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March 23, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:22:38
Going Soviet
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hi there, everybody.
Welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
So, I receive from my producer, Alan Estrin, a.k.a.
The Living Martyr, every night, hand-picked articles that, in addition to my own article research, he has found.
Sometimes they coincide.
Most of the time, I had not seen the ones he sends.
Pithy comments.
Really, I mean, he summarizes the intent of the piece in ten words, or six words, and they're very bright.
By the way, this is not why I'm mentioning it, I'll tell you why in a moment, but you can receive exactly the same articles I receive when you subscribe to the show at PragerTopia.
And you get the show anytime you want.
Keep it if you want.
Send it if you want.
And it is also commercial-free at praegertopia.com.
It's a terrific thing to have because not everybody can hear all three hours.
Some people want to hear it again or play it for somebody.
And again, it's commercial-free, so it's almost half the time.
And you can listen at different speeds.
It's called praegertopia.com.
It's also a magnificent gift.
To somebody you would like to have Dennis Prager in their lives.
Well, why do I mention that?
Because in today's batch, he sent me a piece from Fox News.
The sudden turn of events that could derail Trump's indictment.
Manhattan's DA, Manhattan DA brag.
is determined to snooker a grand jury into indicting Trump.
Show me the man and I'll show you the crime was the infamous boast of Joseph Stalin's ruthless secret police chief, Lavrenti Beria.
His modus operandi was to target any man the Soviet dictator chose and then find or fabricate a crime against him.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has taken a page out of Stalin's playbook and targeted Donald Trump.
Driven by personal and political animus, the DA presumed the former president must be guilty of something.
It wasn't just a matter of devoting enough time and resources to hunt down the crime.
Failing to find one, Bragg copied Beria's paradigm and simply dreamed one up.
That is exactly what has happened.
The man spent a hundred-something thousand, I don't even remember what the sum is, to have a woman that he had a one-night stand with not say anything.
And he's being charged with a felony.
I know, well, you know, he didn't exactly report the fund as the business expense that he should have.
I mean, my friends, there is almost no person in...
No person, let's put it this way, who earns an income, who could not be indicted if somebody, I'm not saying convicted, all Bragg cares about is a mugshot and a humiliation of a man he loathes.
The damage to the country is irrelevant, as it always is to the left.
The bigger picture of...
We're going to keep kids out of school for nearly two years, was the left-wing position, and many people went along with it who were not left-wing.
Why they did is worthy of its own investigation, morally, psychologically, socially, etc.
But that is the way they operate.
They don't ask, what is the effect on the larger society?
What will...
What will gain me power now?
That is a much more rational question for the left.
It is rational.
That's why I've always said, as much as you must use reason in life, reason is not enough.
It depends on what your ends are.
You could be very rational in pursuing evil ends.
So, the reason I raise this is The pithy comment, or the, if you will, the sad comment that accompanies this particular article that was sent to me by my producer.
So what is his comment?
It is, here it is.
More support for your idea that American leftism...
It's not all that far from Soviet communism.
That's correct.
I have undergone some major metamorphoses in the last few years.
One of them is my view of the Russian people.
I thought Russians had a predilection toward tyranny.
After all, they had centuries of the Tsar, and then came...
The Communists, who were totalitarian, the Tsar was authoritarian.
There is a huge moral difference.
Totalitarians control everything about your life.
Authoritarians control your political life.
You don't bother the regime, the regime doesn't bother you.
Under totalitarianism, everything about you is regimented.
We are moving toward that here.
We already had the dress rehearsal for A Tyranny.
How you think is what the left cares about as much as how you act.
I don't care about how you think.
Dictators don't care about how you think.
They care about how you act.
The left is rooted...
In totalitarianism.
That is the part of human nature.
So what is the metamorphosis that I underwent?
And it's totally sad.
There's not a single silver lining in this realization.
And that is that a lot of groups can create a totalitarian state.
The Russians had more of an excuse, actually, for supporting communism, and most didn't, by the way.
Didn't matter, though.
They had more of an excuse.
They had no experience with liberty.
This is the sweet land of liberty, and its own citizens are turning it into a totalitarian state.
With the support of the New York Times and Washington Post and CNN and virtually every college and virtually every high school and virtually every elementary school and virtually every profession, including the medical profession.
We have a doctor who speaks out on behalf of therapeutics.
That is, in other words, therapies for COVID as opposed to just relying on a vaccine.
And the therapies might be ivermectin and might be hydroxychloroquine with zinc, then that doctor must be shut down.
When did that happen, that doctors were shut down?
In California, a doctor who spreads, quote, misinformation, which means there's a definition to the word misinformation.
And that is whatever the left differs with.
That is what is called misinformation.
So, it appears that the totalitarian spirit is not a monopoly of Germans or Russians.
It is a monopoly of the left.
Now you say, well, aren't there right-wing totalitarians?
Well, name one.
There are right-wing dictators.
Now, if you consider Hitler right-wing, he was actually racist, which transcends right or left as categories.
Nazism means National Socialism.
I wouldn't call him a leftist, and I wouldn't call him a rightist.
He was a racist.
His theory of life was based on race.
Why is racism right-wing?
There's much more racism in America today.
Contempt for blacks is much greater among leftists than it is among others.
The belief that the races should be separated is almost a monopoly of the left today.
More and more colleges are having black graduation ceremonies.
There's no irony to the left.
It is astonishing.
They call the right racist, and the right opposes black graduation exercises, and they're for it.
The sense of irony.
There's no self-monitoring on the left.
It's a very happy place.
Well, I take that back.
There's no happiness on the left.
But it has a sort of comfort because you never ask, gee, wait a minute, I'm not supposed to be racist.
Why am I having a black dormitory or a black graduation exercise?
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A Democratic-run city, needless to say, in Colorado, a city by the name of Louisville, passed an ordinance limiting the number of gas stations allowed to operate within the city to just six.
They want to fight climate change in Louisville, Colorado.
Everything the left touches, it ruins.
This country could be energy independent.
But what you must understand about the climate change activities, the anti-climate change activities, is that they are another left-wing attempt at the control of society.
COVID was an example, fully successful from the left point of view.
They got healthy people to take an experimental vaccine.
They got kids out of school for only bad reasons, no good reasons.
They ruined tens of thousands of small businesses because they're in cahoots with big businesses, so you could go to Target, but you couldn't go to Jerry's hardware store.
So the control of people is a very deep part of leftism.
That's definitional.
If they don't want to control you, they're more liberal than they are leftist.
Liberals are not preoccupied with controlling people.
They're preoccupied with voting for people who control people.
The tragedy in America is the tragedy of liberals.
Who think that conservatives are their enemy and not the left.
That's the tragedy in a nutshell, as I have so frequently noted to you.
But this is a vehicle for further control.
That is what climate change is about.
You want proof?
There are so many proofs.
I'll give you two.
If they're really serious about limiting carbon dioxide emission, why is China allowed to build, what did I just read, two coal?
Coal mines a week.
Yeah, that's right.
They are relying more and more in China, the world's largest country, and second economy to only the United States.
They are relying more and more on coal while we limit gas stations in cities and pass laws that you cannot buy a new...
Gas-powered car in California.
What is it after 2030?
I believe it's 2030, which is six and a half years from now.
Controlling people's lives is a yearning on the left.
It's difficult for me to comment on it because, or even say it, I should say, because If you don't have a desire to control others, you don't relate to this.
It comes from a dark place in the human spirit that if you don't have that dark place, it's a puzzle to you.
We all understand many, many bad things that people do.
Nobody asks, why did he rob a bank?
Why did he mug a person on a street?
We understand why.
We understand various evils.
But the desire to control your fellow human being, that is almost unique to the left.
Now, obviously, some controls.
We don't allow people to murder.
There are laws.
Those are functions of...
We're not anarchists.
We understand that there will be some laws.
This is a classic example.
So they're not serious.
The seriousness is controlling your life, not combating carbon dioxide emission.
How would the United Nations allow so much additional reliance on coal in China while telling the West how they have to become energy dependent rather than independent?
And cause people to enter what the Germans call energy poverty.
The second proof is that they're opposed to nuclear power.
See, nuclear power would allow you to remain, to continue to live as you live now.
But the left does not want you to continue to live as you live now.
They want you to bicycle to work.
They want you to walk to work.
They want you to take a train or a bus to work.
In fact, they don't even want you to go to work.
They would ideally like you to stay home, which is another reason, from everything I'm reading, for the increase in loneliness and depression among Americans.
So what will you not do at home, in effect?
You'll watch movies at home.
You'll order in food at home.
You will work at home.
It is very healthy to leave home.
I could broadcast this show from home.
I did for years.
I'm perfectly capable, technically, of doing so.
But I realize it's much healthier to come in and interact with people.
People need people.
In the left view, what people need is money.
I have a very interesting proof of that.
The New York Times had an article about, yes, David French, who was nominally conservative, One of the two or three of the hundred or so right opinion pieces of the New York Times.
And he wrote about, what if kids are sad and stressed because their parents are?
You know what the most popular comment?
The single most popular comment in the comments section of the New York Times readers.
What about poverty?
Yep.
Kids today are more depressed than ever, according to New York Times readers, because of poverty.
You know when I knew that I wasn't a leftist?
The day I heard poverty causes crime.
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The amount of misinformation from the left is remarkable.
They live in a make-believe world of panic.
In order to suppress people's liberty.
That is the raison d'etre of the left.
So this city in Colorado has me mesmerized.
The number of gas stations in this small city will be six.
You can't open another one.
The ease with which people's lives and private industry or private companies, small businesses, are controlled, like in California, with a petty Stalinist by the name of Gavin Newsom, governs.
But it doesn't matter if it's Gavin Newsom.
Gavin Newsom is as interchangeable as any of the communists in the Soviet Union.
You got rid of 100, 100 would take their place the next hour.
It is irrelevant, the name.
The only one by name that I actually pick on is the president because he is a particularly vile human being aside from being by far the most destructive of America president we have ever had.
So Newsom doesn't interest me.
The left interests me.
But this doesn't bother half the country.
While China has more coal plants, fires up coal at an incredible rate, we're supposed to limit the gas stations in Louisville, Colorado.
It was unanimous, of course.
I assume they're all Democrats there.
And because it is a religion, people will take it.
Everyone sacrifices for their religion.
It's one of the definitions of religion that you...
Are prepared to sacrifice for it.
So people are totally prepared because with the death of Judeo-Christian religions, we have secular religions.
They're known as leftist ideologies.
And so people are prepared to suffer for it.
In fact, it makes them feel even more religious in the sense of more committed to their left-wing ideology.
We have an obligation.
This is what a member of the council, a woman, Maxine Most, or Most, M-O-S-T, we have an obligation to take every step possible to address the changes to our climate that are ravaging our planet and directly impacting the health, well-being, and livelihoods of the constituents we represent in Louisville.
Now, I don't think she knows she's lying.
So it's a very interesting question, is she lying?
That's a philosophical, moral question.
If you tell a lie and you believe it is true, are you lying?
I don't know if part of the definition of lie is you must know that it is a lie.
It's a tough one.
But it is objectively a lie.
You might not be able to say she is a liar because she thinks she's telling the truth.
It's a very interesting question.
How many people know that they're lying when they lie?
What percentage of lies are told that people know are lies?
And how much have they talked themselves into believing?
I don't have an answer, but...
That's an important question if you want to understand the concept.
So let's analyze this.
Okay, we have to address the changes to our climate that are ravaging our planet.
This is propaganda of the left, just like lockdowns was propaganda of the left.
Protect kids, don't send them to school was propaganda of the left.
Wear masks all the time.
Or nearly all the time.
It was propaganda of the left.
All of these control activities, this is propaganda.
The world is not being ravaged.
I can tell you that since where you live is relevant, and I will get back to Louisville, Colorado in a moment.
But where I live in Southern California, we are experiencing about as cold a winter as I have in my 40 years of living in California.
I mean, it has been truly cold.
It is cold today, and we're in spring.
It just isn't true that we, at least where I live, which is nominally a warm climate, Ravaged.
They always use the most hysterical term possible because that is the only way they can control your life is with a hysterical term.
Existential threat to mankind.
You can't get worse than that.
Existential means existence of.
So let me continue analyzing this completely deceitful statement of...
Councilwoman Maxine Most in Louisville, Colorado.
The changes to our climate are ravaging our planet.
That isn't true.
There are some deleterious consequences, but our planet is not being ravaged.
And directly impacting the health, well-being, and livelihoods of the constituents we represent in Louisville.
Really?
I'd like to know how it has impacted their livelihoods, health, etc.
Hi everybody, I'm Dennis Prager.
*music* I will read to you from the Los Angeles Times, whose editorial board...
It seems to be composed largely or exclusively of fools.
I have no other term for their latest editorial.
It's called, Bills Intended to Shame and Scare Transgender Students Are Despicable.
It is remarkable the lying that comes with such ease to all leftists.
Not all liberals, not all conservatives, but all leftists.
There is a bill to shame and scare transgender students.
The bill, which of course has no chance, because there are only Democrats controlling the two houses of the California legislature, and of course the governor is a Democrat.
So there's no chance it could pass.
It's symbolic to show those who care about children the amount of damage that the Democrats are doing to children.
But they pay no price.
They were the ones who advocated closure of schools.
That has led to far lower abilities intellectually among children in all these states.
Has led to severe depression at rates never seen before in American history.
But they don't pay a price because, as I wrote 30 years ago, being on the left means never having to say you're sorry.
Do they still think the lockdowns of schools were right?
By the way, I think, is it LA teachers are on strike?
Is that correct?
Yes.
In sympathy for other strikers.
Teachers unions care about children as much...
As I never can fill in the rest of the sentence.
I need help here.
Teachers care about children as much as X care about Y. What would that be?
Well, I guess as much as you care about crickets, since crickets were raised last hour.
Except you do less damage to crickets.
Yeah, there you go.
Crickets.
It's funny that they use crickets as a euphemism for no response.
Well, what was the response?
Crickets.
I guess crickets means that you can only hear crickets, so it's very quiet.
So listen to this editorial in today's Los Angeles Times.
Republican lawmakers across the nation have introduced more than 400 bills to restrict the rights of LGBTQ people in the current legislative cycle, according to Human Rights Watch.
Do they ever identify anything as a left-wing source?
They always identify, always.
I don't believe that the name...
The names Dennis and Prager have ever been used in a left-wing journal like the Los Angeles Times without saying right-wing or conservative.
And I don't mind that.
But they never say left-wing or progressive or liberal or whatever.
So Human Rights Watch is considered just neutral.
I'm not citing a left-wing source, of course.
One of them, Assembly Bill 1314, an odious, so far we got despicable and odious, proposal by California Assembly members Bill Essaley and James Gallagher.
By the way, if you want to know what it's like to be lonely, ask a Republican in the California legislature.
That is a definition of loneliness.
To compel teachers, counselors, and other school staff to notify parents if their kid is transgender.
That's odious.
It's not odious that if a boy says he's a girl, the teachers go, then you're a girl.
Of course, it's wonderful, and we'll hide it from your parents.
Why should they know that their 10-year-old boy says he's a girl?
Who the hell are parents?
They're a nuisance.
Parenthetical point.
I'm asked, as I was yesterday on a Christian podcast that I appeared on to discuss my latest Bible commentary on Deuteronomy, I was asked, as I've often asked, and it's a perfectly logical question, do I think any of the Ten Commandments is the most important one of the Ten Commandments?
And I have given different answers at different times.
My current answer is honor your father and mother because the road to cults and to totalitarianism always begins with the destruction of parental authority.
That's right.
The Nazis and communists told children, you don't owe your parents allegiance.
Schools do not owe parents allegiance.
They owe it to the party.
And that is essentially what they say in the Democratic Party.
Your parents are nuisances.
We will feed you breakfast and lunch.
We will take care of you.
We will hide from your parents the pathology of believing that you are the other sex at 10. And it doesn't mean you're a bad person.
Pathology doesn't make you bad.
But if you do not think that that is pathologic, then you don't know the term.
It is not perfectly healthy, psychologically, for someone to believe they are the other sex.
Because you cannot be what you think you are.
You cannot be a woman if you're a man.
You cannot be a man if you are a woman.
It is quite astonishing that I have to say this, but more astonishing is that it's controversial.
It's considered hate-filled.
Yes.
It's hateful, according to the left, to say that a man cannot be a woman.
He can think that he is, of course, and can act that way.
My view is very simple.
If you look like a woman, talk like a woman, and have a woman's name, I will regard you as a woman.
I'm not going to ask you what you were born, what you are biologically.
But if you announce it, then I have to say you are...
Announcing something that is not possible.
Apparently the state's Republicans aren't quite as concerned with privacy as they pretend.
So now this is a new, the LA Times editorial board reaches new intellectual lows regularly.
So it's now, we are now worried about the privacy of elementary school students.
Wow, that's interesting.
It's a new idea in the realm of human rights.
The privacy of children.
The school should collaborate in hiding from the parents the most radical belief, in effect, that a child could have.
I don't mean politically.
And that is that the child is not...
What the child is.
Under the bill, notification would be triggered if any school employee finds out that a student is identifying as a gender, a gender, I love that, a gender, other than what is on official school records.
Or, I wonder if they'll even have this anymore.
I'll bet you schools in California do not list any longer the gender.
As they've already owned the language, they dropped the word sex.
Or if a student participates in a sex-segregated school program or athletic team.
Oh, so they are for boys competing on girls' teams at the LA Times editorial board.
And they claim to care about children.
Leftism is a religion.
It is a secular religion.
The LA Times board believes that boys should be allowed to compete in girl sports and go into their locker rooms if they say they're girls as deeply as many of you believe they shouldn't.
Just understand that.
Please understand the sickness that pervades the Los Angeles Times editorial board and Washington Post and New York Times and virtually every other mainstream newspaper.
These are the people who bring you news.
This is very remarkable.
We're living through a sick time.
I keep referring to it as a dark time.
And it is.
We're living in a dark age.
And by the way, this is unique to the United States.
Europe has essentially stopped all of this.
Canada probably has it too.
Canada is one step ahead of us toward totalitarianism.
Thanks to Justin Trudeau.
What he did with the trucker's strike.
People told you lose your income if you don't get vaccinated.
Went on strike.
And he had banks freeze their bank accounts.
And he's still in office.
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New York, excuse me, LA Times, they're interchangeable.
LA Times editorial, kids should be allowed, schools should be allowed to hide from parents that their child at school says he is a girl or she is a boy.
Mind you, if every adult in children's lives said, no, you're a boy, you really are a boy.
I don't know why you think you're a girl.
And I love you, and I support you, but your brain is playing tricks on you.
You are a boy.
If every single adult said that, in the vast majority of instances, you would have ultimately a happier and healthier individual.
Having adults say, oh, of course you're a girl, when you're 10 years old, it's not a good thing.
But the LA Times thinks it is a very good thing.
It's odious.
A bill that says schools should inform parents.
Wow.
Odious.
Hateful bill.
That's another term that they used.
So they acknowledge it's unlikely to advance in the Democratic-controlled state legislature.
It was likely filed only to rile up California liberals.
By the way, it's not true.
I don't think California liberals think that the bill is wrong.
California leftists.
What the left has done, like the LA Times editorial board, you can't get left of the LA Times editorial board as a rule, what they have done is they have raped the word liberal, as so many other words have been.
Done two.
And what they've done is they have co-opted it.
We're not leftists.
We're liberals.
And so the liberal thinks, oh, this is what liberalism thinks.
So I support the LA Times editorial board and AOC and leftists who are ruining our society and hate Western civilization.
And that's because I'm a liberal and now I know what it means to be liberal.
A liberal wants children, wants schools to be allowed to hide from parents that their child says that he is a girl or she is a boy.
What's chilling is that Bill's targeting transgender youth.
We think they're...
See, this is really...
This is the beauty of clarity.
You know, my love of clarity over agreement.
So they say these bills target transgender youth.
Right, well, they target them, but they mean it in a nefarious way.
We believe you're targeting transgender youth, and you believe we're targeting transgender youth.
So over time, we will find out, just as we did with lockdowns, we will find out, And probably vaccinations in cases of any young person, and I mean young under 40, which is now in Denmark, for example, asked that people under 40 not get vaccinated.
What do they know after all?
A country heretofore idolized by the left.
So history will judge who was right.
Those who said boys can become girls and parents should not be told that their child says that or those who said boys cannot become girls and parents should be notified.
If you send your child to a public school or most private schools in California, you are taking a very big risk with your child's future.
And then it goes on to say, listen to this, despite opposition from medical groups such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatricians, which say that these healthcare procedures, they never use the term, I don't believe, puberty blockers.
They don't use the term.
They don't want their readers to understand.
They call it health care.
Like abortion has nothing to do with taking a life.
It's a health measure.
This has nothing to do with distorting the biology of a child.
Distorting the health of a child.
Nah.
It's health care.
Get it?
Remember the left lies with the ease with which you breathe because truth is not a left-wing value.
Winning is.
Controlling is.
By the way, they're right though.
The American Medical Association and American Academy of Pediatricians, to the disgrace of American medicine, which has so covered itself with shame, it is very difficult for a regular person in America to come to peace, to come to grips with and make peace with.
The shame that permeates the medical profession at this time.
Kaiser Permanente is being sued by a girl whose breasts were removed by Kaiser Permanente when she was 13. 13. The sick folks at Kaiser Permanente, and there are some terrific folks too, but they don't say anything.
So they're somewhat terrific.
They don't want to lose their job.
They don't want to be hated by their colleagues.
I understand that.
That's why the creation of these giant healthcare centers, corporations like Kaiser Permanente, is not a good thing for the country.
Big as a rule is bad.
If there were no big governments in the 20th century, there wouldn't have been the genocides of the 20th century.
Big can do good, but it does a lot more harm.
The founders of America knew that.
Most of us today don't.
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Ryan Beaudry.
That's right.
Well, one minute.
I'm debating.
Do I give credit?
To my engineer or not.
And I won't.
The fact that he told me that it was Beaudry should be irrelevant because I accepted his suggestion.
So I should get all the credit.
There you go.
There you go.
Exactly.
Ryan, it's a pleasure to meet you.
You are on the older side of Prager Force members.
You're 31, you told me.
I sure am, yes sir.
I'm 31 years old, so I think definitely on the older side, but, you know, I'm here to support.
That's really nice.
So, how did you discover PragerU?
Yeah, so I discovered PragerU really by happenstance.
I was on, so I'm pretty heavy on social media, and I think in the past maybe like four or five years, I started, you know, getting on Instagram a little bit more, and then I just ran into some PragerU videos really by accident, but I was intrigued by them, and I started to...
Look at a few of them.
And specifically, I was drawn to one of you guys' people of interest, Amala.
She had a story where she talked about her upbringing and how she came over to, you know, more of the conservative values and things like that.
And it really, you know, spoke to my heart and spoke to my own journey.
And then from there, I started looking at more of the videos.
And then now I am a PragerForce member and, you know, very strong for the cause.
Well, that really does my heart good.
Amala Abunobi is a remarkable young woman.
For those of you who don't know, she's actually sat in for me.
Not only been on the show, she has sat in for me.
Yes, Ryan.
She's an amazing young woman.
She has a BLM tattoo on her arm.
That is how far she has traveled morally and philosophically and in large measure.
Because of PragerU.
Of course, the credit goes entirely to the individual, but we have to spark something.
So you discovered us, and then when did you join PragerForce?
So I actually joined PragerForce this year, I think about maybe a month or a month and a half ago.
There was an event that was happening here in SoCal, and I wanted to go, and then I found out that you had to be a PragerForce member.
So I said, oh man, you know, I really want to become a member anyways, and especially for this event that's coming up.
So how do I do this?
Went online, registered, and thankfully the folks over at PragerForce signed me up, you know, pretty quickly within the day.
So then I was able to come on over and enjoy the event.
You had a good time?
It was an incredible time.
Really, Dennis, there's nothing like being in a space full of, you know, just very strong, passionate patriots, you know what I mean, especially in today's day and age.
And, you know, me being in Los Angeles, right, I've lived here for about 31 years now, all my life.
And, you know, I'm not too fond of it anymore, especially with kind of what I've learned about, you know, conservative value versus liberal and things like that.
L.A. is a pretty...
You know, I would say anti-conservative space in a lot of ways.
And so, you know, being able to go to an event where I can have, you know, fellowship with other like-minded individuals who are conservative and who are patriots, who love this country, you know, and we can, you know, just talk and share ideas and share struggles and things like that.
Really, it was a wonderful time.
And I'm very, very grateful for Prairie Forest for putting on that event and, you know, just having a good time for us.
Were you ever on the left?
Yes, sir, I was.
I absolutely was.
That's why I said I did kind of feel towards Amala's story.
I would say that I grew up pretty force-fed democratic ideologies and things like that.
Victimhood, victim mentality, that kind of thing.
As a black man, I was expected to think a certain way, act a certain way, and vote a certain way.
And actually, it wasn't until, man, it was the election of Trump.
Where, you know, since it was so just like, you know, so many passions on both sides, I finally, you know, started to look into some of the things that I believed, right?
And I, I'm sorry, at the time, I became a Christian.
So looking at my Christian principles, my Christian values, I just started to, you know, notice that they lined up a lot closer to conservative values.
And so from there, I just started to dig a little bit more.
I started to do some research.
I, you know, thought about the idea of personal responsibility, right, accountability, things like that.
And then slowly but very surely, I came over to the conservative side.
All right, I want to continue with this.
Folks, this is what we mean.
Please go to PragerU.
Hi, everybody.
A true highlight of fundraising month for PragerU is to speak to young people.
Sometimes.
Older people, but usually young people.
Each day at some point in my three hours who are affiliated or been affected by or both PragerU, we have a 19,000 member PragerForce around the world.
Yesterday I spoke to a young English member from Manchester in England.
Today, Ryan Beaudry, B-O-W-D-R-E. He's a member of Prager Forest, and he is 31 on the older side of Prager Forest members, and I asked him about his own evolution toward conservatism.
So you mentioned a number of things.
PragerU was one of them.
Obviously, becoming a Christian was another.
Yes.
Which makes perfect sense, because Judeo-Christian values are the antithesis.
Absolutely.
In virtually every arena.
Mm-hmm.
The Pope, even, who is on the left, has come out and saying, a man cannot be a woman.
He just announced that.
It's ironic.
The Pope tells scientific truth and scientists tell religious falsehoods.
Right.
Because they are a religion.
So I always ask black conservatives this question.
How has your family reacted to you?
You know what, Dennis?
Not well, unfortunately.
There has been a lot of pushback.
There has been just some tough conversations and some tough times.
I feel like I've been ostracized and othered in a lot of ways.
And, you know, really, there's only maybe about two or three other conservatives in my family that I know of.
I have a very big family, you know, so extended family, there's a couple of us there, but, you know, certainly my immediate family and even my stepfamily, I am the only one.
Everyone else is pretty far left.
And, you know, so it has not been easy.
There's been some tough times.
Right.
I suspect that such is why I asked you, and I salute you even more so for it, because...
You're paying a price.
Right.
There's no question.
So I am curious.
I really am curious.
I don't know the answer to this question.
Sometimes I have an answer in mind when I ask, but I don't have now.
I don't know what your answer is.
Do the great majority of your family, extended family, believe that whites are all racist?
Wow.
You know what?
To answer shortly, in a lot of ways, yes.
There is a very high amount of anti-white racism in my family, and it really doesn't make any sense, and honestly, it breaks my heart, but yeah, there are very strong elements of that in my family.
Did you tell any of them that you went to a Prager Force meeting and met a lot of nice people, most of whom were white?
I did not.
I told my sister.
She's the only one I told because her and I have been becoming a little bit closer and more honest with each other with these things.
But no, I did not want to tell most of my family because I knew it went out and got on well.
Would you say, in this case, I... I do suppose an answer, but I still want you to give the truth and not what you think I want to hear.
Would you say that you are happier than most of your relatives?
It certainly seems that way, yes.
I would say that...
You know, becoming a conservative has really just given me a lot of freedom.
The biggest thing holding me back and what I see still holds back a lot of my family members is, again, that victimhood mentality.
You know, thinking that the world is out to get you, thinking that this country is out to get you, thinking that, you know, white people are always going to be trying to put you down and things like that, and the police are out to get you, and there's all these programs that are, you know, against you, you know, things like that.
And for me, escaping that mentality has been an amazing thing for me.
I'm not a victim.
And it's also partly towards my faith where I've come to this realization.
But yeah, it's been difficult.
And I would certainly say that I am in a much happier place and seemingly so much happier than a lot of my siblings and my family.
You're a special guy, Ryan.
I'm very, very happy to make your acquaintance.
Do you know?
You wouldn't know, so I'll just tell you.
One of my books is on happiness.
It's a very important subject to me, because as I say, the happy make the world better, the unhappy make it worse.
I actually have a chapter, and the book is completely apolitical.
I have a chapter on victimhood, that if you think you are a victim, if that is a primary identity, it is not possible to be a happy person.
Wow.
Well, you're living it.
You are living the truth of that thesis of mine.
Yes, absolutely.
I don't want to in any way cause a bigger rift in your family, believe me.
Thank you.
But I want you to know that part of what they are annoyed about with regard to you is not only your changed politics and values and so on, but The unhappy, who are often unhappy for either psychological or even social reasons, because again, if you're told you're a victim, you would become unhappier.
They resent your happiness.
I just want you to know that.
It may not have been something you yourself have thought through, but I want you to know that.
If you were as miserable as they, if you were as angry at the world as they, they would love you more.
Yes, yes.
Honestly, Dennis, just to that point, I have seen that in real time.
When I speak about me being happy in this country and wanting to serve my country, being proud of where I'm from, and I talk about certain values and principles.
They get upset.
They feel like I need to be angry.
They feel like I need to share that resentment towards white people.
That's exactly right.
Ryan, you've made a really big impact on me.
I am very happy to know you and I would like to do this again.
You're a joy and a credit to yourself and to PragerU and to Christianity.
God bless you, my friend.
We will meet again.
Yes, sir.
Thank you so much, Dennis.
It was a pleasure.
See you next time.
Please help PragerU.
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
This is a good example as a preface to my introduction to my foreword as an exercise in redundancy.
This is a perfect example of why I laugh at myself when I first began radio decades ago, and I had a daily show for three hours, and I asked one of the legends of radio, a man named Ray Breen, familiar certainly to many of you in Southern California, who was on five hours a night, midnight to 5 a.m., and I'll never forget.
I said to him, somewhat nervously, I said, Ray, I can't imagine I'll have three hours of things to say every day?
And he just laughed.
A man who had five hours of things to say every day.
Anyway, why is this the forward to my introduction to my preface of my guest?
There is so much that I want to talk to you about.
But this young woman is another find.
If you want hope, and I don't believe in hope that is baseless, but if you want hope for our society, you should listen to this show regularly because of all these spectacular people I have on, and not just young people.
That obviously gives hope just because of the chronology of things.
But there are so many terrific people in this country.
This country is the most toxic idea producer in the world.
It is also the best idea producer in the world.
The best and the worst in ideas are coming from the United States of America.
And in the best category falls this woman, Amber Affey, A-T-H-E-Y. I've had her on before.
Who is all of 28?
And it proves a thesis of mine.
Wisdom is related to whether or not you are wise, not whether or not you are young.
The Snowflakes Revolt is the book, just come out.
The subtitle is How Woke Millennials Hijacked American Media.
Woke Millennials.
And the examples are a legion.
Anyway, Amber, welcome back to the Dennis Prager Show.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's great to be back.
How great on a scale of 1 to 10?
How great?
I would say probably a 10. Wow.
I expected 9.3.
I was not sure what you would say.
You know, I should have warned you because we spoke for a few minutes before you came on.
I throw these curveball questions that come into my fertile mind out of nowhere.
I mean, how many people are going to ask you, how happy are you to come on their show?
Well, that's why this show is good fun.
That's a 10 out of 10 on good.
That's right.
Well, thank you.
Well said.
So, by the way, just remind me and my audience, what is a millennial?
A millennial is someone who was born between, I believe, the years 1980 and 1997. It's about that range.
So I am actually a younger millennial.
I was born in 1994, so I'm pretty close to that cutoff.
And then after millennials is Gen Z? That's correct.
The ones born...
The Zoomers, as they're called.
The what?
Zoomers?
The Zoomers.
Oh, I see.
As opposed to Boomers.
Right.
I get it.
I hear you.
So, you attended Georgetown University, and you were the most, according to the book, the most outspoken conservative there.
Is that accurate?
Yes, that is beyond dispute.
So, here is a...
I'm going to throw an interesting thought at you, and I'd like you to react.
You don't have to even react, but I want you to hear this.
If I were to try to understand where you come from, I don't mean background and all of that.
That's part of it.
In other words, what made you a fighter?
To be very, very precise.
My answer is largely that's your nature.
I'm curious if you would react to that.
That's an interesting point, and I think that is mostly true.
I do have an older brother, and he is political, but not very public about it.
Exactly.
That's right.
He works as a police officer.
Same genes, same environment, same home, same religion.
That's exactly right.
And it's true for every fighter that I know.
It's like God or nature or both throw out a certain number of people who will fight for good things.
You just happen to be one of them, and thank God you are.
I have no better explanation.
But tell me about your background.
You had a very interesting statement to me when I asked you about did you grow up conservative, and you said yes.
And tell us about your parents.
Absolutely.
So my parents are working class Americans.
My dad was a union plumber for the entirety of his adult career.
My mom was a video store manager while my dad went through trade school and then ended up becoming a stay-at-home mom after I was born in 94. And they always were very clear with me that life is not fair.
And they taught me and my brother the value of hard work.
They taught us to take responsibility for our own lives.
And as we were talking before we came on, that is such a difference from a large swath of the millennial generation, which is very entitled.
And not just entitled to things, but they think that they're entitled to be protected from things, meaning they don't believe they should have to face challenges.
Anything that is considered offensive or troubling to them has to be destroyed.
And they operate under the concept that life should be fair.
And maybe life should be fair.
That's obviously a different ontological question.
But it's not the reality.
And these are people who just fundamentally don't grasp reality.
I have to say when a good-looking woman says ontological, I have a very positive reaction.
So as I said to you earlier, that being told in your upbringing that life is unfair is, as that being told in your upbringing that life is unfair is, as I said to you, it's the best vaccine you can take against depression and against
They, as you said, this generation, of which you're a member, expects life to be Uncomplicated.
That's why, you know, Adam Kroll and I made a film called Safe Spaces.
No Safe Spaces, sorry.
And this whole notion of a safe space embodies what you're talking about.
You're unhappy that a conservative came to your campus, come and have hot chocolate, and play with Play-Doh.
Did Georgetown have safe spaces?
They did, and one of them was implemented because of something I did.
When I was the chair of College Republicans my junior year, we decided to bring Dr. Christina Hoff Summers to campus.
And we were, I believe, the first major university to do so, even before Oberlin.
And the reaction was very aggressive from the campus left.
I was reported to the administration for allegedly creating an unsafe environment for my fellow students.
They had a safe space next door to the speech itself.
They demanded that we institute a trigger warning for the event, which we refused to do.
And then even afterwards, when video of the event went up on YouTube, Georgetown itself, the administration, tried to get us to remove that video, even though the event was open to the public.
So it was a major fiasco where these people who didn't have to attend the event, didn't even have to listen to what Dr. Summers had to say, had somehow made themselves the victim of a speech that had yet to happen.
How many allies did you have at Georgetown?
It was not a lot.
The College Republicans had an active membership base of about 40 students.
And out of those, I would say maybe five to ten were as outspoken or close to as outspoken as I was.
The rest of them really just wanted to avoid controversy.
And that was a problem, obviously, because there's a lot of safety in numbers when you're in these very contentious political environments.
And we simply didn't have that.
A lot of us felt like we were on an island.
And I heard from quite a few of my friends after the Christina Hoff Summer speech that They never wanted to do anything like that again because of how mentally draining it was to be constantly defending yourself from whatever accusations they were throwing out, from rape apologists to racists to misogynists to anything else.
To regard Christine Hoff Summers as some hate-filled human being, it's equally absurd and vile.
The woman is such a serious, decent...
Professorial, even, individual.
I know her for many years.
So she came.
Did she give the speech unmolested?
She did.
There were people in the back who had signs of protest, and of course there were some people who asked some rather nasty questions.
But I think the entire event really demonstrated the arrogance and narcissism that defines my generation as well, because these people had basically read her Wikipedia page or maybe Googled Vox for some example of her saying something that they disagree with.
That's what they did.
That's exactly right.
And they somehow thought that they were qualified to take on the decades of research that she had done on feminism and rape culture.
Forgive me, Amber.
We have to take a break.
Everyone, I'm telling you I'm reading this book, The Snowflakes Revolt, How Woke Millennials Hijacked American Media.
It is up at DennisPrager.com.
And I cannot recommend it highly enough.
We'll be back with Amber in a moment.
Speaking to a terrific young woman, Amber Effie, and a very, very important book.
By the way, your book has footnotes on the bottom of each page rather than at the end.
For that alone, I want you to know I salute you and your publisher.
I know.
God bless them.
That is rare.
I mean, it used to be common.
But in any event, I just thought I'd note that.
The Snowflakes Revolt.
How woke millennials hijacked American media.
So I'm going to put you on the spot here because they just had a situation.
I don't remember the protagonists, but someone on our side was asked, I think a congresswoman, but I'm not certain, by an antagonistic person on the left.
So what does woke mean?
And she didn't come up with a very good answer.
I'm curious how you would define woke.
That was my friend, Bethany Mandel, and I really feel for her because she has a chapter in her book defining woke, and I know she knows what it means.
Oh, that was Bethany?
Really?
Oh, that's fascinating.
Well, look at that.
Yeah, so that was a shame.
I feel for her.
She's getting a lot of heat, but I mean, I think she would probably give a pretty similar answer that I'm going to give, which is obviously that woke actually started as a rather academic term.
That people of color used to describe the moment that they awakened or woke up to the idea that this country is systemically racist and therefore all the powers that be are aligned against them.
And the saying or the thinking is that once you wake up or become woke, you're then able to better fight against that systemic inequality.
Now, as the right has adopted the term and used it to describe mostly radical progressivism, it's more mocking the idea that our country is systemically racist and that identity politics is a necessary ideology in order to combat that inequality.
More so, woke has come to define, I think, just the leftists who reject the fundamental ideals in which America was founded, which is equality of opportunity over equality of outcome.
They reject freedom of speech, freedom of religion.
They really don't believe in having discourse.
They believe in shuttering the other side.
And they also believe that they have a monopoly on truth.
So, the truth is, there's really no difference at this time between woke and left.
There is between woke and liberal, because I believe liberal and left are not the same thing.
But liberals vote for the left, so they do as much damage.
But that's a separate issue.
So, is that fair to say that?
That essentially, in terms of positions held, woke and left are synonymous.
I agree.
I think woke is synonymous with the illiberal left, as you can put it.
Right, exactly.
So your thesis is essentially that, again, the subtitle, How Woke Millennials Hijacked American Media, is in the title that they are snowflakes, that they are incapable of dealing with the fact that life has challenges and pain.
Is that a fair summary?
Yes, that's correct.
Okay.
Is there a more dramatic example, and you would know this because you wrote a book on this, but I want people to know that even those of us who didn't write a book on this are aware of the hijacking of American media by these millennial snowflakes.
What happened at the New York Times when its longtime opinion editor invited a Republican senator to write a column?
Tell us the story.
Absolutely.
So at the New York Times, during the summer of 2020, when there were riots breaking out across the country, Tom Cotton was invited to write an opinion piece about sending in the National Guard to quell the riots.
This piece sparked an internal revolt.
In the New York Times newsroom.
And not only just in terms of complaints on Slack channels or to editorial directors, but there was also a public social media campaign that these woke staffers instituted where they accused their colleagues who had published this opinion piece of causing harm to Black New York Times staffers.
They legitimately claimed that the publication of this op-ed was going to lead to violence against Black people.
And what ensued was essentially an apology tour on behalf of New York Times leadership.
It led to the resignation of several of the opinion editors there, including James Bennett.
And the op-ed, to this day, has an editor's note at the top of it indicating that it should have never been published in the first place.
Really?
I did not know that!
That's awesome!
It's so...
They're stupid at the New York Times.
Aside from censorious and vile, they're stupid because it's their way of acknowledging we never publish anything we differ with.
That's exactly right.
And what's insane about this internal takeover of all of these media companies is that usually the people who are doing it, who are pushing for progressive activism over a search for facts and truth...
Is that they're usually the most mediocre, poorest performing employees, or at least in the lowest level position.
So they're people who don't have any authority whatsoever and don't really have much talent, and yet they demand that they have an outsized influence over the editorial direction of these papers.
Forgive me.
I have a tough question, seriously tough question for you.
I wrote a column.
I've been writing columns for decades.
One recent column I wrote about what I believe, and I gave a lot of data, the disproportionate influence of women in the woke world.
So we're going to take a break, but I don't want to keep people hanging, as it were.
Do you essentially agree with that?
Yes.
Okay.
I want to hear your thoughts on that.
This is an important woman and an important book.
That's why I'm taking so much time.
The Snowflakes Revolt.
How Woke Millennials Hijacked American Media.
And it's under 200 pages.
Almost.
We return.
turn, you're listening to the Dennis Prager Show.
Hi everybody, I'm Dennis Prager.
This is a remarkable guest, Amber Affey.
The Snowflakes Revolt.
She's a millennial herself.
She is a writer for...
What is your title, actually?
Washington editor for The Spectator, which I happily pay to subscribe and read.
It's a wonderful sight.
And the book is The Snowflakes Revolt, How Woke Millennials Hijacked American Media.
I did not know that the New York Times has an advisory at the Tom Cotton article.
Why does it say we regret having published this?
What was the advisory?
I'm not hearing Amber.
I think it says something along the lines of it didn't go through the proper editorial process and it's essentially a warning that the piece should not have been published in its current form.
It's really incredible.
I encourage everyone to go read it.
It is incredible.
So I asked you a very provocative question, but it's not meant to be provocative.
I didn't write my column or say it regularly.
Women are disproportionately ruining America.
And it just hit me over time how disproportionately female, for example, the belief that minors should have...
Well, wokeness fundamentally is a manipulation of people's emotions because it's telling them...
That in order to make life easier for a group of people or to make life more fair for a group of people who have been historically disadvantaged, you have to support this certain slate of policy proposals or this group of ideologies.
And women, of course, would have this resonate more with them because, as we know, and I would probably get in trouble for even saying this, There are biological differences wherein women tend to be more empathetic, more compassionate, and tend to be caregivers.
And so it appeals to them more, the idea that they can help people out and give people a hand up if they support this progressive ideology.
And I think this has only ramped up and become more toxic over the past decade or so.
Because women are getting married at older ages and having fewer children.
So their caregiving sentiments are not being directed towards families.
They're being directed towards politics.
What an intelligent last comment.
That's right.
Thank you.
I'm going to get in trouble because I don't do the hiring at PragerU, but I'm going to definitely recommend you give a video.
Your mind is very sharp and clear.
It is truly a pleasure.
See, I have a different take on the exact same first half of your last sentence, and your take is at least as accurate as mine.
My take is women are not getting married, so they don't have the male influence in their lives.
They're their only influencers.
They and fellow girlfriends, as it were.
And that is totally understandable, but unless you believe that men and women think the same, which people on the left apparently do think, but it's not true, there is a problem.
And I have said, and I'm attacked all the time by the left, which brings me great joy, by the way, just as a note to you, Girls must be...
I said this on the Young Turks.
To their credit, they actually invited me on.
The left almost never hears from people like us.
Anyway, so they just found it absurd that I would say that you have to raise daughters to control their natures just as much as you have to raise boys to control their natures.
And the nature that the girl has to control is not every emotion is a valid policymaker, whether for herself or for society.
But you have added, so the lack of male influence was my take, and yours, I'm not dropping mine, but yours is just as valid.
The normal...
Direction of female compassion and caregiving is in the micro, but they don't have that anymore.
Yes, and I think that's another feminine impulse that we usually have to rein in.
It's that we can't save everybody.
Yeah, hold on there.
Keep that thought.
You can't save everybody.
I'm going to come back.
This is just like a candy store for me.
Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
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