All Episodes
Previous Next
May 30, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:10:55
What Do You Want?
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
To hear the entire three hours of my radio show, commercial-free, every single day, become a member of PragerTopia.
You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives, as well as the daily show prep.
Subscribe at PragerTopia.com That's what happens when you aren't here for a few days, Memorial Day, etc. et cetera.
Everything has been moved.
The microphone has been rendered immobile.
Not that any of you care, but I am explaining the noises that you heard.
Hi, everybody!
Wow, long weekend.
And what is on everybody's mind is the agreement.
Sign between Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden.
I was on Newsmax yesterday, and they asked me about it.
I want people to understand the big picture.
I'm always thinking in terms of the big picture.
The small picture is extremely important.
What is it?
Well, they say the devil is in the details, but the angels are in the details as well.
I'm fully cognizant of that.
But the big picture is this.
Something I have warned about all of my career.
Once the government starts giving people money, benefits, it is impossible, virtually impossible, to restrict them.
The addiction to free money, to free things, to free services, Is, in my opinion, more difficult to break than an addiction to heroin.
There are undoubtedly millions of people addicted to drugs, and certainly alcohol.
And they have, through great willpower and the grace of God, they have been able to conquer that addiction.
Do you know anybody who has foregone benefits?
Or let's put it this way.
I don't expect people to refuse money that is being offered them or services being offered them.
But do you know anybody who receives them and votes against them?
Let's put it that way.
Who has voted against receiving benefits?
That is why it is, what do they say?
Medicare and Social Security are the third rail.
Third rail, for those who don't know, is the rail in subways.
And maybe, I don't know, is it train?
I don't think train tracks.
Subways, I believe.
That give the power.
And if you touch it, you're electrocuted to death.
So it's called a third rail of politics.
Look at France.
I don't know how many of you have been aware.
Of the extremely vociferous, sometimes violent demonstrations because the left-wing president of France wants to raise the Social Security age by, I think, two years.
Is that correct?
Is it two years?
One or two.
One or two, yeah.
When it began, people lived ten years.
Less than today.
Maybe even in many cases more.
That's why it was set at 65. And now trying to raise it to 67 so as to keep the country solvent for the next generation is to apparently most recipients of Social Security and Medicare in America unacceptable.
So my grandchildren will have this debt strangling their economic growth.
I want to retire at 65. Screw my grandchildren.
That is how a lot of Americans feel.
And they love their grandchildren.
I don't deny that.
Thank God they do.
Big government makes a worse society.
That's it.
It's as simple as that.
Big government has been the source of the greatest evils of the 20th century.
Only big governments committed genocide.
It is amazing how accepted big government is on the part of so many people in the Western world who have access to the information which they don't read about.
How many college kids have ever been taught what I just said?
You know that?
About a hundred million people.
Not including in wartime.
Not including war!
100 million people were killed by big governments.
I might add, big secular governments.
They're never told that.
I don't even know what they're told.
I have no idea.
And I take that back.
I suspect that most kids in college have no idea about the genocides of the 20th century because they were committed overwhelmingly by the left.
So why would they be taught that?
They need to be taught that Thomas Jefferson allegedly, or perhaps even likely, had sex with a black woman who was a slave.
That's important to tell them.
That 100 million people were slaughtered and a billion enslaved by big governments, that's not important.
So, what the Republicans fear is that if they shut down the government or there's any default, they will be blamed.
Not the staggering debt that is choking this country and will choke the next generation.
Can any of you foresee a non-cataclysmic future?
While everybody's eye is looking at...
Global warming and climate change as existential threats.
Maybe that will be an existential threat.
Not to biological life, but to life as we know it.
So, the Wall Street Journal has some good things to say about it.
There are some good things to be said about it.
Could have been worse.
But so long as there is a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate, well, in the case of budget, it's the House.
So long as you have a Democratic president, they're pandering to people, which is all the left does.
What would you like for free, dear citizen?
That is the motto of every left-wing party in the world.
What would you like for free?
Do you know that Greece has become solvent?
Do you know Greece was, for decades, the poor man of Europe, the one that the Europeans kept debating, gee, should we even keep them in the Euro?
I mean, they're just bringing down the Euro.
We just keep supporting them.
And then they elected a center-right leader, and they tried supply-side economics.
And bolstering small businesses.
And now they're doing, compared to the past, terrifically.
It works.
But this is all...
I predict.
I almost never make predictions.
It's a policy of mine.
I predict that within any, I don't know, five years, ten at the most, they will elect a left-wing government again.
The left-wing then will destroy the society economically and in many other ways.
And then they will elect the right wing to fix it up.
Eric Adams, that's his name, correct?
The mayor of New York, Eric?
Yeah.
Eric Adams is now called by the left a right winger because he had originally some positive things to say about the, or not negative things to say about the Marine who put the guy threatening people in the subway in a chokehold.
By the way, it's very important to know how effective the boycott of Bud Light has been.
Anheuser-Busch is really hurting because they allowed a young, woke female to dictate the policies of affirming to America a guy who has millions of followers as he quote-unquote transitions to being a girl.
This is the hero of Bud Light, or at least of the woke.
Isn't that beautiful?
Dear friends, it is not beautiful.
We do not wish any innocent human being any harm.
That is not the issue.
But to state that society is better for people thinking that they're becoming the other sex, you cannot become the other sex.
You can look like the other sex.
And if you look like the other sex, I will treat you exactly as I would any other person who looked like what you look like now.
You look like a woman, I'll call you ma'am if I need more iced tea at my table.
It's not a complex thing.
But do I have to celebrate the idea that people are doing this to themselves?
Yes, you do.
You have to celebrate it.
That is why the left is totalitarian.
It is not enough to tolerate.
You must celebrate.
And now, target should be your next target.
Gold dealers are a dime a dozen.
They're everywhere.
What sets these companies apart, and who can you really trust?
This is Dennis Prager for AmFedCoin and Bullion, my choice for buying precious metals.
When you buy precious metals, it's imperative that you buy from a trustworthy and transparent dealer who protects your best interests.
So many companies use gimmicks to take advantage of inexperienced gold and silver buyers.
Be cautious of brokers offering free gold and silver, or brokers that want to sell you overpriced collectible coins, claiming they appreciate more.
What about hidden commissions and huge mark-ups?
Nick Grovich and his team at AmFed always have my back.
That's why I mention his name in each commercial message for him.
Nick's been in this industry over 42 years, and he's established a reputation built on trust, transparency, and fair pricing.
If you're interested in buying or selling, call Nick Grovich and his team at Amphet Coin & Bullion 800-221-7694.
Americanfederal.com.
Americanfederal.com.
There is so much to report because of the long weekend.
And...
Forty teens, I saw the video, 40 teens beat up three Marines who were off duty on a beach in, what is it, Oceanside?
So that's near Camp Pendleton where the Marine base is on the coast, Pacific coast, closer to San Diego than to L.A. And they were shooting fireworks on the beach, a bunch of kids, teenagers.
The Marines asked them to please stop because the debris was hitting them and they just wanted to have a relaxing time.
About 30 to 40 teens then swarmed them, kicked them, smashed their heads, punched them.
It's all on video.
There was a breakdown in the society.
While the left, which is always wrong, is preoccupied with guns, they should be preoccupied with the dulling of the conscience that the left has been engaged in for the last hundred years.
The only thing you owe, if you're on the left, is to be woke.
You owe it to society to fight the white.
All whites are racist.
Some man wrote me a letter that I lie when I say that kids at college are taught that all whites are racist.
This is what people on the left frequently do.
They deny what the left does in order to stay on the left.
I made it up.
How do you like that?
I made it up.
That college kids are told all whites are racist.
Not just college kids.
That's what they're told at all of these DEI. Diversity, equity, inclusion seminars at workplaces.
Whites are all racist.
And if they deny it, they're an even more dangerous racist.
Amazing, isn't it?
All?
Can you say anything, any characteristic, all, of any group on Earth?
Fill in another word other than whites.
Can you say all blacks, X? All Hispanics, X? All Asians X. All Native Americans X. All Christians.
All Jews.
All any group.
Can you ever say that?
Only about whites.
Ideally white males.
I'd like to know who beat up these Marines.
It'd be very interesting to see if they're pursued with the same vigor.
That the January 6th people who never even entered the Capitol, or who entered the Capitol and didn't hit anybody, have been pursued.
I wonder if this is even making national news.
Is it making national news?
Yeah?
The New York Times has reported it?
Oh, the New York Post.
The New York Post is the opposite of the New York Times.
What about the Washington Post?
Will the LA Times, which is the local newspaper, report it?
That's an interesting question.
After all, I assume, I don't know, were the Marines white?
Were the attackers?
I don't know.
I saw the video and I couldn't tell.
Were the attackers of mixed race?
Was it a mixed group?
Was it diverse racially?
Was it not?
The breakdown, the incredible breakdown.
What the left is doing is ensuring that we do not fight evil.
This was what convinced me at a very early age, like 13. 14, that I was not a leftist.
I still thought I was a liberal until I was in my early 30s.
Well, I am a liberal.
That's the irony.
I am a liberal, which means I'm a conservative.
Liberals vote left.
I vote conservative.
I advocate conservative.
Anyway, I'm totally happy to be called a conservative because I want to conserve that which is best.
So that's fine.
But anyone who knows me from my youth, tell me what values have changed in my life that have rendered me far right in the language of those who hate us.
Talking about those who hate us.
The, what is it?
Who issued that pyramid of Nazi-supporting groups?
Was it HHS? No.
No, Dayton University.
No, I know Dayton University, but wasn't there a government involvement?
Yeah.
Which department?
Homeland Security?
So, with the University of Dayton and Homeland Security giving them money, a large sum of money, it's not clear to me how much, they have shown a pyramid.
On the top of the pyramid is the Nazis.
Then there's levels two and three, or one and two, and maybe Nazi is three, whatever it is.
and PragerU is listed and Fox News is listed, that we make Nazis.
There's no level of lying and defamation that troubles the left-wing conscience. - I read one of the most interesting pieces, a counterintuitive piece, the Wall Street Journal.
It's titled, believe it or not, Two Cheers for Ukraine's Oligarchs.
The subheading, By accumulating wealth and political influence, Ukrainian tycoons have prevented the rise of a Putin-like dictator.
Isn't that fascinating?
I mean, the article made sense because it was the only diffusion of power.
Remember, they have had changes of government, generally peaceful changes of government.
They've not had that in Russia.
Putin has been a dictator for, I don't know, decades now?
It's fascinating.
Democratic uprisings in Ukraine would not have garnered mass support as quickly if television had been in the hands of the state.
But television was in the hands of the oligarchs.
And the article notes about the oligarchs that Putin has had jailed because they spoke out against him.
Diffusion of power is a good thing.
The left likes diversity, theoretically, of race and gender, but they don't like the fusion of power.
That's the best diversity that exists.
Diversity in power.
The guy who was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute...
Named Aaron, or Aaron, his last name is A-R-O-N, Leon Aaron.
Have you heard of him?
Have you, uh, you remember any pieces by him?
Any reaction?
Good riddance to these oligarchs, you might say.
Let Ukraine move beyond their corruption and meddling in national politics, and you would be right.
Provided that Ukrainian civil society proves mature enough to replace them.
Alexander Gabuyev, a top Russian political analyst, has observed that thanks to the independence of the oligarchs, conditions of powerful players were constantly reassembling to prevent the emergence of someone like Putin in Ukraine.
That's a Russian who wrote that.
It is very unlikely that after three decades Ukraine would initiate Russian-style authoritarianism.
Still, wars endangers civil and political liberties, even in mature republics, and Mr. Zelensky's status as a war hero multiplies the usual temptations of unlimited power.
It's a very, what shall we say, mature piece of thinking.
Isn't that amazing?
The amount of bad that comes from good and the amount of good that comes from bad would shock people.
All the people who think they're doing good and do destructive things to society versus people, these oligarchs are not exactly lovers of liberty necessarily, but they create it in any event.
That's why capitalism works.
People want to make a profit so that they have more money.
But at the same time, only the free market lifts others out of poverty.
Do you have another one?
I'd like to explain to you in one sentence why only the free market works.
And why the left is completely wrong on the subject.
The left wants to redistribute wealth.
But the only thing that does good for society is creating wealth.
The question is not how do we distribute wealth.
The question is how do we create wealth.
Governments do not create wealth.
Governments spend the wealth.
So that they have more power by people voting them in, by spreading the wealth that has been created outside of government.
How many kids get a PhD at some elite university in economics know what I just said?
What creates wealth?
Is the only important economic question.
Ah, if!
It's the only important economic question if you care about improving people's lot.
Just when you thought it couldn't get any better, Mike Lindell with MyPillow is launching the MyPillow 2.0.
When Mike invented MyPillow, it had everything you could ever want in a pillow.
Now, nearly 20 years later, he discovered a new technology that makes it even better.
The MyPillow 2.0 has the patented adjustable fill of the original MyPillow and now with a brand new fabric that is made with a temperature-regulating thread.
The MyPillow 2.0 is the softest, smoothest, and coolest pillow you'll ever own.
For my listeners, the MyPillow 2.0 is buy one, get one free offer with promo code Prager.
MyPillow 2.0 temperature regulating technology is 100% made in the USA and comes with a 10-year warranty and a 60-day money-back guarantee.
Just go to MyPillow.com and click on the Radio Listener's Square to the buy one, get one free offer.
Enter promo code PRAGER or call 800-761-6302 to get your MyPillow 2.0 now.
Hi everybody, I'm Dennis Prager.
I hope you had a good weekend.
Hope Memorial Day was meaningful.
And I now will be speaking to a man that I have revered since I was in college.
To think that I read him in college and he's still writing seminal books is maybe unique.
I don't know anybody else I read in college who's still writing.
Important books.
In today's Real Clear Politics section on markets, the book is described as essential, titled Life After Capitalism, The Meaning of Wealth, The Future of the Economy, and The Time Theory of Money.
And he has written quite a number of important books.
George Gilder is a light in...
Some darkness that we have in our society.
George Gilder, welcome back to my show.
Well, great to be here again.
I always, that's why I write books, so I can be on the Dennis Prager show.
That is really, there's no truth to it, but it is so nice to hear.
I'll take it, I'll take it.
It's kind of true.
Yes, I'm sure.
You've got a bigger microphone beside you.
Bless you.
Any thoughts before we get to your theories on a whole host of matters, including why you titled the book Life After Capitalism?
Any theories on the debt ceiling agreement?
I don't have any theories on that.
It's stupid to have a debt ceiling.
You know, you appropriate all the money and then you have this arbitrary ceiling that causes a crisis and that doesn't accomplish anything very significant.
I think it's a sign of the failure of our democratic processes that we have to go through this ordeal every few years.
You're as interested in the human as you are in the economic.
I mean, they're integrated in your mind, of course.
So I'm going to throw at you a question from left field.
How does the average American who votes to have the government spend more money and thereby increase The horrible debt burden on their own grandchildren.
How do they justify it in their mind?
I think they're just buying votes.
I think it's a simple, paying off, needy people, they believe, who petition them.
I think we have a fundamental crisis in our system that derives from corporations.
Giving huge gifts to politicians.
Corporations aren't citizens.
Why are they key figures in the political process?
And unions, government unions, dominate the government and elect their bosses.
Philip Howard has a great book on this.
These are structural problems in our democracy that skews everything.
People don't want to spend...
$5.6 trillion a year on climate change fraud.
It's something that has been a failure of our political and constitutional order, and it's got to be corrected.
So that explains the person in power.
Explain to me, though, the citizen who votes for that.
The regular guy, I'll be very precise, who votes Democrat, thereby votes for more debt, definitionally.
How does he who loves his grandchildren justify his vote?
It's a crazy question in sound, but I'm curious.
I think you're a fairly lonely voice in the media.
And the media is constantly telling them that Republicans are...
Enemies of his future.
They are allies of these corporate predators.
This is a drumbeat that we all hear.
That's a good answer.
And people have been taught to respect authority.
And this is what we discovered during the COVID nonsense.
People are inclined to respect their doctors.
It was Trump's great error to defer to Fauci.
The white coat carries an authoritative message, and people are learning today that the culture of expertise has been corrupted.
By just massive money creation and deployed by politicians.
It's an amazing phenomenon to look at.
That's exactly right.
So the title of your book just come out now is Life After Capitalism.
Is the implication that capitalism is being destroyed or there was something better after capitalism?
Both.
Both things are true.
I believe that we don't have a capitalist economy in the United States at the moment.
The trillions of dollars that are being deployed for climate change and a suicidal energy transition, a corruption of all the universities, this is a dire predicament, and it's not capitalism.
And for us to believe that we have a capitalist economy at the moment is delusional, so I want to dispense with that.
But I also think that it's partly the result of capitalist theory.
It was Milton Friedman and Richard Nixon who took us off the gold standard in 1971 and created this hypertrophy of finance that now dominates our It allows politicians to just swamp the private sector with subsidies that corrupt it and render it uncapitalistic and actually stultify
it to a great extent.
But I believe that the information economy offers an answer.
Information theory defines Information as surprise.
And this is the heart of capitalism, that because we can't predict the future, we have to be open to it, which entails freedom.
And information theory defines wealth as knowledge.
We got ample matter in the universe.
It's knowledge that is wealth.
Growth is learning.
It's learning new things, unexpected things.
And money is what remains scarce when all else grows abundant.
It represents time in the economy.
And essentially, with the money printing and debt, politicians are stealing from the future.
But entrepreneurship is surprise.
And to give you an idea of the predicament, I recently went to Israel to explore the future of the world economy.
And Jim tore at Rice University in Houston.
It has invented a whole series of new technologies based on graphene, which is an element as important as silicon was at the beginning of the semiconductor era.
And it's 200 times more stronger than steel.
It's as elastic as rubber.
It conducts...
A thousand times better than copper.
It's an amazing, awesome, transformative element that has won Nobel Prizes.
And Tour figured out how to manufacture it in volume.
And he went and his laboratory, Nobel laureate laboratory, spawned some 16 companies.
They're all being funded in Israel.
American venture capitalists are so corrupted by the carbon footprint issue and the manipulations associated with these trillions of dollars of appropriations for government programs.
That all these companies had to be, almost all, 14 of the 16 companies that are the most important in the world, in my judgment.
They're carrying out a graphene revolution.
That's fascinating.
We're going to come back to that.
This is the stuff that you don't hear elsewhere.
George Gilder, Life After Capitalism.
The book is up at DennisPrager.com.
Hi, everybody.
I'm speaking to one of the most important thinkers living, George Gilder.
You don't have to react, George, because I'm sure it slightly embarrasses you.
But I have felt this ever since I began reading him in college.
I would say that his books, it should give you an idea of the vast variety of subjects that he thinks and writes about.
His book on sexuality, which I read early in my life, I would say one of the ten books that most influenced me.
When I read about how single men are the major source of violent crime, I decided to get married.
How do you like that, George?
There's a new edition coming out.
Is that right?
A new edition of Men in Marriage with a new introduction.
It's been in print for 50 years.
Well, it was originally Sexual Suicide and Naked Nomads.
They were two books.
I remember the names because they so affected me.
So I want to summarize because it's the only way I know that I understand what a guest has said.
So in a nutshell, what you were talking about, using the example, Of graphene, which is way, way stronger and more conductive than steel and silicon, and will apparently increase, for example, computer speeds by some exponential factor.
This was discovered in the United States, but it's only being developed in Israel.
Is that so far correct?
Pretty much.
It was discovered in Britain, actually.
But the key breakthrough in graphene came from a lab at Rice University led by Jim Tor.
And he figured out how to make graphene in volume, by the ton, for as little as $30 a ton, and launched a company called Universal Matter, which has transformed the whole...
He can turn garbage into perfect ribbons of graphene worth now hundreds of thousands of dollars a ton, and he can produce it for $30 a ton.
And this, because graphene is the foundation for a whole new industrial revolution, the ability to produce it in volume is hugely important.
And as Tor says, We don't recycle.
We upcycle.
We take garbage, plastic waste, the huge island of waste plastics in the Pacific, as big as Texas, becomes a resource producing this precious material, graphene, that can transform communications, computing, medicine, surgery.
Transmits signals so accurately that you can put it in a severed spinal cord and the signals get transmitted so perfectly that the spinal cord refuses.
You can see that on the internet, on YouTube, with a white mouse.
Spinal cord.
So it was developed in the United States, but our equity people are so busy getting funds from the government on carbon issues that they no longer explore the new.
They've been corrupted.
Is that your thesis?
Pretty much.
I mean, 14 of the 16 companies were started in Israel.
Two of them are in the United States.
Universal Matter is in Houston and Toronto.
But American venture capitalists were excited by graphene years ago, but now they've moved on to social networking and AI and software, which are...
Important subjects, but they weren't ready for a new revolution in material science that renders all the climate anxieties as completely trivial and insignificant as they are.
So, government funding has been a suppressor of the pursuit of information.
Absolutely.
I mean, imagine they're talking about changes that they want to affect by 2050 or 2040 or something.
This is what capitalism does.
Entrepreneurship produces new information, which is identified by its surprisal.
This is the foundation of information theory that Claude Shannon and John von Neumann developed.
Information is defined as unexpected bits, surprise.
And they want to guarantee everything.
The government is trying to have a guaranteed path to 2050. I call it emergency socialism.
Until you declare an emergency.
Well, it's an eventually emergency tyranny, as we saw during the lockdowns.
So, what is your take on the feasibility of eliminating fossil fuels and relying, and by the way, and nuclear power, eliminating both, and having a gigantic economy rely on wind and solar?
I mean, it's just a joke, isn't it?
I mean, the wind and solar all has to be backed up.
And it entails long transmissions of power to where it gets used.
I mean, wind and solar are not...
They're energy sources, but they aren't power sources.
Power has to be reliable and delivered in the quantities needed to run the machines that sustain our lives.
All right, so you are an observer of the human condition, as well as a major economist, and for that matter, a theologian.
You're sort of everything.
So what do you think, and I'm not sure that there's an answer, but what do you think animates this suicidal mission to replace natural gas, nuclear power, and oil with wind and solar?
What animates it?
It's a secular religion.
It's the belief that human beings somehow are a burden on the planet and that world populations have to drop some 50% or the planet will be unsustainable, as the term is used.
It's false worship of...
A kind of nihilistic religion.
It's a cult.
And because Al Gore and all his followers were such key figures in the Democratic Party, all the politicians crowded into the cult.
All right.
Let me tell everybody...
Hold on there, because I want to promote your book.
Life After Capitalism.
George Gilder.
It is just printed and it's up at DennisPrager.com.
Hi, everybody.
I'm speaking with George Gilder.
A book that's just been published is Life After Capitalism.
It's up at DennisPrager.com.
One of the truly important thinkers of our time.
And, again, I want to...
Just restate one of his major points.
Given that knowledge is power, and tell me if I'm, again, summarizing you accurately, because it makes perfect sense once I summarize it in my own mind.
The government has stifled, the U.S. government has stifled a massive pursuit of new information by funneling trillions of dollars.
into green energy projects so that companies that would otherwise be looking into things like graphene, which Israel overwhelmingly is now dominating because American companies have basically been put to sleep.
If we can make hundreds of billions of dollars by government funding us for a wind and solar project, why bother with graphene?
Is that a fair summary?
It's a fair summary.
It's a caricature, but it's a summary.
It's fair.
I mean, it's amazing in Silicon Valley.
Silicon Valley probably loses money now.
They're so oriented toward government programs and subsidies that they are no longer a source of creativity in new areas.
Right.
That's fascinating.
Although AI is the next phase of computer technology, but they somehow imagine it as part of their religion that AI usurps the human mind.
And this is just a delusional characterization of a system that shuffles labels, that doesn't have any access to reality.
It just shuffles labels on things, numerical labels, and produces outputs based on the inputs from the whole internet.
And this does not represent anything that vaguely resembles a human mind.
That's fascinating, too.
That's important.
Are you scared of AI? No.
I'm scared of people worshipping it and being misled by it and having their orientation entirely toward the past, some sort of image of pattern recognition from past internet data.
But AI is a terrific tool.
It's a tool for human beings to expand our productivity.
It does not destroy jobs.
People don't get employed because they're unproductive.
They get employed because they're productive.
And so by making people more productive, AI will increase employment and increase compensation and will be a positive.
I don't think it's going to be dominated by the big companies that are currently dominated, Microsoft and Google and Facebook at all.
I think that it's going to turn out that AI, you know, you're going to have a data center in your car and a data center in your house and a data center in your pocket, Brad, that all can That will eclipse the giant cloud computing operations that currently dominate AI. And I have companies.
I follow companies that are doing distributed AI everywhere.
And Israel is a hotbed of new initiatives in the field.
And I go to Israel a lot because of that.
And by the way, I should add, for those who wonder why, you're not Jewish, you're Christian.
And by the way, he has a phenomenal video on PragerU about Israel.
One of the most important videos explaining in five minutes.
Jews and Israel and people's reaction to both.
What is the name of the video?
The Israel Test.
Yeah, the name of your book.
That's my book!
I know, I know, I said the name of your book, yeah.
Life After Capitalism, it's up at DennisPrager.com.
Hey everybody, it's the Ultimate Issues Hour, Dennis Prager here.
Third hour every Tuesday, some great issue.
I have a great issue.
I have said all of my life that the most important thing that a society can ask is how do we make good people?
I have said that since I began writing in my 20s.
Since I began speaking in my 20s.
That's the most important question.
How do you make good people?
Not angels, not even saints.
Some people might be saintly, but my preoccupation has always been with goodness.
In my, what are the 1990s?
That's when I met Alan Estrin, my producer.
The man who came up with the PragerU idea.
And who's sitting next to me right now.
And we together made a terrific video.
It's on YouTube.
Rich Markey made it possible.
David Zucker directed it.
The famous co-writer with his brother Jerry of Airplane.
One of the most successful directors and writers in...
The Hollywood history of the late 20th century, early 21st.
It's hilarious and powerful, and it's called For Goodness' Sake.
It's a video about being good.
You can see it, by the way.
It is up on the Internet.
For Goodness, just put in For Goodness' Sake, Dennis Prager, and show it to your kids.
It's fantastic.
It is hilarious, brilliantly acted.
I'm in every scene.
I'm not the brilliant actor.
I'm just in every scene explaining an idea.
And it's all about goodness.
There was a recent critique of me in a, I think it's a Catholic magazine.
And in Crisis, that's the magazine, correct?
I sent it to you.
Yes, I have it too, but I'll get it from you.
And he said, Dennis Prager is satisfied with people being good.
He said, I'm not interested in making saints.
He, Dennis Prager, that I'm interested in making good people.
And, yeah, I don't see it on the...
The trillion.
I believe you, but I don't see it.
It's okay, I have it.
So what the man did in writing this critique of me, because he thought that it's a poor statement that I made, that I'm not interested in making saints, I'm interested in making good people.
And what he does in the article is fascinating.
He said, we...
Religious people, we can't be satisfied with mediocrity.
As if good is mediocre.
It's a fascinating piece.
Yeah.
Unlike Dennis Prager's silo approach to sin, the Christian view of sin includes a wholesome, integrated view of the human person.
That's the summary, but it's not really what I'm talking about.
I'm going to look up here, Mediocre.
So he said, Prager's non-eschatological practicality to rectify society But we are called to perfection.
And then he quotes Revelation 3, 15-16.
And we are called to be shaken out of the comfort of mediocrity.
From sports to business, secular culture readily recognizes that if one shoots for mediocrity, surely not even that will be achieved.
Prager, it would seem, is getting the world he signed up for, a world where mediocre goals fail to achieve even the desired mediocrity.
Do we thirst for souls, or are we just trying to be Prager-esque, good people, while hoping to lead others to the same mediocrity?
So he keeps speaking.
About goodness as if it's mediocrity.
I never use that term.
It's not in my mind.
If you're mediocre, you're not good.
It's a terrible sleight of hand.
I'm unhappy that, not because I'm attacked.
I'm attacked all the time.
I'm unhappy because it's in a prestigious journal, Crisis.
I believe it's a Catholic journal.
Am I right?
It's a Catholic journal.
There was so much evil on earth that, yes, I actually am satisfied if we were to make good people.
That's correct.
It is amazing to me how goodness...
Is, in so many people's minds, including, especially perhaps religious people, many religious people, boring.
You know, I've often said, often, over decades, God wants us to be good, bores many religious people.
There's no doubt in my mind.
That's why I've said it.
And religious people are my allies, obviously.
But this may be an area where we differ, which is fine.
The notion that you have to agree with your allies on every subject is childish.
It's truly childish.
I want people to be good.
God wants people to be good.
I don't know why that's mediocre.
I don't know why that's not wonderful.
If people were good, there would be no communism or Nazism.
If people were good, The world would be almost like the Garden of Eden.
Why is aiming for goodness not sufficient?
We have the famous line of the prophet Micah in the Old Testament.
I'll get it for you right now.
It's Micah 6.8.
God's desire for us is basically summed up.
And here's the New International Version, NIV translation.
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
See?
How's that?
What is good?
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly?
To love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
That's what is good.
What's wrong with that?
1-8 Prager 7-7-6 Do you think most people are good?
I don't.
Most people are nice, at least in this country.
Nice and good are not the same thing.
I've made that point over and over.
There were nice people who believed in the most horrific doctrines.
It's not easy to be a good person.
And if that were achieved, we can't be perfect.
God didn't make us with that possibility.
So, I've been criticized In a number of places, because I said in a debate with a Catholic thinker, a young Catholic man who has his own podcast, that it was a debate about a lot of things, including whether thoughts can be sins.
My belief is that overwhelmingly only behavior is sinful.
And many people differ with me.
That's fine.
I don't have a problem with people I love and admire differing with me.
It doesn't invalidate them in my eyes, and I hope I'm not invalidated in their eyes.
If we agreed on everything, we would be the same.
So my take was, I said, look...
Maybe, you know, it's saintly to have only pure thoughts, but I'm not interested in making saints.
I'm paraphrasing what I said.
I'm interested in making good people.
And I think God is too, as I just read to you from Micah.
But others believe that we should strive for perfection.
And maybe you can in one arena of life, your work.
You think you could be a perfect parent no matter how hard you strive?
Of course not.
What you strive is to be a good parent.
Good doesn't mean mediocre.
There's good, then there's mediocre, then there's bad.
It's dishonest to equate, as this writer in Crisis Magazine did, I won't say his name because I don't want to humiliate him, or insult him.
But this notion that Prager says We should be good.
He's satisfied with mediocrity.
Whew.
You know how hard, as I said earlier, you know how hard it is to be a good person?
You know, the greatest goodness...
Well, not...
Among the greatest goodnesses.
I mean, there are so many examples, obviously.
But the non-Jews who hid Jews during World War II risked their lives to save someone they didn't know, someone of a different religion, even perhaps they would think a different ethnicity.
How many were they?
Not many.
These were truly good people.
Now, you may say, well, they were saintly.
Maybe they were.
Did they have saintly thoughts?
I don't know.
Schindler, of Schindler's List, saved a thousand Jews, right?
Is that right?
A thousand Jews, about?
And the guy not only had sinful thoughts, the guy was a serial adulterer.
Life is complex, isn't it?
A serial adulterer saved a thousand Jews during the Holocaust.
Well, I mean, I leave it to God, to how he is judged, but I'll tell you, between you and me, if there were more people who saved Jews in the Holocaust, I would accept an increase in the amount of infidelity.
If there were more people who saved people from the gulag, people from China's gulags, there are gradations of evil.
I don't defend adultery, needless to say.
It's one of the Ten Commandments.
God thinks it's a pretty damn serious thing, and so do I. But being good is a real challenge.
How many parents tell their children, the most important thing I want is that you be a good person?
Your character is more important than your grades.
How many parents say that to their kids?
It's close to zero.
Your character is more important than your grades.
Okay, let's go to your calls here.
Saluda, North Carolina.
Martha, hello.
Hi, thank you for taking my call.
Thank you for calling.
I have never called a radio station or anything like this before, so it's a little nerve-wracking for me, but I have been thinking about it for months and months since I started listening to you, and I find nothing about you mediocre.
I have felt like I have learned such a great deal about wisdom as well as knowledge, I think that each day when I listen to you, I have learned something and so many times something that you will say will just spark something in my mind and make me realize that either I was thinking correctly about something or I was just totally thinking incorrectly about something.
And each day when I listen to you, it's always something worthwhile.
And I feel like I have grown in knowledge of a lot of things, but hopefully, more than anything, I have grown in wisdom.
Well, listen.
I appreciate you.
I'm very touched.
But more than touched, that's the reason I think I was put on earth.
I wrote it in my journal.
Or my diary when I was a junior in high school.
I know what I want to do with my life.
Influence people to the good.
I use the word good.
I knew I had an ability to talk to people in a direct and compelling way.
And if I used it for goodness, I felt that that would justify my time on earth.
I never thought of goodness as mediocrity, as the writer in Crisis Magazine thinks I do.
Hello everybody, I'm Dennis Pringham.
This is the Ultimate Issues Hour.
This is a big one.
Well, they're all big.
That's why they call it Ultimate Issues, so that's redundant.
I have been accused recently in a number of religious journals of...
Being satisfied with goodness when I should aim for human saintliness.
And I am responding here.
I think if you're a good person, and I think it's possible to be a good person, it's not possible to be perfect.
A handful of people might achieve sainthood in some way.
But that is not...
The aim of people...
Of the vast majority of people should be to be a good person.
The world would be the Garden of Eden if everybody were good.
If there were no saints and everybody was good, we wouldn't even need saints.
Sort of need saints to counteract the number of evil people on earth.
Well, it's rare, but I'll take it anonymous in Manhattan, in New York City.
Hello.
Hello, Dennis.
It's always good to talk to you.
Thank you.
So I am Catholic, probably as Catholic as you can be.
I'm actually about to enter training to become a priest.
And I think this notion of everybody has to be saints, as much as it's a beautiful goal, it leads to a loss of reality.
And it leads to this idea among clergy...
And then, therefore, among certain people in congregations, that you can't be good without any sort of sin.
And that's just not real.
And that drives people away, because it's an unrealistic expectation to set.
Wow.
I can't wait for you to be a priest, because that message is so important.
And I'll tell you something.
I think will resonate with you, but if it doesn't, you tell me.
There are many times that I am with deeply religious people, Catholic, Protestant, Jew, and I feel that I can't be as real as I can with others.
I love these people.
I really do.
They're wonderful.
They're my allies.
But your word is my favorite word, perhaps in English, real.
And I salute you because I think that some of your training will knock out this realness from you.
Yes, it's certainly going to.
I mean, I'll give you just a very brief example.
If you read what they tell you when you're hearing confessions, you're not allowed to have vices.
I mean, give me a break.
Well, what does that mean, for example?
Certainly, Catholicism allows people, for example, to drink alcohol and gamble, right?
Right.
You're right there.
You're right there.
Yeah, but doing anything even slightly to the excess.
Well, my difference would lie to the extent that there is a difference in the issue of sinful thoughts.
In confession, do people confess thoughts?
I'm not in a place where I can hear confessions yet, but I know I don't.
Interesting.
I'd like Catholics to call me and tell me if they confess sinful thought.
Well, you stay in touch with me, my friend.
I hope we meet one day.
Yeah, I think the real part comes from the issue of thoughts as sin.
So you're constantly monitoring how you think and how you speak.
I mean, we should always monitor how we speak in the sense that we shouldn't use our mouth to be malicious.
Or to gossip unnecessarily or maliciously.
1-8 Prager 776. And let's go.
Okay, we'll go in a moment.
We have some challenges here, which is good.
Jeremy in Colorado Springs says, Jesus said, no man is good.
Did he say that?
He might have.
I'll find out when we come back.
1-8 Prager 776, Ultimate Issues Hour, Dennis Prager Show.
Is Millard Fillmore, the 13th President of the United States, the least significant of all the presidents, or the most underestimated?
Historian Jared Cohen has the answer in the new PragerU video.
You can see it at PragerU.com, where we teach what should be more.
Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
To hear the entire three hours of my radio show, commercial-free, every single day, become a member of PragerTopia.
You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives, as well as the daily show prep.
▲
Export Selection