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Aug. 4, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:21:33
Gender Affirming Careless
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hi everybody, welcome to the Friday Show.
I'm Dennis Prager.
Yes, the great debate.
What do I begin?
With what do I begin?
So here's my decision.
New York Times column, not column, excuse me, news piece.
I don't know if it's on the front page.
It's the one thing I can't tell when I'm on the website of a newspaper.
Medical Group backs youth gender treatments, but calls for research review.
The American Academy of Pediatrics renewed its support of gender care.
I love the way they put it.
Gender care.
Do you realize that five years ago, and for all of human history, no one would have understood that headline?
What the hell is gender care?
Gender care is the use of doctors, therapists, and nurses to sustain a terrible belief on the part of a growing number of young people that they are not who they are.
It is the use of medicine to hurt young people, in many cases irreparably.
That's what gender care is.
It's a euphemism for gender abuse.
Anyway, I continue.
This is what they're doing.
The American Academy of Pediatrics backed gender-related treatments.
Isn't that amazing, the euphemisms that the left uses?
Oh, it's so sweet.
Gender-related treatment.
How could you be against gender-related treatment?
If they were truthful at the New York Times, they would write sex-denying or even gender-denying treatment.
That's what they would write.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has lost the faith of a major segment of this country.
My immediate reaction to the words American Academy of Pediatrics is thorough, total contempt.
You are a contemptible, ideological, non-medically based, child-ruining academy.
That's what you are!
That's what the American Academy of Pediatrics has become rather swiftly.
Reaffirming its position from 2018 on a medical approach that has since been banned in 19 states.
Reaffirming its position from 2018 on a medical approach that has since been banned in 19 states.
Well, that means at least 19 states, it takes 25 to go to half, have contempt!
For the American Academy of Pediatrics.
If your pediatrician is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, I know it's painful.
I think you should ask him or her, do they have a position?
Does he or she have a position on the American Academy of Pediatrics position to give hormone blockers to 11-year-olds?
To affirm that a girl in her late teens who says, I want my breasts taken off, they should be affirmed in that pathologic wish.
I think you should.
It would hasten a change.
The United States is virtually alone on earth in what it does to young people.
Because the left has taken over medical groups.
Virtually alone on earth.
We are worse than almost every country in the world.
I think Canada might be tied with us.
And what we do to young people who say at 8, 10, 12, 14, I'm not a boy or I'm not a girl.
In my life, I never anticipated saying America is the worst at something significant.
But the influential group of doctors also took an extra step of commissioning a systematic review of medical research on the treatments, following similar efforts in Europe that found uncertain evidence for their effectiveness in adolescence.
Excuse me, New York Times.
They didn't merely find uncertain evidence for their effectiveness.
They found virtually certain evidence of their damage.
Big difference.
Critics across the political spectrum, including a small but vocal group of pediatricians, God bless them.
Have been calling for a closer look at the evidence in recent years, particularly as the number of adolescents who identify as transgender has rapidly increased.
Doesn't that tell you something?
Rapidly increased?
Isn't it obvious it's the result of psychological problems and society telling them?
Almost as a first resort?
Oh.
Melissa, you have problems?
You might actually be in the wrong body.
You might be a boy.
Oh.
So all I have to do is become a boy and then my problems go away.
That's what she believes.
Her problems have only begun.
The treatments are relatively new and few studies have tracked their long-term effects.
Health bodies in England and Sweden have limited access.
Limited is an understatement.
Almost prevented.
Almost prohibited.
Access to the treatments after carrying out systematic reviews, the gold standard for evaluating medical research.
So what is wrong with England and Sweden for the American Academy of Pediatrics?
Why do they find their systematic studies inadequate?
The board has confidence that the existing evidence is such that the current policy is appropriate, said Mark Del Monte.
A man whose name, if it is at all remembered, will be remembered as a butcher of children.
The chief executive of the AAP. God, I'd love to know what animates him.
I think, by the way, it may very well be that he's animated by a goodwill impulse.
It is very possible.
The amount of evil done by people with their desire to do good has been enormous, certainly in the last century.
Very few people wake up and say, I want to do evil.
But it's inexcusable.
At the same time, the board recognized that additional detail would be helpful.
So I don't understand.
You have additional detail from the studies in Sweden, England, and other countries.
Finland.
The gold standard on the left.
The Scandinavian countries.
As for the policy changes in Europe, he said, they engaged in their process, we're engaging in our process.
Does that give you confidence that anything but a fool is running the American Academy of Pediatrics?
What was wrong with the European process?
What does that mean?
They engaged in their process, we're engaging in our process.
What does that mean?
I'll tell you what it means.
Don't bug me, baby.
We're Americans.
We screw around with children.
Leave us alone.
That's what it means.
After completing the review, he said the group will issue additional clinical guidance for doctors and likely update its recommendations.
I have no faith in that whatsoever, because if they were honest, they'd have to say, we hurt a lot of children.
And all of us at the American Academy of Pediatrics are resigning.
That would be noble.
After the Salem Witch Trials, there were a lot of judges who were regretful and penitent.
This is our Salem Witch Trial writ large.
All 16 board members of the AAP, which represent 67,000 pediatricians.
If you're a...
One of the 67,000, and you haven't protested, and you haven't resigned, you're a collaborator.
And I think that everyone who has a pediatrician for their child should very sweetly and gently ask, are you staying in the American Academy of Pediatricians?
We return.
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Good evening to you from the New York Times and the awful American Academy of Pediatrics.
So the article notes that in England and Sweden, they've stopped, virtually stopped all of this.
There are some heroic people, as always.
That's the way life works.
Bad guys almost always outnumber good guys.
God, it's so clear to me as I read.
I'm reading this book on the Russian Revolution and the years after.
Every generation produces a lot of weak people, a certain number of bad people, and a small number of really good people.
There was no generation, I believe, where that was not the case.
It's an interesting question.
Was it the case?
I don't know.
Was it the case in every generation in American history?
It's hard for me to answer.
But it's certainly worse today.
Let's put it that way.
Really worse.
So...
I'm continuing with the article because it's very interesting.
All 16 board members of the American Academy of Pediatrics, representing 67,000 pediatricians, voted to reaffirm the 2018 guidelines yesterday in Itasca, Illinois.
Over the past two years, Republican lawmakers across the country have banned what's known as gender-affirming care.
Yep.
For those of you who utter what I've never considered to be fact-based, but so many Republicans, conservatives say it, there's no difference between the two parties.
Really?
If this were the only difference between the two parties, it would make them completely different.
If just this Alone.
Block their hormones.
Cut their breasts off.
Cut their penises off.
Make penises into vaginas.
If just that distinguished the parties, where Democrats run like California, you lose custody of your child.
If your 8-year-old girl says, I'm a boy, and you don't affirm that she's a boy, you lose custody of your child in custody disputes.
Thanks to Democrats.
You have tried to protect her.
She's 8. She's 10. Much of the Academy's support for gender-affirming care rests on its 2018 previous position statement.
Transgender adolescents have high rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide attempts.
That's correct.
And what the Academy of Pediatricians says?
Well, they may very well be depressed because they're not the sex they were born.
Wow.
Some scientists criticized the decision to continue to recommend the treatment for young people before completing a rigorous review.
Wow.
You would think so, wouldn't you?
But I love the line I read to you before the break.
Look, we have our tests, and Europeans have their tests.
Really, I thought science is science.
The move is very clearly putting the cart before the horse, said Dr. Gordon Gayat, G-U-Y-A-T-T, a clinical epidemiologist at McMaster University who helped develop the field of evidence-based medicine.
Well, that should be a pretty prestigious person.
A clinical epidemiologist, M.D. Well, I don't know if it's M.D. I assume it is.
And help develop the whole field of evidence-based medicine?
Based on previous systematic reviews, Dr. Gayat said, the AAP's report will most likely find low-quality evidence for pediatric gender care.
The policies of the Europeans are much more aligned with the evidence than are the Americans.
In the United States, a small group of pediatricians is pushed for a similar review to that of the Europeans.
From the AAP, one of the few institutions with enough centralized power to influence health care practices, Dr. Julia Mason.
See, this is what I mean.
Do you know...
I'd rather meet Dr. Julia Mason.
than the King of England or the Pope or any extremely famous figure, let alone any actor.
I know that if I feed my soul with good people, I am a better man and I am a happier man.
I would probably leave having had lunch with Dr. Julia Mason.
Considerably richer a human than if I had lunch with any super famous person.
That's how I feel.
And by the way, everybody should feel that way.
Pursue good people.
You'll become better.
She's a pediatrician in Gresham, Oregon.
Co-founded a group called the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine.
Well, that's a radical idea.
Evidence-based medicine.
The wonderful Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal.
Writes today in her Friday column exactly what I said yesterday.
I had her on the show this week.
We think so similarly.
I get it when people say, you know, you articulate exactly what I feel.
And I get it.
Because this is what Kimberly Strassel is doing in today's column.
Articulating exactly, in my case, not just what I feel, but what I said.
The unprecedented Jack Smith, if lying politicians can be prosecuted for fraud, as he proposes in the Trump indictment, will need a lot of new prisons.
That's correct.
That's what I said.
If there's one word to describe what everyone might wish Washington would stop producing, it's the word unprecedented.
Yet here we go again with Special Counsel Jack Smith's unprecedented indictment of a politician for engaging in, quote, a conspiracy to defraud the United States, unquote.
What does that mean?
What does that mean?
Be prepared for this new and startlingly elastic precedent.
To ensnare plenty of others.
That's the biggest problem with Mr. Smith's latest broadside against Donald Trump, on top of its untested legal theories and evidence of a Justice Department double standard.
Take Mr. Trump out of the equation and consider more broadly what even the New York Times calls Mr. Smith's quote-unquote novel approach.
A politician can lie to the public, Mr. Smith concedes.
But if that politician is advised by others that his comments are untruthful and nonetheless uses them to justify acts that undermine government function, he is guilty of a conspiracy to defraud the country.
Get that?
Politician says something.
Advisors have said it's not correct.
He says it anyway.
He has defrauded the country.
Dishonest politicians who act on dubious legal claims, there aren't enough prisons to hold them all.
Consider how many politicians might already be doing time had prosecutors applied this standard earlier.
Both Al Gore and George W. Bush filed lawsuits in the 2000 election that contained bold, if untested, legal claims.
And she goes on to say they had advisors who said they're not true.
Why limit the theory to election claims?
In 2014, the justices held unanimously that President Barack Obama had violated the Constitution.
By decreeing that the Senate was in recess so that he could install several appointees without confirmation.
It was an outrageous move, one that Mr. Obama's legal counselors certainly warned was a loser.
Yet the White House vocally insisted the President had total constitutional authority to do it.
Under Mr. Smith's standard, that was a lie.
She italicizes lie.
That Mr. Obama used to quote, or italicize, defraud the public by jerry-rigging the function of a labor board with illegal appointments.
What's the betting someone told President Biden he didn't have the power to erase $430 billion in student loan debt?
Oh, wait, that's right.
He told himself, I don't think I have the authority to do it by signing with a pen, he said in 2021. The House Speaker advised him it was illegal.
People think that the President of the U.S. has the power for debt forgiveness.
He does not, Nancy Pelosi said.
Nancy Pelosi.
Yet Mr. Biden later adopted the lie that he did.
He should be prosecuted.
And I mean it, he should.
I do believe fighting fire with fire is morally appropriate.
If this is what you do to the opposition party, Democrats, this is what we will do when you are the opposition party.
And then, like with nuclear weapons, we will adopt, hopefully one day, a mad, mutually assured destruction approach.
You don't destroy the country for politics.
We won't destroy the country for politics.
Because that's what you're doing.
I loathe my government for the first time in my life.
I wake up and it's so...
so...
Interesting.
I observe myself.
I always have.
I look at myself from outside of me, as it were.
And I realize what is being done now, putting the last president, the leading opponent of the current regime, it's a regime, not an administration, in a courtroom.
Do people realize the magnitude of this unprecedented evil?
This assault on America?
I don't care if you love or hate Donald Trump.
I don't love him and I don't hate him.
I do love my country.
Jack Smith and the Democrats are inflicting quasi-fatal damage on our society by doing this.
Even if you think That there is a crime here that is worthy of bringing an ex-president and head of the opposition into a courtroom.
You must think it is really monumental in its evil to have done this unprecedented act.
Lying?
By the way, I would love to have them prove that he's lied.
I would.
And I mean that literally.
I would like to have it resolved in my mind that the Democrats did not cheat in the last election.
I'm rooting for that to be proven to me, just for the record.
There is no doubt in my mind that when Democrats can cheat, they do.
They have a different moral compass.
Their compass is, winning is moral.
That's their compass.
Has been for all of my life.
It was a child when they cheated to get John Kennedy elected.
So she's writing Kimberly Strassel in the Wall Street Journal about all the lies, including the lie that the president can say, no more debt for students, including the lie that the president can say, no more debt for students, no more student debt, to be So she writes...
Oh, yeah, that's right, by the way.
What about Stacey Abrams?
If even a former president can be hit with conspiracy charges, what's to protect a mere congressman or a failed candidate or a consultant?
For how long did Stacey Abrams falsely dispute her loss in the 2018 Georgia governor's race and pressure Georgia lawmakers to alter election procedures in ways that might undermine voting integrity on the basis of untruths?
Would the advisors who egged her on in that pursuit qualify as co-conspirators like the lawyers in Mr. Smith's indictment?
That's right.
Why isn't she brought to court?
The press is rooting for the special counsel to go after Republican lawmakers who, on the basis of Mr. Trump's claims, objected to slates of electors on January 6th.
Let's line them all up, including dozens of Democrats who objected to slates in 2001, 2005, and 2017 on the basis of lies and with the purpose of conspiring to obstruct, quote, the lawful federal governmental function We now know that Representative Adam Schiff looked at a classified
surveillance warrant application against a Trump advisor, lied about its contents publicly, memorialized those lies in an official memo, and used it to help gin up an investigation that definitely impeded the function She italicizes, of the Trump administration.
We have evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation officials behind that application, James Comey, Andrew McKay, Peter Strzok, used a dossier full of lies to get that warrant.
Fortunately for them, Special Counsel John Durham chose not to take a flyer by indicting them for conspiracy.
Smith fans, We'll say this is a special case, the big lie, a one-time necessity for justice.
Yet once a bar is lowered, it will be lowered further.
Remember when impeachment, special committees, the stripping of committee assignments, and contempt citations were rare?
Of course future prosecutors will take this precedent and expand it in ever more novel ways.
And she ends, There are any number of things as certain as death and taxes.
One is that politicians will lie and act on those untruths.
Now, that might make them felons.
1,481 people responded.
Wow.
Oh, yeah.
The most popular comment.
Isn't that what 51 Intel officials did in debunking Hunter Biden's laptop as Russian disinformation, which affected the outcome of the 2020 election?
That is a very, very good point.
If a Republican is ever elected again as president, All 51 of these people should be brought to court.
It is far more provable that they lied than that Trump lied.
And if it was equally provable, it doesn't matter.
They lied.
Alan Dershowitz writes about this as well.
Man who can't stand Trump didn't vote for Trump, voted for Biden.
But is actually a lover of the Constitution and truth.
Something that cannot be said about those who support this unprecedented act.
I can't tell you the harm being done to America seeing a president arrested.
It's not possible to overstate the damage the Democrats are doing to the country in every arena.
Whether it's the Democratic governors and ruining children, or this president and ruining our energy basis, and the printing of money, and the great attempt to say, if you paid your student loan, we Democrats think you're a sucker.
That's exactly the message from the Democratic Party.
You're a sucker if you paid your student debt.
You're a sucker if you're decent.
You're a sucker if you get married.
You're a sucker if you give your kids lunch and breakfast and don't depend on school to do it.
Basically, you're a sucker if you work hard.
And, of course, you're a racist if you're white.
Forgot that part.
And you're a misogynist if you're a man.
And now we'll arrest the head of the opposition.
And the New York Times and the Washington Post, Miami Herald, LA Times will all celebrate this, as will CNN and NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR. They will all celebrate the decline of the United States of America.
The crap they teach kids in school and then go nuts because Florida will allow PragerU courses, or not even courses, videos for kids.
The thought that kids will be taught that the founders were good people, whew, that horrifies the Democratic Party.
Our founders were bad people and kids must learn that.
Good people.
Are the people who think the founders were bad people.
That's the message.
Suckers.
Racists.
Yeah.
And now we will try to jail the head of the opposition.
Very few.
I would say, I was going to say very few.
A minority of Americans appreciate the damage, maybe irreparable, being done to their country.
This is not something America has ever done.
I don't know any democracy that has ever done this.
You don't arrest the opposition leader.
That's how it works.
in free societies.
It's the happy, happy, happy, happy hour! happy hour!
Yes it is.
Hey everybody, the happiness hour since 1999. You know they have EST and then a name?
Excuse me, and then a date?
EST period.
1999. We're doing this.
24. 24 years.
It's the happy, happy, happy, happy end.
Hey, my friends.
It's a tough time, actually, to be happy.
I admit it.
That's why you should have been practicing all of your life.
You have to build happiness muscles like you have to build your anatomical muscles.
Happiness is a pursuit, not a happenstance.
It's amazing how many people write books on happiness, how many professors write, oh, you can't pursue happiness.
It's just a byproduct.
That's like saying you can't pursue winning a game.
It's a byproduct of scoring more runs.
That's a good analogy.
I like it.
Yeah, no, no, no.
The Yankees didn't pursue a win.
But it came because they scored more runs.
You got to work on happiness in the happy times just as you do in the tough times.
And we're living in tough times.
Half this country has really bought into venal doctrines.
One of those venal doctrines is you don't need to get married.
The past, everybody was told get married.
Not everybody got married.
I had an...
Aunt or aunt who never got married.
Everybody loved her.
She wasn't ostracized.
She was at every family function.
My Aunt Anne.
So she was known as Aunt Anne.
Like it was one word.
Like she was A-N-T-A-N. Aunt Anne.
Her not being married and having children enabled her to take me to a lot of places for which I was a grateful recipient of her time.
I think most families had somebody or knew somebody that never got married.
But there was pressure to get married.
Society is as important as genes.
I think, arguably.
In many cases, more important.
And society places pressures.
You don't think that society today places pressures?
It places pressures on young people to pursue careers.
Not to get married, but to pursue careers, especially young women.
Young men are pressured To give way to all the victim groups of their white maleness.
And so we end up with, what was the number I saw?
7 million healthy young males who spend the day with their computer.
And they're not learning history or Portuguese.
Yep.
So the topic is, the reason I chose marriage is a new study.
I love it.
A new study.
You know my theory, right?
I know you do.
Because a lot of people quote it to me.
So I know I got through.
My attitude towards studies has always been either they confirm what common sense suggested or they're not correct.
Can you name a study that goes against what your common sense told you before you read the study?
Literally there is one.
I want to be...
Truth is...
I'm crazed about truth.
There is one study in my life that I recall that went against what my common sense suggested.
The study was about couples who live together, they are more likely, live together before marriage, are more likely to divorce than couples that didn't live together.
It's counterintuitive, I admit it.
My intuition said, I'm not talking about morality or religion, I'm just talking about data.
My supposition was if you live together before marriage, then you've sort of practiced marriage and you'll be better equipped to deal with marriage.
Turns out, though, that couples that live together and things are not good are less likely to break up than couples who don't live together and things don't go well.
They do break up and should have broken up.
But people, it's almost as hard emotionally to break up if you live together as it is to break up if you're married.
And so a lot of people who shouldn't have married refused to break up because they were living together.
Anyway, I'm just telling you the one study that...
Went against common sense.
And when I heard it, I accepted it immediately because it made sense.
Alright, so now there's a new study.
The best predictor of happiness in America, marriage.
Americans who are married with children are now leading happier and more prosperous lives on average than men and women who are single and childless.
Is that statement surprising?
In an age that prizes individualism, workism, and a host of other self-centric isms above marriage and family, it may well be surprising.
But the reality is...
That nothing currently predicts happiness better than a good marriage.
So, of course, people have an immediate response.
I don't know if it's half, 40%, but a very large percent.
Divorce.
I've never found that to be a persuasive argument, however, against marriage.
You know my car analogy, right?
Does getting into a car accident, the fact that so many people do, does that mean you should never drive?
And there are a lot of people who die in car accidents.
I have another one that just hit me this morning in my thinking chamber.
It's called a shower.
And I realized something.
If that theory...
I won't marry because so many marriages end in divorce.
If that were applied to life, that's an argument against being born.
Because everybody who's born will die.
There you go.
You can't get more ending than death.
And I believe in an afterlife.
That's beside the point.
It does end this life.
There are so many other reasons, of course, to get married, including you'll grow up.
That's true even if you end up divorcing.
The truth is borne out yet again in new research from the University of Chicago, which found that marriage is the, quote, most important differentiator, unquote, of who is happy in America.
And that falling marriage rates are a chief reason why happiness has declined nationally.
They never talk about that.
Whenever they talk about there are so many depressed women in America, young women in particular, more than ever, they never mention the two biggest factors, religion and marriage.
There are not enough mental health professionals.
That's what they always say.
It's almost a joke.
The reason there are so many unhappy young people, especially women, is that there aren't enough mental health professionals.
Really?
Hmm.
That's like saying, I love analogies, that is like saying, The reason that there has been so much arson in our city is that there aren't enough firefighters.
Okay.
That was a valid analogy.
Do you agree or disagree?
1-8 Prager 776. I'm Dennis Prager.
This is the Happiness Hour.
Another study.
Happiest people are overwhelmingly married, and among them married with children.
Now, I want to pose a question to you.
A, do you agree?
B, do you have a grown child who is unhappy?
What is your theory as to why he or she is?
1-8 Prager 7-7-6 I think no religion and no family are the biggest two.
I have said there's nothing as good as a good marriage.
And there's nothing as bad as a bad marriage.
A lot of people don't have a particularly good or a particularly bad marriage.
And I would say there are things that they could do to improve it, but they're better off than if they were alone.
It's better to be alone than in a bad marriage.
I mean, one that is harming you.
I don't mean physically, just harming you.
I agree to that.
I've been divorced.
I understand it.
There was not a day in my life that I thought, maybe marriage isn't for me.
But I grew up in a society, America and Jewish, that placed almost a definitional element of being a man on being married.
That's what a man does.
He gets married.
You know, when a Jewish child is born, there are three wishes that are said universally.
The child is a Jewish child in Morocco, Russia, Uruguay, Chicago.
It is said when the child is born, And it is said of a boy or a girl.
It doesn't matter.
It has no impact.
May the child grow up for Torah, to study God's Word, the five books of Moses.
Of course, it's broader than that, the whole Bible, all the holy works, but especially the Torah.
To live it and study it.
Chupa means wedding canopy.
And Maasim Tovim means good deeds.
I would say that that is the single best advice for raising a happy and good human being.
Torah, Chupa, Maasim Tovim.
The Bible, the wedding canopy, and good deeds.
So that's the culture I grew up in.
I would have, if I didn't get married, I would have violated one of the three dominant principles of a good Jewish life.
Basically I was taught that's what God wants me to do.
Study His Word and live by it.
Get married and do good deeds.
You have a fourth?
You got a better idea than that one?
It'd be very interesting, what is the average family, including most Jews, who don't take Judaism particularly seriously?
Many don't take it at all seriously.
So, but Jew, non-Jew doesn't matter.
What would you say the three principles that you would wish upon every newborn would be?
It would be very interesting.
Here is what Judaism recommends.
What do you recommend?
I don't know what three people would come up with.
Maybe study hard, self-realize, I don't know what the third might be.
Yeah.
Get good grades.
There would be a definite aspect, some way of expressing self-realization.
1-8 Prager 776 Happiness Hour.
If you're not raised with...
Good guidelines in life.
You're not going to be a particularly happy person.
You don't get happy without guidelines.
That's my basic premise of the whole Happiness Hour, my happiness book.
Happiness is a serious problem, which if you like this hour, is a book you should read.
Even if you read a used copy.
I never think when I recommend my books, oh, I'm going to make a fortune of money.
Nobody writes a Bible commentary in order to get rich.
I have the opposite.
I made enough money otherwise to devote 10 years to writing a Bible commentary.
The toughest project of my life.
And I can't think of anything more rewarding.
Happiness?
Is an art.
And guidelines are critical.
What are the guidelines given for happiness to young people?
Alright, let me see what you think about all of this.
Okay, let's see.
In Washington State, Paula, hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
We're from the LA area, and we're visiting, and what's the first station we come to on our rental car is Dennis Prager.
Nice.
Right up our alley.
So anyway, we've raised four children.
My husband is Catholic, and I'm Baptist, and our children are a mixture.
Our oldest son is firstborn.
He is...
He's not happy.
He wants to get married, but in this day and age, I was telling the answer that he can't even say to a young lady that he works with, you look really nice today, for fear that she's going to head to HR. Oh, stay on with me.
That, you gave me a great subject for a male-female hour.
You know who recommends marriage?
PragerU.
It's a beautiful day That's right.
One of the things we do, and the left, Time just had a feature piece on Florida using PragerU, allowing teachers to use PragerU materials in class.
Yeah, we're really subversive.
We have videos on why you should get married.
This is fundraising month for PragerU.
Please make a note.
Just call PragerU.com or go to 833 PragerU.
Excuse me.
Call 833 PragerU or visit PragerU.com.
Everything we do is made free.
Because so many people donate.
Yeah, we are really subversive.
You should get married.
Alright, let's go back to Paula, Washington State.
On a rental car in L.A. What did you rent?
Ikea, or Ikea.
Wait, isn't Ikea...
No, no, it's a Kia, I'm sorry.
Swedish furniture?
Yeah.
So you're driving a table?
Yeah, it seems like it.
It's a little box.
It's a Kia.
Oh, I get it.
It's a Kia.
Yeah, there you go.
That's great.
Are you in the car right now?
Yes, sir.
I hope the air conditioning is on.
It is.
Alright, so you have a son.
How old is he?
He's going to be 39. Alright, so you say he wants to get married.
Yes.
Right.
And do you believe that he was pursuing marriage?
Since, let's say, his early, mid-twenties?
I think so.
He went to school, of course, got his degree, and the world started changing.
He's a firstborn, so, you know, I coddled him too much.
And should have pushed him out.
I should have pushed him out.
How long did he stay with you?
Probably until he...
Mid, maybe 30. Wow.
And so he's, you know, he's a special young man.
He's got a heart of gold, and he would do anything for you.
But in this day and age, you know, I mean, with everything and this Me Too movement, he's nervous.
He's really nervous.
Well, wait.
He's nervous.
You said he was nervous about complimenting a girl's looks or a woman's looks.
Yes.
What else is he nervous about?
Well, I don't know.
Just being a firstborn, all the hang-ups that a cuddling mother can give him, I guess.
Well, that's not nervous.
That's hang-ups.
That's not the same as being nervous.
Yeah.
Anxieties.
You know, he's...
Has he ever had an enduring relationship?
No.
Yeah, that's why I asked the question.
I had a suspicion.
Well, you know what?
I wish I could beat him.
I do.
I'd smack him around.
I really enjoyed this woman. - It reaffirms a relatively recent conviction.
I've always suspected it, but now it's a conviction.
It's better to be too tough a parent than too loving a parent.
Of course, the idea of being too loving is like it's impossible for people in the post-60s psychotherapeutic-influenced age to believe.
How could you be too loving?
I'm not sure there's anything you can't be too of.
It's good to be thin.
Too thin, you're anorexic.
Bad news.
Yeah, you can get too much sleep.
Apparently you could drink too much water.
Sleep and water are good for you.
It's so interesting.
That I did not have a particularly loving upbringing.
But I had a very secure upbringing.
And I had a demanding upbringing.
Yes, I guess what I just said to you.
Torah, the wedding canopy, and good deeds.
It's interesting the word love isn't in there.
That's what people have lacked.
Guidelines.
That's why I do my radio show.
And that's why we have PragerU.
Please donate.
Let Dennis be Dennis.
That was the key in my life.
My parents had to realize Let Dennis be Dennis worked out.
I'm Dennis Prager.
This is the third hour of Friday.
Whatever's on your mind about you, about me, about life, about death, about fountain pens, audio equipment, photography equipment, classical music, and cigars.
And now, enjoy the musical prelude.
Or interlude.
But it's a lewd.
All right, really nice, really nice. - Yes.
Which raises a question, doesn't it?
If there's prelude and interlude, is there an afterlude?
Or postlude?
Don't think so.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the hour.
This is how I began radio.
People calling in on whatever's on their mind.
And I always remind you, if I let you go without taking your call, don't take it personally.
Of course it's not personal.
You think I don't like you?
It just may not be something I'm aching to talk about.
Or I may not know anything about it.
Let's say you call and ask me, Dennis, what is your favorite flower arrangement?
What I would do in that case is I would immediately ask Sean, whose passion for flowers is like mine for truth.
Yep, what's the name of your dog?
Fergus.
There you go.
It is not well known.
Fergus is a South American flower.
Oh, God.
Oh, God.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, we return to Earth.
All right, let's see.
Okay, Joe in Los Angeles.
Hello.
Mr. Prager?
Si.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for everything you do.
That's very kind.
Happy birthday.
Thank you again.
I'm pretty close to your age, not really, I mean about 10 years away, but you are a father figure to me.
By the way, I understand that, even though I don't know if I could have even physically been your father at 10 years of age.
I understand a man not much older than oneself being a father figure.
And I want to say another thing about that.
Forgive me, because I didn't think you expected me to comment on that much.
Every man should aspire to be a father figure to men who are younger than him.
I agree.
Okay, go ahead.
Sir, I have a request for you.
I don't know if it is a request, so I should be doing it.
I heard a few of your talks on the synagogue, and one of them was pretty profound.
Seven questions, whether God has affected you.
And that killed me.
Anyway, I would like you to, if you could, put some of those sermons or talks at the synagogue that you do.
I think that's a great idea.
I'm going to bounce that off some of the people who work with me, and I agree with you.
Those sermons every week that I give at synagogue are very important.
I know it sounds like I'm bragging.
I don't really care.
I know they're important.
And you're absolutely right about that.
By the way, where were you from originally?
I was born in Mexico.
Don't hold that against me.
That is a riot.
But I'm about 3,000% American.
I get crazy about this country and now I'm crying every day.
You are a kindred spirit, my friend.
That is the highest compliment I could pay someone.
You're clearly a kindred spirit.
You know, in that regard, folks, I tell you what, I always knew this, but there are two forms of knowledge in life, and I can't give a good word, a good description, but there are two forms of knowledge.
There are things you know, And then there are things you really know, you really understand.
For example, when you're 20, you know you'll die.
But it doesn't really register.
When you hit 70, it registers.
It could register at 60, 50. In fact, it does register at 50 because that's when men have midlife crises.
My God.
I didn't reach anything near where I... I assumed I would at this age.
And I'm not getting any younger.
That's the genesis, I think, of most midlife crises.
But there are things that I always knew and now I know in my gut.
Individuals matter.
Much, much more.
than the group they belong to.
This was the American promise.
The individual matters.
And now your race matters.
Your quote-unquote gender matters.
Every progressive idea is actually reactionary.
It's a big one.
So here's a man from Mexico.
I'm a Jew from New York.
I suspect we have everything important in common.
And that which we don't have in common doesn't matter.
It just doesn't matter.
Okay.
Let's go.
Sarasota, Florida.
Robert, hello.
Hey, hello.
Thank you for taking my call.
So, I'll rewind back to the riots, George Floyd thing, and the protests, and then FIFA. I was told, I'm a 55-year-old white man that raised two college kids.
I've been gainfully employed for 40 years of my life, and I've worked extremely hard.
But I was told that I'm an angry, white, privileged, Man.
And it's been wearing on me for quite some time.
I'm a bit befuddled about that because I consider myself to be very happy.
So my question to you is, is it possible to be happy and be a racist, or do you have to be this fist-clenching, angry person to hate another race?
I don't know if I drop into that slot, and it really bothered me to think that that's what mainstream media has told me.
That's what they're telling you.
That's correct.
It's a sick, sick world, the world of the left.
It's sick.
My view of people who are race-preoccupied, which we used to call racist, now we call people who are not preoccupied with race, racist.
It's like we call men, women, and women, men.
The left sows chaos.
It is, people who are truly racist, I don't think are happy.
I have a different, but I have a different term for them.
They're losers.
And it's definitional that they're losers.
Because the only way they can prop up their own Self-esteem and worth is by saying I belong to a worthy race.
I'm nothing, but because I'm black or because I'm white I'm something.
Racism is for losers.
Leftism is for losers.
And traditional racism is for losers.
Anti-Semitism is for losers.
I'm a nothing, but if I could blame my nothingness on Jews, I'd become something.
That's what it's all about.
All of this is the doctrines of the loser.
These are some of the ideas we promote at PragerU.
This is fundraising month, August, because my birthday was in August.
It was two days ago.
Please help us out.
As I've always said, there are three types of good people.
Those who fight, those who don't fight, and those who help the fighters.
Helping the fighters is as good as fighting.
PragerU.com I'm Dennis.
You know, these last comments I made about racism is for losers.
It's so important what I just said.
I actually had a thought.
I'd like somebody...
I'd like to...
I mean, this is a spontaneous thought.
I mean, this may not be feasible.
I would like somebody to go over...
Sean, how many years of my show are recorded?
He has every episode since June of 2007. And best ofs before that.
Well, I would like best ofs.
I'd like somebody to listen to every show since 2007. And take out...
Are you paying them?
Yeah, I would have to pay them, yeah.
Absolutely.
And, you know, I don't know if it's feasible.
I'm just thinking aloud.
Because I thought when we went to break, that insight is really important.
If you get your meaning from group membership as opposed to your own worthiness, that's a problem.
That's why I understood it, but I remember reacting not well.
I was in college when I first heard, black is beautiful.
I was always an individual lover.
That's why I remember...
This is a great story to share with you.
I don't think I ever shared this story.
One of my high school teachers in my yeshiva, Jewish religious school, was an Israeli, A Jew.
And he was originally from Eastern Europe.
And went through, his family went through the Holocaust.
Many members of his family were murdered by the Nazis.
And I'll never forget, I was just out of high school and I visited him in Israel.
And he picked me up at the airport in a Volkswagen.
Which may not mean anything to most of you, but for many decades after the Holocaust, many Jews would not buy German goods.
And especially the Volkswagen, because it was basically created by Hitler.
It means people's car, Volkswagen.
And I said that to him, and it's always been...
A good thing in my life, I ask what I wonder about.
I don't hide it.
So I said to him, I've got to tell you, I'm surprised you have a Volkswagen.
And he said, well, there's a big boycott of Israel.
Every Japanese car maker, for example, other than Subaru, boycotts Israel because of the Arab embargo.
Volkswagen does not do that.
And they're helping living Jews.
And I'm not thinking of their participation in the past, but what they're doing now.
And I judge people individually, not by their national or any other group membership.
So, you know, the motto of my life is there are only two races, the decent and the indecent, also taken from a Jew, went through the Holocaust.
Viktor Frankl, one of the ten books that most influenced me, Man's Search for Meaning, was asked if he hated the German race after members of his family were murdered by the Germans.
And he said, no, there are only two races, the decent and the indecent.
That's how I look at the world.
I have met so many spectacular individuals of every conceivable group.
And I don't care what group they're in.
It's a very rich way to go through life.
Okay, do we have...
No, no, we're not ready for that.
Okay, cool.
Life is good.
Okay, let's see.
Where is the person who doesn't agree with me on love?
Oh, there we go.
Rose in Chicago.
Hello.
Oh, hi, Dennis.
Rose, I love you, Rose.
Oh, thank you.
I love you, too.
Okay, go ahead.
What I wanted to say was, when I had my first baby, I was just the happiest woman on the earth, I think.
I found my role in life, and I love my children.
I love my grandchildren now, and I love them more than my life.
And I think that you can't have too much love.
I mean, God is love.
But you have to have wisdom as well.
And if you love your children, you're going to want what is best for them.
I was very strict with my children.
I homeschooled them.
I was very structured.
They had their chores.
When they were old enough, they had jobs.
They're very productive adults now.
Three out of my four kids have their own families and just such a blessing.
So what was the ratio of strictness to love emoting?
Well, I...
I just don't even know if I could come up with that answer.
Right, I understand.
But the fact that you're even thinking about it, it means we probably agree with each other.
When I said you can love your children too much, I didn't mean internally.
I meant in the way you express your parenthood, your parenting.
Okay, we return momentarily.
Flawless living bitter taste.
The loneliest monk keeps his chance to himself.
The loneliest monk altered memories on a shelf.
I can't stop smiling.
The loneliest monk used chopsticks to eat ice cream.
Is that the best?
He uses chopsticks to eat ice cream and see things that are unseen.
This is so weird.
It is awesome.
I discovered this at the Munich, Germany audio show.
A few months ago.
The sad part is my wife hates it.
I don't mean doesn't like it.
She hates it.
It might be the greatest marital rift in nearly 20 years over that song.
So I want to ask you, Sean McConnell, Love 10, Hate 1, what's your number?
Nine!
All right!
I'll bet you more men like it than women.
I really do believe that.
The loneliest monk.
You know the guy who does this?
Because you were familiar with him, right?
Victor Wooten?
Is he a character?
He's an accomplished bassist.
Oh, the thing has such a rich bass anyway.
I'm going to summarize your stuff.
I can't believe it's the end of the show.
It bugs me.
Indianapolis, Janet, what do you think is the obligation to parents when they have cut you off?
If they've cut you off, I don't understand what your obligation is.
I guess you make some effort to undo it, but my...
My annoyance is with children who cut off parents.
Let's see now.
All right.
David in Alexandria has the same view on the Second Amendment.
He's disappointed that I don't understand that it protects the first.
I do understand it 100%.
My point is, you don't need the Second Amendment unless the first is already violated.
The first thing tyrants do is suppress free speech.
The second is take your guns away.
Free speech is everything.
That's why the left hates it, because they can't survive free speech.
They cannot.
That's why all those professors protested my coming to Arizona State.
Watch my speech there.
And my friends, it's August.
Please contribute to PragerU.
We're really, really making a difference.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
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