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Hi, everybody.
I'm Dennis Prager, and it has been quite a week.
I want to thank the terrific folks.
I'll do it by name a little later.
I want to get into some issues.
I have spoken in Prescott, Arizona on Tuesday night, which is two hours north of Phoenix.
Gorgeous area, great weather.
Then I spoke in Minneapolis, and then I spoke last night in Chicago.
So you'll understand why it was not possible flying city to city to give these talks for the stations that carry me.
This is a service that I provide with love, by the way, because I love my stations.
And I do feel that the love is reciprocated, I will acknowledge.
So anyway, hi there, everybody.
I did not catch the debate because I was giving a speech in Minneapolis.
I will talk about it next week.
What I do want to talk about is the President of the United States, the previous president, in a mugshot.
I salute President Trump for that great mugshot and his suit and tie and a furious look on his face.
To think that he is being indicted, that he's arrested.
Foretelling the Secretary of State of Georgia to find votes that he believed were missing is a fraud.
The actual words elude me because fraud, wrong, immoral, chaotic, none of them suffice to explain the damage to the country done by this district attorney.
He's a prosecutor in Atlanta.
I read the transcript of the president's phone call with the Secretary of State of Georgia.
There was nothing wrong.
Find Me Votes was not manufacture votes.
Cheat.
It had nothing to do with cheating.
It had to do with the president's belief that he was robbed of a few thousand votes.
And so we said, all you need to do is find those few thousand votes.
You may think the president is completely wrong, out of his mind.
That, of course, Democrats wouldn't cheat.
What, are you kidding?
The idea that Democrats would cheat in an election?
Oh, my God.
It's almost like saying the earth is round.
So, fine, you believe that it is utterly nonsense, utter nonsense, lying even, if you will, because that means...
Usually, that the individual does not believe what he is saying.
There is no reason to believe that he does not believe that he was cheated.
In the history of the United States, no incumbent president has received more votes in his second run and lost.
Why would he think he was cheated?
He went to bed, leaving in various states, and woke up behind.
Since when do we have overnight counting?
This is a relatively new thing in the United States.
When we had paper ballots, we knew within hours, in virtually every single instance except the infamous case of Florida and the hanging chads.
The President of the United States is arrested.
It's purely political.
Of course the people who are doing it think that they're acting morally.
I don't know of a case in history of any movement.
That did damage to its society that thought, you know what?
We're really acting immorally.
That's why I am not a big fan of the belief that what you think matters much.
It matters very little because the number of people who have done evil while thinking good thoughts is gigantic!
Virtually every Western supporter of the greatest genocidal movement in history, communism, had good thoughts.
Equality of the working class.
The demolition of capitalism.
They weren't animated.
The people who gave Stalin the secrets to the nuclear bomb, were they animated by bad thoughts?
No, but they did incredibly bad deeds.
So the fact that the Democrats justify all the...
Society crushing things that they do means nothing.
This is what happens when you are guided only by your conscience and not by a code.
People need codes.
My constant proof is speed limits.
Why don't we have speed limit?
Whatever your conscience dictates.
How come?
How come we don't do that?
Speed limit.
Whatever your conscience dictates.
Why would none of you believe that that's a good idea?
You believe that there needs to be a code.
And for morality, that code needs to come from something higher than a human being.
Whatever your conscience dictates.
Yes, that's what we now have.
Your conscience says you're a boy and you're really a girl.
Then you're a boy.
That's it.
There's no reality.
It's an interesting question whether this, what is happening to Donald Trump will garner him more support.
I did not particularly want him to run because I had doubts, I still have doubts whether he can win, although if he runs I will campaign avidly because the defeat of the Democratic Party in any election is a net good for the society.
But right now, I think that the message has to be given that what you are doing to this ex-president has even those who are ambivalent about Donald Trump in his camp.
Now, the only thing that bothers me about that is maybe, maybe, I can't know, but maybe that is what the Democrats want.
They want to ensure That he is nominated because they may believe that he is among the only Republicans that can lose against Joe Biden or against Kamala Harris or against Gavin Newsom.
So that's a tough one to answer.
Are they doing this in order to ensure that Donald Trump is nominated?
There's no way to know, as I said, but that, in any event, is what could be the case.
In any event, yesterday was a very dark day in American history.
One of the darkest days of American history, I will say.
Politically, probably the darkest.
Morally, I mean...
There were a lot of dark days, obviously.
In the treatment, in some ganged attack on a black area, or for that matter, Italian area, see our video on Columbus Day, which was created in order to say to Italian-Americans, we apologize and we celebrate you.
Because they were attacked en masse.
I forgot what city.
It's quite a story.
I mean, we've had dark moral days, but we've never had as dark a political day.
And it's also a dark moral day.
Yep.
You know, the entire time, until this moment, anybody who advocated ivermectin for early COVID, Or even as a preventative for COVID, that will help lessen the symptoms, the intensity.
Or hydroxychloroquine, called conspiracy mongers.
Anti-science.
Well, it turns out ivermectin is extremely safe and apparently, as I read to you last week in a major study, somewhat effective.
Vis-a-vis COVID. I took ivermectin.
I announced it on the air.
I ought to take it for about a half a year or more.
I took hydroxychloroquine with zinc for more than a year.
I didn't get vaccinated.
And we were called every word in the book, people in the book of epithets, let's put it that way.
Yeah.
I don't remember that.
It's the pandemic of the unvaccinated.
One of the great lies of modern times.
Why am I mentioning this?
So many things that we said, we being conservatives, or if you will, non-leftists, turned out to be accurate.
And the epithets hurled at us turned out to be just epithets hurled at us.
How do you know that won't happen one day?
With regard to the counting of votes in the 2020 election, as I said, I am agnostic.
I don't know for certain that the election was overturned by cheating.
I know for certain there was cheating.
That's a given.
Maybe that will happen one day.
Since virtually everything else the left has accused people of being crazy for saying has turned out to be accurate.
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Whenever I'm down, I call on you, my friend.
I call on you, my friend.
It's not the America I grew up in or any of you grew up in, the arresting of a former president, and the charges are so flimsy.
They're made up.
They're made up.
A phone call to the Secretary of State of Georgia.
The president believed that he was...
Cheated out of votes, so he said, find him.
And that is worthy of going to prison?
In my opinion, whether Democrat or Republican, you have to commit crimes of such severity that there is no question but that the country would understand why you went to prison.
But the Democrats don't care about half this country.
They have contempt for me and for you.
Deep contempt.
47, what is it, 37 professors at Arizona State University said I was a white nationalist in a public letter.
Not one will debate me, of course, because they're cowards.
They know that they would lose in a debate with me, with Charlie Kirk, Jordan Peterson, with Ben Shapiro, with Dave Rubin, with Heather McDonald.
There are so many names.
Larry Elder.
The thought of Larry Elder debating any of these guys, especially on racial matters.
These people could not hold their heads up for the rest of their career.
That's why they won't debate.
I've invited them onto my show.
Tell my listeners why I'm a white nationalist.
All they know how to do is smear.
Ever since Stalin called Trotsky a fascist.
That's even earlier than that.
It's when Lenin called anyone who opposed communists the Red Terror.
Nobody knows anything about the Red Terror.
The millions of people slaughtered by the communists after the Russian Revolution.
Not even including Stalin's Gulag.
God, what people don't know.
I've known this since I was a kid.
People are not preoccupied with evil.
I don't know what there are.
People are preoccupied with all different sorts of things.
But evil is not one of them.
That's why my favorite verse in the Bible is those of you who love God must hate evil.
And it's a command, actually.
The Hebrew verbs have a command form.
In English we don't, so we have to add must.
But that's what it is.
It's a command.
If you don't hate evil, you don't love God.
So I would have to say, if you don't hate communism, you don't love God.
Because communism is pure, undiluted evil.
And every time it's been enacted by a state, it resulted in vast torture, deprivation of elementary human rights, and mass murder.
Why doesn't anybody going to almost any college in America know this?
Because the left is still protecting communism.
That's how I knew I wasn't a leftist as a kid.
I thought I was a liberal, but I knew I wasn't a leftist.
Because I hated evil.
It's built into me.
I hated bullies at school.
I used to beat them up because I was the tallest kid in the class I could.
My father was called up by the school principals.
School principal about that.
And I explained to him it was a bully I hit.
I don't remember his reaction, but I don't think he punished me.
My father fought bullies.
He was in the Navy during World War II, and he fought the Japanese, who were almost indistinguishable from the Nazis in the way they treated subjugated populations.
Of course, the Holocaust was unique to the Nazis.
But other activities, like live medical experiments on people without anesthetics.
I don't know if the Japanese did more, but they did at least as much as the Nazis did.
It's the great explainer.
People don't hate evil.
What the left does is it doesn't fight real evil.
It fights make-believe evils.
They didn't fight communism.
They fight America.
Ah, that's the great enemy.
America.
Systemic racism in America.
Yes.
Transphobia.
This is it.
This is what they do.
They make up evils because the left doesn't fight real evil.
It is one of the two, three keys to understanding the left.
When people don't fight real evil, they fight make-believe evils.
That's what it is.
That's what I wrote a couple of years ago.
What is it?
The right fights evil, the left fights statues.
Yes, made-up evils.
That's what we're about.
You don't think that men should be allowed to compete in women's sports?
You're a transphobe.
What the hell is a transphobe?
It shows you how they dominate the language, that every one of you knows what a transphobe is.
In the history of the English language, until five years ago, was the word transphobe ever used?
How come, by the way, how come there's no Christianophobe?
There are anti-Semites, those who hate Jews, and there are Islamophobes, those who hate Muslims.
Why is there no word for those who hate Christians?
Does nobody hate Christians?
Christians are, I believe, the most persecuted religious minority in terms of death right now.
The number of Christians slaughtered in West Africa alone.
Now maybe the Uyghurs of China raised the Muslim total, but that's isolated to China.
But there's no word for it.
It's a great example of how the left owns the language.
And this is what your kids, this is the language your kids hear.
I wonder how many parents have been accused by college students or even high school students, sons or daughters, of being a transphobe.
I'll tell you this, if your kid accuses you of being a transphobe, I must say my heart goes out to you.
You've sort of lost that kid.
At least for the time being, there's always hope that they will leave the cult.
But right now, that's truly an example of a brainwashed, truly brainwashed child.
We return.
In a nutshell, President Trump was complaining about two things in his call to Raffensperger, the Secretary of State of President Trump was complaining about two things in his call to Sure.
People who claimed they went to the polling place to vote and were told they could not cast a ballot because they had already voted absentee or by mail.
The other was the number which he told Raffensperger he and his team had reason to believe was in the tens of thousands.
Well above the margin of victory of Joe Biden.
So they were cast illegitimately.
For instance, 18,325 votes that came from vacant addresses.
They're not allowed to be counted, Trump said.
He cited 4,925 votes cast by people from out of state.
So he was certain that if you threw...
Out the illegitimate ballots, he won.
Okay, so you could say he's wrong.
What did he do that's criminal?
Let alone worthy of the unprecedented action of putting a former president and the head of the opposition in jail.
Of arresting them.
Potentially putting them in prison.
See...
You know, I'm preoccupied, have been my whole life, with the issues of good and evil.
So I have a word to say about the American left.
They're particularly despicable because they grew up in a good country.
See, when I think about the evil of, let's say, the communists in Russia, they grew up in a very bad society, Tsarist Russia.
They lived in absolute economic, social chaos.
This is no excuse.
These people were...
Lenin is one of the most grotesquely evil human beings to have ever lived.
If you believe in the devil, a picture of Lenin might be a good picture of what the devil looks like.
It's not just Stalin.
But there is a certain excuse because they didn't come from a good place.
The American left comes from a good place.
The United States of America, the freest country in the history of the world.
So there's much less of an excuse to be scum in the United States than there was to be like that in Russia, let's say.
Or in Germany, where there was no tradition of freedom and liberty.
I don't know what produces an American leftist.
I'm not talking liberal.
Every single time I mention this, I distinguish between left and liberal.
I only wish liberals did.
How do you produce such people?
How do you produce in a society that supposedly values education people who believe it is fair for biological men to compete in women's sports?
How are they produced?
See?
It's a quandary.
It's a conundrum.
Or as Churchill said about the Kremlin, it is a riddle wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a mystery.
Or did he say a mystery wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a riddle?
But that's what the left is.
What produces such people?
How does a kind society produce cruel people?
Their contempt for truth is so deep.
Every single major news organ has now attacked PragerU in the last month because Florida has announced that teachers cannot be fired if they...
They're not even mandated to use PragerU videos.
Do you know how many of them...
First of all, they have watched, I assume, maybe one, maybe, maybe, maybe one of the thousand...
Or so videos that we have up.
They'd be blown away at the kindness and decency and wholesomeness of our videos.
But they hate the wholesome.
They hate it.
Wholesome to a leftist is white supremacy.
Yeah?
They hate the word.
They never use it.
You know that a lot of them say, oh, as an example of the terrible stuff that PragerU has put out is they have a video.
Did slavery cause the Civil War?
Or was slavery the reason for the Civil War?
They didn't even watch it.
They didn't even watch it, these liars at these major newspapers.
I'll name them.
The video by a professor who's also a Catholic priest at Notre Dame, the whole video is that slavery was the cause of the Civil War.
They only looked at the title, and they made an assumption.
They lie.
Because truth is not a left-wing value.
I swear before the holy God of the universe, I believe that truth is not a left-wing value.
This is not a smear.
It is a fact.
It's the happy, happy, happy, happy hour from Chicago.
It's the happy, happy, happy, happy air.
Yeah, Chicago, one of the happiest cities in the country.
That's an interesting question.
What is the happiest city in the country?
It's probably some city none of us have ever heard of.
Hi, everybody.
Happiness Hour.
Dennis Prager here.
I endeavor not to miss Happiness Hours.
If I'm not on a Friday, I feel I've cheated you.
That I've cheated you.
My friends, happiness.
A guy came over to me last night, spoke to a nice crowd here in Chicago, and it was really, it's so touching to me, because at almost every talk, they have a meet and greet where people come over and have me sign a book and take a picture with me.
And people don't have an opportunity to speak to me long, because I have to...
Obviously take a picture with somebody else or some other couple.
But they do get a chance to say something.
And I'm very touched when people tell me two things.
Well, more than two things, actually.
A lot of things touch me.
But specific to the radio show is that the male-female hour has really improved their marriage and that the happiness hour has changed their life.
So a young, I'd say the guy was 40, and he said, you changed my life.
And of course, I want to know how.
I'm not interested so much in the compliment.
I'm touched by it.
But what interests me is to know what touched you.
And he said, you're telling us that happiness is a choice and a moral obligation.
It changed my life.
So I often forget how life-changing...
These ideas are.
Because they're so part of my life.
And I've said them so often.
So I sort of forget that for many people, hearing it the first time or reading it the first time is life-changing.
As it should be.
It's meant to change your life.
So the importance that I attach to the Happiness Hour is greater than ever because I always knew how important happiness is.
But now I realize It's civilization creating or destroying.
My motto that the happy make the world better and the unhappy make it worse, you know, it sounds like a throwaway line because so many of you have heard it so often, but it's not a throwaway line.
If all Americans were happy, we would have none of this chaos.
Happy people don't think they're the other sex.
Just to give you one example.
Happy people are grateful to live in the freest country that was ever made.
Happy people build, they don't destroy.
Happiness is a big deal.
Anyway, my topic today is childhood and adulthood.
Raising children is the most complex thing that most people do.
In some senses, it's easier to chase cold fusion, apparently a very complex idea in physics, than it is to raise a happy, healthy human being.
And sometimes it's not even possible because sometimes you are battling physiological forces that you can't overcome.
So one aspect of raising children that I want to talk to you about with regard to happiness is something I have discussed on a number of occasions.
I'm doing a variation on it in this Happiness Hour.
So I have asked, which sounds almost funny or even silly when people first hear it.
Does a happy childhood equip you well to be a happy adult?
And most people would think, well, of course it does.
And one of the reasons they would say this is, well, what's the alternative?
An unhappy childhood?
That's going to make you a happy adult?
Well, as usual, things are quite complex.
My general feeling is that It's not good to have an unhappy childhood, but it depends on how unhappy it is.
And it's certainly nice to have a happy childhood, but it depends on what price was paid for that happiness.
So my subject today is, did your childhood prepare you for life?
And here is where I think a lot of people have ended up unhappy because parents so guarded their children from any possible unhappiness that the child ultimately was not prepared for adulthood.
Life is difficult.
Life is difficult for just about every human being.
Obviously, for some, way more than for others, clearly.
But you've got to be prepared for it.
My fear is that many, many parents of the last 50 years, not just of this generation, were so interested in having their children have happy childhoods that they didn't prepare them for adulthood.
Think of the emotional energy that so many parents have invested in having their child win in sports.
I mean, I tell you, I look with disbelief when I see parents screaming at umpires at Little League games.
Are you kidding me?
I'll tell you this, I mean, you may think less of me, but I... I've always believed in revealing as much as possible about my own self and let the chips fall where they may.
I was ambivalent, to be honest, about my kids' teams winning when they were little.
On the one hand, I had the natural inclination of wanting my child's team to win.
On the other hand, I remember vividly, I mean, this was clear to me, will it be better for my child in the long run if they lose?
And learn how to deal with losing.
What do you think is more important for adult happiness?
Learning how to face losing or always winning?
It's a rhetorical question.
Every one of you knows the answer.
It is much better for a child to learn how to deal with losing.
Than to keep winning.
And yet, so many parents want their kids to keep winning.
Were you raised that way?
Did you raise your children that way?
1-8 Prager 776. 877-243-7776.
I had to...
Oh, very nice.
Took a little long.
I would say that on that one, Sean gets, on a 1 to 10, a 6. Yeah, and you know what he said in my headphones?
That's fair.
He just added, I'm used to losing.
That was good.
That was witty.
On a scale of 1 to 10, in terms of wittiness, Sean is a 9. That's pretty damn impressive.
In most other areas, he's a six.
But witty?
Again, fair.
One of the joys of listening to men's dialogue, much more than women's dialogue with women, because women don't do this to each other.
It's just...
For those of you who actually think you can change sexes, I'm curious, can you do a brain transplant?
You can cut off breasts and you can cut off a penis, but you can't cut off a brain, and the brains are different.
1-8 Prager 776. This is a big issue.
Parents have not...
Since World War II, since the parents of World War II, even that generation, they did not think of preparing their children for life's difficulties.
They thought of giving their child the happiest possible childhood.
I think that was a big mistake.
That's the subject of this Happiness Hour.
Your reactions in terms of you as a parent or you as a child will invigorate the discussion.
And I can't give a more important message.
I can give equally important, but not more important message than...
The task of a parent in raising a child is to prepare the child for adulthood and to be a responsible and good adult.
You're not raising a child.
You are raising an adult.
People forget that.
So they have been since World War II's parents.
So this goes back a long time.
Parents' primary concern was to give their children, like the...
Generation of World War II and the Depression, their motto was, I want to give my child everything I didn't have.
I was in my 20s and I was already lecturing.
I used to say all the time to these people in the audiences, yes, you gave us everything you didn't have, but you didn't give us everything you did have.
And I specifically thought love of country, religious value system.
And the results are the sickest generation in American history, the baby boomers.
I'm a baby boomer, so I don't believe every member of the generation was sick, obviously.
But a generation that adopted the idea, don't trust anyone over 30, is not a healthy generation.
A generation that produced people who spelled America with a K like it was a fascist country did not produce a lot of healthy people.
Wanting to give your child a happy childhood is not the primary aim in your life.
It should not be.
I know it sounds counterintuitive because you love your children as I love mine.
It's so hard to battle that instinct.
I want them to be happy at every moment.
But it's like not giving your child an inoculation against the problems of life that will ensue inevitably in adulthood and even in adolescence.
For very few people is adolescence a particularly happy time.
That's why I said I was ambivalent about my kids winning.
In the sports that they played.
Every parent wants their kid's team to win, but I knew that if they lost, it would help them later in life more than if they won.
All right, that's the subject, my friends.
How you were raised and how you raised your kids in this regard, and do you agree?
Do you not agree?
Tampa, Florida, and Dale.
Hello, Dale.
Oh, hi, Dennis.
My gosh, I wish it was you and me sitting across a hamburger or something just doing this chat.
You're speaking my language, my friend.
I have six children, and one of the biggest things that I could ever teach them was exactly what you're saying, how to fail.
Not necessarily how to fail, but how to respond to failure.
Yes, exactly.
Rather than wrapping them in bubble wrap...
You simply give them a safety net.
They're going to fall.
You stand back and you watch them.
How do they react?
Because the problem is when they leave the house and then they fall and fail and you're not there, that's a whole other topic.
And so I encourage them to try all kinds of things.
I wanted them to be successful as adults.
When you don't need me, I know I've finished my job.
None of my children have come back.
I'm knocking on wood.
They have jobs.
Four of them are business owners.
My son was on the U.S. national gymnastics team, went to world championships.
I mean, these guys are successful, but they know what they need to do.
How did you know to do this?
I learned how to work.
No, I mean, how did you learn how to raise your kids this way?
I would have to say that religious background, of course, played a big part.
Alright, so let's go deeper.
How did religion tell you that?
Boy.
You know what, Dennis?
I guess I haven't broken it down that far.
This is just something that I... Right, right.
You know, listen, you're a kindred spirit.
I really adore you.
Thank you.
It's a very important thing about breaking things down.
That's what I do in my own life.
I do it for a living.
I break things down.
I think that religion properly understood does, in fact, teach you that.
It would be very important to figure out how, why, why does it do that?
And I'm not even 100% certain.
I asked him because I was curious to know what his answer might be.
I mean, a secular parent can raise a non-spoiled child as well.
I fully acknowledge that.
I think that religion helps.
In that it teaches a child that he or she has an accountability.
That is if your religious upbringing or the way you raise your children in religion does teach that.
I think here, too, a lot of people have done a big mistake in their religiosity speaking of God as just one who loves people and not one who judges people.
Thank you.
I don't think that that's a good way to raise people.
God loves you is not the only message.
And it's not more important than God judges you.
I have been somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but really seriously, actually encouraging my colleagues at PragerU to...
Have a whole series of billboards like that.
Something to the effect, God doesn't only love you, He judges you.
That helps raise a person when you think you're accountable, so you're not so narcissistic.
When you think you only have to answer to your conscience, the odds are you won't be a good person.
That's the way it works.
All the people who've done bad things have clear consciences.
Okay, everybody, happiness hour.
Dennis Prager here, coming to you from Chicago, Illinois, where it is very humid.
Cracks me up when I give talks in these cities.
So people say to me during the Q&A period, how come you still live in California?
To which I have a puzzled response.
And why exactly have you stayed in Illinois?
As the two nights ago, same question, and I looked at them, and why exactly are you staying in Minnesota?
All right, happiness hour.
Did you...
Were you preoccupied with your children being happy or your children growing up to learn how to handle life?
And I use my baseball or football, it doesn't matter, but sport analogy.
Parents so much want their kids' team to win.
Or if it's a solo sport like tennis, for them to win.
But in the ultimate...
Analysis.
They might be a happier adult if they learn how to deal with losing.
Which I did at a very young age and has helped me immensely in my life, I might add.
My parents were not preoccupied with my being happy.
I will say that.
And I'm laughing only because that wasn't their preoccupation.
The preoccupation was making me a responsible adult.
Okay, let's see here.
Okay.
Well, that's severe.
Wow, we've got some very interesting stuff.
Okay, Virginia, in your Belinda and my Belinda, California.
Hello.
Hi, Dennis.
I'm a first-time caller.
My husband's an avid listener, so thank you for this.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
Hold on a minute.
Your husband is an avid listener?
Does that imply that you're not?
No, I've been listening, but he listens more.
I retired, so he listens when he's going out in the field.
He just retired.
So we listen together, and I listen separate, and he listens separate.
So no, we have your books, and we love you.
I completely agree with you.
My background is my childhood.
My mom was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, never got treatment, so I didn't have a happy childhood.
So there's a difference between, I think, having a healthy, happy environment to grow up in and then teaching your children, we have one son, how to equip yourself to deal with life and adversity.
And I think out of what I went through, and my husband is compatible with this, but we taught our son that, you know, you need to learn how to deal with things.
And that's, in fact, he got diagnosed with cancer and he's fine, thank God.
Now, but in high school, and he went to a Christian high school, and his theology teacher happened to the day that we told my son he got cancer for the second time.
He had a class on adversity.
And so we had a conversation about adversity and also about God and how, you know, God helps in our faith.
And I also agree with you what you said about judge.
And there's a higher power that you answer to.
And I think that's a big part of what is going on today in our society that's bad.
And our children and adults, it's just so interesting.
So let me review here.
You have one child?
Yes.
Yeah, we went through infertility for like six and a half years.
All right.
No, no, no.
That's okay.
I just wanted to get it clear in my mind.
So you have one child.
How old is he now?
He's 33. He's under the sheriff's purview, so he's very successful.
Okay.
How is his health?
His health?
Are you talking about my husband or my son?
My husband?
So both.
My husband's the one that was diagnosed with cancer.
Oh, okay, okay.
It was your husband.
Right, and at the time in high school, we had a conversation about adversity.
Oh, so okay.
So your son dealt with the adversity of a parent who might die.
Yes, exactly.
Well, that is adversity.
So is your son a relatively happy person?
Yes.
And is he married?
No, he's not.
He's not married.
He kind of threw himself in the academics, but he's a good-hearted child.
All right, so I want you to have him call me so that I can yell at him about not getting married.
Oh!
I don't know.
He's waiting for the right person, and I don't know why.
I know.
Oh, my God.
Oh, the magic word.
Waiting.
No, but he also wants a Christian girl.
Is he pursuing the right person?
Not is he waiting for?
No, he's not waiting for.
Okay, okay.
That's all I wanted to hear.
Brush off the clouds and cheer up.
Put on a happy face.
Take off the gloomy mask.
Hi, everybody.
Looking at your calls here.
It's a big subject on the Happiness Hour today.
Every Friday, the Happiness Hour.
Yes, very interesting.
Very good stuff.
So, the Happiness Hour is, if you have a pretty relentlessly happy childhood, I'm not sure you'll be a happy adult.
You need to face some adversity and learn how to overcome it because it's going to happen later in life.
A big factor in the staggering amount of unhappiness and immaturity among young people is that they were raised to just With the concern over their happiness.
So they're spoiled.
They see that life is not perfect.
And needless to say, they blame the society.
They are perfect.
I'm okay, you're okay, America stinks.
That is the motto of our left.
But they're not okay, and America doesn't stink.
Although...
It is moving in that direction because of those people, but that's not part of the happiness hour directly.
Your child needs to learn how to deal with life.
Okay, let's see here.
Where should we go?
Well, I'll honor the fact that I'm in Chicago, Arlington Heights, Illinois.
Andrew, hello.
How's it going, Dennis?
Well.
So I think you're kind of beating around the bush of something that you constantly preach all the time and you're beating the drum on, which is gratitude.
And I think that's one of the biggest things that we have in this country now is we have generations of kids that are just ungrateful for how lucky they have it.
I mean, look at all these college kids.
It's like, how can you be happy if you're ungrateful for the country you live in?
Your upbringing, even the blessings that we have in this country that have been afforded to us more so than any other generation previous.
So I think that's one of the biggest things that we can instill that into our kids now of how lucky we really are in this country.
It's very hard to be unhappy when you have that gracious attitude.
Well, you're entirely 100%.
Right.
I'm being berated, and I know it's certainly well intended, and correctly so, for not saying what I always say, and only because I try to focus exactly on the topic that I raise, but the point is entirely accurate.
If we don't teach them gratitude, they can't be happy.
They can't even be good.
Gratitude is the mother of goodness and happiness.
Then they go to school and they learn to be ungrateful.
That's what you get a degree in in the United States of America at almost any college.
You get a degree, whatever your subject, you get a degree in ingratitude.
Yeah.
Part of building gratitude is if you have adversity and overcome it, then you're grateful for all the good you have.
So the adversity issue is at least partially related.
But there's no question that that is accurate, what he said.
Okay, let's see here.
Mark in Los Angeles.
Hello.
Hello, Dennis.
Hi.
I called you a couple weeks ago.
I was inspired by one of your previous callers, so we talked briefly.
Following up on what you're talking about, I have two examples.
One, I was primarily raised by my mom, who was a very successful businesswoman.
So she was busy climbing the corporate ladder.
Because of that, we had to move a lot.
So I went to three different high schools, so that was kind of adversity there.
But one of the lessons she taught me was you can definitely be whatever you want to be as long as you work hard for it and you apply yourself for it.
So one of the lessons she taught me earlier was I was wanting a car when I was 18, so she said, save money, I'll match your money.
So I saved money.
She matched my money.
I got a car.
Then she said, okay, now you're going to pay me back for three years.
No interest.
What I loaned you, you get your car.
Now, at the time, I thought, well, that's pretty strict.
But later as an adult, I mean, she was genius for the lessons that she was teaching me in life.
And later I went to the military and commissioned as an officer.
And then, you know, I worked for a law enforcement agency here in Los Angeles.
Paying that forward, I have three daughters, blended family.
My oldest daughter, she was...
Troubled from 6th grade to 8th grade, lied about everything, didn't do her work, didn't do anything.
Luckily, my wife and I are on the same page of music.
So being strict with her, we basically took away a lot of things that she was allowed to do, which she had to earn back.
We essentially put her almost in a uniform.
She had to wear blue jeans and a white polo shirt to junior high school, which, you know, as a girl, you'd think, wow, that's pretty crazy.
Going forward in high school, I said, you are going to join the ROTC program in high school.
There's only a fans or buts about it.
That's what you're going to do.
I put her in that, and she thrived in that program.
Now, she had a little setback her junior year.
She failed math, but she learned a lesson from that because my wife and I were allowing her to fail forward.
And by her failing math that year, she wasn't allowed to go to a state university, so she had to go to a community college.
Well, she's done everything on her own to apply for community college, get forward with that.
And also, in her senior year of high school, I got her a job where I had her do a job application, a resume, and I sent her out, and she got a job.
And when she got that job, her eyes really opened up that senior year, dealing with people, dealing with, you know, people's expectations, co-workers, boss, you know, consumers who are committed.
Well, all right.
Let me thank you.
I got the message.
You did a good job.
So one of the things, taking from his call, is teaching your child consequences.
One of the ways of preparing your child for adulthood, which is your job as a parent.
Your job is not to give your child a happy childhood.
It's not your job to give your child an unhappy childhood.
It is your job to prepare your child for adulthood.
And one of the ways is there are consequences to your behavior.
Another one that he mentioned is earn.
You earn your car.
I should like to remind you that these are some of the lessons in so many of the PragerU videos.
We help you raise your children.
Please help us do this.
We're really fighting for good things.
This is Fundraising Month for PragerU.
Whatever you give till the end of the month is tripled.
Generous donors have made that possible.
During the break, go to PragerU.com or call 833-PRAGER-U. Let Dennis be Dennis.
That's been my life's motto.
My parents adopted it when I was 14. I've been a happy person since.
Not every kid would that work with, but it worked with me.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here, and this is the hour where you set the agenda whenever it's on your mind about you, about me, about life, about death, and of course about audio equipment, photography, cigars, fountain pens, and classical music.
Enjoy the music.
You know, it's a funny thing.
So many funny things happen.
When you're a public figure, you experience things in life that are not experienceable if you're not a public figure.
This is not a boast or anything silly like that.
It's just a fact.
They say, for example, that the rich lead completely different lives from me.
Which may be true in many ways, but I believe that the life of the rich is imaginable to those of us who are not particularly rich.
But I don't think that a public life is fully imaginable.
So there are so many funny things and interesting things that happen.
I'll give you a little...
It seems tiny, but I think it's not tiny.
Because I mentioned fountain pens.
So, at all these events, and I've had three events in three states in the last three days.
That's why I haven't been on the air for three days.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
I'm on today, and I was on Monday.
And I sign books and take photos prior to almost every lecture.
The way it works out.
And, of course, I always have a fountain pen or two fountain pens in case one runs out of ink with me.
Very often people will say, when I sign, let's say, one of my books, they'll say, oh, wow, yeah, you really do use a fountain pen.
Now, what are they saying when they say that?
This is what I think they're saying.
You really are honest.
You're telling us the truth when you mention that.
What else can it mean?
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe I'm reading into it.
It would be interesting to have people react.
But the reason that I say this is to make that point.
People don't know whom to trust.
For example, a lot of people will tell me, who work with me or are in my life in other ways, that when they mention my name, one of the first questions they get is, what does he really like?
By the way, these are all totally legitimate.
The fountain pen, or what does he really like?
But it all emanates from, is somebody really trustworthy?
I mean, I get, for example, the question, does relief factor really work?
It's another example of, are you for real?
Are you trustworthy?
Like, there's a certain amount of money I could be paid to lie about a product?
I would say 90% of the people who have heard me for any length of time know that the idea is preposterous.
Aside from having a strong commitment to honesty, I feel that I am accountable to God for not lying.
But it's revelatory that people see people in public life and they really do wonder, are they for real?
Okay, anyway, just one of the thoughts.
By the way, I have one more thought.
I mentioned it at the end of the first hour, so many of you may have missed it.
A woman in, let's see, where was this?
Minnesota.
I spoke in Arizona, Minnesota, and Illinois this week.
I'm in Illinois now.
I'm in Chicago.
And an elderly but very vibrant woman told me the story.
I don't remember what prompted it.
She was just on a plane, and she has a bad back in addition to her age.
And she's a woman, and she had a bag in the compartment above her seat on the plane.
And she was obviously struggling to get it down.
And this man was just watching her struggle.
And he finally looked at her and said, Would you be offended if I helped you take down your bag?
Do you realize what we have come to that a man would see an older woman struggling to get her bag from the overhead compartment in a plane and ask if she would be offended if he helped her?
It's such a profound illustration of the Corruptive effect of feminism.
When she said to him, why would you think I'd be offended?
He said, well, the last time I offered a woman to take it down, she berated me, saying, what do you think?
I can't do that.
You think I'm a woman?
I can't take it down?
Can't lift it?
It's hard to believe that...
Occurred, but I don't believe the guy made it up.
Why would he make it up?
You realize that a woman, in this case a woman, he was taught by society to ask if she'd be offended, and she was taught to be offended.
The ability of society to...
Distort your own nature is one of the revelations of the recent past in America.
You would think women's instinctive nature would be to protect children's innocence.
You'd think it's built into women to want to do that.
And yet women are overwhelmingly in the forefront of taking five, six, seven-year-olds to drag queen events.
And teaching them that they can choose their gender and providing materials which are sexually graphic for young people.
In other words, in the great question of what is stronger nature or nurture, it does seem that for very, very many people, nurture is more powerful.
You can do the opposite of what your nature is if you're persuaded to do so.
So, some thoughts before I take your calls.
Let's see, what do we have here?
Oh, that is a riot.
Oh, I'll take it because it's, well, I don't know if it's a riot.
We'll find out.
This is Mark in San Antonio.
Hello.
Hello.
Hi.
As I told your screener, I wanted you to start the bigger school for marital arts, not martial arts.
Oh, good.
It's funny.
I said it's a riot because I saw martial.
That's a good pun.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Thank you.
Right.
Marital arts.
Yes.
Here's what I think you should do.
It wouldn't involve a lot of work on your part.
You just take all the relevant...
Male-female hour and happiness hour episodes that describe the development of a relationship from first meeting all the way through to marriage and struggling with any difficulties that come up along the way and counseling and things if the marriage is on the rocks.
The episodes that describe the whole sequence and you just put them in order in the order that the issues come up.
And I don't think you need to comment on them.
I think the episodes are pretty much self-contained.
I think you would just need to put them in order and say, here's how our relationship develops.
Well, I'll tell you something.
First of all, I'm very touched.
I know how many marriages I've helped.
And it sounds like a beautiful idea.
Back in a moment.
My wife disagrees with me.
She eye-empted me that the inference that I drew from the fountain pen comment is not entirely accurate.
So she writes, I think it's a way of saying when people say, oh, you really are writing with a fountain pen.
I said I think it was an issue of verifying that I was telling the truth.
Not even in a kind, nobody thinks I'm lying about it, but my theory is that it substantiates my credibility when people see.
Something especially idiosyncratic.
Very few people write with a fountain pen.
But she says that I'm reading her IM. I think it's just a way of saying, oh, I've heard you talk about this, and now I've seen it with my own eyes.
They could do the same thing with your height.
I've heard you mention you're 6'4", but now I've seen you in person, and you really are tall.
So she may be right.
And we both may be right.
So, okay.
But, alright, so how...
Yes, so it's interesting.
What about that other...
I can give a lot of examples.
And this is just an interesting point more than it is critically important, but it is interesting.
So when people say to me, does relief factor really work?
And I never, ever, God forbid, I'm not an idiot, I'm certainly not easily, quote, offended.
I'm never offended, actually.
But, in effect, they're saying, are you telling me the truth, or do you do it because advertisers pay for time on your show?
That might be part of it, or it might be...
Tell me more about the product.
So, I don't know the answer, but that was another example that I gave.
Okay, let's go to Greenville, South Carolina, and Dave.
Hello, Dave.
Hey, man.
Hey.
Hey.
I was calling, I listened to you the other day, and you were speaking with Larry Elder, and regarding, you know, applying to get him on the stage.
And I let the call screener know that it was my third time talking about him, trying to get in touch with him, and I tried to pay several times and could never get through.
I was wondering, is there something attached to his...
Committee that won't allow people to pay for it?
I was furious.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know.
I checked that out.
Larry Elder, or is it Larry, is it Elder for President or LarryElder.com?
I don't remember.
I tried both.
Yeah, LarryElder.com.
I tried both and just couldn't, I couldn't make a payment?
Yeah, okay, well, I feel bad.
Right.
Well, let me say this.
I don't know why that happened.
I feel bad.
You should try a different browser.
Sometimes it's the browser that you might be using.
But I don't know why.
I tried it and it was, indeed, I donated because I wanted him on stage.
And he got the requisite number of donations from the requisite number of states and they still didn't allow him on stage because they said that he didn't poll high enough.
Look, I don't trust the RNC, unfortunately.
And I think it was very, very, very sad for the country that Larry Elder was not on stage.
To hear what he has to say would blow people's minds.
It's very, very unfortunate.
Okay?
We'll keep trying.
What else can I say?
Okay, let's see.
Atlanta, Georgia.
Patrick, hello.
Hey, Dennis.
Hi.
Hey, great.
I was worried because it's illegal to drive with a phone on your ear in Georgia, and I just found a side road right here as soon as you called me.
Perfect.
Good.
Yeah.
I got a warning some time ago, so I think they'll throw me in the slammer.
But anyway, this was many years ago.
And this was back, I guess, in the Bush administration when people were lamenting the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and talking about nation building.
And it was a big issue.
And we had built...
A place called Veterans Memorial Walk up here in Johns Creek, Georgia.
And we had the dedication ceremony.
And one of the speakers was the ambassador from South Korea.
And at that time, you were sort of lamenting that nobody talks about the Korean War.
And he says to the audience, there must have been 500 people there or something.
And he says, Something to the effect that every morning 50 million South Koreans wake up and are thankful for the United States of America.
Because otherwise there would not be a South Korea.
And that hit me so hard at the time.
And this was 10, 15 years ago.
I've got goosebumps thinking about it.
The impact that that man sincerely...
Well, let me react to that.
I have had the greatest degree of anger at South Korean demonstrators against the U.S. precisely for that reason.
There is no group on earth that exemplifies ingratitude more than anti-U.S. Koreans.
They are really the lowlifes of humanity.
The freedom that they have, the prosperity they have, is 100% due to the 37,000 Americans who died on behalf of South Korea.
I would like to ask a man I adore, Vivek Rawaswamy.
I know him.
I really like him.
He's done PragerU videos.
He's spoken at our conferences.
But I'd like to ask him, what was the American interest in aiding South Korea?
if the only question is what is America's interest in.
August is fundraising month, so next week is the last week.
Thank you.
Of fundraising for PragerU on my show.
And one of the great highlights is almost every day of the month, I do feature a young person who is active in or has been affected by, or both, PragerU.
So I have on the line a New Zealander who's 23 years old.
He's been active at PragerForce for four years.
Ethan Lewis.
And Ethan, tell everybody your disappointment.
Thank you, Dennis.
I woke up this morning, I put on a suit, put on a tie, and I thought I didn't test my camera, but for some reason now, all of a sudden, it's not working.
My Skype is not connecting to my camera.
Big disappointment.
Is it the only suit you own?
No, I own a couple for work.
Remember that green suit?
You had me on your radio show a very long time ago on that international retreat.
I'm not sure if you recall it.
You referred it as Joseph's shirt.
Oh yes, the coat of many colors.
That was you.
Bingo.
That's great.
What city are you in, Auckland?
No, I'm in Hamilton, which is about an hour south of Auckland.
And thanks for having me on the show.
When I got the message from Sabrina, I was ecstatic that this was going to happen.
I was pumped.
You know that I play your former Prime Minister on my show probably every month and at times every week.
If you don't hear it from the government, it is not true.
Do you remember her saying that?
Yeah, I do know.
It's very sad that that's what was said by our Prime Minister.
It makes me cringe, but it's the reality.
So, the obvious question is, do you have any kindred spirits your age in New Zealand?
What do you mean by that?
People who share your values, your outlook.
Yeah, there are.
I've got a small group of friends.
We really all share our outlook.
My parents share it for the most part, but I wouldn't go around saying it personally, saying it out openly.
I've kind of toned down on my social media just because I need a job.
I want to keep my job.
I don't want anything to affect me in the future.
What could you say on your social media?
That would have you not get a job or have you fired.
Give me a couple of examples.
So anti-vax would be a big one.
Not anti-vax, but you say express some sort of viewpoint that the vaccine isn't all that.
That's a really big one.
That was huge when it came out.
You couldn't get a job in New Zealand if you didn't have it, if you didn't have the pass.
So that was really damaging.
I knew some people who just ended up not getting hired, so they went to go out, work manual labor.
Wow.
Wait, so did you get vaccinated?
Sadly, I did.
I did.
I did.
Because you wanted a job.
I wanted a job.
You know, I've got ambitions.
I really want to grow.
I didn't really want to go back to work in manual labor.
I'm not really proud of it.
No, no, no.
I'm not at all judging you.
No, yeah, I get that.
You wanted to make a living.
I totally understand it.
Listen, somebody I love very much got a vaccine to attend a friend's wedding.
Yeah, it's sad.
It's so sad to hear about that.
There's just no choice.
That was a really big moment for New Zealand, how far we took it.
I mean, if we wanted to go I wanted to go whitewater rafting.
We couldn't do that unless you had a path.
To go whitewater rafting in the middle of nowhere.
Well, I mean, you know, I don't know if you know this, but I've studied it.
Whitewater carries viruses.
Oh!
I didn't know that.
I didn't know that.
No, no, no.
I'm very glad we got a chance to speak, just if only to convey that idiocy.
So what percentage of New Zealanders, I mean, there's no way for you to know, suspect, do you suspect, think that they have been brainwashed?
Like you said, there's probably no way to ever know that, but I'd say what percentage of people think that there's brainwashing out there, propaganda, I'd have to say it'd be at least 90%.
I'd be in that 10% group.
We'll be back in a moment.
Member of Prager Force of PragerU, Ethan Lewis, 23-year-old New Zealander.
Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth.
We're speaking with Ethan Lewis, 23-year-old New Zealander, been a member of Prager Force for over four years.
Thank you.
So, it's been fascinating and a little depressing to talk to you about the state of New Zealand, the country of the Prime Minister who said if you don't hear it from the government, it is not true.
So you would say, obviously I know that none of us has any scientific data, but your rough estimate is that 9 out of 10 New Zealanders do not have trouble with that statement?
I know I didn't ask you about the statement.
I asked you about the brainwashing.
But what do you think?
Do you think 9 out of 10 New Zealanders are comfortable with if you don't hear it from the government, it is not true?
I would say.
I would say that would be correct, in my view.
You know, you don't have to go far, but you go on a public transport train and you'd see all the signage about, you know, take this, this is good for you, all of this sort of.
Nonsense.
And you just kind of let it go by.
And nobody bats an eye when they see it.
It's just part of life.
Nobody complains that it's all up.
Because, you know, we don't have advertising on our public transport, but when it comes to government ads, we're allowed that all the time.
Yeah, New Zealand seems to be somewhat lost.
Look, we're battling the battle here in America for Western civilization.
We're doing the battle for New Zealand and Australia.
100%.
Yeah, I know you know that.
America is sort of, in my view, I view America as the lead nation.
When it comes to all Western nations at the moment, England, you name it, Australia, New Zealand, England, Ireland.
America's really the forefront.
If America goes and it gets more lost, well, guess where all these other countries are going to be?
They're all going to be more lost.
New Zealand, Australia, we all take America's lead on things.
That's why it's such an important, in my opinion, it's so important the work that Prager Force does, trying to educate the youth, trying to get them on the right path, because it affects not just America.
America affects everyone else.
How did you discover PragerU?
I just found your videos online, just scrolling through online during university.
And I tried my best to get in touch with PragerForce, and then eventually I ended up speaking to, at the time it was Devin.
And from then on, it was pretty much history.
You have a favorite PragerU video?
100%.
At the moment, it's Amala's Barbie.
The one where she talks about the Barbie movie.
I like that one just because it's quite topical at the moment.
I disagree slightly.
And then anything about climate change.
Go back five years ago.
Your videos about climate change back then, they were extremely impactful for me.
You know, as I always mention, and my listeners can vouch for this, I always get a different answer when I ask if you have a Prager.
A favorite PragerU video, which I love.
I love the fact.
So I never know what the PragerForce member will answer.
That's always different.
Well, maybe we could find you a wife in PragerForce.
No, not yet.
I've actually, when I met you, I asked you, what's the number one piece of advice you'd give a young person?
And you told us to get married.
Get married younger.
Get married soon.
Don't waste time.
And I ended up getting a fiancé not so long ago.
I ended up getting engaged.
So that was a big...
I really kind of stuck to what you talked about on the trip, trying to get your life, trying to get yourself in order, sorted, make the right moves.
And my question, I wanted to ask you, what do you think would be the next step?
How do you think conservative men should really follow that up?
You mean once they...
Do commit to a woman and get married?
Yes.
So, to be a man is fundamentally to marry and have children, take care of a family, and engage in hard work.
I mean, I think that masculinity entails a certain degree of ambition.
Spending a good chunk of the day with video games is not masculine.
Okay.
That makes sense.
What did you want me to say?
I just wanted to know if you'd say anything about getting involved with groups of guys and partaking in activities, vocalizing your voices in a certain way.
I was curious.
Oh, well, of course, fighting.
Yes.
Okay.
You're right.
I should have added it.
I sort of take it for granted, but it was foolish.
Of course, men fight.
That's correct.
Well, it's inherent in taking care of a family and a community is fighting.
And obviously, you're doing that.
I was just curious.
Yeah.
Well, do me a favor.
Take 20 seconds to tell people why they should contribute.
And folks, this is completely spontaneous.
This is completely spontaneous, and I wanted to bring this up, and I think it's because Prager Force is completely unbiased.
They're just trying to deliver you with information, and you decide on what to do with it.
And a great example of this is, I wanted to bring this up, is Dennis Prager's book, The Genesis, because he brings it out to a point where it's, how would I describe it?
He brings in points from both sides.
A great example is I remember he quoted Obama in the book about, you know, bringing up a child in a fatherless home, how important the father is.
And he's not afraid and no one else in the group is afraid to quote whoever it is and to bring in anybody from any point and debate that.
The videos are really educational.
The climate change and gun control videos that I found really seminified my relationship with Peggy just because all of it gave me the knowledge to...
Because at the time, the gun control, that was a big debate in New Zealand.
Listen, alright, we've got to take a break.
I mean, we have to actually...
I have to move on.
Ethan, you're an impressive young man.
And I look forward to meeting you.
Thank you, Dennis.
Dennis Prager here.
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