totalitarian.
They care about what you think.
It is not a matter of will you behave properly toward a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender person.
No.
It is will you celebrate this.
That's what you have to do.
That's what Gay Pride Night is about.
Which is a fascinating thing, because they don't have a nuclear family celebration night.
Pride night.
Wouldn't that be nice?
You know that they couldn't do that in San Jose.
Because the left does not celebrate the nuclear family.
Mother, father, married, and children.
There could not be a nuclear family pride night in any of the major sports, or even minor sports, presumably.
I would think that would be really needed now.
A nuclear family pride night.
Impossible.
How about a go-to church pride night?
Impossible!
The left has contempt for you if you go to church every Sunday.
What did Barack Obama say?
They'll retreat to their guns and churches?
What was his line?
Guns, Bibles.
Guns and Bibles, yeah, right.
San Jose Sharks...
Hosting Pride Night at SAP Center Saturday.
This was written, obviously, last week.
But their goalie will not be included in the celebration.
James Reimer announced on Twitter he will not wear a Pride-themed warm-up jersey before the game against the New York Islanders.
Reimer cited his religious beliefs.
For all 13 years of my NHL career, I have been a Christian, not just in title, but in how I choose to live my life daily.
Would that all Christians and Jews have the same attitude?
It's not surprising then that they get better.
They cling to guns or religion or...
Oh, guns or religion.
There you go.
Alright, thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
To say that it was not the clearest transmission is to enter the world of the understatement.
I wish all Jews and Christians were not just entitled, but in how they choose to live their life daily.
I have a personal faith in Jesus Christ, he writes, who died on the cross for my sins and in response asks me to love everyone and follow him.
I have no hate in my heart for anyone and I have always strived to treat everyone that I encounter with respect and kindness.
In this specific instance, I am choosing not to endorse something that is counter to my personal convictions which are based on the Bible, the highest authority in my life.
Wow!
The Bible is the highest authority in the life of one player on the San Jose Sharks.
I salute him.
But it's depressing.
Well, something uplifting after the San Jose Sharks attack on Western civilization.
I have a woman, Heather Mills.
She's a homeschooling mother.
I think everybody should homeschool their children.
It would be the single...
If I could have one wish, it would be that people took their kids out of America's schools and educated them on their own.
That alone would change the society.
And Heather Mills is in Iowa.
What city are you in, Heather?
West Des Moines.
West Des Moines.
Okay, wonderful.
Thank you for coming on.
And this is Fundraising Month for PragerU, and you use PragerU materials with your kids.
Is that correct?
That is correct.
How old are your kids?
11, 7, and 6, and they're all boys.
Wow, you got a lot of testosterone in that house.
Yes.
It's a very, very busy household.
I would imagine.
Yes.
So, this is a big deal.
How did you discover PragerU?
So, we were familiar with PragerU through your fireside chats.
I think we listen to the Daily Wire as well.
So you guys kind of do a lot of projects together.
And so we were listening to the Firesight Chats.
And then around 2022, I think you guys had started, or 2020, you'd put things out about wanting to get into kids' content.
And our kids were in public school at that time.
We were fortunate enough in Iowa to have our kids still be in class, except the last three weeks before spring break, COVID numbers were so high and so many teachers were out, they decided to pull the kids from school and do online.
And we had already seen through several years of being in public school that our religious beliefs, the worldview, the value system wasn't there.
The only reason they were still there was academics.
And then the pandemic just...
Showed us that there was no reason for them to be there academic-wise either.
And so you guys were just saying, we want to get into kids content.
And I was like, I'm all in.
We need this.
And you guys were already a trusted source for our information anyways.
And so we just jumped right in.
And it's been amazing to see how the content that you guys have hosted has just kind of exploded over the last couple of years.
Well, when you used the word, and I got the chills, you trust us.
I'm so moved you have no idea that you trust PragerU to help educate your children.
It means the world to us.
I just want you to know that, Heather.
I've got to take a break.
I'm up against the clock.
I hope I meet you personally.
And thank you from the bottom of my heart.
And please, folks, donate to PragerU.
Everything we do is free.
And yes, you can trust us.
Everything you give this week is tripled.
God bless you, Heather.
Thank you.
Every Tuesday, the third hour of the Dennis Prager Show.
Devoted to great themes of life.
The big issues.
There is almost no big issues.
Except anti-racism and transgender ideology taught at schools.
But big issues is the nature of wisdom.
You can't be a good person if you're not wise.
You can have all the good intentions on Earth.
You will actually probably end up doing more harm than good without wisdom.
I would have called it the Wisdom Hour, but it sounds pompous.
Then we could call it the Pompous Hour.
The Pompous Hour starring Sean McConnell.
If anybody is known for his pomposity, it is Sean McConnell of Oaxaca, Mexico, McConnell's.
Oaxaca, I'm sorry.
I get his ancestry wrong periodically.
Ladies and gentlemen, today's subject is brand new.
Shiny car new.
Smell of new leather new.
New, as in New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, New Hampshire, New Caledonia.
I'm starting to get carried away, like happens to my engineer.
The subject is, will be revelatory to most of you, even those of you who are biblically illiterate.
How much...
The Bible specifically, the great first five books called the Torah, the basis of the Old Testament, and the basis of the New Testament.
It's all in the Torah.
Love your neighbor, love stranger, love God, God loves you, and creation, and flood, and Noah.
And Ten Commandments, it's all the Exodus, it's all the first five books.
You have no idea how much they stress the treatment of animals must be decent.
You can eat animals, but you must treat them decently.
People, even religious people, even...
Bible commentaries, I just don't see it.
And I make a big deal about it in my Bible commentary, The Rational Bible.
If you want wisdom, read those books.
I'm sorry if it sounds self-aggrandizing.
It's either true or not true.
And you don't write biblical commentaries for self-aggrandizement.
You do because you have something to say and you believe it's the most important book ever written.
So let me begin.
I promise you it will blow your mind.
Because no matter how literate you are in the Bible, if I said to you, tell me where treatment of animals is commanded, good treatment of animals is commanded or taught in the Bible, you wouldn't come up with all the references.
So I'll begin in Genesis.
This rule actually applies to all humanity.
It is not at all just for Jews, just for Israelites or Hebrews, whatever term you wish to use.
You are not allowed to eat the limb of a living animal.
That is one of the only laws in the book of Genesis.
All the laws...
Of the Torah, which is where all 613 are in the Bible.
They're all in the Torah, the first five books.
And they're all in the latter four books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
Very few are in Genesis.
One of them is you cannot eat the limb of a living animal.
People did that prior to refrigeration, which is prior to the very, very, very modern age, because if they weren't going to eat an entire animal, they would simply keep it fresh by keeping it alive.
But if they wanted a leg, they tore off the leg.
How do I know?
It's very simple.
You only have laws prohibiting actions where the actions took place.
Right?
There's no law prohibiting something that people didn't do.
It would be absurd.
So, this is the beginning.
The treatment of animals continues.
How many of you have ever thought about this?
Treatment of animals is in the Ten Commandments.
The most important document ever written in the history of the world.
And do you know where?
In the Sabbath commandment.
Your animal must be given a day of rest just as you are.
Big A? I don't know why.
I only know that it is true.
That the amount of attention paid to decent treatment of animals in the Bible, specifically the Torah, is just ignored and yet is extremely extensive.
From the Genesis, you can't eat the limb of a living animal, to the Ten Commandments, your animal must be given a day off.
Then, let's see here.
So, the next one, I want to give you the source, actually.
Deuteronomy 2210. By the way, the latest book of my Bible commentary is Deuteronomy.
I urge you with all of my heart and soul to read it.
A guy just wrote me that he read Exodus and...
Genesis, and he thought Deuteronomy was the best of my three volumes out so far.
I really enjoyed that because Deuteronomy is not easygoing.
I worked feverishly to explain everything in it.
Deuteronomy 22.10, how is this?
Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.
How many people know that one?
And by the way, just for the record, the founders of the United States cited Deuteronomy more than any other book written, from the Enlightenment or from the Bible.
Deuteronomy.
In case you think it's some obscure text because you went to school and it was never mentioned.
How's that, huh?
Do not plow with a donkey and an ox.
Yoked together.
They walk at different speeds.
They are of different sizes.
And so they will hurt one another.
They will cause pain to one another being attached, yoked together.
There's a law I'll bet very few of you were familiar with.
And we go to another one.
And let's see.
That will be Deuteronomy.
25, 40, 25, 4. Yep.
Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.
That's, what is that?
What translation is that?
New IV, yeah.
New international version.
Very widespread red one.
Yep, your animal is in the field.
You're working with it.
Him, her.
You may not muzzle the animal.
It must be free to eat at will while you are working the animal in the field.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, my favorite.
My favorite comes from the most strange story of the Torah.
Balaam, B-A-L-A-A-M, a heathen prophet, a non-Israelite prophet, if you will, is hired by a king to curse the Israelites.
And on his way, he's with his donkey, on his way to the king.
And the donkey...
Seize an angel with a sword.
I'll give you the rest when we come back.
It will blow thine mind.
Blow thine mind itself is a biblical phrase.
Prager 3-7.
1-8 Prager 7-7-6.
I'm going to finish the great donkey story in a moment.
How much the Torah, the first five books, enjoins us to treat animals decently.
People don't know about this.
But then there comes the question, and that's part of the Ultimate Issues Hour, why can we eat animals?
We'll get to that.
So I am telling you of something I never see noted.
I'm not saying it is never noted, I just don't see it.
How preoccupied the Torah, the first five books, is or are with the proper treatment of animals.
So here's a story, the Balaam story, Numbers 22, 23, 24. It's a complete departure from every other story.
It's both comical and brilliant.
I love the story, personally.
Balaam is hired by a king named Balak, B-A-L-A-K, to curse the Israelites.
They believed in those days that curses worked and blessings worked, and he was afraid of making war against the Israelites, this king Balak.
But Balaam says, listen, I can't say anything that the Lord doesn't put in my mouth, even though he was not.
A Hebrew, he believed in the Lord.
That's not the key part of the story.
The key part is this.
He did, in fact, nevertheless, go to Balak, because Balak was offering him vast fortunes if he would curse the Israelites.
And on his way, there was an angel up ahead in the road with a sword, and the donkey stopped.
In its tracks, the donkey just stopped walking, afraid of the angel with the sword, which Balaam didn't see.
It's part of the great joke of the Bible, an ass can see what a pagan could not.
The guy was a pagan prophet.
He couldn't see what his own donkey could see.
That's one of the punchlines of the story.
That everybody has noted who has studied the story.
But here is, to me, as important part of the story as any.
So he hits his donkey to get it to move.
The donkey doesn't move, fearing the angel that Balaam doesn't see.
He hits him twice.
Doesn't move.
Hits him three times.
And then the donkey speaks and says, Why are you hitting me?
Have I not been a good and loyal servant to you all these years?
I love that story.
Now...
The superficial crowd will go, oh, you believe a donkey could speak?
Like, as if that's the issue.
It's like reading Pinocchio and asking, oh, you think a nose can get extended when it lies?
That's the point of the story.
And by the way, if God could create the universe, he could make a donkey talk.
I mean, the idea that it's absurd, uh-huh.
So God could create the universe, and...
All the intelligence that was produced but he couldn't make one donkey talk is a little absurd.
If you believe God made the world, he could make a donkey talk.
But it doesn't bother me.
If it's literal or not literal, it's irrelevant to me.
I don't care.
I care about the moral of the story in this case.
So the donkey says, why are you hitting me?
And I'm literally now up to Numbers 23. And I've just been writing the commentary to that chapter.
And I note that wouldn't it be terrific if animals could say something?
Even just once, to their owners.
Why are you treating me this way?
Now, some owners could say, I'm treating you beautifully, and the animal would say, you're right, thank you.
But many animals have been horrifically mistreated.
In the late Middle Ages, I was just reading in a book on Europe, kings and princes and the elite would gather together and they would watch animals tortured to death.
That was part of their amusement.
I have to admit, there are acts of evil that I understand.
I don't understand why it brings anyone joy to watch a cat cry out from pain.
But they would do that.
The mistreatment of animals is a big part of human history.
We know that if a child tortures an animal, the chances are overwhelming.
That the child will mistreat human beings.
It is almost a perfect predictor of malevolent behavior later on in life.
Why people mistreat animals is a tough one on me, and I'm no believer in animal and human egalitarianism.
Unlike PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which has a program called Holocaust on Your Plate, and it equates the barbecuing of chickens in America with the cremating of Jews in Europe.
It's a sick organization, PETA, but they do believe that a man is a chicken is a pig, is a whatever, is their famous statement.
But how we treat animals is very, very significant.
3,000 years before Pita, the Torah was preoccupied with this.
What if your animal could talk?
Hello, everyone.
Ultimate Issues Hour is treatment of animals and how preoccupied to the The amazement of many of you listening, if not all of you, how preoccupied the Bible, specifically the Torah, the basis of the Old and New Testaments, the first five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, are with treatment of animals.
I gave you example after example, all of which I suspect is new, ending with the great story of Balaam's donkey.
Who, after the owner hit him for not moving, just looked.
Was it a him or a her?
I don't remember.
Maybe it's not sighted.
Maybe it's just him, which is generic in any event.
Nobody who kills a mosquito says, oh, I killed her.
Because I always killed him.
So...
The donkey says, you know, I've been so loyal to you, why do you keep hitting me?
And when I read that, I thought, oh...
If only animals could have had even just a one time in their lives, one time in their lives, to speak to their owner, what would they say?
And if they could all ask, why do you treat me that way?
How many would be able to say, well...
You know I treat you well.
Certainly not historically.
Okay, in Torrance, California, is Tom.
Hello, Tom of Torrance.
Hi.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
Yeah, I was telling your screener that I find it curious that you think God made all these rules about how to treat animals when he created nature the way he did.
You know, I was watching a video a few years ago.
Of a little donkey walking through the jungle.
It was pounced on by a pack of hyenas who chewed it to pieces as it screeched.
And God did that intentionally, and he could have not done that.
So all of a sudden, he makes all these rules.
You know, there's such a contradiction there that I don't quite get it.
Your question is completely legitimate.
So let me deal with it here.
It's a very fair question.
In fact, there are people who have written, and I've read all of my life, on the issue called Theodicy, T-H-E-O-D-I-C-Y, of reconciling a good God and all the evil in the world.
And some writers have written that animal suffering is actually even a harder question than human suffering, because you can blame human evil.
Or human-inflicted suffering on the humans who inflict the suffering.
But who do you blame animal-inflicted suffering on?
You can't blame the animal.
It doesn't have free will.
I fully acknowledge that there are a handful of questions I cannot answer.
That's why I call my Bible commentary the Rational Bible.
I use reason, and if it violates reason, I don't use it.
And I never make up things.
I have no answer to the question of animal suffering as a result of behavior of other animals.
I have to, however, I have one recourse, which is a line a late rabbi named Milton Steinberg said in about 1950, which When I read it in high school or college, I memorized because it was so powerful.
Believers in God have to account for one thing, unjust suffering.
Atheists, however, have to account for the existence of everything else.
I find that as persuasive an argument with regards to that issue as exists.
Now, if you're still there, Tom, please feel free to react.
No, I said I think that there could be a God.
I'm an agnostic, not an atheist, so I absolutely think there could be a God.
The idea that it's a moral God, you can't have a moral...
He's like a torturer that way.
It's like Caligula or something.
He could have done anything.
He could have made the world with animals and made them all vegetarians, for instance.
And he would have the same world.
Right, okay, so in different words you're repeating your first point.
You're right, God could have done a lot of things.
In the meantime, the only reason you're bothered by it is because of the Bible that told us to be bothered by it.
This did not bother people in almost any other society.
Nor did slavery, nor did cruelty, nor did revenge.
By family or child sacrifice.
This was the God of the Bible who outlawed all that.
Dennis Prager here.
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