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May 17, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:18:45
Durham Report
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hi everybody, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
Welcome.
One wonders, is there anything that can come out about what the left has done to the CIA, the FBI, the Department of Justice?
Is there anything that could come out that would shake up the American people?
My suspicion is that the answer is no.
The Durham report, which has just come out, and confirmed what we all knew about the FBI's involvement in the Russia collusion hoax.
It was all a hoax.
It was a lie.
And it doesn't matter.
January 6th matters.
That's what matters.
For which we have political prisoners, people who simply entered the Capitol.
It was called...
An insurrection from the beginning.
I said from the first day, I wrote my column that week, that it was the same use of January 6th will be used by the left and the Democrats as the Nazis used the Reichstag fire.
I'm not comparing Nazis and Democrats for those who do not understand.
Comparisons.
I'm comparing an action, not a group.
I can't think of another action that so mimics what the Democrats are doing with January 6th, and that is suppressing freedom and using the government for its own ends to suppress freedom to jail opponents, just as was done.
In 1933, the Reichstag fire?
I think it was.
And that is exactly what has happened.
So all we hear is January 6th, but the actual corruption of the government and the state for the use of a political party to suppress dissent and opponents is done by the Democrats.
It's a very bad time in American history.
Because there is no institution that I can think of.
Can you think of an institution?
I'm asking you listening.
Can you think of an institution that has not been corrupted?
I don't mean an organization.
Of course there are terrific organizations.
But institution?
A medical institution?
An academic institution?
A media institution?
I can't think of any.
Sports Illustrated, second year in a row, features a trans woman as its cover for its swimsuit issue.
Maybe there will be blowback like there was with regard to Bud Light.
But one wonders, what do the women who pose in the swimsuits for Sports Illustrated think?
About a man who has been surgically sculpted to look like a woman second year in a row being put on the cover.
Anyway, there's nothing more woke than Sports Illustrated.
They've been left-wing as far back as memory serves.
You have to ask, what is their purpose?
How many transgender swimsuit models are there in America?
Seriously.
Think, what is the number?
Five?
Ten?
I have no idea, but I'm sure it's double-digit.
Maybe single-digit.
So what is the reason?
The reason is to affirm that men can become women.
There is a...
Deep yearning to abolish the binary truth of human sexuality, that there are men and there are women.
You cannot become the other.
You can look like the other.
You cannot become the other.
Any more than a white can become a black or a black can become a white.
Be very interesting, wouldn't it?
What would the reaction of the left be?
And I don't know the answer to this question.
Let us say there was a surgical, or even just through the imbibing of a pill, that one could change one's skin color and look like another race.
What would the left's reaction be?
What would...
What would black people's reaction be if many whites decided, you know, I have a much better chance of getting a job or getting into college if I look black?
Which is a fact.
That's just a fact.
It's not a conjecture.
So what would black Americans' reaction be to whites who became black?
And why is that?
In fact, the truth is, race is not genetically made the way sex is.
And what about biracial people?
Which race are they?
If you could look like another race, why would that be unacceptable?
you identify as such.
Does it mean that we disrespect a human being who looks like a woman See, my answer to it is decency and common sense.
You look like a woman.
You have a woman's name.
You sound like a woman.
I will say you're a woman.
I will treat you as a woman.
I will refer to you as she.
But if you have to announce to me what genitalia you have...
Or chromosomes you have, then what am I supposed to do then?
It means you want me to affirm that men can become women.
You don't merely want me to treat you as a woman.
You want me to affirm a lie.
And that's the issue.
The issue is affirming a lie.
Which college you sent me a piece?
Which college is now Colorado University in Boulder?
You are not to refer to anyone as he and she unless they tell you to do so.
That's a sick place, Colorado University.
Colorado has really now joined the competition with Oregon, California.
Who else?
Washington has the sickest.
Bad folks have taken over the place.
That's an example.
I see this catching on at universities around the country.
You are not to refer to anyone on campus as a he or she unless they tell you to do so.
It would be very interesting if Israel mimicked this.
it isn't by the way in Israel which has a very strong liberal left contingent or cohort if you will in its population there is no movement toward accepting that men become women or women become men part of the problem is that if I say how how are you just how are you in Hebrew
the you is feminine.
Verbs are male and female in Hebrew.
That is how, by the way, deeply embedded sex difference or gender difference, if you will, is in the Hebrew Bible and in Hebrew.
There are not many languages that have male and female in its verbs.
Many, many have it in adjectives and nouns.
La casa.
Many of you will know.
The house.
La is feminine and casa is feminine.
El hombre, the man, it's el, not la, and hombre is masculine.
But the verbs are the same.
Él está, ella está.
Él es, él es, French.
I wonder if that movement caught on in Israel, what would they do?
Since Hebrew, what would a university in Israel do equivalent?
It couldn't do it.
You wouldn't be able to talk to somebody.
There's no neuter.
There's only male and female.
1-8 Prager 776.
I started by telling you that the FBI was involved.
Do you understand the depths to which we have sunk?
And it means nothing to anyone on the left.
Nothing.
That the Columbia Journalism Review said the New York Times and Washington Post lied for two years means nothing.
That's a very bad problem.
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According to you, you checked.
The New York Times never reported the Columbia Journalism Review.
Columbia, it's amazing because Columbia School of Journalism is quite on the left.
And they reported.
That the Washington Post, New York Times just lied for two years.
And it doesn't matter to a single reader of the New York Times.
It doesn't matter.
Nothing matters.
The mindset of the liberal, forget the leftist, the leftist is simply there to destroy everything we have held precious in America.
Whether it's the nuclear family or late night comedy.
They are just destroyers.
There's something empty in their soul, and it hates order, happiness.
I can't fully explain it.
But the liberal, who shares none of the values of the left, hates the right more than it hates the left.
It's been drilled into them that we are the enemy.
So nothing that comes out will change their voting pattern.
Not even their kids being taught that there aren't two sexes.
The liberal parent, generally, is fine with it.
They're fine with it because they don't want to know about it.
Where are they going to find out about it?
New York Times?
LA Times?
You know, the track record of people like me has been pretty good.
L.A. Times just came out with an article yesterday.
It's an opinion piece?
It is in the opinion section.
You're right, in the opinion section.
But they don't print conservative opinion pieces.
So the fact that they have this in the opinion section is...
It's dramatic.
The U.S. economy lost $14 trillion.
We'll have lost $14 trillion because of the lockdowns.
They say COVID, of course, but it's the lockdown.
The greatest losses stemmed from workplace absences and lost sales, but some of us, remember, said that the lockdowns were a horrible thing.
Who was the latest article about the damage done to children because of lockdowns?
Because of closed schools.
Was that the New York Times?
This is just another recent article.
The damage done to children is quite severe.
I was with a high...
Let's see, was he in high school?
No, he's in college.
I was with a college student at dinner last night, a very exceptional young man.
He's at the University of Miami.
And he radiated maturity, integrity.
He was quite an impressive young man.
And he spoke about the effect of no school on him.
Intact, happy family.
A Jewish family.
And it had a severe impact.
Teachers unions are disgusting organizations.
They're truly disgusting.
And they're just more left-wing destroyers.
They wouldn't go back to class, partially because they're hypochondriacs.
What is the word for people paranoid?
No, that's not the word.
What's the word for people with irrational fear?
Is there a word?
There should be.
Isn't that interesting that we don't have a word for that?
People who spend their life afraid?
That's interesting.
I don't know.
We would probably say they're paranoid.
Yeah, but paranoid is where you think people will hurt you.
That's how people understand paranoid.
Delusional is a factor, but it has nothing to do with fear.
Delusion and fear are not related.
I mean, they can be, but they're not necessarily.
Greatest loss is...
So anyway, my larger point is you got much more accurate, much infinitely more accurate information from this radio show than you did from the New York Times.
Just remember that.
The greatest losses stem from workplace absences and lost sales.
The latter were due primarily to closed stores, reduced air travel, and limited public gatherings.
Why did we have all of that?
They let big stores open, remember that?
At the height of the pandemic in the second quarter of 2020, our survey found that air travel fell by nearly 60%, indoor dining by 65%.
And in-store shopping by 43%.
How do people survive that?
Indoor dining by 65%.
I remember asking over and over, how come I can take off my mask and eat three inches from the person next to me in an airplane, but not five feet away from somebody in a restaurant?
Nobody had an answer to that.
Crush restaurants.
Anyway, the left doesn't like.
small businesses.
Hello, everybody.
Bye, everybody.
My column is out today on a biblical law that could solve much of America's problems.
There's a law in the book of Deuteronomy.
Instructing the Hebrews, the Israelites, right after they got out of Egypt and hundreds of years of torment and bondage, do not hate an Egyptian.
Isn't that interesting?
They had no interaction anymore with Egyptians, so it had nothing even to do with Egyptians.
God slash Moses, whichever one you want to view as the author of the law, knew though that that hatred will eat up the hater.
That's what's happening.
The hatred of the white in America is eating up the haters.
But if blacks don't hate whites, they may not vote Democrat.
That's what it's all about.
That's what it's all about.
Okie dokie, let's see here.
Alright, I haven't spoken to him in a while.
Ray in Livermore, California.
Hello.
Hey, good morning, Dennis.
Hi.
Would you do me a favor and say the great Ray from Livermore for my friends who are listening?
Wait, I have to debate.
My producer says I should not do that.
But I will.
Okay.
The great Ray from Livermore.
Anyway, it's not that way.
Thank you.
But wait a minute.
That's not the way I put it.
No, I do.
The famous Ray of Livermore.
That's the way I would put it.
Yes.
Okay.
All right.
Go ahead.
I can boast in my friend group.
And Livermore is ensconced between Pleasanton and Mountain House, just for the record.
For everybody who's not from the Bay Area, it's very helpful, correct?
Yeah.
Yeah, of course.
You were talking about the Sports Illustrated cover and how this is about affirmation and participation in the fantasy of these people, but I think it's worse than that, Dennis.
I think they're trying to provoke people and elicit negative emotions and reactions so they can point to us and continue to call us haters and bigots and homophobes.
I think that is part of it.
Yeah, that's a fine thought.
That's the reason I need to explain our objection.
See, if they had this person as the cover swimsuit model and said nothing, just the person's name, then the vast majority of us would know nothing and say nothing.
The person looks like a woman.
The fact that they tell you, hey, this person has or had a penis.
We fooled you.
That's what it is about.
It is to stick it to us.
There's no such thing as a woman.
Any man who gets sculpted by a surgeon becomes a woman.
That's the agenda.
It is not, let us honor this individual.
Nobody gives a damn.
I don't ask anyone I meet, what were you born?
You look like a woman.
I say, Miss, can I have some more, can you bring some more napkins?
Right?
Or sir, sir, you know, ketchup please.
How do we do that?
Because we...
We know 99.9999% of the time, or we think we know, what the person's sex is, and we react.
Why do I need to be told this person has or had different genitalia, different brain, different chromosomes?
Why do I need to be told that?
Because it's totalitarian leftism.
You must think right, not just act right.
Would act as if this person is a woman is not sufficient.
We are supposed to say it is a woman.
That's the left's agenda.
That's why it's pride.
Not tolerance.
Pride.
We must affirm what they believe.
How we think matters to the left.
I tell my religious friends, that's why I don't think we should go the route of judging how we think.
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That's a big deal.
PragerTopia.com I will be off the rest of the week, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
This is the first pure vacation in my memory.
Because everything else involves speaking whenever I go abroad, which I'm doing.
This is, I'm going to Germany for four days, and it's just vacation.
I'll let you know on Monday, when I broadcast from Orlando, the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, what it is like.
It has an effect, because, you know, my work is very intense.
You know, I don't talk about light stuff.
I try to do it in a light manner often, thank God.
It helps me, it helps you.
But it's pretty intense, the writing and the lecturing, the books, PragerU.
It's a lot of stuff.
So anyway, I'll let you know what that was like.
So I'll be with you Monday, but I have terrific people sitting in, as always.
My belief is that I owe it to you to have people who are so good, you won't miss me that much.
Notice I said that much?
I didn't say at all.
That's very sweet of you.
Alright, thank you.
Alright, let's see here.
Where was the guy who said he's a liberal?
There we go.
North Hills, California.
Frank, hello.
Yeah.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
Yeah, you say liberals are naive, but I can assure you you're much more objective than the millions of Republicans who believe that the election was stolen without any evidence to back it up.
And everything's been refuted.
Probably a simple refutation.
So let me ask you something.
Can I finish what I'm saying?
Oh, I thought you did.
I'm sorry.
You made a point.
It's the fact that every aspect of every election is carefully vetted and controlled by both Republicans and Democrats.
And so to believe that the election was stolen, there was all this massive voter fraud, you'd have to believe that...
Excuse me.
You'd have to believe that dozens, if not hundreds, of Republicans in the contestant states agreed to fix the election for Biden, and not one of them objected and exposed the scheme.
It's absurd.
All right, tell me when you're done.
Are you done?
Okay, back to that.
Every recount and audit came up with the same vote totals.
Trump's lawyers lost 60 lawsuits because they couldn't produce any evidence of vote fraud, many before conservative judges.
Christopher Krebs, the Director of Cybersecurity and Technology, said this was the most secure election in American history.
William Barr said that.
Claims of any voter fraud or any consequence was, quote him, BS. And then you had two private investigative firms that Trump hired to discover fraud.
Both of them came back and said every claim he made was false, and he kept making the same claims that Joe does to this day.
How is that an answer to my statement that liberals are naive?
It's an attack on Republicans who believe that there was fraud.
I am certain there was fraud.
I don't know if it determined the election.
That has been my position from the beginning.
I accept the fact that Joe...
Now you've got to let me finish.
I accept the fact that Joe Biden is president.
That's not enough for you.
I have to say what you believe, otherwise I am doing damage.
It's not enough that I regard him as president.
I must say he was absolutely, there's no question, that he was honestly elected.
Despite the fact that we had unprecedented recounts, unprecedented dumping of ballots in the millions of people who didn't request their ballots, I am supposed to believe there was no fraud, that in Philadelphia they stopped counting at a certain point at night and said, we'll resume tomorrow.
That for the first time in American history, so many places didn't have results at night.
But I am not allowed.
No, no, no, no.
I'm not debating.
Okay, please.
Otherwise, we'll end up here only talking about one thing.
I said...
No, no, no, no.
You refuted it.
You refuted it originally.
I'm moving on to another subject.
How does that respond to the issue that liberals think leftists are closer to them than conservatives?
Do you believe that men can become women?
Of course not.
Okay.
Does the Democratic Party support the idea that men can become women?
You're talking about sex change.
Yeah, and actually, while you're on the subject...
Do you think that men should be allowed to compete with women if they say they're a woman?
No.
Okay.
The Democratic Party is adamant that they be allowed to do so, and you vote Democrat.
Not all of the Democrats are.
Oh, no, please.
The Democratic Party, all Democrats, is irrelevant.
It's irrelevant to my point.
That's why you're naive.
You're not willing to understand the damage the party you vote for does.
I'm not naive at all.
You're totally naive, sir.
You acknowledge the fraud.
You're shouting over him.
I am, correct, because that's the only way I could talk.
You acknowledge that when men...
I'll let you talk after this point.
Okay, thank you.
Excellent.
You acknowledge that it is utterly destructive of women's sports if men who say they're women compete with them.
However, the Democratic Party, from Joe Biden down, wants to allow that to happen and is opposed to every Republican bill to ban it.
I'm keeping you on.
I swear to you, before God, I have put you on hold.
Tell me why you vote Democrat in light of that fact which is more destructive to the country than whether I, Dennis Prager, think the last election was completely honest.
Back in a moment.
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Fully 69% of U.S. likely voters say accusations of foreign influence peddling by President Biden and his family are a serious scandal, but ABC, NBC, and CBS didn't spend a second reporting on breaking news Wednesday when Representative James Comer, Republican Kentucky, detailed how the Biden family may have received more than $10 million from foreign nationals.
As my producer put it in his pithy summary, what did you say?
We have national media?
State media.
That's right, we have state media.
That's why I compare it to Pravda.
That's exactly right.
When the Democrats are in government, the media are state media.
That's it.
That's all they are.
NBC, CBS, ABC. PBS, that's really a riot, as if we need a public broadcasting system with all the privates doing the same exact thing, or NPR. Has NPR ever had me on?
I don't think so.
Certainly not in 25 years, let's say.
Now...
This has nothing to do with me talking about me, but it's me talking about a guy named Dennis Praker.
Now, I would say that I have more influence in the society than 99% of the people that NPR has on.
Forgetting politicians, of non-politicians.
But I'm a conservative, so I have me on.
Have they ever had Ben Shapiro on NPR? I don't know.
I'm asking.
Maybe once, if they have at all.
Jordan Peterson, Tom Sowell, Larry Elder.
The point is, they insulate people from non-left-wing opinion.
That's what they do.
I mean, just the fact that...
I think it's the best-selling Bible commentary currently on Amazon.
So I have two strikes against me.
One, I'm conservative, and second, it's religious.
I wonder if NPR, I would love to know, has NPR had anybody who's written a Bible commentary on?
No wonder if I walked through Harvard Square and I asked, what is Leviticus?
I don't believe half of the students would know.
I don't think half the students would know.
Name the four Gospels at Harvard.
They would know about preferred pronouns.
No question about that.
They would know that the greatest threat to the country is white supremacy.
Yeah.
White supremacy.
That's what they're told.
I went through Joe Biden's speech yesterday in detail.
Spent an hour with excerpts from it.
Anyway, I have very much to share with you.
And there is a story.
Let me find this for you, my friends.
Oh, yeah.
Officials neglect COVID vaccine side effects.
Wall Street Journal.
A couple of days ago.
Talks about a woman who is very pro-vaccine, in fact, volunteered to be tested with it, but got terrible reactions as a result.
I read to you after that.
She learned that many others were experiencing similar symptoms after getting vaccinated.
She organized online support groups.
Now here's why I'm reading it to you in part.
Listen carefully.
But Facebook shut them down.
People injured by the vaccine.
They started Facebook groups and Facebook shut them down.
Under the misinformation policy.
Which bars information that is, quote, likely to directly contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm, including by contributing to the risk of individuals getting or spreading a harmful disease or refusing an associated vaccine.
There you go.
Because at Facebook, they know their science.
This includes, quote, claims about the safety or serious side effects of COVID-19 vaccines, unquote, even it appears when such claims are truthful.
Of course not.
Facebook doesn't care about truth because truth is not a left-wing value.
Every day something arises that enables me to say that line.
It's a liberal value.
It's a conservative value.
It's not a left-wing value.
The Facebook censorship and government inaction spurred her to launch React 19, a, quote, science-based nonprofit offering financial, physical, and emotional support, unquote, for people who suffered severe reactions after COVID vaccines.
For the record, as you probably know, I'm not vaccinated against COVID. I got it twice, maybe more.
I didn't test after the second time.
Got it twice, and...
I'll take those antibodies over an mRNA vaccine anytime.
I pray that my fears about the mRNA vaccine's effect on reproductive abilities of young men and women, I pray those fears are for naught.
REACT-19 has more than 21,000 members in the U.S., another 20,000 in 24 international partner organizations, and now has a Facebook page.
We are not anti-vax and are neutral on the COVID vaccines, Ms. Dresden says, but doctors need to be aware of what's going on so they can treat patients.
Amazing.
She's still neutral on the vaccine that so damaged her.
Amazing.
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Hi everybody, reading to you from the Wall Street Journal.
A woman who was terribly damaged, very pro-vaccine and terribly damaged by the COVID vaccine.
What her story is and the corruption in our national medical associations and big pharma organizations.
I mean, to the point of indifference to human suffering.
So Facebook censored anybody who spoke about damage of the vaccine.
I read to you that part.
Interviews with React 19 members.
React 19 is the organization of people damaged by the vaccine, started by this woman who was still not even anti-vaccine.
It's very hard to change a liberal's mind.
A part of my first hour.
Interviews with React 19 members and emails they shared with me, that's Alicia Finley of the Wall Street Journal, that public health authorities haven't been transparent about these adverse events.
Officials privately expressed concern to patients but kept mum about the issue in public and failed to keep promises to investigate the side effects thoroughly.
Ms. Dressen, the woman who started these groups, says NIH officials were initially solicitous.
They brought at least a dozen patients like Ms. Dressen to their facilities for tests and treatment as part of an informal study.
Good that you are getting the word out, Dr. Nath of the NIH wrote to her June 27, 2021.
And then Alicia Finley writes, but the NIH did not get the word out.
Now, she took, interestingly, the AstraZeneca vaccine, I mean, Ms. Dressen says AstraZeneca offered her $1,243.30 if she agreed to waive any additional claims.
Did you read that?
$1,243.30.
She turned it down.
AstraZeneca says the offer was a reimbursement for medical expenses and tests rather than a legal settlement, and its independent experts determined the injury wasn't vaccine-related.
Okay.
Other React 19 members I spoke with said they didn't receive responses from Pfizer or Moderna about adverse event reports they filed with the companies.
They didn't even get responses.
A Pfizer spokesperson said its, quote, medical team thoroughly assesses and reviews medical documentation to further understand the event, and reports are shared regularly with federal and global regulatory and health authorities for further review.
You realize that means nothing?
That's a long answer.
That means nothing.
Moderna didn't respond to requests for comments to the Wall Street Journal.
In the fall of 2021, some Americans resisted vaccination.
The Biden administration mandated vaccines for health care workers.
In other words, you're a health care worker.
You're fired.
You lose your income if you don't get vaccinated.
Remember that?
Most Americans were fine with that.
That was very frightening.
I'm not easily frightened.
They were necessary to ensure employee safety and health.
I don't understand something.
If I'm vaccinated, why the hell do I care if you're vaccinated?
It's like, if I wear a mask, why do I care if you wear a mask?
If the vaccine works, why do I care if you're vaccinated?
One of the many questions I asked the entire time...
At the same time, FDA and NIH officials received a growing number of reports of severe side effects, including from medical professionals who had been among the first to get vaccinated.
One was Denise Hertz, a 66-year-old retired gastroenterologist in Santa Monica, California.
On February 4th, 2021, she stumbled on an article from Neurology Today in which Anthony Fauci sought to correct his earlier recommendation that people with a history of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare disorder in which the immune system attacks the nervous system, shouldn't get vaccinated because it might trigger a recurrence.
After drawing pushback from the medical community, Dr. Fauci retracted his statement because it clashed with the CDC. What does follow the science mean?
It means follow the dominant scientists that you believe in.
Hi everybody, I'm Dennis Prager and it is a pleasure to be with you.
Quite an article in the Wall Street Journal about not responding to people, the pharmaceutical companies not responding to people who have been damaged by the COVID vaccine.
It was a real horrible thing to have kids vaccinated against it when the chances of their...
Being hurt by COVID were so minuscule.
Do you realize how much more honest my track record is than the New York Times on every major issue?
Do you realize that?
That's not a brag.
It's true about so many of my co-conservatives.
But I can speak for me because I know all of my positions.
Masks, lockdowns, school closures.
They're wrong on everything.
Has anybody awakened one day and said, you know, they're wrong on everything.
Maybe they're also wrong on destroying the economy in the name of green environmental policies.
Literally destroying it.
Yesterday I read to you that the government itself says that we are headed for a catastrophe.
Because the electrical grid does not have enough power?
Because we shut down coal mines and we shut down natural gas pipelines and so on?
Do you understand the damage being done for no good reason?
The existential threat to humanity is a gigantic lie.
Gigantic.
I'm not saying global warming is a lie.
I'm saying the existential threat is a lie.
Because truth is not a left-wing value.
Do you not understand?
They scare you in order to gain power.
That's all it is about.
That is why I wrote in April 2020 that the lockdowns were, quote, my quote, dress rehearsal for a police state.
That's exactly what they were.
And they realized nobody, almost nobody would oppose them in America, including, tragically, Synagogues and churches who were sheep for the most part.
Docile sheep in the face of irrational, harmful, secular authority.
I look to religion to give people courage.
If it's going to produce wimps, of what use is religion?
I've devoted my life to spreading the idea that only Judeo-Christian values will save us.
Who the hell holds Judeo-Christian values?
That's a real good question.
Eric Metaxas asks that question.
A courageous Christian.
I'm going to have him on again.
It's a very...
I don't want to say depressing.
That was the word that came to my mind.
It's a very sobering question.
Remember I asked Jordan Peterson, one of the two PragerU Galas he came to, do you believe in God?
His answer shook me up.
He said something to the effect that it's so difficult.
To say you believe in God, not because it's hard to believe in God, but because of the moral demands that belief in God makes upon a person.
But how many people think that way?
The government says, shut your church?
For a year?
And you go, okay, fine.
You don't even allow it to be open, you're not forcing anybody to go.
If you have scared parishioners, then fine.
A friend of mine who was a rabbi, the board of directors of his synagogue were out of their minds scared.
Out of their minds sheep.
Worthless.
It drove him crazy.
He would have had services every...
Single Saturday.
Another synagogue, a prominent synagogue in the West Coast.
They actually, on Rosh Hashanah of 2021, there were no services in 2020. 2021, they put a mask over the shofar, the ram's horn that has blown on the New Year Day to call people to penitence.
A mask on the shofar.
In the history of the Jewish people blowing the ram's horn for 3,000 years, did it ever have a mask?
The moment you start moving left, you become a coward.
Cowardice is part of leftism.
Fear, scared, better than fear.
Scared is a characteristic of leftism.
If you're not scared and you don't impose your phobia on others, you're not a true progressive.
I wonder if the people at that synagogue, one of the most prominent on the west coast of the United States, are embarrassed when they know that they...
They seriously expected the ram's horn to have a mask over it.
Is the person who blew the shofar then embarrassed?
Did they look back on it with pride?
I really, I don't know the answer.
And I assure you they would not come on the show to answer the question.
Some churches and some synagogues defied it.
And they were hated by many fellow Christians and many fellow Jews.
The question of how effective is religion morally and intellectually is a very, very real question.
Yes.
and it's probably the saddest of all the questions.
All right, everybody, Dennis Prager here. Dennis Prager here.
you Bye.
The subject of my column this week, which is out every Tuesday, and there are over a thousand of my columns up on the internet.
You could do worse than read them.
I know it sounds self-serving, but it's free.
I don't make money if you read it.
I can make converts, though, to reason and morality.
So, it's titled The Biblical Law That Would Change American Life.
There's a law that is known to almost no one except real biblical scholars.
There's a law in Deuteronomy.
By the way, that's the book that the founders of the United States cited more than any other book ever written.
Biblical or Enlightenment.
It's a fascinating little piece of data.
The founders cited the book of Deuteronomy.
More than anything else.
In second place was the French Enlightenment thinker Montesquieu.
But Deuteronomy was number one.
And in that book is a little law.
It's just part of a verse.
It's not even its own verse.
You may not hate an Egyptian.
They had just suffered horribly as slaves in Egypt for hundreds of years.
And God says, or if you don't believe God, Moses says.
You don't believe Moses.
Somebody said, don't hate an Egyptian.
You know what's interesting about that?
Aside from the obvious, they had no interaction with Egyptians again.
That's over.
So, in terms of pragmatics, it's irrelevant.
So why would there be a law, don't hate a group that you don't have any more interaction with?
Because it was meant to affect the Israelite, the Hebrew.
That's why.
That's why I titled my piece, A Biblical Law That Would Change American Life.
How about having every church in America, every synagogue in America, teach, Thou shalt not hate the white.
Shall not hate a white.
Think that would change the country?
I do.
It's the only hatred permitted in this country.
Hatred of whites.
Especially white males.
Especially white Christian heterosexual males.
Then you have everything running against you.
That's powerful.
We return.
I'm Dennis Prager.
The Dennis Prager Show, live from the Relief Factor Pain-Free Studio.
Hello, everybody.
I'm Dennis Prager.
This is the Ultimate Issues Hour, the third hour every Tuesday on some great issue of life.
So here is an issue that has preoccupied me.
for the last two months and it has been a national discussion on the internet comments that I have made and a dialogue that I had with a Christian podcaster in Ohio where among the many issues that arose is an issue that I have now given I've given thought to All of my life,
but more in the last two months than in any two-month period, let's put it that way.
And the question is sinful thoughts versus sinful actions.
One of the most interesting reactions, may I speak about you in this regard?
Sure.
My producer and very, very, very close friend, a.k.a.
the living martyr, Alan Estrin, came up with the idea of PragerU and is producer of this show and so much more.
So, I am proud to say I had a big effect on his thinking many years ago.
And now he's had a big effect on mine and everybody else, but millions of others through what he has helped create.
He said to me just the other day, and I did not know this.
I don't know if you had told me this in the past, but you said recently, when you heard from me, he grew up completely secular, completely non-religious.
And he said, when I heard you, Dennis, say, That what counts are your actions, not your thoughts.
Is that correct?
That is the single biggest thing that opened you up, in this case, to Judaism.
Because he came from a home where the parents were Jews, but there was no religion to speak of, which is very common among Jews, unfortunately, but that's the way it is.
It's common among Christians, but they're just not called Christians anymore.
They're just called secular people.
So that really meant a lot to me when he told me how much that meant to him.
Because one of the guiding principles of my life is from the Talmud in one of the most important chapters of the Talmud.
And that is, it is not the teaching...
That is the essence, but the deed.
Which basically means it's not the thought that is most essential, it is the deed.
So, there are many criticisms of me on the internet for having said that, because there is a widespread belief in the Christian world, and you know, I don't know of a bigger advocate.
Of Judeo-Christian values in America than I am, and have been for all of my career of 40 years, and big defender of Christians and Christianity, as so many of my Christian listeners and readers know.
But obviously there are differences in some of their theologies, otherwise they would have the same religion.
And that's fine with me, by the way.
That there will be difference in beliefs is perfectly understandable.
But this one, because it's been raised so much now and is, I think, fundamental in some ways, I'm addressing.
So what does it mean, a sinful thought?
And if a sinful thought leads to sin, I mean, which is obvious.
You can't do something you didn't think about.
But is the corollary true?
A good thought leads to goodness.
Well, you might say, of course, because how could you have a good deed if you didn't have a good thought?
But the problem is, the vast majority of good thoughts don't lead to goodness.
Most evil in the last hundred years, just to give an example, and the last hundred years saw more genocide, more torture, more enslavement, more mass murder than any century in history, was caused by people with good thoughts.
You think communists didn't have good thoughts?
And nearly all the genocides were communists.
The one non-communist genocide was Nazism.
And you think every Nazi woke up and said, I'm going to do evil today?
I don't think so.
They were brainwashed to believe that killing Jews was a good deed.
I don't place much importance on the issue of sinful thought.
I place 99% of my emphasis It's a very interesting thing because the secular left has the same view of the importance of thought.
That's why if you treat gay people in your life beautifully, but you're not for same-sex marriage, then they say you're a hater.
It doesn't matter how well you treat gays.
The fact that you think that marriage is between a man and a woman is bad enough.
It's a scary thing to me to monitor thought.
Because in the secular and the religious world, it's hard enough to control your actions.
To ask people to control all their thoughts is, maybe it is an ideal.
I would love to know, only God knows the answer to this.
Do people who suppress sinful thought, like lust is considered a sinful thought, I'm dubious about that, but let's say that it is.
Do the people who...
Suppress those thoughts.
Are they kinder than people who don't suppress those thoughts?
In other words, does it manifest itself in behavior?
Do people who believe in sinful thoughts act finer, with more courage?
Do they fight evil?
And after all, God said, or at least did not.
Not God.
The psalmist said, those of you who love God must hate evil.
If you don't hate evil, therefore you don't love God.
Do people who suppress sinful thought fight evil?
The guys in World War II who went on bombing missions, and I think the highest rate of death was among flyers.
Is that correct?
To fight the Germans and the Japanese, they often had a decal of a pin-up girl on their airplane.
A scantily clad, sexy woman.
They risked their lives to fight evil, but they obviously had a lust-inducing picture on their plane.
So, you could say, well, that was sinful, but they did a lot of good when they bombed.
Okay, that's fine.
I'm asking, the relationship between the two is tenuous to me.
me, that is between thoughts and deeds.
The vast majority of men who are faithful to their wives suppress their inclination to act otherwise.
Look at how many men have destroyed their lives because of extramarital affairs.
You realize how powerful the urge in men is to have sex with more than one woman.
Not necessarily at a time, by the way.
That's the way men are made.
They were made that way by God.
This is not societally induced.
This has been the case since men were created.
It is a battle every man has to fight.
Many men don't tell their wives about this because they're embarrassed or afraid.
We'll return, Ultimate Issues Hour.
Okay, this is a tough issue, but it's an important one.
Is there such a thing as sinful thought?
So I'm going to tell you a story I don't know if I've said on the radio or not.
It's a very personal story, but I decided very early in my career that I would be as transparent as possible.
So I grew up as an Orthodox Jew in Brooklyn, New York, and it was sort of a cocoon.
My whole world was...
A religious Jewish world.
Went to a religious Jewish school.
I went to a summer camp that was religious.
My home was.
My friends were.
My parents' friends were.
My nature has always been, however, to want to meet the other.
I'm not a cocoon fan.
I'm not blaming those who like.
Most people like cocoons.
Be surrounded by people like them.
Anyway, at a very early age, I decided I wanted to see the world.
I've been to 130 countries.
I've lived out my childhood dream in that regard.
And I was infatuated with non-Jews from a very early age.
I knew I was not living.
The Jews were a small minority.
I wanted to know the majority.
I remember as a kid, if I met the mailman, I would start asking him about his life and his family, just to know about the other.
Anyway, I remember my first exposure to Christianity was twofold.
One, my family watched the Christmas Mass from the Vatican every Christmas Eve.
And I got a big kick out of it.
I didn't blink.
I mean, I just watched it.
It was so fascinating to me.
And the other was on the car radio when my father would turn the dial and you'd go over stations as you went to the number on the dial you wanted.
And often there would be a Christian preacher.
They came to be known as tele-evangelists.
Then I guess they were radio evangelists.
And I remember often saying, Dad, stop, hold on, I really want to hear that.
And he thought it was a little odd.
He didn't think it was bad.
After all, he's the one who watched the Mass from the Vatican.
So I would listen and I'd be fascinated.
As I got older, I had...
What I later came to call Christian envy.
And what was that about?
I had to observe all these laws.
And Christians didn't have to observe any of these laws.
I'm talking about the ritual laws of the Torah and Judaism.
And in my mind, it was infinitely easier to be a Christian than a Jew.
All you had to do was believe in Christ.
And you were set.
No kosher laws, no Sabbath laws, nothing.
And so I had what I quote unquote Christian envy.
Then, as life would have it, God or fate had me at the age of 33. I began broadcasting.
And my first show was to be the moderator of a priest, minister, and rabbi each week, different ones each week.
And I did that for 10 years.
And there was no commercial.
There was the one commercial-free program on that station.
So therefore, two hours times 50 weeks is, was it 1,000, correct?
No.
100. Sorry.
100 hours.
So, that was 100 hours a year.
I think I got that math right.
Is that right?
What is 2 hours a week?
2 times 50 is 100, yeah.
100 hours times 10 years.
I did 1,000 hours of dialogue with Christians, Jews, and I invited other religious groups over the course of time.
And about year five, I dropped Christian Envy.
And it was over this issue.
And it was really new to me.
And the reason was, while we Jews had all this preoccupation and even guilt over ritual sins, they were sins over actions.
But Christians sort of traded in sins over actions for sins over thought.
And that dropped my Christian envy.
So, I'm giving you a personal response.
I'm not even saying who's right.
I'm only noting that there is a difference of approach.
There is one thought sin that I am aware of, and it's in the Ten Commandments.
Do not covet your neighbor's wife, your neighbor's house, your neighbor's ox, and anything your neighbor owns.
Covet, however, is not lust.
And I make that clear.
This is not new.
I make it clear in my Bible commentary, The Rational Bible.
In fact, there really isn't a biblical Hebrew word for lust.
Which comes as a surprise, I'm sure, to many.
By the way, Jesus did not say lust.
He said covet as well, because he was repeating the Tenth Commandment.
The Greek he uses is covet.
Covet is very different from lust.
Covet means you want to take what belongs to your neighbor.
His house, his servants, his wife, his animal, and anything he owns.
You don't lust after an ox.
You don't lust after a house.
That's the one thing you can't do.
You can't want to steal.
That's basically what it means.
But otherwise, pretty much the mind is left alone.
So I am behavior-preoccupied because I know how many people have good intentions and they're worthless and they do a lot of bad.
So, I'm a behavior man.
Take your calls when we come back.
Alright, it's the Ultimate Issues Hour of the Dennis Prager Show, third hour every Tuesday.
Very, very, very big issue of, is there such a thing as sinful thought or only sinful actions?
So, I gave you my thought.
By the way, remember that a big part of...
My preoccupation with actions is, first of all, that's what affects others.
Secondly, if bad thoughts are sinful, then good thoughts are goodful.
But they're not.
What leads to good deeds is not always good thoughts.
Obviously that's an element, but the relationship between good thoughts and good deeds is very tenuous.
The people who give children hormone blockers and otherwise truly abuse children in the name of their trans ideologies, they have good thoughts.
They think they're doing good things for children.
The people who sacrificed children in the pagan world didn't think they were doing bad.
So, it's a tough question, the question of thoughts and deeds.
But to me, deeds are everything.
Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, no, how was that?
So is it, I assume it's Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
There's an error here.
John, hello.
Hello.
Hi.
Dennis, this is John, and I am from Pittsburgh.
That's right.
Yes, and anyway, great to talk with you, and yeah, I agree with you that the thoughts and behaviors, it's a very tenuous position.
I believe that a thought can be bad, can be sinful, and I'll just, I'll share real quick.
So I was divorced, a real nasty, bad divorce.
I didn't want to divorce.
And if I would have held on to my bad, resentful thoughts towards my ex, it would have messed me up.
So, I mean, that's one way that I look at it.
Yes, you know what?
That's a great call.
That's a very, very good point.
Sometimes, even if...
If certain thoughts don't lead to bad actions, they can mess you up.
That's true.
Still, if you had resentful thoughts and you acted decently toward your ex, that would be what matters the most.
But for your sake, not to dwell on your resentment is a very good idea.
That's why I mentioned in my column today, That just as there is a biblical law for the Hebrews not to hate the Egyptian, there's a biblical law, do not hate an Egyptian.
They had just gotten out of hundreds of years of enslavement.
It's an amazing law.
But it was done for their sake.
They had no interaction anymore with Egyptians.
So that's true.
Nevertheless, if you don't like me, That's sad.
But as long as you don't do anything to hurt me, I don't care.
to be honest.
That's what matters.
Like You know how many people claim they love their partner or their spouse and mistreat them?
The number of partners, often women, who are hurt by their husband or their boyfriend, and then he tells them how much he loves them.
And by the way, a lot of women are then convinced to stay in the relationship because he's so sincere, and he is, about his love for her.
My answer would be, love her less and treat her better.
How you treat your spouse is more important than how you feel about your spouse.
But we live in a feelings-based world, and I think that it also affects religious people.
Feelings, thoughts, they're really important.
And my belief is, behavior is almost everything.
We'll continue.
Dennis Prager here.
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