All Episodes
Previous Next
July 11, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:23:23
Perspective
| 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 prager-topia.com Hello everyone.
I'm I'm going to begin with a subject that has nothing to do with news of the day, which is not unique.
I do it periodically.
When something is on my mind, I like to share it because I think it's important.
So I'm reading a book on World War II, except this one is with regard to Japan, not Germany.
And once again, I am reminded of the atrocities that the Japanese inflicted upon the peoples they conquered in Asia.
I had known, for example, trigger warning here for those I won't be graphic, I know.
I'm serious.
My producer is, despite his persona, extremely sensitive.
Not to himself.
It's not for me.
No, I said, not for yourself, exactly.
So, the Japanese in conquering China...
Used Chinese civilians, just randomly picked the way the Nazis used Jews and Russian prisoners for medical experiments.
Cutting people open without anesthesia.
And I won't tell you the others.
I'm well aware of them.
I've studied good and evil all my life.
Especially good, because it's so much rarer.
And they used Korean women, as you probably know, as so-called comfort women, young women whom they would take and have Japanese soldiers rape repeatedly.
Dozens of soldiers and, I don't know, ten a day, whatever the mass rape was.
So now I'm reading about their treatment of Filipinos.
They would gouge children's eyes out, smash the children against walls to have their brains shattered.
And they too used Filipino women in the exact same way.
I did not know that until I read this book.
Why do I tell you all of this?
A number of reasons.
One is, I don't find the trips to Hiroshima.
Meaningful.
That vast numbers of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, because of the atom bomb suffered, is known and is horrible.
But the general trend of these pilgrimages to Hiroshima is to portray the Japanese as victims.
And the Japanese have largely accepted that role.
I have been to Japan a number of times.
I enjoy my trips there very much.
I find the people particularly friendly.
So this has nothing to do with feelings towards Japanese.
Nothing.
Zero.
It has to do with feelings towards right and wrong.
And I realized...
Something that dawns upon me periodically.
The ignorance, the overwhelming ignorance among people, Americans among them, but not solely Americans.
The ignorance of the world and its past is staggering.
Essentially people, most people know nothing.
They know George Floyd.
That's what they know.
They don't know what the Japanese did.
They know that the Americans dropped an atom bomb on two cities in Japan.
That's all they know.
It's like all they know is about American slavery.
But they don't know about Muslim, Arab slavery.
Spectacularly greater numbers and even greater suffering in many instances because they so often castrated the men.
And to say the least, there was no anesthetic in those days because they didn't want them reproducing.
Everything that we are told, or largely everything, is rooted in ignorance.
People just don't know what has happened.
They don't know what is happening today.
How many readers of the New York Times know that the Columbia Journalism Review excoriated the New York Times and Washington Post for its years-long lying?
That's the Columbia University Journalism Review.
It's the gold standard of journalism magazines or newspapers.
Well, it's not a newspaper.
Journals.
I'm shocked that they even did it, to be honest.
Columbia is as woke as you can get.
There is a great PragerU video.
What is the title of it?
Let me know when you know.
People don't know.
How many times do I say to you, We know what they know and they don't know what we know.
Meaning the left, they don't know what we know.
Left and right tend not to know what the Japanese did.
Russian collusion and the death of journalism.
Russian collusion and the death of journalism is the name of the five minute, they're all five minutes, PragerU video.
You should see it.
The left depends upon ignorance to make its case.
America is portrayed as if it alone, essentially, was this horrible society.
The left compares America to a semi-perfect country.
The right compares America to other countries.
There is no other way to make moral judgments.
And Noah was a righteous man in his generations, says the Bible in Genesis, the man whose family God saved from the flood.
He was righteous in his generations, because that is how you are supposed to judge people in their generations.
We have a video, one of the oldest of the PragerU videos.
It's magnificent.
Given by a Catholic priest historian on the atom bomb.
You should see that one, too.
You should see them all.
In our way, we're trying to fill the Grand Canyon-esque holes.
Craters of ignorance.
Our motto is we teach what should be taught.
It's not an ad for PragerU.
Everything's free anyway.
Not PragerU.
It is a statement of the role that it needs to play.
I try to play that role in this show.
That people do not know what the Japanese did.
When they speak of American racism, has one leftist ever uttered the words Japanese racism?
Japanese racism meant that you could be medically experimented on.
You could be gang-raped every day.
That's what Japanese racism was about.
Filipinos were inferior.
Chinese were inferior.
Koreans were inferior.
How many kids at Yale know this?
I contend, zero.
Maybe three?
Hey, how many professors at Yale know this?
Racism.
So I thought I'd share that with you.
It's coming up in a few weeks, right?
The annual pilgrimage to Hiroshima, isn't it, in August?
Sounds right.
My heart breaks for those people who are burned to death, who are asphyxiated by lack of oxygen.
But I think people need to know what brought it on.
Natural disasters, airlines.
Airline cancellations and runway near-misses, supply chain issues, inflation, rising interest rates, and sky-high government debt.
This is Dennis Prager for AmFedCoin and Bullion.
There's a lot in the news about what consumers cannot control, so let's talk about what you can control.
You can control how you choose to invest and protect your wealth.
That's why I choose to do business with Nick Grovich and his company, AmFedCoin and Bullion.
Now is a great time to own tangible assets like gold, silver, and platinum.
With over 41 years' experience and tens of thousands of satisfied clients, Nick will help you make informed decisions and show you smart choices, which have been proven winners time and time again.
AmphetCoin and Bullion?
We'll sell you the right types of precious metals to get the maximum value for your money.
Take control of your investments like I did.
Call Nick and his team at Amphet Coin& Bullion at 800-221-7694.
AmericanFederal.com AmericanFederal.com An important book is out, Rogue Prosecutors, How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America's Communities.
One of the authors...
Zach Smith, co-author with Charles Stimson.
Zach Smith is with the Heritage Foundation, and he is on with me.
Zach Smith, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
Well, thank you so much for having me on today.
I really appreciate it.
Hmm.
It's funny when authors appreciate it.
I totally get it, because I'm an author, too.
On the other hand...
That's why you wrote the book, so that people like me will publicize it.
Well, I'll tell you, I appreciate it in two respects.
One, obviously, I'm self-interested.
I want people to go out and buy the book.
But part of the reason I want people to go out and buy the book is to bring attention to this very crucial issue of what's happening around the country.
Frankly, I've found out many people don't even realize is happening.
There are these so-called progressive prosecutors, now obviously we call them rogue prosecutors, who are getting into office and are refusing to do their jobs and do the basic blocking and tackling of prosecuting criminals and seeking justice for victims.
And you can imagine that the results of that are nothing but chaos.
I report on this frequently, and I know I'm not alone.
And I have a question in my mind that I'd like you to address, and I'm not sure you have the ultimate answer, but I'd love you to address it since you're an expert on this issue.
So frequently I will speak about, and tell me if I'm right, Soros-backed district attorney, let's say in Philadelphia, or in San Francisco, or in Los Angeles, or I think in New York, is that correct?
Right.
So, if one were to ask Soros, why do you fund the election of people who don't prosecute criminals?
What would he answer?
Well, if you know where to look, the answer is very obvious.
Now, George Soros hasn't come out and said this himself, but many of the...
Individuals that he's funded, particularly on the supposedly academic side of things, they're very upfront and forthright if you know where to look.
And they'll tell you their goal is to, quote, fundamentally reimagine our criminal justice system.
They want to tear it down and build it back in a completely new and different way.
And the reason they want to do this is because they bought into two myths about our criminal justice system.
They bought into the myth that our criminal justice system is systemically racist, which it's not.
And they've also bought into the myth that we have a mass incarceration problem in our country, which we don't.
If you look at who's primarily incarcerated in state and federal prisons, it's not first-time nonviolent offenders.
It's repeat violent offenders.
And so whenever you talk about reducing mass incarceration, not locking some individuals up, keep in mind that necessarily means that you're going to be releasing some repeat violent offenders back onto our streets.
Wow.
I think you got it right.
The key word is reimagine.
By the way, that's a perfect leftist word, like intersectionality.
There's an entire vocabulary of leftism.
What does reimagine as opposed to imagine mean?
I've never quite figured that out.
Can you re-reimagine?
Well, they can, Dennis, and it's horrifying to know what exactly they mean by reimagining the criminal justice system.
You know, the way Coley and I... We have a chapter on the ideological underpinnings of the movement.
We have a chapter on the funding.
We highlight eight different rogue prosecutors and the crimes that wouldn't have happened but for their policies.
And then our last chapter is the way forward.
But in that first chapter, the ideological underpinnings, I think it's important to realize this is a Marxist-based movement.
A lot of the ideas and ideology from this rogue prosecutor movement borrows from something called the prison abolition movement that really gained steam in the 60s and 70s.
And this was a very radical movement, a Marxist-inspired movement that basically said, we shouldn't have prisons.
No one should be locked up for any reason, for anything.
It was promoted by Angela Davis, some other left-wing academics.
And when people heard this, they were rightly horrified.
They said, that's crazy.
It'll lead to chaos.
We can't have this.
Well, all right.
Hold on there.
I want to promote your book.
Sure.
I appreciate that.
Yes.
No, no, no, no.
I know your position.
Rogue Prosecutors.
It is up at DennisPrager.com.
A man has written a very necessary book about the Soros-funded prosecutors in various cities in this country, and it's titled Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America's Communities.
So now his son, Alex, who, by the way, yesterday or the day before, met with the Pope.
It's very depressing.
But you don't have to comment on that.
I just wanted people to know that.
Alex Soros is considered even more radical than his father, which is sort of like saying Lenin, if he had a son, would be more radical than his father.
So, again, I'm asking a tough question to get into their heads.
So Soros' father or son, You think they're aware of the number of violent criminals who are released to do more damage as a result of their prosecutors?
Well, I don't think they can be unaware, Dennis, particularly if they spent any time in any major city in the United States.
And unfortunately, I think to many who back this rogue prosecutor movement, this increase in crime is seen essentially as collateral damage and necessary evil to accomplish their greater goal of fundamentally reimagining the justice system.
Right, right.
Okay.
They're perfectly willing to live with it for the greater good.
Of not having almost any prisons.
By the way, when we speak about that, I have a feeling that they would be fine with Donald Trump being in prison.
Well, we know, look at Alvin Bragg in New York City, in Manhattan.
He spent a lot of time, a lot of resources, pursuing a case against Donald Trump on very questionable legal grounds.
But he doesn't do the basic blocking and tackling of prosecuting repeat violent offenders in New York City.
And just watch any of the videos coming out of New York, and you'll see the terror these criminals are inflicting on everyday citizens because they are not being held accountable for their actions.
So now guide me through something else, this funding issue.
Let us say that there was a decent human being Who put in as many funds as Soros the Indecent puts in and backed district attorneys who actually believe that people who hurt people should be prosecuted.
Is money the reason the Soros people win?
Is it simply a matter of nobody funds them as much as Soros?
Well, I'll give you a two-part answer, Dennis, quickly.
You know, one of the things that is so diabolical about this plan, and ingenious in some ways, is George Soros and the other supporters of this movement realize that district attorney races have historically been low-profile, low-dollar affairs, even in large cities, where a six-figure campaign contribution historically has been almost unheard of.
And so when you get George Soros coming in, donating seven figures in some of these races, that's a tsunami of money in these DA races and immediately catapults his preferred candidate to the top.
And so, yes, money is part of it.
But what we found, and we talk about this in our last chapter, the way forward, law and order traditional district attorney candidates don't have to match the funding dollar for dollar.
But they do have to have enough funding to be able to get their message out, make clear not only what their positions are, but to also debunk some of the myths that these rogue prosecutor candidates are putting out there.
You know, they use poll-tested language.
They claim they have data and science that support their approach, that they claim their approach doesn't raise crime.
Now, we talk about why that's not true in the book.
But it's just law and order candidates need just enough money to stay in the race and get their message out to voters.
So then I'm right that if we had an equivalent person or persons on the right, we could put up a fight.
Is that fair to say?
Or, there is an or.
Maybe people in big cities will vote for the most left-wing candidate no matter what.
Which is it?
Well, I think if you put up, if there is adequate funding, that certainly helps law and order candidates.
Now, in some cities, unfortunately, I think things are going to get much worse before they get better.
But there is some hope, Dennis.
Look what happened in San Francisco with Chase Aboudi, the son of Weather Underground members, radicals, radical.
His policies were so radical, so devastating, that even the left-leaning voters of San Francisco said that's too far.
They recalled him and kicked him out of office.
And so even in left-wing cities, everyone wants to be safe when they walk down the street, or they should want that.
And so even in these very liberal cities, There is pushback starting to happen.
Right.
So, okay, good.
So, first of all, it leads me to a fact question I don't know the answer to.
So, who succeeded the district attorney that was kicked out in San Francisco?
Is it a law and order candidate or a milder version of the previous Soros candidate?
There's someone named Brooke Jenkins.
She used to be in the DA's office there in San Francisco before Chesa Boudin came into power, and she's been much more law and order than Chesa Boudin.
But look, you bring up an important point.
You know, having law and order district attorneys in office, this isn't a left or right, Republican or Democrat issue.
Again, it's really enforcing the laws, having a functional society, or having chaos.
That is the distinction we're talking about.
And so fortunately, in San Francisco, it is a much more law and order candidate.
Not as conservative as probably many of us would like to see, but certainly much more in the mainstream.
If Alvin Bragg, if there were no funding from outside sources, would Alvin Bragg be re-elected in New York?
Look, my crystal ball is broken these days, unfortunately.
But we do know that in some of these rogue prosecutor races, George Soros' money, either directly or indirectly, has counted for up to 80 to 90 percent of the war chest.
All right, hold on there.
Begin the book, folks.
Rogue Prosecutors.
You'll find out what's happening in your cities.
Final segment here.
We have Zach Smith.
Zach, I wanted to tell you something.
I mentioned this to my producer during the break.
You're sort of like the perfect guest.
No, no, I'm sure I knew it would elicit laughter, but I'll tell you why.
Obviously, I probably have interviewed a thousand people or more, but you give direct answers.
And you do it briefly.
You're my gem interviewee.
There are times I won't mention names.
There are times I ask a question.
I could go to the men's room and return.
The guy will still be speaking.
So, I have one final question.
Folks, the book is Rogue Prosecutors, How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America's Communities.
Ironically, I opened the show with the theme of they don't know what we know.
The left doesn't know what we know.
They don't know, for example, the Columbia Journalism Review.
Excoriated the New York Times for lying for two years.
There's so much, they just don't know the number of hospitals that are removing girls' breasts because they say they're boys.
So, does the average voter in any of these cities with a Soros-backed DA know what has happened to their city?
So I think the answer to that is initially no.
When many of these rogue VAs initially were running for office, they used poll-tested, bland language.
They said things like, we want a fair criminal justice system.
We don't want anyone to be locked up unnecessarily.
We want to hold criminals appropriately accountable.
Now, those are uncontroversial statements, something you or I or probably most other reasonable people would agree with.
But what quickly became obvious once these rogue prosecutors got into office is that what they meant by these statements and what you or I would understand them to mean are something radically different.
And so the good news is, as I mentioned earlier, I think in some cities, citizens are starting to wake up.
Chesa Boudin, as I mentioned, was recalled and removed from office.
Kimberly Gardner in St. Louis, she resigned from office.
Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore, she lost her primary election there and is currently under federal indictment.
Rachel Rollins, the rogue DA in Boston, who the Biden administration elevated to be the U.S. attorney, the chief federal law enforcement officer for the entire state of Massachusetts, she resigned in disgrace recently.
And Kim Fox in Chicago, she recently announced she's not running for re-election.
And so, while that's the good news, I'll quickly give you the bad news.
All right, you'll have to give it on a part two.
We've got a break.
You're a pleasure.
Rogue Prosecutors, my friends, the book is up at DennisPrager.com.
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.
Hello everybody.
Dennis Prager here.
I have one of my favorite people in America on, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, running for President of the United States.
So is that a good introduction, Senator?
You're one of my favorite people in America?
That is a fantastic introduction, Dennis, and it's always good to be in your presence.
God bless your efforts.
Thank you.
God has blessed my efforts, to be honest.
Indeed.
So, sir, there was a real clear politics just interviewed you, and it was you at your eloquent best.
So explain, as they asked you, your notion of the people who don't like when whites or blacks say that people should lift themselves up by their own bootstraps.
You know, Dennis, one of the blessings of life is common sense, and those who have a position contrary to common sense bewilders my soul.
But I will say in America, the blessing of being an American, the blessing of American exceptionalism, is that any kid from anywhere at any time can rise above their circumstances.
I know that because I've done it.
And it's not just me who's done that, by the way.
Black kids, white kids, Hispanic kids all across America continue to prove that.
With hard work, talent, a little bit of talent, grit, you can go as high as you want to go in America because our system, the playing field of America, is the best there is in the world.
So if you apply yourself, you get remarkable results.
Unfortunately, the victim culture of the radical left continues to create this grievous society that feels like quicksand.
Everybody wants someone else to be the problem when, in fact, my mentors taught me that perhaps the biggest problem in your life is the kid in the mirror, not your dad not being there, not living in poverty, not your single mom working 16 hours a day proving there's dignity in all work.
Take the blessings of the misery that you started with and use it for a greater purpose, even as a kid.
I learned that valuable lesson, and I thank God Almighty I was born in the right country to rise beyond my circumstances.
So, I'm struggling here because I so love what you said.
Listeners of mine know I have said all of my life I learned that the biggest problem in Dennis Prager's life is Dennis Prager.
That was the greatest lesson of my youth.
Yes.
It is.
That is the biggest difference between left and right.
Is the biggest problem in your life America or you?
And it's only you.
Here's what gets me excited about where we are in America today.
What you and I are talking about was not the case in 1923 or 1963. It is the case for the last 60 years.
America continues the greatest evolution on Earth, where we judge people today by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
I'm running for president because I know America can do for anyone what she has done for me.
It requires individual responsibility for us to reach the heights available and possible in the greatest nation on God's green earth.
And if we are not willing to put in the work, don't look anyplace else except the mirror.
But once you put in the work, I can assure you, more times than not, the response will be individuals and families and companies from around this great nation will respond to your efforts.
They will respond to your character by lifting you to a place that your hard work has qualified you for.
You'll get a chance to do the most remarkable things.
But if you don't put the work in, don't expect people to respond to nothing.
They have to have something to respond to.
And that was a hard lesson.
It was a hard lesson for me as that kid in that single-parent household who wanted to say life wasn't fair.
And frankly, maybe it wasn't.
But now life is more than fair.
Why?
It's not fair to a lot of people.
Life isn't fair, period.
It's very rare that it is.
You're so eloquent on these matters.
Are you speaking at, for example, black churches?
I am.
Within the first seven days of my announcement, I decided I would go to a black church and have a town hall.
Because the message of conservatism works wherever we take it.
I spoke at Harvard, and I'll tell you this, that's a tough social, I shouldn't call it socialist, tough liberal camp.
Socialist was fine, but go ahead.
Yes, terrain for an African-American conservative to stand one week after I voted against Justice Jackson.
But here's what I can tell you.
I'm willing to defend my conservative beliefs.
Anywhere in America because they work.
And going to an African-American church seven days after I announced was one of the best things I did, because here's what I found out.
Number one, a lot of folks that showed up that weren't black.
Number two, that means that we live in an America where you get to decide where you go, you get to decide who you love, you get to decide what you believe, and we get to debate the most important fundamental truths of our time.
And truths, by the way, they're timeless.
And so what's true today was true 100 years ago, and it will be true 100 years from now.
But having that debate in a public forum where an African-American pastor is asking me questions from his congregants about race in America, about progress in America, and a diverse audience filled with Republicans, Democrats, and independents, black folks and white folks, and Asians as well.
That's the kind of environment.
Where conservative principles prove time and time again they're the best way forward.
So I'll ask you what has asked me and has been all of my life.
People will ask me because I'm a Jew.
Dennis, explain why so many Jews are on the left.
So you tell me, why are so many blacks on the left?
I do believe that many African Americans made a decision to join the Democrat Party 100 years ago, 50, 60, 70 years ago.
And frankly, the Southern strategy in the 70s and early 80s, where we've used race as a wedge, was an important consideration that reinforced Democrats having a stronghold on African Americans.
The great news is for the last 40 years, the party that's made the most progress on issues impacting Vulnerable people economically?
It's the Republican Party.
Let me give you three classic examples why African Americans today are heading back to the Republican Party, led by African American males.
One out of five voted for President Trump.
I think I can get one out of three without much of a question.
When you ask yourself the question, who provided the highest level of HBCU funding in the history of America?
That answer is the Great Opportunity Party.
Who made their funding permanent?
Of course, it's the GOP. Who led to the lowest unemployment rate in the history of this country for African Americans, as well as Hispanics and Asians, 70-year low for women, 50-year low for the general population?
The GOP. When we start talking about the actual issues and the best response to those issues, we have a lot to market and sell to all communities, including minority communities.
But unfortunately...
Dennis, you know this as well as I do.
You have to go where you're not invited.
I fought for three years ago anti-Semitism legislation.
I am not Jewish.
I am a born-again Christian.
But here's what I understand.
Defending the rights and eliminating discrimination against my Jewish Americans is a part and parcel of my responsibility.
And I take that responsibility seriously.
That's a conservative position, that we are going to conserve the values of our nation and make sure that no group in our nation is going to defy the laws of our land.
That's good news, but that's conservatism at its very best.
We don't look at who you are or where you're from.
We just do the right things.
That's exactly right.
So how do people get in touch with you?
What's your website?
VoteTimScott.com.
VoteTimScott.com.
Dennis, here's what I love about your show and you.
You are a student of history.
You are a student of human behavior.
And you believe that there are common principles that can be applied.
Universally throughout the world and specifically here at home.
Applying those principles here at home because the rules of the road are set for success and not failure, you get a better harvest here in America than you can any other place in the world.
And you having the courage and the tenacity to continue to provide a forum for truth to be heard, God bless you.
That's very kind.
It means a lot to me.
Well, I only wish you well.
VoteTimScott.com.
We'll speak again.
God bless you.
Look forward to it, Dennis.
God bless you.
Right now.
This is a great piece in the Wall Street Journal.
The states in America where income grows faster.
How many people on the left are aware of this?
It's like, what would they think?
New federal data show a striking divergence between earning growth in GOP-led states and progressive states.
Yeah.
President Joe Biden will never admit it, but he has Republican-led states to thank for the resilient U.S. economy and labor market.
Witness how an earnings surge in right-leaning states is helping compensate for sluggish growth in progressive ones.
That's what's happening.
New state personal income data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis highlights how aggregate worker and proprietor earnings in red states...
By the way, just a note on how the left controls all language.
The United States is the only place on earth, to by the best of my knowledge, where red does not signify left.
Democrat and left should be red.
But they knew that Americans wouldn't like that.
You're red, because red is communist.
So the press decided to call the conservative part of the political spectrum red.
Just thought you should know that.
Earnings in red states grew significantly more in the last year than in the blues.
The disparity owes to GOP-led states adding more jobs, including in higher-paying industries like tech and finance, along with faster-growing wages.
as I have often said, as an inhabitant of California.
If California had the weather that nearly all of the rest of the country has, I don't know who would be living here.
I Earnings nationwide rose 5.4% on average between the first quarters of 2022 and 2023, but much less.
In New York, 2.6%.
Indiana, 2.6%.
California, 2.9%.
Connecticut, 3.4%.
Rhode Island, 3.6%.
Maryland, 4%.
New Jersey, 4.3%.
Oregon, 4.5%.
And Illinois, 4.6%.
Now, do you understand this?
The whole country was 5.4%.
All of these were under that.
Apart from Indiana, these states are run by Democrats, and most have been for years.
They boast high taxes and a high cost of living, which along with COVID lockdowns spurred increased out-migration during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, earnings in the same period surged in North Dakota.
So the average was 5.4, is that correct?
Let's see.
Yeah.
Guess what it rose in North Dakota?
9.7.
New Mexico.
New Mexico is governed by Republicans?
No.
I guess that's the exception.
No, that's odd.
All right.
Anyway, Nevada.
Well, who runs Nevada?
Yeah.
Florida, 9.1.
Nebraska, 8.6.
Hawaii, that's Democrat, 8.8%.
South Carolina, 8.8.
And so on.
How to explain this.
California suffered from tech layoffs.
Hawaii, Florida, and Nevada benefited from a tourism resurgence.
Higher oil and gas prices in production boosted earnings in New Mexico, North Dakota, and Alaska.
Less so in Texas, which has a more diverse economy.
Which is stupid.
Stupid, stupid.
Texas bought the climate change meal hook, line, and sinker.
I don't know why.
And that was under Republican governors.
That is...
One of the truly indefensible decisions has been Texas's belief in...
What is it?
What do they call it?
Green.
Yeah, green energy.
Green energy.
Oh, my God.
Renewables.
Anyway, it's an important point that is worth your noting.
Here's something worth your noting.
Honduran drug dealers say they've flocked it to San Francisco because of sanctuary laws.
How do you like that?
They're not stupid.
They're evil, but they're not stupid.
Honduran drug dealers have made a business hub out of San Francisco.
Due to the progressive city sanctuary laws for illegal immigration, fueling the nation's fentanyl epidemic, a dear friend of mine lost his son to fentanyl.
This hits me directly.
And the visible decline of a major American city.
San Francisco's accommodative approach to illegal immigration makes it appealing to sell there.
Honduran dealers told the San Francisco Chronicle.
They actually acknowledge it?
They told this to the San Francisco Chronicle.
We love it here.
They don't do anything to us.
As part of an in-depth investigation into how Honduran nationals have come to play a dominant role in the city's drug crisis, under current San Francisco law, last amended in July 2016, city employees are forbidden from using city resources to cooperate with any ICE investigation, detention, or arrest relating to an illegal immigration case.
It's illegal!
To help federal authorities catch illegal immigrants.
The law also prohibits ICE from placing holds on local prisoners so they can be deported upon their release from jail.
A Honduran dealer told the Chronicle that San Francisco is a hotspot for drug work because those illegal immigrants who are caught are less likely to be deported.
Reading to you a very troubling piece.
Hondurans have established a base for drug dealing in San Francisco because it's a sanctuary and nobody will report any illegals.
A Honduran dealer told the Chronicle that San Francisco is a hotspot for drug work because those illegal immigrants who are caught are less likely to be deported.
The reason is because in San Francisco, it's like you're here in Honduras.
You hear that?
That's what one of the drug dealers told the San Francisco Chronicle.
They don't even hide it.
Nothing will be done to them.
Everything the left touches, it destroys, and San Francisco is an example.
The law, because they don't deport, that's the problem.
Many look to San Francisco because it's a sanctuary city.
You go to jail and you come out.
That's a direct quote from a Honduran drug dealer in San Francisco.
San Francisco's drug arrests have dropped significantly in recent years.
Only 734 were made in 2021. Followed by 929 in 2022. In 2015, 1,273 were made, according to data.
This is despite fentanyl sales increasing during the pandemic.
Honduran dealers also started controlling the open-air drug markets in the Tenderloin and south-of-market neighborhoods during the COVID crisis.
The human toll of drug trafficking from Central America has been monumental with a 2,200 dead in San Francisco due to overdoses on fentanyl since 2020. Did you realize that?
That's not a gigantic city.
2,200 just fentanyl.
I've got to tell you, folks, my heart goes out to parents who have a drug-addicted kid.
It is way, way, way, way more dangerous today than ten years ago, than probably seven years ago.
If you go on drugs, this has to be the message to young people.
There is a very real chance you will die.
God, when I think about the war on cigarettes, there was a one out of three chance that sometime in their life they will die from cigarette smoking.
And that's what the war was made on.
Cigarettes.
Oh, tobacco generally, as if cigars are dangerous.
I knew the Mayo Clinic lied when I read to you years ago that they have on it, or had on it.
Cigar smoking is as dangerous as cigarette smoking.
I read to you last week, I think it was, about the Mayo Clinic and how they're firing a...
They're suspending a doctor and threatening to fire him because he has come out with regard to there are only two sexes.
Mayo Clinic threatens to fire Professor for comments on COVID treatment and men in women's sports.
That's really something.
You don't have freedom of speech as a doctor at the Mayo Clinic.
As this article points out, people are starting to refer to it as the Mayo Clinic.
Everything's backwards.
Father goes on a furious rant against a doctor who asked his nine-year-old son whether he identified as a boy or girl during a routine physical. - I'm a girl.
It's mind-boggling.
A father posted a furious rant to TikTok after his nine-year-old son went to the doctor for a routine physical and was asked about his gender identity.
The father who has not been named claims the first question the doctor asked his young son was whether he identifies as a boy or girl, gender fluid or non-binary.
That's impressive, huh?
Your nine-year-old son is at the doctor's office and is asked, Are you gender fluid?
A lot of sick people in medicine.
Hi, everybody.
It's the Ultimate Issues Hour. . .
When I started the Ultimate Issues Hour about 18 years ago, it was a gamble.
Because, you know, Ultimate Issues, come on, I want to hear about the news, I want to hear about the news, I want to hear about the news.
That's the theory in talk radio.
And it's not a stupid theory.
But that is the theory.
And I gambled with the happiness hour first, I gambled with male-female hour second, and then I gambled with the ultimate issues hour, and they turn out to be people's favorite hours very often.
Because if you're not clear about the great issues of life, you're going to be confused about the immediate issues of life.
That's the way it works.
So today is something different, not subject-wise, but personnel-wise.
So, in the course of the next couple of weeks, the third hour of my show, I will frequently have Julie Hartman on with me.
Many of you know her from her own show, Timeless, and from the Dennis and Julie podcast, which we do every week, and I have to say is one of the most enjoyable moments of my week, and I might even add, I have an enjoyable week aside from that.
So that is a real compliment to how much I enjoy it.
I have never co-hosted in 40 years of radio.
It's just not my style.
And then she walked into my life, and it hasn't been the same since.
And we talk about everything.
That's the beauty, because I love to talk about everything.
So, Julie, welcome to the Ultimate Issues Hour, the first co-hosted Ultimate Issues Hour in its history.
Boy, I hope I live up to the hype.
No pressure.
But I feel so comfortable on this show.
I mean, I've guest-hosted.
No, no, but that's a good reaction.
I know.
There is pressure.
When Dennis Prager says, I've never had a co-host in 40 years, but I'm here with you.
Your heart skips a beat.
Yes, that's fair enough.
So, one of my, if I had ten favorite Ultimate Issues subjects, this would be one of them.
It might have been the very first one on the first Ultimate Issues Hour, Are People Basically Good?
And why did I decide on this one?
A, because it's so significant.
B, because I'm so curious to...
Get someone's take who's in their early 20s and what she thinks her generation would answer if I ask them that question, which I have not.
I would love to know that.
Let me just say the following.
There are few ideas I have as much contempt for as the idea that people are basically good.
It is a profoundly stupid idea.
There is no basis upon which to believe it.
Forget religion.
I mean, if you're an atheist, it should be irrelevant to the question.
I don't believe people are not basically good because of religion.
I believe it because I have common sense.
Julie, I opened up the show today with a description of what Japanese did to Filipinos.
I did not know this.
I knew what they did to Koreans.
I knew what they did to Chinese.
Most people don't know.
The only thing they know is Hiroshima, which drives me crazy.
As if America dropped it for no good reason.
The Japanese did to Chinese what the Nazi doctors did to Jews in concentration camps.
The Japanese rounded up vast numbers of Korean women to gang rape every day.
Now I learned that they treated Filipinos the way they treated Chinese and the way they treated, with regard to the women, the way they treated the Korean women.
And I mention this only because when people read about this and then go, oh, people are basically good, it does, it drives me crazy.
So I am curious, if I, before we met, Which is now what, three years?
Three years this month.
Is that right?
I sent you the first email.
And it's a miracle.
It's a miracle everyone that Dennis saw it.
Yeah, I don't see most of my mail.
Thousands of emails a day.
Everything about us is a miracle.
It's three years this month?
Wow.
That's really something.
Has it affected your life at all?
Slightly.
Some days.
Yes, exactly.
You know, I'll tell you which days.
The ones that end in day.
Yes, exactly.
The ones that end in day.
It's affected me.
I mean, I'll just say this quickly.
So, obviously.
It's affected me in the professional realm, but it's affected me in the personal realm, too.
You've transformed the way that I view myself, the way that I view life.
I have respect and reverence for things that I never once did, such as great works of art and architecture and literature.
Also, you've introduced all these wonderful people into my life.
For instance, I'm best friends with Robert Florzak, who is a great artist I had on my show to talk about the five most important pieces of art.
Dennis has just transformed my life by, you know, in the hours that I show up at Salem to do work.
When I go home, the stuff I'm reading, the stuff I'm watching, the stuff I'm consuming, you've had an outsized influence on that, too.
I'm glad.
I really am.
It means a lot to me.
So, okay.
So, three years ago, before we met, if somebody would have said to you, Julie, do you think people are basically good?
What would you have said?
I would have said no from my own life experience.
As many people who listen to Dennis and Julie know, I have a severely autistic sister who has gone in and out of government group homes, and her caretakers have often tragically been very abusive and negligent to her.
So I saw for a lot of my life that people are not basically good.
However...
You asked a few minutes ago or you pondered what people in my generation would say.
I would speculate that a vast majority would say that people are basically good.
And that actually goes back to a point that you made where you were saying, how could someone look at what happened during World War II with all of the atrocities committed by the Japanese and the Nazis and think that people are basically good?
Well, that's it right there.
My generation has grown up in a really prosperous, peaceful time.
We have not lived through a World War I, World War II, or Cold War.
We barely even know that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars happened, and we weren't personally affected by those.
We haven't experienced something like the Great Depression.
Many of us have been, of course, there have been tragedies in our own lives.
No human being in the history of human civilization is immune to a parent dying or some tragedy befalling us.
But overall, our daily lives have been really good.
So we haven't had to encounter the basic fact that people are basically not good.
In a nutshell, now you know why I asked Iran.
Okay, just to be totally open about this.
That was great.
That is the point.
Americans are more likely to believe people are basically good than most of humanity.
they're naive because it's been so easy.
It's a luxury to believe that people are basically good, just as it is a luxury to talk about microaggressions.
If your biggest problem in the world is that someone leveled a microaggression against you, you are the definition of privilege.
And isn't that ironic?
Because we hear all about privilege, white privilege, male privilege, hetero privilege.
Our attitudes towards life are privileges to have.
That is perfect. - Wait.
Let me explain to people what microaggressions are.
First of all, the people who invented the term acknowledge it's micro.
Because there's so little macro discrimination against blacks in the United States that they had to go to micro.
So ladies and gentlemen, you should go.
This is an important tangent.
You should go to...
The University of California website.
Type in University of California list of microaggressions.
And you will see what they list as examples of severe racism.
For example, if you say there is only one race, the human race, that, according to the University of California, is a microaggression.
Your point, therefore, is the key point.
There's so little.
Discrimination against blacks in the United States.
There's so little racism outside of the left that they have to create.
That's why there are so many made-up instances.
We'll be back in a moment.
Ultimate Issues Hour.
I'm on with Julie Hartman.
Take your calls.
Take your calls.
This is the Ultimate Issues Hour, every Tuesday, third hour.
And to be perfectly opened, I'm experimenting with the idea, with evolving the show that the third hour each day be with Julie Hartman.
I think it would enrich it because it gives you another perspective from an extraordinary human being.
It's just worked out that way.
Anyway, she's on with me on this Ultimate Issues Hour, talking about what is, to me, the second most important question.
The first is...
Is the God of the Bible, because to say, is there a God, is irrelevant.
Is the God of the Bible real?
Is there such a thing?
And the second most important question in life is, are people basically good?
Because if you believe people are basically good, it shapes many of the utterly destructive ideas of the world.
For example, you blame America for people's problems instead of blaming yourself.
You know, I had Tim Scott on earlier.
I do know.
That's fantastic.
But to hear him speak, it was as if he had heard my show, but I have no doubt that he didn't get it for my show, which I'm happy about.
It means that it's widely understood.
You have a choice in America.
For your problems, do you blame you or do you blame America?
And the left blames America, and the right blames ourselves.
That is the difference in a nutshell, and I've said that all of my life.
So we're talking about the naivete of so many in America who have it so good.
You said it so well.
They just don't know.
It's abstract.
Evil is abstract.
To most Americans.
And for all that individuals in the United States today talk about respecting the plight that other people have, they so superfluously throw around terms like racism and homophobia and misogyny.
And it is actually offensive.
It is an affront to people who really do experience those things, which are very stark realities in the vast majority of the world.
For instance, did you know that half of the countries in half of Africa's 54 countries criminalize homosexuality and actually a handful of them criminalize it with the death penalty?
If you are found to be gay and even in some cases, if you support organizations or people who are gay, you will be punished with the death penalty.
For people who say that the United States is a homophobic country, that is such an egregious affront to the people who have to go through that.
Or when people say that the United States is a misogynistic country, can you imagine what women in Iran think of that?
Who have to get permission from their husbands to go to school or to work?
Who need two male witnesses in court to corroborate their story if they are accused of rape?
If they accuse of rape.
Yes, if they are accusing that someone raped them.
They need two male witnesses to corroborate their story.
Can you imagine what they would say if they knew that women in the United States view the United States as misogynistic?
Look, this misogynistic, racist, homophobic country is the place that most people persecuted for being gay.
or for whatever their color is or being a woman want to come to.
We live in the world of the lie, eh?
It's so overwhelming.
You can choke on it.
I want to get back, though, to that original one.
So you said, when I asked you about...
Your generation, obviously you didn't do a scientific test, we all understand that, but it doesn't matter to me.
I believe that if I would have asked your fellow students when you were in college just over a year ago, do you believe people are basically good?
You and I both believe most, well, a lot of them are foreign-born.
I wonder if the foreign-born and the American-born would have the same answer.
I bet they wouldn't.
I actually encountered a lot of foreign-born people at Harvard who were quite conservative.
They wouldn't label themselves as conservative because they didn't really understand what that meant in the United States.
But by all measures that we would assess, they were.
Because they don't have the luxury that we have in the United States.
How do people who believe that explain the amount of evil?
But I don't think they know the amount of evil.
You know, it raises the issue which drives you crazy, too.
So, okay, you went to Harvard.
We'll reveal the H-bomb.
But it wouldn't matter.
It just happens to be the most prestigious college, but it wouldn't matter.
If I ask this question there or at Montana State, and I'm not knocking Montana State.
I'm just picking a state college that doesn't have the prestige of Harvard.
If I asked the students, can you identify the Gulag Archipelago, do you think that most of your fellow Harvard students could?
No.
I didn't know what it was until I encountered you.
I didn't know who Alexander Solzhenitsyn was, who wrote the famous essay, Live Not By Lies.
I didn't know what E. Plur Bizunum meant.
I had never heard of it.
You need to write an article.
I know, I will.
And no, I'll tell you what it is.
She will.
I didn't even tell her what the article is.
Well, I can guess.
But she will.
She knows she will.
Hey, I can guess.
Wait, wait, wait.
Guess.
What do you think I'm thinking?
I am curious.
The ignorance of people who are supposedly highly educated and yet we are not.
Yes, that's right.
Yes, so title, that's right.
Something to the effect, What I Didn't Know.
So you were saying a few moments ago, is it that people my age...
That's why they think that human beings are basically good.
That is certainly a component of it.
But also, I think the greater reason is that we have consumed a cultural diet which has taught us that we are not responsible for our actions.
This is the Rousseauian idea that human beings are born perfect in the state of nature and that it's society that corrupts them.
I mean, this is the whole, you know, people commit crime because they're in a desperate situation.
When all of the cultural influences are telling us that, no wonder we don't think that, or we don't acknowledge that people aren't basically good.
You didn't know what Gulag was.
No, I didn't.
I'm ashamed.
No, no, no, don't be.
Harvard should be ashamed.
Your high school should be ashamed.
Ultimate Issues Hour, 1-8 Prager-776.
Go to your calls.
I'm Dennis Prager with Julie Hartman.
Ultimate Issues Hour, third hour every Tuesday.
Little drives me as crazy as the belief that people are basically good.
That human nature is good.
The only thing that drives me crazy is when a religious Jew or Christian says it.
As if God saying the will of man's heart is evil from his youth doesn't mean a damn thing to them.
There was an Orthodox rabbi who said that people are basically good.
I got so incensed, I wrote a whole article against that.
And then he agreed, to his great credit, to debate me.
You could watch the debate.
I should put it up.
I don't know why I didn't.
You should watch the debate.
And when religious Jews and Christians ignore what God himself says in the Bible, you realize, and this, by the way, I do realize, most people's religion is what they want to believe.
I should do an Ultimate Issues Hour on that subject.
Most people do not believe in their religion.
They believe in what they believe and then attach their religion to it.
That would be an example.
I believe people are basically good, and by golly, I'll prove my religion says that.
Anyway, the whole question of how much...
How much does religion make people better when it should is a very real question, but I won't get into that now.
All right, let me go to calls.
Can you hear calls?
I believe so.
Okay.
We're going to test it out.
Yeah, we haven't done this.
You may have to wear something in your ear.
Okay, let's go to Philadelphia.
Nancy in Philadelphia, hello.
Hello, Dennis and Julie.
Nice!
That was nice that you added, Julie.
Thank you.
Of course.
I'm very glad that you're talking about this topic, and you should talk about it periodically.
And I guess I should be glad I'm the daughter of a Holocaust survivor.
So growing up, I never thought people were basically good.
My brilliant father, by the way, for many, many years, who passed away in 2008, he said that...
50 years of unrelenting prosperity will be the ruination of this country, and I think he was right.
20 years of what?
I missed the word because I was distracted for a second.
What was it?
He said 50 years of unrelenting prosperity.
Oh, yeah.
He was wise man.
That's correct.
Yes.
That's right.
The great challenge to wisdom is not poverty, it's affluence.
The poor are wiser than the rich.
They know what life is about.
That's the way it works.
So he was a Holocaust survivor.
Had I asked him, do you think people are basically good, what would he have said?
He probably would have laughed.
Nancy, if I could give out awards for great calls, you'd get one of them.
Gracias.
Gracias.
So Jules doesn't have headphones.
We'll have to get you that.
We're working this thing through.
So her father was a Holocaust survivor, and he's the one who said 50 years of affluence have had a decimating effect on America.
And he was right.
Well, there's an ignorance in believing that people are basically good, but there's also an arrogance, too.
You think, well, I don't need certain moral codes that thousands of years of human history has produced.
I'm good on the inside.
I have a good conscience.
That's right.
I can direct myself.
That is exactly right.
So it's an interesting question.
Do people who believe that people are basically good...
Is it because they don't want to acknowledge their own nature?
Or they're just naive?
Because you just offered the latter, or the first, excuse me, the former.
It's a very interesting point.
I think it's a cocktail of things with several ingredients.
But I think a lot of people really think that they are good people, even if they do bad things.
I don't know anybody who does bad who thinks they're bad.
There wasn't one Nazi who thought that they're doing bad, one communist who thought that they're doing bad.
The left in America, ruining children's lives and the country and every city, they think they're doing good.
We'll be back.
Ultimate Issues Hour, Dennis Prager Show.
So, third hour of the show, and we'll have third hour of the show, and we'll have Julie Hartman on the third hour in the and we'll have Julie Hartman on Cool.
Julie and I do a podcast called Dennis and Julie.
If you want to introduce people to great ideas, but they, especially a young person, they are afraid if they hear...
Oh, Dennis Prager's a conservative.
Send them Dennis and Julie.
Then they'll be afraid, oh, Julie Hartman's a conservative.
She really blew that little plug, I have to say, in one fell swoop.
No, no, people love it.
You should love it.
Dennis and Julie.
Anyway, talking about people being basically good, your last point is very important.
But I have to tell you, I don't relate to it.
If you're arrogant, which is part of what you're saying, right?
Yes.
So you want to believe you're basically good or human nature is basically good and therefore I am.
Here's the irony.
You can be good despite the fact that human nature is not basically good.
That's the whole point.
Then isn't your achievement all the better?
If human nature is basically good and you're good, there's no achievement!
All of this comes back to the killing of God, the death of religious values, because part of this is that people think that they don't have free will.
That we are just products of the way that we were raised, that's the Freud approach, or we're influenced by the circumstances that befell us.
So it's interesting, because once you see one death of a religious value, it leads to another death of a religious value, and on and on and on.
The death of free will equals the lack of seeing that you are inherently flawed.
Show me where they're connected.
Why?
Oh, because if we're basically good, we don't have free will to be bad.
Right, and we're not saying we're basically bad.
Then you wouldn't have free will either.
We're basically capable of either.
That's why I always phrase it, we're not basically good.
I never said we're basically evil.
If we're basically evil, then you can't blame people for the evil they do.
Just as if we're basically good, you can't praise people for the good they do.
That's a really important point.
Yes.
Because a lot of people will reject the idea.
They'll go, oh, conservatives think we're basically evil.
No.
I've never said it in my life.
It's a really, really...
People just think it's words.
It's a very important distinction.
Yes.
Not good is not the same thing as evil.
That's right.
All right.
Rabbi Kraft in Los Angeles.
Yes.
Is this the rabbi craft that I have known nearly all of my life?
That's 45 years.
Holy crow.
Wow, I knew you from when I was born.
I met you in Jerusalem, actually, before you took the job at Brandeis.
Really?
Yeah, you're wearing shorts and sandals, you know.
That's me.
Remember well.
Shorts and sandals.
Birkenstocks, everyone.
Dennis Prager wears Birkenstocks.
Oh, you know, that is not fair for you to speak.
And he drinks almond milk.
Rabbi, we've got to teach her.
She's not Jewish, but you should teach her about the laws of lush and horror.
Anytime.
Be a pleasure.
Send her to my store.
Exactly.
Anyway, Dennis, you know, I don't want to get you upset with me, but to a certain amount, I disagree.
And there's a very important piece of wisdom I learned many years ago from one of my rabbis.
And it's a way to focus people in.
See, I think the confusion people have is they call their evil part good.
They think they're good, they're calling the evil part good.
What do I mean?
I ask people, I say, do you believe I have a soul?
I ask people, do you believe?
What do you think most people say when I ask them that?
Yes.
They say yes.
I say, no, you don't have a soul.
You have a body.
You are a soul.
Oh, interesting.
They identify with their bodies and they think that's them, their essence.
The truth is, after 120 years, they'll have no bodies.
Their soul will go on and live on for eternity.
That's the real them.
And, you know, the sages of 2,000 years ago in Ethics of the Father said, human beings are dear because they're created in the image of God.
This is from the sages who lived in the times of the Romans.
They saw tremendous barbarism, destruction of the temples.
They knew evil very well, but they still said human beings are dear.
Why?
Because we're a duality.
We have a good inclination, we have a bad inclination.
So where do we differ?
We don't differ.
No, but it's mistaken because the essence, our essence, our eternal essence of us forever, the human soul, is created in the image of God.
That's the real us.
God and His genius gave us a duality so that we can use the foil against ourselves.
When we defeat our evil inclination, that's how you become good.
And that takes nurturing.
That takes effort.
Right.
And that takes education.
And that's what it's all about.
So you can't say people are essentially evil or essentially good.
The beauty of God's creation is he made a duality out of us.
I agree with every word you said, by the way.
So, which I just said before that.
That's why I don't say we're basically evil.
I only say we're not...
Not basically good.
We have a duality.
Yeah, you have to be careful.
I think people basically hear when you say that.
I know what they hear.
Well, they didn't go to yeshiva like you and I did and learn to porous words.
One last point is, we say in the Shema, every day, Behol Levavach, with our hearts, we say with the, do a double letter.
You're supposed to serve God with the evil and the good.
You're supposed to elevate Him.
And that's what life is really about.
Tell everybody, I'm going to give you a free plug, because you have the biggest Jewish bookstore in L.A. Tell them where it is, or what its name is.
The Mitzvah store, it's on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles, near La Brea.
So you visit Rabbi Kraft, tell him you heard him on the radio, and then take a picture with him.
Take a selfie.
You're a good man, my friend.
Thank you.
You know, Julie, you'll love this.
So the Jewish traditional teaching is everyone has a good will and a bad will, which is fine.
I agree with that.
But the rabbis of the Talmud, they made a brilliant point that they asked, why did God make the bad urge?
And then their answer is mind-blowing.
Without the bad urge, a man wouldn't get married, wouldn't make a family, wouldn't work hard, wouldn't build a house.
And so I remember as a kid learning this and thinking, well, wait, if all of that comes from the bad urge, what the hell does the good urge do?
Also, without a bad urge, how do you know what a good urge is?
That's right.
There's no such thing then.
That's right.
How do you know that light is light if you don't have darkness?
That's right.
That's correct.
It's not a defense of evil.
Of course not.
But it's defense of the possibility of it, yes.
All right, we return.
1-8 Prager, 776, Ultimate Issues Hour.
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.
You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives, as well as the daily show prep.
▲
Export Selection