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April 28, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:18:12
School Daze
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Dennis Prager here.
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subscribe at prager topia.com hello everybody and welcome to the Dennis Prager show Yesterday I spent time on the decline of our schools.
And I had a discussion last night with a very fine man in Phoenix.
I spoke last night in Phoenix, Arizona.
And happily I was able to get back and here I am at the studio.
And I have been...
Begging people to take their kids out of the schools, most of the schools in any event, because, well, the most dramatic, well, there's no such thing as most dramatic.
One truly dramatic example is in Vermont, where the school district, where Burlington, Vermont, the largest city in Vermont, to the best of my knowledge, is located, sent parents a letter.
To fifth-grade parents, dear fifth-grade families and caregivers, we will be using the following language with students.
Person who produces sperm in place of boy, male, and assigned male at birth, and person who produces eggs in place of girl, female, and assigned female at birth.
That is truly damaging that a major school district doesn't speak of boy and girl, male or female, man or woman, but sperm producer and egg producer.
So, a very intelligent good man that I was speaking to in Phoenix told me, look, Dennis, Your point is very well taken on these matters, but it's really, really hard for people to take their kids out and homeschool them.
And he gave me the example, one example that he knew well, actually his own, I think.
And it was that his high school kids...
They want to play the sports of their school.
And to the best of my knowledge, you're not going to be on a football team, although you might be.
If you have a homeschooling situation, let me know, what does your teenage homeschooled child do for organized sports?
Is there even a possibility of them being on a football team, for example?
And he really lamented it because he is watching, and this is a wonderful man, and a committed conservative and a practicing Christian, if one can use the term, a religious Christian, faithful Christian, whatever term you wish to use.
And he uses the sports of the school.
And his child has that.
And I had no answer.
My internal answer, well I expressed it to him, but my internal answer is that looking back at his life, if his child does turn out to say sperm producers rather than males,
and egg producers rather than females, and all the Things that accompany that, then he will look back and think, gee, it might have been worth my kid not having organized sports and coming out normal.
But I raise this because I am so emphatic on the need to take kids out of many of these schools.
And the difficulty that obviously so many parents have in making that decision.
I told you that I have begged parents who are now grandparents to say to their child that they will pay their child the amount of money that they have lost if one of them now goes to work and doesn't do it full-time.
That is a real possibility.
A lot of grandparents have more money and certainly less debt than their children do.
The children, that is, parents of their grandchildren.
So I wanted to cover that.
If you have been able to have organized sports, I mean, he was telling me how...
Affected his child.
This man, this is not only intact, but to the best of my knowledge, a really good quality couple, the husband and the wife.
I know them both.
And they're just really worried.
And they have every right to be.
I don't know who isn't worried if their kid goes to most public schools, certainly in any big city, and even private schools in any big city.
What is my answer to them on that issue of the organized sports?
I mean, it is really sick what is happening in all of these school districts, as I reported to you yesterday.
In Las Vegas, they have equitable grading.
It's the fifth largest school district in the country.
You don't get grades based on your performance, but on your progress.
You can't get under a 50. How do you like that?
You can't get a 40 on an exam.
As I said yesterday, hey, can I apply that to my workload?
Even if I show up to work 0% of the time, I get 50% of my salary?
How is that possibly different from what the Las Vegas schools are doing?
The wrecking of that which is beautiful.
And then the other school report that I gave you yesterday, where they consider learning...
How to play strings, violin, viola, cello, to be a form of white supremacy.
So when Japanese orchestras, who are terrific, South Korean orchestras, terrific, the solo violinists and cellists from Asia who win all these worldwide competitions, are they engaged in white supremacy?
Do these morons at the school even know that Asians play with the same proficiency and often better than whites?
We're losing our mind.
I mean We're not only losing our moral compass, people are losing their minds.
Moorpark, California, and Lori.
Hello, Lori.
Hi, Dennis.
How are you today?
Okay, thank you.
I wanted to let you know, I'm sure a lot of your listeners are aware, for the gentlemen in Arizona, I homeschooled my children preschool through 12th grade, and we had a...
A private school in the area that allowed us to use them as our umbrella school.
And we also played sports with them.
So it was a tremendous provision.
And maybe you can encourage other private institutions to open that up to homeschoolers.
Because it does make an impact for them to be on organized sports teams.
And my daughter did theater there.
They did robotics there.
They did mock trial there.
So let me understand this.
If your child is not enrolled in a given public school, they can still take part in its activities?
That was through private school.
I don't think that the public schools have the same provisions.
I see.
And how many private schools?
Do you have any idea if this was an exception, this private school?
No, I don't think it's an exception.
However, in the climate, it is getting more difficult for private schools to do that, unfortunately.
But I do know the one that I was with out here in Simi Valley, they closed that homeschool program.
And I'm working there now, which is ironic.
But I'm trying to see if there's any way, because there's so many people that want to homeschool.
And they can't afford private, and there's a reduced tuition when you're part of the school, but not, you know, going to the daily brick and mortar.
There's an overseer.
They file your affidavits for you.
They are considered a student of that private school, and they are allowed to take classes if they prefer.
All right, all right, all right.
All right, got to take a break.
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So...
I spoke to last night in Phoenix, and I spoke to a Christian dad.
He and his wife are concerned about what's being taught in the school that their kids go to, but he has no answer, so I inferred or heard from what he told me about his teenage son who just wants an opportunity to play sports.
So do any of you know?
So that's why he's not homeschooling his kid.
So let's see what you have to say.
Cincinnati, Ohio, and Chris, hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Hey, love your show, and thank you for experiencing wisdom.
Thank you.
So, yeah, so we both homeschooled and subsequently sent our kids to private school, and the sports thing is always a question, even in our private school.
We're not able to offer a lot of organized sports, but what we do gets pretty decent participation.
So first thing I would say to this gentleman is consider your priorities.
How important is it that your son participate in that as opposed to the character and education that he's going to get in his environment?
Now, that said, to look at sports opportunities in Ohio, Homeschool students can participate in the local government school sports.
The requirement is they either have to take one or two classes at the government school, and then they can qualify for playing on the local sports team.
That's one option.
Forgive me one second.
How can you enroll in a school and take one or two courses?
I don't know if it's a special thing just in Ohio, but that's what they allow folks to do.
So the kid shows up for two hours and then goes home?
Yes.
It seems to me that it's very tough on the kid.
He goes in and he's the only one who doesn't stay the rest of the day.
I have some sympathy for the kid in that case.
Yeah, well, and again, it's the drive, right?
So we have a family, they homeschooled all 10 of their children.
One of them was a very successful baseball player, played on the local government school team, and thrived there and did very well, and it wasn't a particular issue in his case.
Right.
Well, did he go for one or two hours?
Yes, yeah.
I see.
All right, all right, listen, thank you for that.
See, I could see it being a tough thing for a parent to say to a 15-year-old, 14-year-old, I'm taking you out of school.
It would seem to me that you have a much better chance if you start homeschooling much earlier.
But a lot of people are awakening to what the schools are doing now when their kid is in high school.
So that's the question, what do they do?
And a lot of you listening are not raising kids.
Your kids are grown.
But your kids may well be raising kids.
So this has to be of sublime significance to you as well.
And if you have no kids and no grandkids...
It should be of sublime interest to you because you're worried about the country.
What are we going to do in these instances?
Sonora, California.
Mike, hello.
Yes, sir.
I am really at odds with this because, again, you pay taxes, you've got to pull them out, you've got to bend over backwards.
Nobody wants to seem to...
To strike.
Get five, six hundred, or a thousand parents and say, we want the people off there, out of there, and we don't want this anymore, or we're not going to send any of our kids back to school.
But nobody seems to want to, that's the only way you can get done in numbers.
And I'll give you another quick example.
Bud Light, there's a salesman lamenting how he's going to lose his job.
Too bad.
I mean, nationwide, they could go on strike.
And say, we want the people out that are on the top that caused this, or we're not coming back to work.
And that would be easy to do.
50,000, 200,000 people on strike, no beer?
Are you kidding me?
Yep, yep, yep.
But, you know, we're all bending over backwards.
We've got to homeschool, there's no sports, there's nothing.
You know, I don't have kids in school, or I'd be down there and I'd get people together and say...
We want these people off our board, out of here, and we want this off the curriculum.
I mean, the woman gender thing, like I said, I heard the other day when people are at work and a man comes in dressed up, now he's mad because people are staring at him.
You can't work in your workplace.
It's just a disaster.
That's right.
But we've got to have something in numbers.
Numbers!
Yeah, people need to fight.
People are afraid of fighting.
And I don't say that as a criticism.
And the people in Burlington, Vermont, I'd like to know the parents of the fifth graders. - Yes.
Are they on board?
There's got to be a certain percentage of parents that thinks this is terrific.
My son will no longer, my daughter will no longer say boy or girl, man or woman, male or female.
But sperm producer and egg producer?
My fifth grade daughter will start speaking like that?
My son?
You've been reduced to a sperm producer?
And anyway, if you believe in trans, there are female sperm producers, so that doesn't tell you a damn thing.
I don't even understand how the Burlington, Vermont school district is rationalizing this to themselves.
Men are not sperm producers.
Women are sperm producers too.
And men are egg producers.
I don't know exactly how they got around that.
Fifth grade, my friends.
Fifth grade.
The letter has been printed.
Has been photographed and printed.
It is on the internet.
By the way, the article was from NBC News in Burlington.
It's not even from a conservative site.
I would do anything to talk to fifth grade parents in Burlington, Vermont.
We will continue.
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The Dennis Prager Show.
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I want to solve a big problem.
The despicable things your child is being taught at schools, you must take your child out of those schools.
If you want to take over the school boards, I admire that tremendously.
My view is that even if you run the school boards, it will be very, very hard to tell the teachers not to call boys sperm producers.
Will you order the teachers?
Let's say you take over.
People who think rationally take over a school board.
What will you do?
We will insist that teachers call students, boys and girls.
How will you monitor that?
What if the teachers refuse?
You know how hard it is to fire a teacher?
I want you to take over school boards.
But...
There is only one answer I know of that would actually cause the revolution we need.
Hundreds of thousands, ideally millions of kids, leave their schools.
Then they don't get funded.
Money matters to teachers' unions far more than children, and that is how it operates.
Bud has gotten rid of, at least temporarily, The fools who decided that it would be a really, really good thing to feature a guy posing as a woman on a beer can.
That has backfired.
It's backfired because people stopped buying the product.
Bud Light sales have gone down.
The whole company's income has gone down.
Right?
They didn't take over Bud.
They withdrew.
From Bud.
That is, in most cases, in some cases, the takeover is necessary.
Elon Musk took over Twitter.
He opened it up and didn't use it to censor.
These are the issues, in my opinion.
In light of that, I'm asking what this man asked me last night in Phoenix, Arizona.
What do I do?
Take my kid out and he doesn't play sports anymore?
And I didn't have an answer.
So I'm asking you folks.
Homer, Alaska.
Debra, hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
I'm a huge, huge fan.
Thank you.
I'm really, really nervous.
Oh, I understand that.
I homeschool both my children.
I use the help of a co-op.
My son is graduating this year.
My daughter graduated in 2020. And I just want to share with your audience to check out your school district and find out exactly what they require.
I don't know about other school districts.
Our school district, you enroll as a homeschool student, and there's organizations affiliated with the schools.
With the district that you enroll with them.
They've got even counselors that you can use.
So my students, my kids were enrolled in the school district.
My daughter as a freshman homeschooler, full-time homeschooler.
I'm sorry, I'm nervous.
You're sounding fine, by the way.
Don't worry.
You're doing great.
Go on.
Yeah, so she was up until through freshman year, she'd been homeschooled all except for second and third grade.
And as a freshman, she was a varsity on one sport, team sport, went to state.
And in the second individual sport, she went to state and also...
Okay, so explain to me, these are individual sports.
No, one was a team.
All right, so good.
I want to know about the team.
The team belongs to what institution?
The high school, our public high school.
All right, so a previous caller said that in order to do that, you had to take courses at that school.
Was that the case here or with you?
You are enrolled in the school district, but you are homeschooled, and so all of her classes were at home.
Actually, we used a co-op.
We had a small co-op of year-to-year.
It would range between 6 to 12 students.
Which I highly recommend finding other families.
Of course.
Absolutely.
And if you pull together...
All right.
So walk me through this.
So your daughter played what team sport?
She was pitcher.
She was softball.
Softball team.
So she was on the local school, public school softball team.
Is that correct?
Correct.
That's correct.
A very accomplished team.
Okay, so hold on with me.
I want to walk through this.
The reason I'm spending this time, folks, is if this is the best answer to the problem of leftist indoctrination, we have to know how to do it.
I can't just advocate something without the details.
Okay, here we go.
It's the happy, happy, happy, happy end.
Yes, it is.
Hey, everybody, every Friday since 1999, the 20th century, which included World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, and communism, 100 million killed.
That's a bad thing to note on a happiness hour, now that I think of it.
We really, really, really, really need.
We really, really, really, really need.
Yeah, the happy make the world better.
The unhappy make it worse.
And your child is taught to be unhappy at elementary school, high school, and college.
And the increase in unhappiness in America is dramatic.
It is the highest depression rate among teens ever recorded since they started monitoring Depression rates among teens.
They should all be listening to the Happiness Hour.
You should give them all my book on happiness.
Happiness is a serious problem.
I don't care if you give them a used edition.
I'm not talking about royalties.
I make a fine living without depending on royalties from my happiness book.
But I want them to read it.
That's why I wrote it.
Well, now that I've mentioned the book, it's interesting.
Well, look at that, a picture of my book.
Where can people watch this show if they're so inclined, John?
You watch this show on...
Salem News Channel.
SNC.
I write in the forward to the book that the book is dedicated or directed to your mind.
That's it.
All of my happiness hours have been directed to your mind.
Why do I mention that?
Because the topic today is you can't be happy.
If you are ruled by your emotions.
And that's it.
I'll see you tomorrow.
That's it.
That subject in and of itself has become so large in my life, in my perception of reality.
I did not know until...
Recently, which is an amazing thing because it's so obvious now.
The vast majority of people are ruled by their emotions.
That's how powerful emotions are.
However, You ever see a mob?
The mob is completely emotionally driven.
That is why you cannot follow your heart.
The warning of following your heart, the biblical warning.
Not only for moral reasons, but for happiness reasons.
The seat of happiness is your mind.
Yes, your mind is the only thing that can overcome Your emotions.
Emotions are this gigantic, powerful monster.
And it can only be fought, this monster, by the mind.
That's it.
People who become sober from whatever addiction it was that was ruining their lives or their life.
They do it because their mind concludes one day, I want a good life.
I want a better life.
I cannot follow the monster.
Now, emotions are what make us human.
I fully acknowledge that.
But that which makes you human should not rule you.
That's the point.
1-8 Prager 776. If any of you have overcome the emotional power, the monster, as I call it, with your mind, either through this show or through your own work or through 12 Step or whatever, I want to hear from you.
People need models of how to do that.
It's so ubiquitous. - Yes.
Did you ever hear the phrase, he's his own worst enemy or she's her own worst enemy?
You know what that means?
If you actually did some exegesis on that line, you would know what that means.
It means he or she is ruled by his or her emotions.
And so becomes his or her worst enemy.
Whenever you have a feeling, this is what you should do.
Acknowledge the feeling and then say, how should I act as a result of that feeling?
That is the way to control your feelings.
You have a feeling.
You get angry at somebody.
So now, that's fine.
You get angry at somebody.
And it might be a fully justified anger.
But what you do about it is separate from how you feel about it.
There's a Hebrew phrase that you know somebody, and I've said this before because it's really brilliant, one of the many aphorisms that have shaped my life.
So even though 99% of you know Hebrew, you'll enjoy it.
It's a play on Hebrew words.
You can know somebody in Kiso, Kaso, and Koso.
You acknowledge they all sound similar.
That was the reason for this aphorism.
Kiso means his pocket.
Koso means his cup.
And Kaso means his anger.
You could tell what a person is by how he deals in monetary matters.
That's the pocket.
How he acts when he drinks.
That's the cup.
And how he acts when he's angry.
In other words, I learned through this aphorism, you can't let...
Your emotions dominate you, especially the third one.
How do you act when angry?
When you sometimes hear about, I mean, to give an extreme example, you sometimes hear about some anger on the highway, right?
Guy gets out and shoots another guy.
It's obvious, correct?
He acted completely on emotion.
Let us even say he was right.
And the guy cut him off.
And then gave him the finger.
Neither of those is a capital offense.
And so we shot him.
And sometimes it takes less provocation to shoot somebody.
This is not taught to young people.
Nah.
Control yourself.
Well, I had recently come across, and somebody was called a misogynist by a left-wing woman, called a misogynist.
Why?
Because he said, or she said, I don't even know, it might have been a woman who was accused of being a misogynist.
And what the person said was, girls need, which I have said all of my life, girls need to be taught to control their emotions.
Boys, everybody knows boys need to be taught to control their sexual predatory nature and their physical aggression, their violence.
I wish.
Now, boys have to control their emotions too.
But emotions are a more powerful factor in the female than in the male.
Which is a beautiful thing when it's controlled.
And it's a monster.
It's an atom bomb when it isn't.
And how many people are taught that from a very early age?
We're taught rather follow your heart.
What does follow your heart mean?
Follow your emotions.
act on your emotions this is a key to happiness Every suggestion I have given in 23, 24 years of the Happiness Hour is dedicated to your mind.
That is the seat, ultimately, of happiness.
Hi everybody, I'm Dennis Prager, the Happiness Hour.
We'll be right back.
The sky and the sky So, it's in the preface to my book on happiness.
Happiness is a serious problem.
So it needs to be re-emphasized.
This is a very long-standing thought of mine on the subject of happiness.
Happiness is...
The seed of happiness is the mind, not the heart.
And that's a very big mistake because if you let your heart direct you, then you cannot be happy.
End of issue.
you might have moments of happiness.
Everything that I have said and written on happiness is mind-directed.
Okay.
I have been told more about one chapter in my happiness book than any other, and it's fascinated me.
The one, well, let me see.
There are three chapters that most affect people.
And they are the moral obligation to act happy, and ultimately strive to be happy.
Not having expectations, because the more you expect, the less gratitude you will have.
And the missing tile syndrome.
It was fascinating to me how many people have cited that chapter, the missing tile syndrome, which I have done on the air, not in a while, in a nutshell.
I learned this from a person who spoke to me and said, Dennis, Every time I walk into a room, all I see is hair.
The person was bald.
He was a bald man.
And that was a brilliant insight, and that's where I began my understanding of the missing tile syndrome.
All you see is what you are missing.
So that's an emotional state.
Women who want to get pregnant...
See babies all over the place.
Fat people see skinny people all over the place.
Short people see tall people all over the place.
It's endless, whatever your missing tile is.
So my advice is either fill the tile.
I know someone very well who got...
Hair transplant, and it seems to have worked.
Great.
Or, just make peace with it and know that for most women, it's not going to be an issue if that's what's your greatest concern.
Many other aspects of a man are appealing, and I speak as someone with all his hair, so I don't have any personal axe to grind on that matter.
So this is what you do with your emotions.
This is really good advice.
Monitor them before anything.
You can't control them if you don't identify them.
So in any given day, this is my emotional reaction to X, Y, and Z. And then...
Once you've isolated your emotional reaction, that's more than half the battle.
Identifying the emotion.
Then ask yourself, what do I do about it?
How do I act?
You will be a happier and finer human being.
It's a big bonus.
You'll be happier.
And you'll be a more good, decent person.
How much am I saying out of emotion?
How much am I doing out of emotion?
And is that what I want to say?
And is that what I want to do?
If you can do that, you have achieved a great achievement, if that is not redundant, in your life.
There's actually one line open?
How did that happen?
1-8 Prager 776. All right.
Let's see, my friends.
Joan in Lakewood, Colorado.
Hello.
Hello, Dennis.
Thank you for taking my call.
So this morning, I listened to Salem.
And George Brocker talked about how this terrible thing has happened in our community.
We had three teenagers who lobbed landscape rocks out of their truck onto moving cars.
And they did it seven times, and then the seventh time they killed a woman.
Yep, I followed that story.
I looked at their pictures, and I was...
I'm staggered.
That they can find fun in throwing huge rocks through windshields as people are driving?
I mean, that is...
I was a teenager too, and I remember, and I'm not proud of it, but I did this in 8th grade, not when I was a teenager, but I threw a snowball.
When the bus driver opened the bus, he was stopped.
I threw a snowball at him.
And by the way, I feel guilty to this day.
But if you'd have said to me then, oh, Dennis, if you think that's fun, let's throw rocks at drivers.
What are you, out of your mind?
And of course, they weren't 12. They were 18. No, they were 18. And the part that has been very interesting to me is that when they originally started out on this spree, they went to get their rocks at a store nearby, and this one boy who was with them, there were four boys originally, went to the bathroom, and he came back and he watched them loading these bricks.
They're landscape rocks, and they're not small.
They're like five pounds.
And he looked at them, and he looked at these people, and he said, Take me home.
Now, this, I think, should have been some kind of signal to these people that what they were doing...
All right.
Well, anyway, I'm with you and I'm going to report on this next week.
How do you attach it to the Happiness Hour?
I listen to it every Friday because there is so much stuff out there like this that I just relate to you.
And I sincerely believe this comes out of...
Some kind of anger.
Some kind of, I've got to do things on TikTok to be noticed.
I just don't know what the motive is for somebody to do something like that.
Right, I don't either.
I hope we learn a lot about these boys.
Do you realize these boys, they ruined their lives.
They obviously, to say the least, ruined the life of the woman that they murdered or killed, if you prefer.
That woman's family and friends are ruined, and every one of the families of these three boys...
Boy, if that's not an example of being ruled by an emotion, hey, it looks like fun.
It looks like fun.
is not the best way to lead a life.
Hello, my friends. my friends.
It's Dennis Prager, Happiness Hour, talking about happiness.
This is another critical happiness hour that you have to separate emotions from behavior.
And if emotions rule you, you can't be happy.
You can't be good and you can't be happy.
So here is a really good task.
If you take this seriously, it will change your life radically for the better.
People will like you more as well.
That's a bonus.
You get an emotion, identify it, identify the emotion.
And then say, now what do I do about it?
If you can separate emotions from the rest of your life, from reason, from thought, from behavior, I'm not saying you should never act on it.
You make that decision.
But your mind makes the decision, not your emotions.
That's why you don't follow the heart.
That's the whole point.
Okay, this is a big, this is a very big issue.
Alright, let's see my friends.
Klamath Falls, Oregon.
And Diane, hello.
Hi Dennis, how are you?
Well, thank you.
A couple of things I wanted to say.
First of all, I'm curious about the difference between joy and happiness.
And I guess I kind of thought of myself as a cup-half-full person.
And I've had a lot of losses in my life.
And as an evangelical Christian, I am...
My focus in my life is to try to redeem the losses.
If I've had a loss, I'm going to try to minister to somebody else that has had that loss.
But I had somebody ask me once if I was happy, and I had to say, I'm content.
Okay, so excellent.
There are two separate issues here.
There is no answer to...
Defining happiness or defining joy.
So I'll give you my subjective, because you can only give a subjective response.
Joy is ongoing, or excuse me, joy is momentary and happiness is ongoing.
That's how I would look at it.
Others might have the exact opposite definition.
But one, so for example, I spoke about the joy I had at my younger son's wedding almost exactly a year ago, which took place at my older son's home.
And the amount of joy I had is indescribable.
But I have an ongoing happiness irrespective of these joyful moments.
So that's how I would distinguish between joy.
And happiness.
Okay?
Okay.
Alright.
Anything else?
Half full.
Yeah, yeah.
You mentioned half full.
That's correct.
If you expect your coast to be full, your coast.
Isn't that funny?
I'm using the Hebrew word because I did that coast thing earlier.
That's the way the mind works.
If you expect your coast to be full.
I don't think I've ever done that before.
Just out of nowhere, using another language word.
Cracks me up.
It probably doesn't make a single one of you crack up, but it does crack me up.
Anyway, if you expect your cup to be full, how do I put it in a scientific way?
You're screwed.
Back in a moment.
What's wrong with me?
I'm my own worst enemy.
That was a dramatic call.
Look.
Another intense hour on the happiness hour.
Are you ruled by your mind or your emotions?
It's so easy to be ruled by one's emotions.
Both in the macro and the micro.
Now, this is the happiness hour, so it's the micro, but in the macro, clearly, I mean, the amount of evil done.
By people being governed by emotions.
That's the human being.
You're not human if you don't have emotions.
And you're a monster if you're ruled by emotions.
How's that?
That's another truism.
Gotta remember that one too.
Let's see, what was that?
You're not a human without emotions.
And you're a monster if you're ruled by them.
Yes, with my trusty fountain pen.
You know how many people comment when I pull out this fountain pen?
You know, sign something or autograph their book.
Okay.
Let's see.
So many good calls.
Mordecai in New York City, hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
I'm really happy to be on your program, and I'll take an opportunity quickly to wish you a good night of Sabbath.
Thank you.
He wished me a good Sabbath.
Thank you.
Very welcome.
What I wanted to say to you was...
The idea of happiness for me, personally, is happiness for me is a state of mind.
And why do I say that?
Because whenever I'm not happy all the time, there's always something around the corner that bothers us, but whenever something's happening to me that kind of is disturbing me, I just think about the things that I have in my life that are good for me.
I have a home, I have children, I have a wife.
My friend, I am so happy I took your call.
Forgive me that I can't talk their point.
I have a whole chapter in my book on exactly what he said.
You cannot be happy if you don't keep perspective.
Mordecai, thank you and Shabbat Shalom to you.
That is exactly right.
It's a perfect call to end the hour on.
He appealed to his mind.
When he felt sad.
Good luck, everybody.
And now call in on any subject under the sun.
The Kings send out a line of Wayne Gretzky along with Luke Robitaille and Dennis Prager.
Gretzky wins the faceoff.
He gives it to Robitaille.
Robitaille gives it to Dennis Prager.
Here's Prager to spend ice with Gretzky.
Two on one break.
Gretzky back to Prager.
He stumbles and falls.
It's not possible to overstate the joy that brings Sean McConnell.
*music* I can't say ditto.
All right, everybody.
It's the line.
This is you.
This is the hour.
Whatever is on your mind.
This is the hour.
About you, about me, about life, about death, and of course about cigars, and audio equipment, and photography equipment, and fountain pens, and classical music.
We don't get many.
Yeah, that is impressive.
I agree.
After 15 years, it should have been etched in my memory.
Yep, everybody, what is on your mind?
If I don't take your call, don't be offended.
I should do an hour on the happiness hour on the ease with which people are offended.
Can't be offended if it isn't personal.
Well, I guess you can be.
Anyway, people choose how much they should be offended.
Okay, let's see here.
Let's see what's on your mind.
Hmm.
A lot of things are on your mind.
Let's begin in Tallahassee, Florida with Tim.
Hello, Tim.
Hey, Dennis.
Tuesday, you said that a large percentage of scientific research was not reproducible, and therefore, if it violates your common sense, You don't need to take it seriously.
No, no, I didn't.
Wait, forgive me.
Forgive me.
You're right on part one.
I think you're conflating two different things that I say.
So I'm happy that you're called, and I'm obviously continuing with you.
I read an article in, I think it was in the Wall Street Journal.
It was a reputable article about the amount of cheating going on in scientific studies.
Wherein a serious percentage are not replicable or the other, or not deniable.
So they're not valid as studies.
The other thing is that I have said for years that my view of studies, and I don't mean scientific studies, you think I know anything about pancreatic cancer?
I meant studies like, you know, people say, people think, people do.
My motto is that generally, overwhelmingly, either they confirm common sense or they're wrong.
But those are separate issues because a scientific thing has nothing to do with common sense.
So what I wanted to tell you is that there's a couple hundred journals out there that all you have to do is pay them and they will publish your research and they don't review it except to make sure that you haven't violated patient confidentiality.
And people publish journals like pharmaceutical companies simply to get stuff out there that their stuff works.
And, you know, there's a big difference between those journals, which doctors don't take seriously, and big randomized trials in major medical journals that go through extensive peer review.
So just because...
Right, no, that's an extremely important point you're making.
The article, I don't...
I didn't know if it was about specifically scientific as opposed to other things, like anthropological studies, sociological studies, and the like.
So, anyway, I thank you for making...
I did not know that.
Thank you for calling.
I did not know that there are journals that will print something if they're paid to print it.
I mean scientific journals.
It certainly makes it hard for the layperson to know what to trust.
But look, science has done itself, scientific groups have done themselves a disservice.
Lancet has editorials on whom to vote for.
What does that have to do with anything?
Lancet is the most prestigious science journal in the world.
And they start editorializing on American elections?
It's a British journal, which makes it even more ironic.
If they're that committed to commenting on politics, it's very hard for sober people to think, oh, it has no effect on their scientific reporting.
And I'll look up, because I did note a few.
Pieces in Lancet that weren't scientifically accurate because of bias, because of political bias, not because they simply made up scientific error.
Okay, let's see here.
Tenafly, New Jersey, and Stan, the famous Stan of Tenafly.
Hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Thank you for taking my call.
My big thing is, as I mentioned before, is humor.
And I don't think that in Your Happiness is a serious problem book that you really address.
You're 100% right.
I didn't.
You're right.
So what would you like me to have said?
Watch a funny movie?
I'm not kidding you.
What would you have liked that I recommend?
When people laugh, when there's funniness...
That affects their mental being.
That affects their attitude.
Right.
I'm with you.
But what can I recommend?
What if somebody doesn't have a sense of humor?
Well, whether or not you have a sense of humor, as I discussed with you before, that in the old days, you corrected me because I said red skeleton.
You said I pronounced it wrong.
Yeah, because you said skeleton.
I know, I know, etc., etc.
I think that there has to be more humor injected, and maybe we need, in the schools, humor and laughter and other things to get people's attitudes and get them thinking more positive, and that has to...
Well, we do have it, but not as much as we used to, because there's been a war on humor.
Because all humor, this was explained to me, and it's brilliant.
What is it?
All humor has two things.
Oh, yes.
Surprise and a victim.
But as soon as there's a victim, somebody will say it's insensitive or bigoted or whatever.
Now, there are jokes that are malicious, and I'm against them.
And there are jokes that have victims, even ethnic jokes.
If it's not malicious...
It was Tom Dreesen.
Yes, it was Tom Dreesen.
Yes, he was a terrific comedian.
All right.
Anyway, I agree with you.
That does help in life.
There's no question.
Lynchburg, Virginia.
Linda.
Hello, Linda.
Hi, Dennis.
Thank you for taking my call.
I've been listening to...
Can you hear me?
Yep.
Hello?
Yep.
Okay.
I've been listening to the pro-choice arguments, and I don't understand why nobody is simply saying...
When they say that they...
That the law doesn't have a right to tell you what to do with your body.
That's exactly what the law does.
The law tells everybody what to do with their body.
Yeah, but all right, but you can't...
All right, you're right.
But you can't make that argument in a secular society.
It won't work.
Okay, well, can you simply say, oh, why won't it work?
That's interesting.
Why won't it work?
It won't work.
It works among those who believe in the Lord.
Obviously.
It would be like if somebody...
If I were doing a talk show in Morocco and somebody called and said, well, all you have to do is tell them that Allah said X, Y, or Z. But what if you don't have that view of God as Allah through Muslim eyes?
So we who are religious can't make arguments.
We can make the argument that...
Without God, there is no good and evil.
There are only opinions of good and evil, an argument I make all the time.
But on any given issue, we have to be able to make a secular argument.
I don't understand why the secular arguments about a child that is not born are not dispositive.
It's one of those times where common sense and science dictate.
That that has worth.
And you can't say it's only worth what the mother in whom that baby resides thinks of it.
That would be, it's unique in the world.
Your worth is decided 100% whether you live or die by one person.
Why is that a rational secular argument?
Especially at the time of viability, but even before that.
A woman doing what she wants with her own body is a complete non sequitur.
It's not her body.
That argument is simply foolish.
It's dishonest.
It's another body.
Hello, everybody.
I'm Dennis Prager.
This is the hour you called in and set the agenda with whatever is on your mind.
Okay, Richard in Phoenix, Arizona.
Hello.
Thank you, Dennis.
Listener since 1983. Really?
So you began with me?
I did in 1983, during your evening show, 7 to 9, Monday through Thursday.
Wow.
Yeah, I was studying for the LSAT. Anyway, it was great.
So on Tuesday, you were talking about the interpretation of the words of Jesus, in which he said, if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery.
Well, if you look at her with lust, you've committed adultery with your heart.
Yes, correct.
And the interpretation that you receive from the other person, I think, is incorrect.
You have to see the big picture, and if you look at the surrounding verses, you'll see it clearly.
Jesus was not primarily a lawgiver.
He was not a law interpreter.
He came as a savior, and that's important, because he was to prepare human souls for eternal life with God.
His main purpose is to wash away sinfulness by his sacrifice.
So, when he said, you lust after a woman, You commit adultery in your heart.
He's basically saying, don't think that just because you haven't committed the physical sin of adultery that you haven't sinned and you don't need a Savior before entering eternal life.
Don't think you're going to make a technical legal argument and thereby reject my gift of salvation because you think you haven't sinned in that regard.
Right.
So my hour devoted to those two verses, Matthew 5, 27 and 28, was to say that I... I have every reason to believe that the translation lust is not accurate, that he actually said covet.
And then I would agree, in fact, with what he said.
You have committed adultery with your heart because covet means wanting to take possession of.
Something that belongs to another.
That's why the word is the same as the Tenth Commandment.
The word Jesus used in Matthew is the same Greek word as in the Tenth Commandment, do not covet.
Covet is not lust.
The Tenth Commandment was not written in Greek, it was written in Hebrew.
I know, but it's used, the same word is used.
Of course it's written in Hebrew.
But he wasn't speaking in Hebrew.
If you look at the NIV, the ESV, and the NET, and a lot of the other major research translations, they have correctly changed the word kill to murder, you know, like in the Fifth Commandment.
I know, I've pointed that out my whole life.
Go on.
That's right.
Sixth Commandment.
Sixth Commandment, sorry.
They get that right.
They don't, however, change this.
Right.
They were looking carefully at it.
Yes, it is odd to me.
I have to say.
And I think the reason is it is so deeply embedded in Christian thinking that the word is lust that to abandon that belief would be a rethinking of a certain theology of lust.
I believe that my linguistic claim actually defends Jesus.
Because I don't see how it is possible for a heterosexual man to look at a sexy woman and not have a lust feeling, or a homosexual man to look at an attractive man and have it.
It's not societally induced.
God built it in us.
So, in effect, I have always heard it as the most natural...
It's like...
If you crave yummy food, it is as if you have overindulged in food or something.
I mean, my analogy is not perfect, but we're built to want food and we're built to want the attractive object of our sexual desire.
But if you start thinking of taking her from her husband...
Then you have, in fact, committed adultery with your heart, and I agree with that.
I think we agree there.
It's worth looking, however, and I'll leave you with this, in the same chapter, chapter 5 of Matthew, verses 21 and 22 and 23, Jesus says, if you are angry with your brother, if you're angry enough to want to kill him, that's the same as, that you're subject to judgment as if you were to have murdered him.
So the point is that he was trying to say, look, I need to help you by cleaning off thoughts like those, that if it were not cleared, you would be a danger in heaven.
Right, again, but that doesn't invalidate my point.
And so too, my listener, as it were, I'm speaking in Jesus' name, so too, just as if you want to murder, if you covet and want to take away a woman, so too you have committed adultery.
There's no basis.
He has bases.
He was a Jew.
He has bases in the Torah for what he is saying.
That's what he was familiar with, for that matter, the whole Hebrew Bible.
And he is therefore, he is in effect repeating the Tenth Commandment is the way I understand it.
About if you covet your neighbor's Now, a lot of Christians, when I raised this, have said, well, you can find a woman sexually attractive, but it doesn't mean you've lusted.
Okay, so I admit, I don't see the difference between sexually attractive and lust.
Now, then they'll say, well, lust is when you...
Preoccupy yourself with lustful thought about her.
Okay, fine.
I understand.
That may well be true.
But the instinct is a lustful instinct.
Lust is a sexual desire.
I don't understand.
Something is sexually attractive, but there's no sexual desire?
That's really a distinction without a difference in my mind.
And I think we have to be real.
I don't think we do religion a favor when we strike the non-religious as not being real.
And I've had a lot of success in convincing non-religious people to take religion seriously, and I think a big part of it is that my arguments are grounded in reality.
Well, so it's a very important topic.
You should all see my video, He Wants You.
I've done about 55 videos out of the 550. One out of ten for PragerU.
So nine tenths are not done by me and shouldn't be done by me.
And I'm very proud of them.
I've worked very hard on all 55. But I think the one I'm most proud of, Is he wants you.
About how a woman might healthfully react to the fact that her man periodically looks at other women.
And I'm not talking about staring.
Looking.
Back in a moment.
Hi everybody.
Welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
This is the Whatever's On Your Mind Hour.
Third hour of my Friday shows.
Okay.
Wayne in Reno, Nevada.
Hello.
Hello, Mr. Prager.
How are you doing today?
I'm well.
Thank you.
This is a topic that's been a frustration of mine for a period of years since I've been subscribing to your PragerTopia.
Be able to listen to it, have the flexibility to listen to it when I want, and on the basis also of it being commercial-free.
But intermittently, occasionally, there are commercials that aren't properly edited out of the show.
And I can give you a couple of recent examples that occurred last week on April the 17th, on the second hour of the program at the 10 minute and 40 second mark.
They didn't take out your commercial for Nick Growich to buy gold.
And at the end of the third hour, they didn't remove the prompt that states that the show is brought to you from the release factor.
Well, okay.
All right.
So there are two issues here.
I don't frankly think that to say it's commercial-free and for you to hear that this show is coming to you from the Relief Factor studio, the Relief Factor studio is at most two seconds.
If they just said the studio and dropped Relief Factor, it would save one second.
So I think that's a bit picky on your part.
If they do miss the removal of commercial on occasion, then you have to chalk it up to human error.
And Sean, in my headphone just now, humbly apologized.
In fact, he's going to send you an autographed picture of himself.
That would be swell.
That'll be what?
Twelve?
Oh, that'll be swell?
Okay, you're a good man.
Okay.
Sean, you owe him a picture of yourself, alright?
Hello?
Okay, yeah, stay on and give the screener your address.
By the way, it's a great recommendation for me, it's a great segue for me to recommend to you, Prager Topia.
You can hear the show anytime.
A lot of stations carry two, not all three hours.
You don't always get a chance to hear all three hours.
You want to hear another hour again.
You want another person to hear the hour and commercial-free.
It's all at PragerTopia.com.
And plus, PragerTopia Plus is everything ever broadcast, basically.
Like decades of the happiness hour and the male-female hour.
Okay.
And now coming to you from there...
Studio.
Does that count?
No, no, no.
Sean is saying it's fair.
That's why you owe him a picture.
I think the one in the swimsuit is the one that he would most appreciate, but that's your call.
Yes, you're in negotiations with Bud Light.
That is awesome.
Let me say this, Sean.
If your picture were on a Bud Light beer bottle or can, I would start drinking beer.
Okay, just want you to know that finally there would be something to push me to alcohol.
By the way, I'm not opposed to alcohol.
It's its own subject.
Alcohol does an incredible amount of damage.
I wish society warned on alcohol as much as it did on tobacco.
From the beginning, I said, you know, is anybody killed by a smoking driver?
I mean, we're really...
How many kids are molested by drunk relatives as opposed to smoking relatives?
Nevertheless, I'm for the legality of drinking, and a lot of people drink quite responsibly.
Okay, now let's see here.
Anaheim, California.
Chris.
Hello, Chris.
Yes, Dennis.
It's wonderful to talk to you.
Thank you.
By the way, you even said that before you talked to me.
So that's a real compliment.
That's great.
Listen, I was at the Ask a Jew, Ask a Gentile evening a couple of months ago, isn't it?
Yes.
All right.
Hold on.
I realize I have to take a break.
I'm keeping you on.
You're not gone.
You're not gone.
Relief.
Oh, wow.
Coming to you from the studio.
Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
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