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June 23, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:21:54
Implosion
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Dennis Prager here.
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subscribe at prager topia.com hello everybody welcome to the friday show Happens each week.
I reflect for a moment on an interesting representative fact.
I've looked on Daily Mail, which had for the last three or four days the top items, not just item, was with regard to the...
Titanic submarine disaster tragedy.
And not now.
That is the nature of life.
That which dominates news then doesn't.
And then, in many cases, is simply forgotten.
How many of you will know the name Jordan and Neely in six months?
Many of you don't know the name now.
The man who, in a fit of rage, began threatening people on the subway train, and a man grabbed him, put him in a chokehold, and he died.
Such is life in many ways.
Things that are so dominant, and you think this will be remembered.
And then it isn't.
So it is our task to remember what is significant and keep that in our memories, because we have to honor those, that might be one reason, or because we have to learn from it, or because though it is no longer a dominant item, it remains news, or remains, not news, remains important.
There are also items that are overwhelmingly significant or seem to be at the time, and which in fact stay in people's consciousness, but which may not in fact be quite as significant as we thought.
The death of George Floyd, which put the country in some ways metaphorically and literally in flames.
Why did the George Floyd death create such massive reaction and become so dominant in the news that it reached the presidency and the national leadership of the United States of America?
If you saw the video at the time, the entire video, you saw how kindly they treated the man.
They tried to get him in.
To a police car gently asking him to do so.
And then finally, the tragedy occurred.
And if it weren't for COVID, it is very hard to imagine.
No, I'm sorry.
I fell into the trap I asked people not to fall into.
If it weren't for the lockdowns, it is very unlikely that the riots that ensued...
Would have taken place.
But the country was locked down for no good reason and did extraordinary damage in almost every respect.
It made the rich richer and made the middle class poorer.
It shattered people's hopes and dreams.
It put people in their homes, many of whom are still there.
It stymied children's education to the point where they have the lowest rates of knowledge in math and almost any subject recorded in American history.
And then, of course, the riots of 2020 over George Floyd, not a heroic man, but made into a quasi-saint.
Some items, therefore, dominate.
for long periods of time and they dominate because it suits the agenda of those who render items dominant or non-dominant.
It is very, very difficult to sort the important from the non-important because the media tell you what is important and people believe that.
Which is understandable, though not defensible.
To explain, what is it?
To comprendre, c'est tout pardonner.
The French phrase, to understand everything, is to forgive everything.
This is a very, very important phrase, but that is not the case.
That submarine should never have gone to the depths that it went.
There were many warnings.
It was not tested.
It was not certified.
The CEO, who was responsible for all of this, died.
He went into that submarine.
He believed it was safe.
So you certainly cannot accuse him of playing with others' lives.
He did play with others' lives, but he played with his own as well.
Not sure why he didn't listen to the warnings.
There's another element here of this story, including the issue of once dominant and then forgotten.
There are many, in fact, many side issues.
That pertain to what happened and another one is death comes in many forms and the lucky do not suffer much.
My fear was that they were alive and they slowly died of asphyxiation and hypothermia, not to mention the darkness of a claustrophobic Essentially a tomb.
They would have been, in effect, buried alive, had they been alive.
Dark, no place to move, and no air over a gradual period of time, plus the cold.
They would have perhaps gone out of their minds in some way.
But that didn't happen, to the best of our knowledge.
They didn't even know they were hurt.
Apparently, they said it's not even...
What is it somebody said?
It wasn't even a nanosecond.
It was a millisecond.
I don't know which is a shorter period of time.
But most of us would take either if those were the choices that were available to us.
The thing imploded from within an instantaneous death.
I must tell you the great relief that I had when I read that.
Terror and suffering is what make people scared much more than death.
Anyway, I've never understood what there is to be scared of with regard to death.
It's either nothing, or unless you're evil, and I do believe the evils suffer.
If they don't, God is not just.
Then there is something good.
It's either good or you're unaware.
Were you aware of things before you were born?
Were you troubled by the fact that it took you billions of years to be born?
I don't think so.
So you won't be troubled in the after world either.
So I've never quite understood what people fear.
I certainly understand why it saddens people.
To leave so much of the good here, which is usually people that we love.
That's a painful thought.
But they did not suffer, to the best of our knowledge.
There's a sidebar to all of the sidebars.
There was one young person on board.
I think he was 19. And from all reports I read, he was terrified of going.
And he went as a Father's Day gift to his dad, who was on board.
It's a very touching story.
So I wonder, we should all wonder, would you have gone if you were given a free ticket?
No.
I wouldn't have.
And I certainly take risks.
But I wouldn't have.
I'm not saying they shouldn't have.
There are things you do because they are inherently interesting and hopefully important.
And there are things people do in order to say they did it.
I'll cover that.
of that.
It's a fascinating aspect.
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Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here.
The House voted Wednesday to censure Representative Adam Schiff.
For pushing claims that former President Trump's 2016 campaign colluded with Russia.
The man deserves that censure if we have any moral absolutes left in our society.
I'd like to read to you something from 2020. From May 12, 2020. One year and one month ago.
Excuse me, three years and a month ago.
Three years ago.
Wall Street Journal.
All the Adam Schiff transcripts.
Newly released documents show.
He knew all along that there was no proof of Russia.
Trump collusion.
So my old question, which is a very difficult one, if someone believes their lie, are they lying?
And in the case of Adam Schiff, it's very difficult to answer, but I think he can be called a liar because it's so consistent and because he knew he wasn't telling the truth.
So how did he sleep well at night?
I don't know the answer.
No one knows the answer.
Well, I take it back.
I propose an answer.
The conscience is an extremely unreliable guide to moral behavior.
Extremely.
The vast majority of people shape their conscience.
Their conscience does not shape their behavior.
So this is what the Wall Street Journal, not exactly a right-wing bomb thrower, wrote in 2020 about this, I believe, almost sociopathological liar.
It's not a term I have ever used about a politician.
Americans expect that politicians will lie, but sometimes the examples are so brazen that they deserve special notice.
This is the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
The whole board wrote this three years ago.
The example of lying is so brazen that they deserve special notice that it deserves.
Newly released congressional testimony shows that Adam Schiff spread falsehoods shamelessly.
about Russia and Donald Trump for three years, even as his own committee gathered contrary evidence.
The House Intelligence Committee last week released 57 transcripts of interviews it conducted in its investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election.
The committee probe started in January 2017 under then-chair Devin Nunes and concluded in March 2018 with a report finding no evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin.
Most of the transcripts were ready for release long ago, but Mr. Schiff oddly refused to release them after he became chairman in 2019. He only released them last week when the White House threatened to do it first.
This was still in the Trump presidency.
So he lied.
This is not someone who believed what he was saying was true.
He knew that there was refutational evidence.
Now we know why.
From the earliest days of the collusion narrative, Mr. Schiff insisted that he had evidence proving the plot.
In March 2017 on MSNBC, Mr. Schiff teased that he couldn't go into, quote, couldn't, quote, go into particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now, unquote.
Was that a lie?
Of course it was a lie.
In December 2017, he told CNN that collusion was a fact.
Quote, the Russians offered help, the campaign accepted help, the Russians gave help, and the president made full use of that help.
Is that a lie?
He should have been removed from office.
He is the biggest liar of them all.
In April 2018, Mr. Schiff released his response to Mr. Nunes' report, stating that its finding of no collusion, quote, was unsupported by the facts and the investigative record.
Was that a lie?
None of this was true.
I'm reading from the editorial of three years ago.
And Mr. Schiff knew it.
Oh.
So, in other words, the Wall Street Journal declared Schiff a liar.
He knew what he was saying was false.
In July 2017, here's what former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Mr. Schiff and his colleagues, I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting slash conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.
Three months later, former Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch agreed that while she'd seen concerning information, I don't recall anything being briefed up to me.
Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates concurred several weeks later.
We were at the fact-gathering stage here, not the conclusion stage.
The same goes for the FBI agents who started the collusion probe in 2016. Most remarkable, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe admitted the Bureau's reason for opening the case was nonsense.
Asked in December 2017 why the FBI obtained a secret surveillance warrant on former Trump aide Carter Page rather than on George Papadopoulos, whose casual conversation with a foreign diplomat was the catalyst for the probe, Mr. McCabe responded, quote, Papadopoulos' comment didn't particularly indicate that he was the person that had had that was interacting with the Russians, unquote.
No one else was either.
On it went, a parade of former Obama officials who declared under oath they had seen no evidence of collusion or conspiracy.
Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Samantha Power.
I'll continue because it is so important.
This is an example of the past that people forgot.
He deserved to be censured and more.
He is not a good man.
So I read to you from an editorial in the Wall Street Journal from three years ago, not basically accusing, but in fact accusing Adam not basically accusing, but in fact accusing Adam Schiff of being a liar.
A serial liar at that.
So I'd like you to know who was censured.
And then they gathered around him, members of the House who were Democrats.
Adam!
Adam!
Because truth is not a left-wing value.
It just isn't.
Once you understand that, a great deal of what is going on makes a great deal of sense.
Adam Schiff censured for House for false allegations on Trump-Russia collusion.
Every Democrat voted against the censure.
Every single one.
Does every one of those Democrats believe that he told the truth, that he didn't lie about it?
If I could have them alone and put them on a lie detector, would they pass the test?
Do you believe that he told the truth about Russia and the Trump campaign colluding?
I don't know how many would pass the test.
I don't know how reliable.
Truth detectors are to begin with, so not much I can say.
But it is worth noting.
Christopher Ruffo, who reveals a great deal about what is happening in this world, has a piece out.
A physician reveals the nightmare of transgender ideology in a major children's hospital.
I have been engaged in an ongoing dialogue with a physician, he writes, who works in a major children's hospital in a blue city.
This physician has witnessed firsthand how transgender ideology has captured the medical profession and jeopardized the first commandment of the healing science.
Do no harm.
He has now chosen to speak out on condition of anonymity because he is alarmed by the sudden corruption of the medical community.
His colleagues, many of whom silently oppose transgender intervention, have so far chosen to stay silent.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Ruffo, please begin by setting the scene.
What is it like in a major children's hospital in the United States regarding transgender interventions for children?
The physician.
I think the best way to answer that question is to talk about the cultural shift that happened in 2021 because transgender ideology and COVID are inextricably linked.
This is very interesting and very plausible.
In fact, I'm convinced it is true.
Normally, doctors operate by the authority of the professional societies that govern our specific practice.
So, what is it?
The Endocrine Society, the Academy of Pediatrics, and so on, right?
That worked because the individuals in those institutions were reliable, intelligent, and thoughtful.
But with COVID in 2020, We started getting medical decrees without peer review or evidence.
You saw this with masks, social distancing, and emergency use authorizations.
These decrees were expressed as something that everyone had to do without justification based on sound science.
The other thing was censorship.
If you were to ask questions or express doubt about these medical decrees, you would be ostracized within your department and you stood a good chance of being publicly humiliated, severely reprimanded or fired.
That's when transgender ideology really took off.
Let me first comment on that.
I wrote in 2020...
That lockdowns were the greatest international mistake ever made.
And then I wrote a column that this is a dress rehearsal for a police state.
That is exactly correct.
And that is exactly what he wrote.
Science and scientists became...
Well, I'm trying to find a word other than liars.
Became unquestioning robots during COVID. They were tested in the medical profession and they failed.
They failed the test of truth, of compassion, of competence.
It is a very scary thing and that is what this doctor is noting.
This denial of science and obedience To non-medical as well as some medical authorities set the stage for what is now happening in hospitals with these poor children who are sent there claiming they are the other sex.
I will continue.
I will continue.
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It's the happy, happy, happy, happy hour.
Yes, it is.
It's the...
Hello, everybody.
I'm Dennis Prager.
The happy make the world better.
The unhappy make it worse.
That's a fact.
A fact of life that you must know.
If you don't, you'll really, really screw it up.
Those are the original lyrics.
Yes, it is.
Hi, everybody.
Every Friday since 1999. That's the 20th century.
I've been doing this since the century of World War I. That is how long I have been doing the Happiness Hour.
The century after the American Civil War, this Happiness Hour began.
Yes, the happy make the world better.
It's a moral obligation to pursue happiness.
Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.
The giants who wrote the Declaration of Independence.
And remember, one of my many, many aphorisms, midgets hate giants.
I'm not talking about physical midgets or physical giants.
Moral midgets hate moral giants.
Those who hate the founders are the midgets.
And that's why they hate them.
I have a new topic.
I would give a lot of money to see a list of all the topics I've had on the Happiness Hour.
If this is the 24th year, and it is, so 24 times 50, well 20 times 50 is a thousand.
And then four times, so about 1,200 shows, would you say?
1,200 hours on happiness.
And I would say that at least 400 separate topics.
That's amazing.
Well, anyway, here's a new one.
It's a thought question here, but I will...
I will, however, offer my own thoughts as well.
What do parents give to a child that is most likely to contribute to adult happiness?
I'm loving you think.
So I'd like to offer you some of my thoughts.
Then, of course, I'll take your calls.
You might very well speak autobiographically.
My parents did X, and that really did enable me to be happy.
Or my parents didn't do X, and that has had repercussions.
Now, if you were abused, that's not a call that I'm looking for because that's obvious.
That if you were abused by, I mean, truly abused by a parent, sexually, physically, Verbally, then it's going to create obstacles to happiness to understate the case.
I think you can still achieve it, but it is obviously an obstacle.
But I'm asking, what is it that parents give that is most likely to produce a happy adult?
I would say it is not love.
The vast majority of people in this society, I believe, I have no data, I admit it, but I believe that the majority, let's say, I don't know, 70%, I'm trying to give a conservative number, were loved by their parents.
Zach is sitting in for a show today.
Zach, were you loved by your parents?
Yes, extremely.
Well, you radiate unhappiness, so it proves that love is not sufficient.
I'm kidding.
Zach actually radiates a certain degree of happiness despite the fact that he works on the show.
I'm introducing you to the world, Zach.
I just want you to know.
In fact, he's smiling the whole time I'm saying this.
It's a very interesting and important subject because I think parents got it wrong since World War II. Everything has been concentrated on loving your child.
Love your child, love your child, love your child.
For the record, for the left who monitor my show and lie about it later, I believe it is truly important to love your child.
Just make that clear.
However, there are things that might be as important.
As important.
Maybe there are things that are more important.
I don't know.
But when you are an adult, you have to live with you and...
The way you have been formed, and your parents are not the only formation, that's very important to remember, but the way you have been formed is a major factor in how happy you are.
So, how much of your formation is a result of your parents is a very fair question, and how much of that formation involves the amount of love that you received.
I don't know the answer, but I don't believe that it is determinative.
I think that what is equally determinative, or really are equally determinative, is the ability to take care of yourself.
If you can't take care of yourself, you can't be happy.
Who could take care of him or herself?
Is it that they were loved by their parents?
Well, since most people were loved by their parents, and so many people are emotional wrecks, are the one-third of young people who are depressed?
Something I read, Time Magazine reported, if Time says the sky is blue, I still go out and check.
Nevertheless, they cited some report that one-third of American teenage girls considered or thought about suicide last year or the year before.
Are all these girls unloved by their parents, or at least by one parent?
I doubt it.
Something else must be missing from the equation.
So what can parents do to help produce a happy person?
I say help produce because there are no guarantees no matter what.
There are children with crappy parents who are happy.
There are children with loving parents who are profoundly unhappy.
So then what can parents do to help produce a happy adult?
Well, one thing I already mentioned was to be self-sufficient.
To learn how to take care of yourself.
Therefore, I believe helicopter parenting produces a less happy adult.
Then much more removed parenting from the child's life.
Because one day, that helicopter will have to land at some base, at some heliport.
And then what does the child do whose parents were omnipresent in their lives?
Maybe omnipresence in your child's life is not a good idea for your child's, I don't believe, moral health or emotional health.
But those parents presumably love their child a great deal.
So I believe that somehow figuring out how to make your child self-reliant Major step towards the hopeful creation, manufacture, production of a happy adult.
Remember something, too.
You're not raising a child.
You're raising a future adult.
Your child remains a child for a very small fraction of his or her life.
They will be an adult, at least chronologically.
Most of their lives.
The vast majority.
Teaching your child to be self-sufficient involves criticism.
Involves non-helicoptery.
Love is not enough.
You might want to say that might be the theme of...
This Happiness Hour.
We return.
I'll take your calls.
1-8 Prager 776. Hello, everybody.
The Happiness Hour, Friday, second hour of the Dennis Prager Show.
I am he.
The question is...
What can parents give?
What is the most important thing parents can do or give to help make a happy adult?
There is no perfect answer because you can do everything right and just love an unhappy adult.
But what can parents do?
Notice I'm not only saying give, do, but do and or give to produce a happy adult.
And I don't think that love...
is at the top of the list.
Love is important.
However, I believe that they shower too much love on many kids and they end up narcissistic.
And no narcissist is happy.
Nobody who deals with a narcissist is happy.
I have other things that I think are number one.
Stability.
Security, guardrails, and teach a child to take care of him or herself.
First, make your bed!
As Jordan Peterson would say, first make your bed.
From a very early age, I knew that I could rely on me.
I had to rely on me.
It was a big help in my life.
Showering a child with love, especially the old unconditional love, eh, you may act like an a-hole, but I love you, is not a great message.
I'm sorry.
It sounds like it should be.
Maybe unconditional love for a newborn is appropriate.
It probably is.
Anyway, on what can you condition the love?
But if you shower your child with love, no matter how or she behaves, I have told the story, but not on the radio in maybe decades.
When my older son was about, let's see, two, he was in a park in L.A., and his mom was with him, my wife at the time, and so she saw this, I didn't.
A kid about five years of age went over and just threw him on the ground.
Simple as that.
Well, the mother saw this happening, the mother of that proto-Nazi, and she ran over and she said, What's troubling you, darling?
Wow.
Well, that's unconditional love, isn't it?
He threw down a toddler, and that's what she was worried about.
What's troubling him?
Okay.
Let's see what you have to say, my friends.
We have a...
Is that a pediatrician in South Carolina?
Adam, are you a pediatrician?
Well, actually, it's a pediatric therapist.
And I agree with you.
So when I sit down and talk with my children and my families, I work with a lot of kids with a lot of mental health diagnoses and issues.
And my number one thing I tell families is that children need rules, limits, boundaries, and expectations.
And that truly shows your love by sacrificing possibly how your children view you so that they become able, like you said, to be self-sufficient and to be able to rely on themselves to cope and to calm themselves and to regulate.
Instead of having to have the parent there present to be able to do so.
How do I schedule an appointment with you?
I live in California.
Oh, well, we can do telehealth.
I do that as well.
Well, I am no longer in the pediatric role, but that was my way of praising you.
Do you consider yourself...
So what are you?
Are you a psychologist?
No, actually, I am in occupational therapy, but we handle mental health, and so most of the children I deal with have severe mental health issues.
So, do most of your colleagues who work with children know your position?
Well, they do, actually, because I'm a male, and so occupational therapy, it's rare to have men, but I get requested personally.
But the thing is, for most of my profession, it's woman-based, and it's very young.
And they just moved occupational therapy into a doctorate degree.
So we get a lot of these young girls coming out of the program with doctorate degrees, like, hey, I have a doctorate degree.
And so most of them are kind of brainwashed.
But I tend to, I have a son who is disabled.
And I also went through a part of my life where...
You know, I had to learn what actually brought me happiness, and I found out that it was in the restricting of my desires and passions where I was truly able to fully, to be happy.
So when I talk to children and stuff and parents, they say, oh, like you said, I have to give, give, give, and give.
That's going to make my kid happy.
That's going to make my kid look at me and see, great, you know, great, my parents are great.
But see, I don't care how my parents, I don't care how my kids look at me.
I want to raise, like you said, children who can rely on themselves because that's only when they're going to achieve happiness.
And if I have to sacrifice their view of me, so be it.
Yes, you said that earlier.
I was so impressed I wrote it down.
If you really love your child, then you sacrifice how they look at you.
That's right.
That was really intelligent.
That guy, he's got it right.
That's why I get calls periodically.
Some of you might have actually heard them.
So, Dennis, my spouse and I were pregnant.
My husband, my wife were pregnant.
And give us a piece of advice on raising a child.
Well.
There's a ton of advice I could give to use the vernacular.
But I do have an answer, and I have a one-sentence answer.
Self-control is more important than self-esteem.
And you want to make a happy adult?
Teach them self-control.
That's really loving.
And really hard.
People do it a lot with boys, teach them not to hit, hopefully not to be sexual predators, but they do it very little with girls, within whom emotions rage, and if a girl cannot control those emotions, she is crippled for life, and so is society.
Self-control, let's say massive doses of teaching that is more important than massive doses of love.
So what can parents give or do to help produce a happy adult?
The Happiness Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.
That's the subject, and my claim to you is that love is not the highest on the list.
Security, guardrails, self-control, teaching self-control.
I asked this of my producer, this very question, and he said, one, a sense of security.
That's big.
I think security beats love, by the way.
A model of responsibility.
That's why I said, what can they do?
Not just what can they give.
Guardrails.
And I could push things only so far.
That's right.
That's what I believe.
That's what I got.
And it worked with me.
I'm a happy adult.
I've been since a very early age.
I was an unhappy child.
Not teenager child.
Just for the record.
All right, everybody.
Let's see here.
Plano, Texas.
Chris, hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
So, this subject has come up Recently in my family, we have two sons, both raised pretty much with love all the way around,
raised in the Catholic Church, although the younger did experience a lot of emotional setbacks as a preteen.
He questioned God, his religion, his faith.
And I just lost him to depression in April.
So I don't have an answer because we raised him both equally as well.
When you say lost him to depression, he's alive, but you lost him because he's depressed.
Is that what you're saying?
Or did he actually die?
Yes, he ended his life.
I see.
My heart goes out to you.
Please know that.
Yes, there are things parents cannot overcome.
You must know that.
And as much as I emphasize good parenting, you didn't do this, my friend.
You didn't do this any more than if he had had an aneurysm or pancreatic cancer.
I'm happy you called so that I could say that to you.
I don't even know if that helps because that may not be an issue in your life, but in case it is, there is no explaining certain depressions.
They are as physiological and uncontrollable, I believe, as cancer.
I didn't realize how much of an impression Or an impact he had on those around him until we had his memorial service and we were just overwhelmed.
So it really made me sad thinking why he never thought of himself as being more valuable.
His mother and I, we struggled with this, and luckily we're going through counseling, grief counseling, and one thing that we've come to realize, and it's been repeated, that he gave in to his depression.
He didn't do this to harm anyone.
He just gave up.
He was just tired of battling demons.
That's exactly right.
So again, I just want to...
I want to emphasize I don't know if you do hold yourself in some way responsible.
What could I have done better?
What did I do wrong?
I want you to understand you didn't do any more wrong probably than someone whose child died of cancer.
I wish we had a better take on pathological depression.
People who have it, it's heartbreaking.
We return.
Hi, everybody.
Dennis Prager, the Happiness Hour.
What do you think parents can do or give?
To their child that can help most to make a happy adult.
We understand parents do not have complete control over anything that you become.
Let's make that clear, and parents need to understand that.
It's humbling and important.
If they turn out great, you're not the only reason.
And if they turn out lousy, you're not the only reason.
Well, if they turn out lousy, you might be.
Let's put it this way.
We have a better chance of screwing up our kids than we do of ensuring how they'll develop in a positive way.
That's just the way life works.
It's easier to damage than to create.
If that weren't true, the left wouldn't be powerful.
All right.
Well, look who's calling.
One of my favorite comedians.
Live.
Tom Dreesen.
Hello there, Tom.
Hi, Dennis.
How you doing?
Well, I must have really provoked something in you to have you spontaneously call.
Yes, because I give motivation talks on four subjects.
Perception, visualization, self-talk, and develop a sense of humor.
And I elaborate on those four points.
But the greatest gift that God can bestow upon a human being is a sense of humor.
And a sense of humor, by my humble definition, is not when you have the ability to laugh at other shortcomings or misfortunes, when you have the ability to laugh at yourself.
And parents can teach this to children.
And the way you do that is, whenever you do something dumb or stupid, come home and share it with those kids.
You know, if you're a housewife and you're shopping and you reach up for a box of Cheerios and you slip and fall and your dress comes over your head, all the boxes fall on top of you, come home and tell the children about that and laugh with them.
It teaches them it's okay to laugh when you do dumb things.
Laughter...
It's no longer a theory that laughter is healing.
Because of Norman Cousins, we know now laughter is not only psychologically a deterrent, it's physiologically therapeutic through research done at UCLA Research Medical Center.
So that's the greatest gift you can give them.
Learn to laugh at yourself.
Don't take yourself so serious.
And I'll end with this.
I was on Hollywood Squares one time, and 3,500 women polled, what's the number one characteristic you look for in a man?
And the biggest answer was a sense of humor.
Someone who didn't take themselves so serious.
Someone who was fun to be around.
Laughter in the home is just the greatest gift you can teach them.
And teach them by laughing at yourself.
Yes, well, bless you.
I'll just tell you all, this is a wise man.
And thank you.
He is a wise man.
I think you have to have a level of wisdom to be a truly funny comedian, by the way.
Because you have to perceive life and know how to make people laugh as a result of it.
That's a very important thing.
Somebody called, actually, and said it was laughter in their home that contributed the most to their later happiness.
They actually gave up staying on the line, but I remember reading that line.
Yes, learning to laugh at yourself.
That's right.
It's easy to laugh at others, but that's not therapeutic.
It's mean.
Well said, Tom Dreesen.
Look for his stuff.
He's extremely funny.
Okay, let's see here.
Okay, I'm going to take an older caller here.
Ginny in Pinellas, Florida.
It says here you're 87. Is that correct?
That's correct, yes.
So are you 87 and a half, 87 and a quarter?
I would say approaching about 90. I don't play bingo.
I keep busy all the time.
Wait, wait, wait.
You're approaching 90, but you told the screener you were 87?
Well, mentally I'm approaching 90. Oh, I see.
I made it to 87. Okay, fair enough.
And I am blessed with a sense of humor.
That was a wonderful, wonderful comment that both you and Tom...
That's one of the most important things in life.
But I was a child in the Second World War, and I remember it as clear as a bell.
And my father worked, he was a supervisor at an oil refinery.
My mother had spinal meningitis.
My brother went off to war.
And we had a farm, and I was a grown woman by the time I was 12. So I had to help run the farm, go to school, and everybody just did what they had to do.
And so basically, you teach a child responsibility so they can have respect.
Respect to me is...
It's the most important thing in life.
Respect for what?
Respect for themselves?
Respect for others?
Everything in general.
Respect for what you have, what you possibly will have, so that you can work toward it when you're responsible, but to basically have some sort of spiritual connection by the parents.
Right, okay.
Well, those...
Quite rightly, throwing in a lot of thoughts here.
I want to emphasize your prior thought.
You learned by 12, when you say you were grown up, what you did was, what your parents or life forced you to do, was to take care of yourself at 12. Exactly correct.
That is right.
We have prolonged adolescence.
It now reaches to 30. And in many cases, beyond 30. That's why I began this hour with the statement that the best you can do to ensure a happy adult is teach them how to take care of themselves.
You are raising an adult, not a child.
If you're raising a child, both you and he or she are in trouble.
Your task is to make an adult.
And an adult is a person who takes care of himself or herself, as it were.
And that's why I emphasize self-control over self-esteem.
And none of this is oodles of love.
I don't see how oodles of love prepare you to become an adult.
Let Dennis be Dennis. .
This is it, everybody.
The Let Dennis Be Dennis Hour.
Actually, it's Let the Callers Be the Callers, because whatever's on your mind.
This is the hour of the week.
About you, about me, about life, about death.
But first, enjoy the music.
All right, everybody, Dennis Prager here.
about life, about death, about you, about me, about cigars, about photography, about audio equipment, fountain pens, classical music. fountain pens, classical music.
Okay, let's take your calls.
What's on your mind?
As you'll find out, it really runs the gamut here.
Paul in Chicago, I asked him to stay on from the last hour.
I know it's not a happy subject, but I don't care.
I talk about everything in this show.
Paul in Chicago, hello.
Hello, Dennis.
Hi.
Your caller that lost a child...
Literally tore all the scabs off.
I lost a child 11 years ago, and my heart goes out to this individual, and I'd love to tell them that it's going to get better, but it never does.
I mean, it's something you don't wish upon your worst enemy.
It's a suffering you carry the rest of your life, and you do constantly ask yourself, what could you have done to have changed things?
And I'm certain he's gone down that road from the tone of the conversation.
But the one thing that troubled me in all of this, when I lost my son, he was in the care of a psychiatrist.
And the psychiatrist put him on drugs that if he altered or missed a pill, it would induce strong feelings of suicide.
And I just...
To this day, I can't understand how somebody could put a kid 18 years old, and at 18 years old, I don't care what anybody says, you're still a kid, on a drug like that without notifying somebody in the family to monitor it.
I don't have an answer for you, and I didn't think I would, but I wanted you to have the audience as it were to what you have to say.
I have a number of psychiatrists in my life for whom I have great affection and respect.
So what I have to say has nothing to do with my regard for the profession or any individual in it.
But I don't know the answer on a lot of the psychiatric drugs.
I know that they have helped a lot of people.
I know people they have helped.
I am not speaking about me in the third person.
I thank God daily that I've never come close to needing medical intervention.
My hormones are balanced.
My physiology of the brain is fine.
I am happy.
But I do know people for whom these drugs have been life-saving in the sense that they could embrace life rather than, in effect, stay in bed depressed.
I can only say that if that is accurate, you should have been warned.
If there are bad repercussions, if your child does not take the pill every day, if that is indeed what happened.
At the same time, I do believe that there are a lot of people on drugs who probably should not be on them.
And I think it needs to be studied with no a priori assumptions what role psychiatric drugs play in outbursts of violence, if any.
I don't have a theory on any of this.
I only know that we are, as a society, we owe it to ourselves and to others to ask these questions.
Anyway, I don't know what to say to parents who lost a child to suicide.
It seems to be a sort of double whammy.
It's bad enough, the pain to lose your child to a hit-and-run driver or a cancer.
But if they kill themselves, it would seem to be a level of pain that is even ratcheted up.
I don't know if that's accurate, but I would assume that.
Because it also adds the issue of what could I have done better as a parent?
That self-recrimination is painful for me as an outsider to think about in the life of a parent.
It's bad enough to have lost a child.
Life is unfair.
That is an example of it.
Okay, let's go to Michigan.
Dale, what city are you in in Michigan?
I'm sorry, what?
What city are you in?
Oh, Colon, Michigan.
C-O-H-E-N? No, Colon, as in the body part.
Oh, C-O-L-O-N? Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a real town.
I talked about it last time.
I'm on the call and disagree with you a little bit on a hockey topic.
You said that when you saw fighting and hockey, you wouldn't stand up.
Right.
You disagree with that.
And I'm, being from Michigan, you know, we're big Red Wings fans up here.
To me, hockey was part of the game.
It's like taking fighting away from boxing.
You know, it was part of the game.
It never bothered me.
In fact, it made the game different, I think, when fighting was taken away.
And my argument for having fighting, or not necessarily not having fighting, is that I never saw a fight where someone got seriously hurt.
Every time a hockey player got seriously hurt, it was a bad hit or some fluke accident.
You know, a blade came up and did something.
But it was those bad hits, which of course those get penalties and such.
Those, yeah, those are bad.
But just out and out fighting, that was part of the game.
It was an intimidation tactic.
It kept people in check.
It was just part of the game.
So to me, fighting didn't bother me.
Good.
I'm glad I took your call.
This is not one of the major fights of my life.
I want you to know.
But something that...
Oh yeah, Julie Hartman, when she said she didn't stand up when the speaker at her graduation of college had spoken about being a pro-choice and everybody stood up except her.
You know, thousands and thousands of people.
So it reminded me that I was the only one who wouldn't stand up.
Alec, I think I did the right thing.
If...
So let me understand, you're a big hockey fan as I am.
So if you go to a game or watch a game on TV and there were no fights, no matter how well played the game was, you feel you were cheated?
No, I don't think I was cheated.
It just bothered me when they took fighting away from the game.
In fact, I would go to minor league games a lot more.
Well, then why wouldn't you feel cheated?
If you would go to minor league games just to see fights, then clearly, and I'm not arguing with you, I'm only clarifying, you do feel cheated.
I just think it took away from the game.
Right, so the game, no matter how well played, the game is better if there are fights.
That's what you're telling me.
Yeah, I guess if I'm saying it took something away, then yeah, maybe I'm saying that.
Okay, you are.
If I want to see fights, I tune in MMA or boxing.
Does it add to baseball if there's a fight?
Does it add to football if there's a fight?
So I don't enjoy it.
I enjoy great hockey.
But anyway, there's nothing to be learned here except that people should think it through.
And that's why I asked the question.
I'm not sure my man there, Dale, had thought that through.
Does he feel cheated if he didn't see a fight?
Okay, this is the hour.
You raise any issue you would like.
And San Diego, Tom, hello.
Hi, Dennis, how you doing?
Really well, thank you.
Say, I called about what animates the left, and it actually, the way they, how they think, people who have thrown God out, actually started in the 18th century, and was led by four men.
And the last was Kiergaard, Soren Kiergaard.
And basically it works like this.
Think of the modern mind of man as a divided mind, a dichotomy of the mind.
Think of it as an upper story and a lower story.
And in the upper story is the area of non-reason.
And that's where people put their faith and their optimism.
And in the lower story is the area of reason.
And reason leads to pessimism and despair.
Topic you want, and it applies to this way of thinking that people have today.
All right, let me react.
Actually, I'm a big fan of reason, and the world of reason is primarily, ironically, inhabited by religious people.
Only secular people say men give birth.
One of the greatest lies and idiocies in human histories.
Do you know any religious person, Jew or Christian, who says men give birth?
No, I don't.
Now, there are secular people who know how idiotic that line is and how dangerous and how destructive.
Moronic, absurd, imbecilic, but it's only secular people who have embraced idiocies like that.
I discussed this week the Beyond Growth conference that the Greens put on in Europe, gigantic conference there.
The Green Movement, which is overwhelmingly secular, and people who believe they're religious but have adopted secular values, left-wing secular values at that.
But it's overwhelmingly a secular movement, and they now have embraced a doctrine, the Greens have, the environmentalist movement, that is as imbecilic and destructive as men give birth, that society should that is as imbecilic and destructive as men give birth, that society should no longer seek but in fact to decline economically.
That will be good for people.
You have to be a secular moron.
To say that, an entire conference of secular morons took place in Europe last month.
I played excerpts for you this week.
My Bible commentary is called the Rational Bible.
My vehicle to God is reason.
So I wouldn't get rid of reason that quickly.
Reason without God is dangerous.
But God without reason is also dangerous.
So, anyway, I'm glad you raised that.
I'm going to thank you.
Okay, Philadelphia and Chris.
Hello, Chris.
Hi.
Thanks for taking my call.
I'll never forget the 1972 Olympics and sitting beside the terrorist incident, but there were so many great and historic sporting competitions, and every time I hear...
When you talk about Leah Thomas, I can't help but think about those Olympics.
Because as me and my neighbors watched Transfixed as Mark Spitz won those seven gold medals, we also were rooting for women who were all these college total amateurs who had to compete against those hulking East German women who blew them away every time.
And it was so unfair.
You know, we're sitting there looking at these East German women who look like men.
And two decades later, now I know that basically they were the first real transgenders.
Interesting.
I didn't know that they were.
I remember the East German women issue.
I didn't know that they were transgender.
They seemed to me to be women on hormones and who...
Who developed a profoundly muscular body.
I mean, there wasn't anything particularly feminine about them, I acknowledge.
I have to look into that.
That's an interesting theory.
Okay, let's see here.
Cleveland, Ohio.
Julie, hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
Sorry about that.
Yeah, that was like a storm.
Sorry about that.
I'm calling because I caught like a snippet of your conversation with your guest yesterday.
She went by the name of T.T. Keene.
I forgot her actual name.
No, no.
We don't know her actual name.
You and I don't.
Oh.
Oh, okay.
That's interesting.
So you asked her why...
Apparently, there's some kind of statistic out there that there are more girls that want to be boys than boys that want to be girls.
And you asked her why she thought that might be.
And she made a comment that it just really didn't fit well with me.
She said, because girls are uncomfortable with their bodies.
I just...
I feel that it's so wrong.
I think it's...
Well, she didn't say girls are uncomfortable.
She said that at that age, as their bodies change dramatically, a lot of girls are uncomfortable.
I'm not a girl, so you feel you don't think that's true.
I don't think it's true.
Even in early adolescence.
Even in early adolescence.
Okay, all right, fair enough.
And I think it's a dangerous comment, actually.
Why is it dangerous?
Because it reinforces that negative idea and the negative notion.
It just reinforces it.
Well, okay, so the most important question to ever ask is not, does a comment or a thought Can it lead to some bad things?
The first question we have to ask is, is it true?
And I don't know the answer to that.
Hello, everybody.
The hour you call in on what is on your mind.
So, an interesting call.
I have no answer to it.
Not having raised a daughter and not...
Being a girl.
But I'm going to ask this of women in my life.
How uncomfortable were you, if at all, with your changing body in early adolescence, or even pre-adolescence in some cases?
Because that was one of the comments made yesterday by my guest, Peachy Keenan, when we were discussing why is it that more girls...
Then boys are quote-unquote transitioning to becoming the other sex.
By the way, you can never become the other sex.
That there is anyone in science or medicine who actually says you can proves how low the sciences have been reduced as a result of leftism.
There was an article I'll read to you next week about what is happening in biology, for example, because of the sick world of the left.
You can't become a member of the other sex, okay?
You can think you are.
There's a movement in Britain of young people who think they are furried animals, but it does not mean that they have become a furried animal.
You cannot become the other sex.
You can't.
It's not anything but a statement of obvious fact.
Anyway, why are more girls being affected way more than boys?
I don't personally know.
I have theories, but we'll leave to a further discussion of that.
Okay, let's see here.
Greenville, South Carolina.
Ron, hello.
Hey, Dennis.
Pleasure to speak with you.
Thank you for taking my call, sir.
Thank you.
So I have a question in reference to addiction.
I'll keep it quick.
My wife and I have been married for 43 years.
Great relationship.
Three kids.
Oldest one, 35. All three are college graduates.
First two, no problems.
Everything's great.
Oldest is a college professor.
Youngest, 25, has been in rehab five times for addictions from alcohol to benzos.
Thought we had, you know, things back under control last year.
Been under the care of a psychiatrist, doing really good.
And then all of a sudden, bam, you know, got a good job making good money out of college.
college and within three weeks we're back in the same place we were for the last seven years after a six-month uh run of being good so just wondering what your opinion is on addiction as a parents we have you know you get you get so much advice you know put put your kid on the street let them go let them fan for theirself you've done enough for seven years um or you know hey back to rehab we go again you know another 40 50 000 and it's just it's just tough and and as as husband wife it just destroys your relationship why is it
let me let me deal with the last one first Why is it destroying your relationship?
Well, the pressures that it puts on my wife and I trying to, you know, the vicious things that addiction does to a family, you know, from having, you know, we don't hide anything from anybody, but it's just, you know, the pressures of every day trying to take care of a daughter, you know, who is really struggling, you know, with addiction and just can't beat it.
Why?
I know, but forgive me.
Maybe I'm dense.
I don't know why it's destroying your relationship with the woman you've loved for so many years.
The only reason I could see is that you have different approaches to how to deal with your daughter.
That's possibly...
I'm more of authoritarian.
My wife's more the take care of, you know, loving, kind, feeling...
So is that a source of tension?
Yeah, most definitely.
Okay, so then it's not the child's addiction.
I had an addicted child for many, many, many years.
He was born to a meth addict.
We adopted him at birth.
And that was not an issue, a marital issue.
I have a lot of thoughts.
You asked me for my thoughts, Dayan.
I have a lot because I've dealt with it.
He is seven years sober.
He's married.
He's even started a conservative podcast.
I mean, he's wonderful.
But I learned a lot, and I'll share a handful of those items with all of you, including a very dramatic statement made by one of his friends.
is now sober.
Dennis Prager here.
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