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March 28, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:22:41
Nashville Shooter
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hello, everybody.
Dennis Prager here.
Thank you for being with me.
So, we have a very interesting sort of smoking gun problem in the mainstream media, which is the left-wing media.
They are synonymous.
How do you identify the shooter?
In Nashville, this monstrous murderer who murdered three children and three adults.
I believe that is the number.
Children, three children ages eight and nine and three adults.
At a Christian school, the Covenant School.
For the record, the children were Evelyn, Deakhouse, Hallie, Scruggs, and William Kinney.
The adults were Cynthia Peake, Catherine, Koontz, and Mike Hill, 61, 60, 61, children 8 and 9.
I think the murderer was 26 years old.
I'll verify that for you.
So we have here a female who identifies as a male, so in the current parlance that's trans male.
If you watch the mainstream media or read the mainstream media or listen to them, it was very difficult to ascertain that because in their articles many of them did not even use a pronoun.
This is very difficult when you describe somebody who is the subject of your story.
So, do you say she took the gun or she got the gun illegally?
She got there in a stolen car?
She got there or he got there?
In the beginning, the New York Times...
Actually said that it was a she.
And then they took measures, as Breitbart writes, the Blaze, excuse me, the Blaze writes, they took measures to ensure that they were on record as not misgendering the individual who slaughtered children.
They used the word transsexual.
I'll use either that or transgender.
Transsexual is more correct.
But I'm not going to get into that right now.
Murdered three children.
Metropolitan Nashville police officers were able to kill the shooter before she.
So they, at the blaze, they're saying she.
But it was, of course, a she who identified as a he to make things more complex.
I believe that the name of the individual was Audrey, which is a girl's name or female name.
The New York Times issued an update several hours after the rampage effectively apologizing for having identified the school shooter by her biological sex.
There was confusion later on Monday about the gender identity, which is very interesting.
Not the gender.
Now, so the New York Times acknowledges that there was something different about trans people in terms of gender, as they use, instead of sex, but fine, we'll leave it that way now.
There was something different, because they would never say that about a person who is biologically the same as identifying.
There was confusion later on Monday about the gender identity.
Did you ever read there was confusion about the gender?
So, in other words, the New York Times is tacitly acknowledging that gender and gender identity are not the same.
Whoa, that's a biggie.
I'm sure it eluded them that they were, in fact, doing that.
There was confusion about the gender identity of the assailant in the Nashville shooting, the Times tweeted.
Officials had used she and her to refer to the suspect who, according to a social media post and a linked-in profile, appeared to identify as a man in recent months.
So that's the tweet from the New York Times, and that's all you need to do.
If in recent months you say you're a man, then the New York Times says you're a man.
That's it.
If the individual changed three months later, then the New York Times would say she.
So you don't learn the gender from the New York Times, you learn the gender identity.
That is their own acknowledgement.
What is important here, aside from that, is if indeed we're talking about a trans individual murdering students and teachers at a Christian school, might this be what is known as a hate crime?
And it will be very interesting to see if that is labeled as such.
Because...
In the trans community, as they call it, there is deep hatred of Christianity and religious Christians.
They are seen as the enemy, which to a certain extent is true.
Religious people do not accept the idea.
That you can become a member of the other sex.
Many religious people, as I am one of them, in my case Jewish, my modus operandi is, if you look like, talk like, have the name of, and dress like a certain sex, I refer to you as such.
I don't ask you what you were born.
I don't ask you your biological sex.
If you look like a woman, talk like a woman, have a woman's name, and wear women's clothing, then I will treat you as a woman.
That's it.
I don't know any religious person who doesn't.
Do religious people go around asking strangers whom they meet, like, let's say, a waiter or waitress?
I'm just curious.
What, is your biological sex?
No, of course not.
What the LGBT community wants, and what all of the left wants, the LGBT organized community, not by any means all LGBT people, what the left-wing community wants, or the left wants, is that we have no distinction between male and female.
that's why Disney is the enemy of civilization as we know it because if you think the civilization will survive the end of the male female distinction you're extremely naive person and as I have said so often it is a sin to be naive as an adult
anyway it'll be very interesting to see if this is charged as a hate crime I'll tell you this, my prediction is that if it turns out to be trans anger at Christians, it may not end up that way, but if it does, it will be very quickly forgotten.
Whereas had it been the opposite, had there been a Christian shooter of, let's say, a black...
A largely black school and a hate crime at that, then we would be hearing about this for years.
The mainstream media don't tell you the truth.
they tell you what the left wants you to hear.
Podcaster Noam Blum noted, one of the weirdest sub-genres to emerge from the current online discourse is, quote, trying one of the weirdest sub-genres to emerge from the current online discourse is, quote, trying to apologize for misgendering a horrific criminal without making Okay.
CNN similarly worked ardently to do right by the child killer.
And...
It's interesting.
4.31pm on Monday, CNN reported, 28-year-old woman kills three students and three adults at a private Christian school, police say.
The original article refers to the child killer as a woman three times.
MythInformed highlighted how CNN has since stealth edited that article.
And changed its title to Nashville private school shooting suspect had had maps of buildings and scouted possible second.
They changed their own article.
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And Ray in San Diego, hello.
So...
Hi.
You know, the person who killed those people...
In Nashville didn't kill them with their gender identity.
They killed them with a gun.
And I'm wondering, with a very specific type of gun, and I know that there's a lot of policy proposals out there pertaining to that gun, but I'm wondering if you can tell me, off the top of your head, what policy proposals your two ideological standard-bearers, Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump, What policy proposal has either of them offered to prevent the next school shooting?
Go.
I would imagine, I don't know, I don't know the answer to your question.
I would imagine, however, that their belief is akin to mine, that the problem is much more lack of fathers than it is lack of gun laws.
Let me ask you a question.
I answered you honestly.
I don't know the answer to their specific proposals.
I know the general trend of the conservative response.
So I'll ask you a question.
If you could have your prayer answered, all the laws you want passed on guns, or every kid in America is raised with a father in the house, which would you think would reduce shooting more?
It's an either or.
It's an either or.
If you don't answer it, I'm letting you go.
I answered you directly.
You answer me directly.
I don't know.
I don't know the answer.
So you would flip a coin.
Okay, fair enough.
That's a fair answer.
You don't know.
So at least you acknowledge then that more fathers may be as effective or more effective than more gun laws.
I think more fathers would be a generally good thing for society.
I also think that simultaneously...
Banning assault rifles, banning high-capacity magazines, investing in greater mental health, all kinds of policy proposals would help.
But you acknowledged, Mr. Prager, that your two biggest ideological standard-bearers out there have no policy on it.
I didn't say, I didn't acknowledge, I said I didn't know.
I said I didn't know.
The reason you don't know is because that policy doesn't exist.
They don't have any policy.
All right, we'll find out if his policies enacted result in better home life, more ethical, more religious standards in schools.
And I have a list as a conservative that I believe, I don't know about Donald Trump, that I believe Ron DeSantis would share, and I cannot tell you definitely that.
I can only tell you that conservatives have better answers to the problem of crime than the left does.
I'll give you one more example.
We believe in far more police, and the left came up with the idea of defunding police.
I believe that there should be an armed...
May I say one more thing?
Yes, you will.
Let me say it.
Yes, but I'll say one more thing first.
I believe, and I'm sure that they believe, that having armed people in schools is a good idea.
Do you?
I would like to hear a proposal from Republicans to pay for that.
Okay, fine.
If they paid for it, you would be supportive of it?
Yeah, I mean, my children went to a public high school, and there was a police officer at my children's high school.
All right.
Well, what about armed adults who were trained?
Would you be against that or for that?
Armed adults.
Since a policeman at every school is not feasible financially.
So you mean unpaid, like vigilante people, like civilians?
No, like teachers.
I don't think that we should ask teachers to do yet another job.
Okay, fine.
We differ on that.
That's fair.
What if the teacher volunteered?
My feeling is, I've listened to you enough to know that regardless of the gender identity of the shooter yesterday, you would be talking about transgender people today.
Because every issue...
That's correct.
Yes, I think it's...
You're right, you're right, my friend.
Is met with more talk about transgender people.
Not every issue, only that issue.
You go back to it, you return to it.
I do every day.
You're entirely right.
I plead guilty.
I think it is the most fundamental upsetting of our civilization of any policy in my lifetime.
If there were no transgender people in the world, do you think that would eliminate school shootings?
No.
It's a stupid question.
I'm talking about it to show you how the press lies.
It's not about the shooter.
It's about the press lying about the shooter.
Okay, but you're just talking about something that's your personal little pet peeve.
If you think it's a little pet peeve that girls get their breasts removed...
Okay, I'm talking about the reporting.
That is correct.
That if this were the opposite, I said many times, if this were the opposite, if this were...
A Christian, white Christian, shooting up black kids.
That's all we would be hearing about, even more than guns.
But the fact that it might be, I don't know that it is.
A trans who hates Christians is not even on the table.
That's it.
I'm glad you called.
These are clarifying moments, and yes, I plead guilty to talking about the trans issue virtually every day.
That is correct.
Yesterday I spoke about Riley Gaines, this courageous young woman who was a championship swimmer who was denied the championship because a man swam against her.
That's why.
And anyone who cannot acknowledge that is lying to themselves the single most dangerous form of lying that we experience as humans.
Back in a moment.
Final week of March.
March is fundraising month for PragerU.
And I get so much positive feedback from having these young people who are affiliated with PragerU on once a day, each day in March.
And it gives you genuine reason for hope.
This is not just ethereal hope.
This is the real deal.
So I have...
Young Avery Pulse, or Pulse, I'll ask her, P-U-L-S. She is a Prager Force member.
She's in high school in California.
You can see her as well as me at SalemNewsChannel.com.
You can watch the show.
Avery, welcome to my show.
It's a pleasure to meet you.
It's so great to meet you, too.
Thank you so much.
How old are you?
I am 16 years old.
So we just met literally three minutes ago, and only for me to ascertain where you live.
I didn't even know if you were in high school or college.
So have you been homeschooled?
No, I've gone to private school from kindergarten all the way up to junior year.
This is a compliment.
You sound...
Like the unjaded and classy, mature kids that I often meet through homeschooling.
So I'm not here to compliment you, but I am curious, how did you turn out the way you did?
I would just say my parents.
My parents did really well in raising me to, you know, find...
Figure out what I believe in that.
You have to do your own work.
That was the message?
You have to do your own work?
Elaborate on that.
You don't let other people just say, this is what we believe in.
You do it.
You go and you do your own research and you find out why you believe and what you believe and why you believe it.
It's not just, I'm going to go with the flow, but I'm going to really know what I know and why I know it.
Largely religious or not particularly religious?
Yeah, my whole family is Christian.
Right, so I knew that there was a secret in this stew.
There was a secret ingredient, so that doesn't surprise me.
Do you go to a public school?
Private school.
A private school?
Is it a Christian school?
Yes.
Ah, so you're not being told that America is systemically racist?
No.
And do they ask you your preferred pronouns at your school?
No, thankfully.
So how do you know about the issue of preferred pronouns?
From the internet, your parents told you, how do you know about it?
I mean, I would say I did get into politics during 2020, and so I did watch it progress.
And so, again, I'm on social media, so join in that.
Definitely brought the issue to light.
So I would say that's how I learned.
Definitely, like, probably lose the internet and get into politics.
I see.
So you're allowed access to the internet at home?
That's not an issue?
Oh, you're laughing.
I'm glad.
Okay, good.
That's funny that you're laughing.
No, no, there are some religious homes that have great curbs on internet usage, so it was a legitimate question, but I'm still glad that you laughed.
That's very fair.
How did you find PragerU?
Like I said, I got involved with politics in 2020, and it was really the response to COVID that I began to see how quickly our freedoms were taken away.
So I started doing my own research, and I was looking for different places that were talking about the current issues or whatever I could, and I stumbled across Will and Amala Live, and when I started watching it, I could not stop.
I watched it every day once I got home and just loved it.
So first you found Amala?
Yes.
And did you go on from there, or was it strictly Amala?
I just...
Do you watch the five-minute videos?
Yes, I do.
I would say this one is kind of random, but I one time sent it to a teacher, the video on totalitarianism, because we learned about it in class, and I didn't understand it, but then I saw the totalitarian five-minute video.
Was uploaded that day.
So I watched it and then everything made sense.
So I sent it to my history teacher and told him to play it in class.
And did he?
No, he didn't.
Oh, that's fascinating.
Stay on with me for a moment, would you?
I'm very curious to know why he didn't.
And I have a few more questions.
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Hello, everybody.
Welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
At the very end of the last hour, I was playing for you an incoherent rant.
Of Alexandria Octavio.
Is it Octavio or Octavio?
Ocasio.
Ocasio, that's right.
Octavio is a Shakespearean character.
I'm so used to saying AOC. Now you know why people say AOC. Cortez.
And this is a member...
Of the United States Congress, one might add.
A hero of the left.
We'll start at the beginning.
It is not long.
It is just incoherent hate.
A bad combination.
Let's start at the beginning.
Many of these disgusting and insinuating attacks on trans and LGBT people are actually projections of what predatory cisgender and often straight men do when left alone in the presence of women or sometimes horribly children.
So instead of getting you to challenge the patriarchy, they're trying to get you to challenge the very gender expressiveness that challenges patriarchy.
Don't get it twisted because a lot of people attacking drag are projecting.
Okay, this is the fourth time I heard it.
I'm getting it actually a little better.
So here is what she's saying, I believe.
Those attacking, what she really has in mind is the drag queen story hour.
That we don't think that five, six, seven, eight-year-olds, in fact, I don't think 16-year-olds, should be...
Taken by their teachers or their parents to drag queen shows.
That is men dressed as women.
These are not transgender.
These are cisgender men who like to dress up as women and then do various forms of dancing and reading before the children.
I've seen videos of it.
This is not red descriptions.
And sometimes it involves removing an article of clothing.
They do not get naked, I do not suggest it, and I do not imply it.
But it is gender confusion at a very early age, and it is a sexualized event in any event.
So here in English is what she is saying.
And her English is not a function of any non-English-speaking background.
It is a function of leftist rhetoric.
So their disgusting attacks, I guess she's referring to drag queens and taking children there, because that's what she ends her rant with, or her statement, if you will.
Those who oppose it are really projecting.
What are they projecting, however?
What is it in them?
They want to molest children?
We're not accusing drag queens of molesting children.
So what is it that they want to do?
Projection means it is something in you that you ascribe to another.
What is in cisgender males?
That motivates them to attack the notion of bringing children to drag queen story hours.
That I didn't quite follow.
What does that have to do with the patriarchy?
Patriarchy, I assume now, not now, maybe from the beginning, patriarchy for the left means Commitment to the ideal of the nuclear family, a family of a married man and woman raising children.
That is called two things, heteronormativity and cisgender projection in this case.
I'll tell you this.
Their ability to come up with terms is unparalleled.
There is nothing on the right as creative as what we have in the names heteronormativity.
I've actually mastered a lot of these names.
Cisgender heteronormative patriarchy.
Ah, better known as CHP. Where I live, that's called the California Highway Patrol.
But it is now cisgender heteronormative patriarchy.
I think there should be a movement to have the California Highway Patrol change its acronym.
That it would be advocating on every one of its badges and cars.
Cisgender heteronormative patriarchy!
is not acceptable.
Well, let me see.
I think we should clear up the lines.
I'm not going to be talking about guns this hour.
We mentioned it.
Thank you all for calling.
I appreciate it very much.
And we're moving on here.
So let me bring to you one of the most frightening developments is California bill, what's the A, B number?
Assembly Bill 6665, introduced by Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo.
As reported in PM, a California Democrat has proposed, and I went to read the bill, by the way.
Just for your...
I'll read you the bill and then I'll describe it.
So, lest you think the description is not fully honest.
So, I've taken the following from this bill.
The bill basically is from the age...
Let's see, what is the age given?
It's an interesting question.
If the child...
yes, as young as 12, can be placed in a residential shelter facility without parental consent and without there being any prior allegations of incest or child abuse.
Now, since California is establishing itself as a sanctuary state for transgender children, if your child runs away from you in Colorado, or for that matter, East, east of Colorado, from Indiana.
And gets on a bus to California and says, I am 12 years old and I am a boy.
A girl, 12 years old, says, I am a boy.
California will put her up.
And it is irrelevant if the parents object.
Irrelevant.
That's the key for this bill.
The child as young as 12 can be placed in a shelter facility without parental knowledge or consent or without there being any prior allegations, as I read, of incest or child abuse.
This is AB Assembly Bill 665. Currently, children aged 12 and over are able to consent to receiving mental health treatment or counseling services but cannot consent to being placed into a residential shelter facility unless deemed a risk either to themselves or others or in cases where the minor is an alleged victim of incest or child abuse.
AB 665 seeks to remove these conditions.
It's interesting that a 12-year-old can make these decisions about taking hormones that block puberty, for example, but you can't vape.
You can't vape until you're 18 or 21. I don't remember which it is.
That's a sick society.
That is a sick state.
I live in a sick state.
New York is like it, Illinois, and Colorado.
But isn't that interesting?
A child cannot vape, which is basically just vapor.
That's why it's called vaping.
It's vapor.
Vapor with caffeine.
But a child can decide...
To take hormones that postpone puberty infinitely, it is immeasurably more dangerous than vaping.
The upside-down world of the left.
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For reasons that completely elude me, I just clicked on a New I just clicked on a New York Times piece What's the date?
Let's see.
November 8th, 2016. Election Day, 2016. The headline, Hillary Clinton...
Has an 85% chance to win.
They even explain what that means.
Mrs. Clinton's chance of losing is about the same as the probability that an NFL kicker misses a 37-yard field goal.
I guess they don't tend to miss 37-yard field goals.
Apropos of another completely unrelated subject, my grandson, my 12-year-old grandson, is a very, very serious field goal kicker.
He, yes, that's right, the one you met, Daniel.
He is extremely serious about it.
He is taking lessons from a former pro kicker.
And every moment he is free and can go to a nearby park with field goals, with uprights, he's kicking.
Which goes to show...
A very, very fascinating subject.
Do you know what you get when you have a child?
And the answer is not really.
My parents were completely befuddled at why I was what I was. .
They produced two children, one of whom went to Columbia and then Harvard Medical School, and the younger one didn't do homework once in four years of high school and graduated in the bottom 20% of his class.
That was I. To make things either better or worse when I wasn't doing homework, Which is every day.
I was traveling almost every day, at least Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to Manhattan from Brooklyn to just enjoy myself intellectually and just enjoy myself, period.
Going to bookstores.
It's a subject worthy of attention unto itself.
And teaching myself, I know this will sound really bizarre, this really befuddled my parents, I would go to the New York Philharmonic Library and listen to symphonies and follow the scores that were in the library to teach myself how to conduct.
How many high school kids are doing that?
All I'm saying is you don't know what you get.
You have to follow the ancient Hebrew dictum.
I think it's taken from Psalms.
Or Proverbs.
The Proverbs, I would assume.
I take it back.
Let's see.
I know it in Hebrew, so I have to...
Educate a child according to his way.
I mean, that's a literal translation.
That each child is so unique and so different.
Anyway, I got a big kick out of going to the New York Times.
November 8, 2016, Hillary Clinton has an 85% chance to win.
I got a big kick.
I was not punning because it was about the election, but that was a good catch.
If I ever pun, it is almost always inadvertent.
Punsters are another creation by nature or God.
So, California Bill AB665. According to Erin, E-R-I-N, Friday...
Co-lead of Our Duty, an international group of parents of children who are or were gender-questioning, who believed the law would amount to state-sanctioned kidnapping.
The bill will give counselors unfettered control over children age 12 and above.
In a letter to the State Assembly, Friday gives the example of a hypothetical sixth grader.
who informs her school counselor that she is a trans boy.
Friday argues that if AB665 were to be enacted, that child may not come home from school that day, but could instead be sent to an LGBTQ housing facility.
Many so-called gender-affirming therapists believe that non-affirming parents are a danger to their children, while at the same time holding the belief that experimental sex change interventions, such as puberty blockers and cross-hormones, are life-saving care.
Right, so the parent who says to the child, actually, you're a girl.
And it is very important that you make peace with that fact, whatever your feelings at this time.
That, of course, is heresy, blasphemy to the LGBT community.
Their belief is that the moment that you say that your child says he or she is the opposite sex, you are to say, of course you are.
And we will help you cross over.
To the opposite sex.
I admit it that if my 12-year-old daughter, if I had one, if she said, I am a boy, I would say, no, you're not.
God made you a girl.
And whatever your feelings in that direction, or whatever you've picked up on social media, or from people at your school, has not been healthy for you.
You are a girl.
We love you, and we will help you make peace with the fact that you are a girl.
Many kids in history have gone through a process of thinking, oh, maybe I am the other.
Not nearly as many as today, which proves that it is socially induced, not natural to the individual.
However, everything that I just said, Is considered really a form of child abuse.
Not giving children hormone blockers.
That's not child abuse.
Saying to the kid, you are what you are, that is.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here.
The largest demonstrations in the history, the 75-year history of Israel have been taking place repeatedly.
Israel is, there's an up, it seems to the outsider that there is massive upheaval taking place domestically in Israel.
It's not about terrorism.
It's not about war.
It's not about Iran.
It is about the way in which the Israeli government and Supreme Court are organized.
And I commented on it A few weeks ago, I mentioned that, to my mind, the root problem, and I may well be wrong, but in my view is that they have no constitution.
Israel's not the only country.
Britain has no constitution either.
But thank God America has one, or we would be in similar convulsions.
So what is happening there?
I have a professor, Eugene Kantorovich.
He's a professor of international law at George Mason University and spends three-quarters of his time, I just learned, in Israel.
So, Professor Kantorowicz, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
You are headed right now to Princeton?
Yes, I'm on my way to give a lecture this evening at Princeton University, the Jewish students then.
And on what subject?
Israel and international law, the question of borders, occupation, one of my main areas of specialty.
That's interesting.
What Jewish group at Princeton?
What is the name of it?
I believe, actually, Camera organized it.
Oh, Camera.
Okay, yeah, that's a well-known, quite many years active.
Okay, so...
You've been in Israel.
Before we talk about what the crisis is over, what is it like?
Are the convulsions accurate, or is it just the way the media are portraying them?
The convulsions are real, focused on the Tel Aviv area.
Which is kind of a bastion of the left.
There has been, for a while now, blocking of highways, interference with traffic.
But what happened yesterday...
But life in the rest of the country went on pretty normally, quite normally.
What happened yesterday was unprecedented.
The supposedly apolitical labor union declared a national strike and closed Ben-Gurion Airport, which is the only way in and out of the country.
And basically, hospitals would not provide medical treatment.
So that really escalated matters significantly.
And it's impossible to believe that this would truly be over two court appointments.
There was no nationwide strikes in the United States, even after Roe versus Wade, even after Dobbs.
Well, I'll tell you, whatever side one is on, the closing of the only international airport of a country, had that been done by Arab terrorists, the country and the world would have been shocked.
But this was done by Israelis, two Israelis, and hospitals.
In the past few decades, Ben-Gurion has only closed on three occasions other than Yom Kippur.
Due to Hamas rocket fire, due to COVID, and now due to the opposition to allowing...
Democratic processes to be involved in picking Supreme Court judges.
Yeah, well, we're going to get to the actual issue in a moment.
First, I want to have people understand, I mean, the left in America is not even closing airports.
I had always been under the impression, and I think I was wrong, that, generally speaking, the left in Israel is more liberal than left.
As opposed to America, where the left is more left than liberal.
I was wrong, apparently.
Well, the left has a strong basis still in the old socialist origins of the state.
So we have these weird things, like the Histodroot, which is a national labor union.
So it's not like you have the, you know, the auto workers and the steel workers.
There's basically one union that controls them all, like the Ring of Power.
And so even though most of the people in that union are actually right-leaning and even vote for the Likud party, its leadership is rooted in the old sort of socialist ethos of the country, and they can actually declare a national strike.
We'll be back in a moment with Professor Kantorovich at E.V. Kantorovich.
Back in a moment.
Israel is having the largest demonstrations in its history.
And I'm talking to a professor of international law at George Mason University who spends most of the year in Israel, Eugene Kantorovich.
And you are Twitterable at E.V. Kantorovich, correct?
Correct.
Let me spell that for people.
K-O, it's really spelled more or less like it's...
K-O-N-T-O-R-K-O-N-T-O-R-O-V-I-C-H. So, Professor, you're describing something I didn't even know.
When did this happen, the closing down of Israel's one international airport by left-wing demonstrators?
Unionists.
You're right, Unionists.
That's right.
The Histad route did it.
I'm sorry.
Yesterday.
It's reopened.
And same with hospitals?
Hospitals also reduced services.
There was also a medical strike.
I see.
So, I know you're a man on the right, but I think a very clear thinker on these matters.
But I just wanted to say that for the intellectual honesty of my listeners.
How do you think the non-left, non-right Israeli, they must exist, How did they react to seeing their international airport closed?
So, you know, this is the problem with these kind of tactics, is they're effective.
I think there's a broad understanding in Israel's center.
That there is a need for judicial reform.
But on the other hand, they just want quiet.
They want the protests to stop.
They want the disruptions to stop.
They want the threats of civil war that the left is constantly raising to end.
And so many people say, yes, there should be reform, but if only we could go back to have some quiet.
So it is not alienating the center when the left does this?
You know, I think it has both a combination of alienating and intimidating effects.
I see.
That's very interesting.
I don't know if you can answer this, but do you feel that this is having a deleterious effect on Israel's army?
You know, I think it's too early to tell.
I think it's certainly having the use of...
The army as a political tool is going to have a deleterious effect in the political culture.
I expect if there was a war, everybody would come to serve and the Israeli army is still engaged in operations routinely.
I also think it's having a dilatorious effect on the U.S.-Israel relationship when the United States intervenes in Israeli internal legislative constitutional issues to object to Israel adopting a system that would actually more closely resemble the United States simply because it likes those people who currently have, it likes the identity and ideology of the people who currently wield unchecked power in Israel.
Okay, so let's get to the issue itself.
So what I do often with guests is summarize what I think, not my opinion, what I think is happening, and then they tell me where I'm wrong.
Okay?
So, as I understand it, at this time, the Supreme Court of Israel can say about any law passed by the government of Israel that it is illegal.
However, there's a problem with that.
The Supreme Court in the United States can do the same thing.
However, there is a problem, and that is that there is no constitution on whose basis...
The Supreme Court of Israel rules.
So, as I understand it, they literally rule on what is reasonable.
I think that's the term that they use, or something analogous.
Is that, so far, accurate?
Yeah, so reasonableness is what they use about government action, not about legislation.
So that means anything from appoint who's going to be a cabinet minister, who's going to have this job in the government, who's going to have that job, they can decide that a particular appointment is unreasonable.
It doesn't mean that no reasonable person could have made it.
It means they would have done it differently if it was in their shoes.
And in fact, there is no written constitution.
And until 1995, the Supreme Court did not engage in judicial review like the United States Supreme Court because it is a different kind of system.
It is a British system of parliamentary sovereignty.
And the Supreme Court invented a constitution with which to justify judicial review.
And then they also said, but you're never allowed you.
The Knesset is not allowed to change that constitution.
So they're judges not just of what the constitution that they invented means, but also of any attempts to change it.
How would a left-winger answer that?
I think they have different answers, but a central part of their answer is that the judges, they're apolitical.
You can trust them.
They don't have an ideology.
They're just trying to...
promote human rights and do what's fair and good, unlike the politicians who, you know, are corrupt and… And who appoints the Supreme Court justices?
So there's a committee which is dominated by the Supreme Court.
So the court essentially has veto power over their own successors.
It's as if after Roe versus Wade, they would say, "You know what?
Don't try to change it because we're going to…" Wow.
I knew that.
Pretty important.
This really takes more time than we have even devoted, and we'll have to do a part two.
But I'm continuing with Professor of International Law, George Mason University, Professor Eugene Kontorovich, at E.V. Kontorovich, K-O-N-T-O-R-O-V-I-C-H, and he lives most of the year in Israel.
While being a professor at George Mason, he's on his way to Princeton to give a talk.
So, let me understand.
Supreme Court justices basically pick their successors in Israel?
They have control over them, and they have a majority on the committee that picks them.
The idea originally was when this system was first created in Israel, the Supreme Court had very little power.
And Israel was a one-party state, essentially, for its first 40 years.
And the Supreme Court did not have the power to strike down statutes, so it didn't really matter how they were picked.
Since then, the Supreme Court has taken for itself vastly more power than the United States Supreme Court.
On the other hand, it still has this Politburo-like system of picking its successors.
But I want to say right here, I'm being very critical of the Israeli Supreme Court.
And I want to say, for an American audience...
My goal here is not to, you know, argue whether the current Israeli system is the best one, you know, or whether it can be improved, because Israel has the system that it has.
And I think the bigger point is, while I might argue that the current system, you know, has a significant democracy deficit, that itself is no reason for the United States to...
You know, get involved in Israel's constitutional system.
And indeed, for the past decades, we have not seen American presidents sticking their nose into Israeli politics, demanding that the unchecked power of the Supreme Court be curbed.
And even though I would like the power to be curbed, I'm very happy that American politicians have not made it their business to seek that, because Israel is its own sovereign country, and these are not questions for foreign interference.
Which makes it very sad for me, and the reason I think this is relevant for an American audience, is President Biden has clearly come out on the side of absolute Supreme Court power and is attempting to have America intervene politically.
It's astonishing.
I don't know of another parallel to this, but the American left hates Netanyahu as much as it hates Trump.
He is essentially an Israeli Trump in the eyes.
Of the American left.
Is that fair to say?
I think the Biden administration wants to prop up the court because it sees it as a more faithful executor of its foreign policy.
You know, I think if the Supreme Court would be similarly structured and routinely made right wing decisions, the Biden administration would be at the forefront of the calls for reform.
But what Americans and what other foreign audiences need to ask themselves.
All right.
It's not.
Forgive me.
We're going to just have to do more.
Thank you so much, Professor Kunturo.
This issue is going to be going on for the next several months.
It's the ultimate issues hour because it is the third hour on a Tuesday.
If people are clear about Ultimate Issues, Then we would have a much better society.
They are not taught.
They are not considered.
The meaning of life.
Is there a God?
What is good and evil?
How do you determine it?
What is the role of reason?
What does America stand for?
I mean, I have literally hundreds of subjects.
Religious and secular.
Today, my subject is what is conservatism?
And it is a very interesting and important subject.
There is tremendous division among conservatives, I think much more than on the left.
And it is the reason, if in fact the right does not win in the next election, it will be largely, in my opinion, because of dissension on the right, where because of dissension on the right, where there are people who are so angry at others for supporting the war in Ukraine or not supporting the war in Ukraine.
Angry if you do support Trump.
If you don't support Trump, so the names are thrown out.
You are a rhino.
You are a neoconservative.
And you're not a true conservative.
You're not an America First conservative.
You are American First conservative.
What is a conservative?
And as a result of these...
This anger, this internecine anger, it's a very real possibility that we will lose the United States of America for the foreseeable future.
The existential threat of the left to America is far greater than the existential threat of climate change to biological life or to human life.
Since we're talking about existential threats, I thought I should make that clear.
So what is conservative?
I have a column up today.
My Tuesday is my column day.
I request that you read them.
I work hard to make life clear in print.
I have a thousand columns up on the internet.
I've been writing this for over 20 years, every Tuesday.
And today's is...
Do conservatives oppose change?
I'll get to that momentarily.
However, as always, things need clarity.
Clarity is our best friend, and we don't have it.
So, I deal with one aspect of conservatism, which every single conservative should know by heart.
If you're ever asked by your child, or grandchild or niece or nephew or brother-in-law or anybody at college.
Well, what does it mean to be a conservative?
So the first and foremost response is my subject today.
We conserve.
That's what we do.
We conserve the best of the past and feel that it is our moral obligation to pass on the best of the past to the next generation.
That is our moral obligation.
We wanna give you the best art, the best music, the best ideas, the best philosophy, the best of religion, the best everything.
That's our task.
Whether you're conservative or not, you should feel that as your task.
I have to give you Shakespeare because that is the best English writing ever done in fiction and because of the profundity of the insights in his plays.
Therefore, I am morally obligated to hand this over to you.
O ye youth, I am morally obligated to at least expose you to da Vinci and Michelangelo and Beethoven.
I have a moral obligation to expose you to the writings of the founders of this country, what was until just a couple of years ago the freest country in human history.
That is not the case today.
I don't know who's freer, but it is not the freest.
Because the left is powerful and the left does not believe in personal liberty, except on sexual matters.
That is the first and foremost answer you should give if you're ever asked, well, what do you stand for?
Well, our name tells you what we stand for.
Conservative is one who conserves.
We have that obligation.
However, at the University of Pennsylvania, which is another rotten institution because the rot has been caused by its leftists, the Department of English took down the mural of Shakespeare.
And you know why?
Because he was a dead white European male.
Not because his writing is not the best in English, but the Department of English at this Ivy League institution does not believe in the obligation to bring the best literature in English to those who study in the English department.
It believes its obligation is to promote leftism, not to promote the best English writing that has taken place.
So you don't study the best English writing necessarily at the University of Pennsylvania English department.
You study leftism.
And that is true in virtually every department.
Sociology, anthropology, psychology, you name it.
I can think of a more beautiful thing than passing on the best of the past to our children.
There is glory in doing that.
So what does to be or not to be mean, my son, my daughter?
What does that mean?
Can you pick out this theme in this Beethoven symphony?
Can you see what he did with da-da-da-da?
And do you see how it went from the violins to the winds?
Isn't that fascinating?
And then what he does with that same four notes?
G, G, G, E flat.
And then F, F, F, D. What does that even mean?
You don't have to be a music connoisseur or expert to appreciate all he's done with a few notes.
It's pure genius.
And you get them excited about the best architecture and sculpture and painting and dance.
You name it.
Whatever the art form.
Here's the best.
Here's the next to the best.
These are gifts of giants in the human society.
They're gifts that they have given us.
They were given gifts.
They use those gifts, and then we conservatives, we pass them on.
But there is an anti-greatness movement called left.
They don't celebrate Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.
They celebrate turds, as in poop.
They do.
Read about it.
Look it up.
Google turd exhibit Netherlands New York Times.
You'll see a massive coverage, serious coverage of sculpted poop at a museum in the Netherlands.
That's what they pass on.
They're not conservative.
They don't want to conserve what is best.
They want to create crap.
And they do.
That's what a conservative does.
1-8 Prager 776. My friends!
Ultimate Issues Hour.
So, my life has been in large measure a life of explaining.
It's what I have done professionally with my life.
I'm an explainer.
That's the most powerful thing you can do is explain.
And Jewish and Christian and American parents didn't do that.
I'm not blaming them.
I'm just telling you that that's what happened.
American parents did not explain America.
And Christian and Jewish religious parents, I'm speaking, let alone not religious.
Did not explain God and the Bible.
They sort of went on by inertia.
Well, we're religious, they'll be religious.
Well, we love America, they'll love America.
Well, the great error was, if you don't explain, it doesn't survive.
We didn't even explain liberty.
If nearly 50% of American young people believe as they say, oh, I believe in free speech but not for hate speech, clearly free speech was never explained to them.
Free speech means hate speech is allowable.
It should be obvious to anybody with common sense.
The moment you start banning speech you don't like, There's no free speech.
Whether you call it hate speech or whatever you call it, that means that you don't believe in free speech.
You believe in free speech you agree with.
That's charming.
We didn't explain.
So the first thing you need to know about conservatism is we conserve.
They don't.
In my column today...
I note something.
I note it once in passing.
I don't expect you to have heard it, and I certainly don't expect you to remember it, even if you did hear it.
Two weeks ago, Time Magazine had its 100th anniversary.
All right?
And the...
Editor-in-chief and the CEO wrote an introduction to the issue.
And I'd like, I quote what they wrote at the end of my column.
Here is what the CEO and editor wrote when they described the purpose of the magazine, Time Magazine.
Now, what would you think they would write?
You would think they would write, We continue with our purpose to report the news as truthfully as possible.
Right?
Wouldn't that be the obvious, whether it's just a cliche or not?
That's what you think they would say.
They didn't say that.
It didn't even have any relationship to what they said.
This is the way the heads of Time Magazine defined the role of Time Magazine.
As we begin our second century, that spirit of innovation and disruption inspires us every day.
Well, there you have it.
That's the left for you.
Innovation and disruption.
They don't want to conserve a tradition of truthful news reporting.
They want to innovate and to disrupt.
What was the motto of the Obama campaign?
Hope and change!
Ah, change.
He said change so much, we had a coin sound, the sound of change from one's pocket, as one of the sound effects of our show during his era as president.
Change.
Change for the better is great.
Change for change's sake?
For innovation and disruption?
Ah, that's what they believe in.
We don't.
It's a lot less sexy to conserve the past than to innovate with sculpted turds.
Yep.
Get a lot more money, a lot more attention, more exciting.
The talent-free have a place to be featured.
It's a big part of the reason for not conserving standards.
Then the people who cannot meet them can really succeed.
Alright, let's see here.
We've got this thing.
There were two calls on this subject.
I didn't know about it until your calls.
But I'll take him.
Philadelphia, Jared, hello.
Hey, so you didn't know about the issue with David and the principals in Florida being fired because they showed their statistics.
Really, it's funny how you referenced something from 2016, the issue in UPenn, where they didn't stop teaching Shakespeare, they moved the portraits.
That's all they did.
They moved the portraits from the hallway.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Okay.
Yes.
It's not insignificant that they took down Shakespeare.
They didn't take Shakespeare down.
They moved a portrait.
Yes, to a place.
Exactly.
The featured portrait is of a gay, non-white lesbian.
A lesbian is gay.
Excellent.
A gay, non-white woman who has one one-thousandth the talent of Shakespeare.
If we agree on that, we can continue.
In your opinion, I'm not familiar with who they put up.
I see.
So you think, okay, I have seen some of her poetry.
Oh, by the way, I'm not going to hang up, so you don't have to rush.
I just want to say one other thing.
You can get a BA in English without reading one Shakespeare play.
So when you tell me...
Huh?
I'm sure that's not true.
Okay, so one of us is wrong.
I'm not letting you go.
Look it up.
What was that, Sean?
Okay, back in a moment, everybody.
Dennis Prager Show.
The Dennis Prager Show.
I went looking for my last caller who had said, I'm not hanging up, I've got to take a break, but he hung up.
But he said, I don't believe it when I said that you can get a BA in English at UCLA without having studied Shakespeare, taken a Shakespeare course.
He said, I'm sure that's not true.
Oh, those are his words?
Okay.
That's the same as I don't believe it, but that's fair.
So, Washington Post.
Not exactly a conservative source.
April 23, 2015. Skipping Shakespeare?
Yes.
English majors can often bypass the Bard.
I said to him one of us was wrong.
He was wrong.
A new report has uncovered what to many might be a surprising fact.
English majors at the vast majority of the most prestigious colleges, the only thing I was wrong about is isolating UCLA, aren't required to take a course focused in depth on Shakespeare.
We have found our bard suffering the unkindest cut of all, said the authors of the report from the American Council of Trustees and alumni.
Stealing a line from Julius Caesar.
At most universities, English majors were once required to study Shakespeare closely as an indispensable foundation for the understanding of English language and literature.
But today, at the elite institutions we examined, public and private, large and small, east and west, he is required no more.
There were four exceptions among the 52 schools analyzed.
Harvard, UC Berkeley, U.S. Naval Academy, and Wellesley.
All four require English majors to take a Shakespeare class.
Okay.
So I was right.
And I'll bet he still doesn't believe it.
It's the Ultimate Issues Hour, and the subject is explaining what it is to be conservative.
And the first thing, and it is my column today, please, please, please read it and send it to as many people as possible.
There's no money involved.
This is pure idealism on my part.
Help me fight the good fight.
Send the column to as many people as you can.
It's at DennisPrager.com.
It's at TownHall.com.
Over the course of the week, it will go to the Daily Wire.
American Greatness, Jewish Press.
And many other places.
But please send it.
Please forward it.
It's about conservatives.
We conserve.
The greatest obligation we have to the next generation is to give them the best of the past.
What could be more exciting?
I guess there can be.
We can give them the crap of the present.
Not all of the present is crap.
But there's a lot.
Some of it literally.
Like the turd exhibit in the Netherlands.
Tom in Philadelphia, hello.
Hey Dennis, how are you doing today?
Okay, thank you.
Okay.
The Statue of David subject, you guys got off that and got on to Shakespeare.
But the parents at this school, and the school is affiliated with Hillsdale College, they call the Statue of David...
Pornographic.
Do you agree with that?
No, it's a silly use of the term.
Pornography is an image or writing whose intent is sexual stimulation.
Yes.
Dave, real quick, you could do a lot of good by trying to get that teacher's job back.
I know you got some pool at Hillsdale.
And I think she was fired unjustly.
Yeah, well, no, those are two separate questions.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
So I had a chance, I really, just a little chance, because I was checking the Shakespeare.
I had a little chance to look up the story.
It was in Tallahassee, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
So for everybody else like me who didn't know about it, a sixth grade teacher showed Michelangelo's sculpture of David, which...
David is naked, and so you see his penis, and it is part of the exhibit.
There's clearly zero erotic intent here.
It is the way he depicted David.
So the question is, I'm a little ambivalent with regard to sixth grade girls, and on the other hand, I don't think the teacher should have been fired.
Let me say at the outset that I don't think the teacher did it to undermine the innocence of children like drag queen story hours.
So that's my...
I'm against her being fired.
It is an odd thing, though, that we have...
Well, I guess this was a conservative school because we have sex ed.
And then we have this.
I'll have more to say in a moment.
Dennis Prager here.
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