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Sept. 1, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:16:43
Promoting Gender Confusion
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here.
As we enter Labor Day weekend, I welcome you to the show.
We'll be off on Labor Day.
I was planning to work, but Sean threatened bodily harm to me.
First time, first time in all these years.
Actually, the whole crowd is taking off, including most of you.
How should I react?
The issue that I'm about to bring to your attention raises this question in me.
How should I react?
California pays...
This is from Daily Wire.
California pays non-profit encouraging kids to identify as fox gender and teaching schools to hide it.
The state of California has awarded a nine-year grant to a group That encourages students to identify as a wide variety of genders, including foxgender, and teaches school districts how to hide this from parents.
The California Department of Public Health has awarded a total of $2.3 million to a non-profit called Gender Spectrum.
The staggering amount of taxes that I pay to California.
It's the first or second highest taxed income state in the country.
To think that $2,300,000 is going to a deformed idea, a sick, deformed, destructive idea.
Gender spectrum.
Well, you can't get more direct than gender spectrum, right?
That tells you what it is.
For activities such as developing, quote, concrete strategies for applying the lens of gender diversity to school practices.
Wow.
Concrete strategies for applying the lens of gender diversity to school practices.
The grant is intended for Gender Spectrum to conduct a rigorous evaluation of whether its own programs work.
Among those programs is the development of a six-page form for students to submit to school districts For students to submit school districts, their pronouns, and whether school staff needs to hide their use of those pronouns from their parents.
So, do you realize the directness, the boldness of the attempt to tell children your parents are not the authorities in your life, the state is?
How is it that half my fellow Americans do not understand how destructive the Democratic Party is?
How is it possible?
How do people who think that they are good souls support this sort of thing?
Well...
I know the answer to part two.
I don't know the answer to question one.
The conscience is about as strong as silly putty.
The conscience is, in most people, a product of their feelings.
It does not produce their feelings.
It is a product of their feelings.
So I've warned all of my life that the route to tyranny begins with the degradation of parental authority.
And yet, liberals vote left.
Liberals are the tragedy of the country because they don't vote their values.
They vote leftist.
They are the tragedy.
And it comes from weakness and imposed self-ignorance.
This is what the director of training for Gender Spectrum says, Carla Pena.
That's a shaka woman.
It's not always the case that caregivers are supportive of their child's gender, their gender journey.
Yes, that's true.
I would not be supportive of my child's gender journey.
I admit it.
My 10-year-old daughter comes to me and says she's a boy.
I tell her that God made her a girl.
My 10-year-old boy says he is a girl, and I tell him that God made him a boy.
And then I get the hell out of California.
Move to almost any country, in fact, either another state, or for that matter, to save my children, another country.
No country, except Canada, is as sick as the United States in this arena.
There is no left like the American left.
And there is no right like the American right.
There's a lot of fight in this country.
It's not always the case that caregivers are supportive of their child's gender, their gender journey.
I love that term.
It's interesting because Sean told me when we first met, I said, have you traveled much?
And he said, yes, I've been on a gender journey my whole life.
It's a beautiful thing, Sean.
And I'm not his parent, so I was supportive.
I didn't tell whom?
I did not tell your parents.
That's a good point.
In that case, if parents are not supportive or if the child is not out, that's not necessarily someone who will be part of the gender support team.
In other words, the parent, I assume, will not be part of the gender support team.
Said director of training Carla Pena at the group's annual Gender Spectrum Family Conference last year.
I don't know how many men attended that.
Naomi Cruz, the group's manager of family and educational programming.
That's a shock and a woman.
Gave a presentation.
The reason I cite...
It's woman, woman, woman, woman, is that women are overwhelmingly the activists in the movement to ban parental authority and to, in my opinion, hurt children in the gender arena.
Gave a presentation at the conference called Intro to Neo-Identities and Neo-Pronouns.
What does that mean?
What is a neo-identity?
The presentation said pronouns may, quote, describe gender as a personal, aesthetic, synesthetic, or headspace-oriented experience.
These are the sorts of people...
That if it weren't for the sick left, they'd be unemployed.
What would this woman do for a living?
What does it even mean?
What does synesthetic mean?
They include noun genders like fox gender, moon gender, and rock gender.
Even...
And even emoji self pronouns, such as smiley self.
Secularism and boredom produce a lot of bad things, especially when you're given millions of dollars from the Democratic-run government.
Cruz said fox self describes someone who identifies with, quote, aspects of a fox.
Whether that's their appearance, their personality, or how they're viewed in society.
Now, I want you to understand that Fox identity proves the impossibility of the objective reality of trans.
You no better know What it is to be the other sex than you do to be another species.
Men have not only different chromosomes and body parts and hormones but brains and women and vice versa.
Yep.
This is coming to a school near you if you live in California.
We'll be back.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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I'm reading to you this Beyond Belief piece on what is happening.
In California, they're giving almost $2.5 million to a sick, sick, child-hurting organization.
Boy, have we produced a lot of sick people.
You know, I wrote many years ago, How the Left Keeps Me Religious.
This is a perfect example.
I realize what secularism leads to.
The complete breakdown of not just in the moral realm, in the intellectual realm.
It is a complete breakdown.
It is utter chaos.
The post-Judeo-Christian, post-biblical world of the West is chaos, and especially in the United States.
Because this country relied on, in God we trust, for its ethics.
There is a sculpture of Moses holding the Ten Commandments in the Supreme Court that faces the justices, so you don't tend to see it if you see the justices.
Our youth are becoming more and more independent regarding their self-expression.
Instead of trying to fit into pre-made boxes, they're using their unique identities and forms of expression to create terminology to describe themselves.
The presentation said, well, yes, pre-made box, male or female, or for that matter, human or animal.
That's right.
No pre-made boxes for the left.
Not good and evil, not right and wrong, not male and female, not holy and profane, not God and man.
That's true.
No pre-made boxes for them.
They make their boxes.
That's the point.
The left makes the boxes.
No pre-made boxes.
The presentation said that youth are on a gender journey.
Oh, yes.
And their genders will likely change over time.
Oh, isn't that something?
Their genders will likely change over time.
Again, this is a group given $2.3 million by the state of California.
The number of Democrats who know this is close to zero.
They don't want to know what their party is doing.
Because then they would have cognitive dissonance.
They know they can't vote Republican because it's been drilled into them from birth that Republican is the party of the rich, the party of white supremacy.
But if they really know what the Democrats are doing...
Then they are between a rock and a hard place.
Except the hard place of the Republican Party is not what they have been drilled about.
Parents should affirm those identities unless those identities appropriate a racial, ethnic, religious or disability group they are not part of.
I don't quite follow that.
What does that mean?
Let's see.
In that case, parents should say, I understand that this term means something to you, but perhaps we can create another term or another pronoun that also has a meaning to you, but isn't specific to a certain racial, ethnic, or other group where there are closed identities and pronouns, but includes religion.
I didn't understand that.
Okay.
I still don't.
It is unclear why youth do not have to gain permission from foxes before appropriating them.
That's a snarky line of Daily Wire.
Though gender spectrum wants to push its programs on children across the country, it appears to have taken down its website after it attracted attention.
That's interesting.
It's taken down its website?
I'm clicking on that URL. Well, nothing comes up.
I guess if nothing comes up...
Wait a minute, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Here we go.
Our Work Conference and Professional Symposium.
Well, except this is last year.
2022 Family Conference.
Yeah, so I guess they have.
I don't know.
Closing keynote speaker for last year, I guess.
Gender spectrum.
Dr. Ximena or Ximena Lopez.
That's odd that it would be a woman.
How interesting.
Somos familia.
We are a family.
I don't know what that means in their view, but it doesn't matter.
California previously awarded $1.1 million to the group for a pilot project.
This is what is happening.
Second grade gender spectrum was previously involved in the national sex education standards.
By the way, for the record, I was always opposed to sex education, even when it was heteronormative.
It was the beginning, and I knew it at the time, it was the beginning of the breakdown of parental authority.
Who the hell is the school to tell my children about sexual matters?
They didn't for all of American history.
Somehow people still married and made babies.
In fact, since sex ed, they've married much less.
And made fewer babies.
Oh.
I don't think that's coincidental.
By second grade, students should be able to define gender identity, and by fifth grade, they should be able to describe the role of puberty blockers.
Wow.
Please read my column this week on how much they don't learn about evil.
But they do learn about puberty blockers.
Which is evil, but that's a separate issue.
Really, read my column this week.
It's up at DennisPrager.com and many other places.
I am preoccupied with good and evil.
And that's why I am preoccupied with the left.
We return.
It's very sick, the stuff that's going on in California.
People ask me regularly why I live here.
I'll tell you where it's funny when it's asked.
So last week, let's see, last week, yes.
The week before this week is last week.
But this is, it could sound like this week because this is Friday.
Anyway, I will not develop that particular theme.
Truly, you have a dizzying interview.
Yes, I understand.
In fact, it makes me dizzy, actually, on occasion.
I was in, let's see, I spoke in Minnesota.
And then I spoke in Illinois.
And people everywhere, they go, why do you still live in California?
And I would look at them and say, wait a minute.
You live in Minnesota and you're asking me why I live in California.
You live in Illinois and you're asking me why I live in California.
And that really ended that question.
People have human attachments that are not easily severed.
But it is a truly sick place when I think about where I live.
And Gavin Newsom is sort of a favorite of Democrats to run.
The disappointment I feel in so many of my fellow Americans is sad.
What can I say?
It's a source of sadness and a happy human being's life.
You can have sadness and be a happy person.
Just like you can get sick and be a healthy person.
It's possible.
And that's what I'm enduring.
Watching people degrade and destroy the greatest country that has ever been made.
I'm angrier at Americans destroying America than I am outsiders who might want to do this.
Like the Chinese Communist government.
Thank you.
I'm not as angry at them.
They were raised in a sick, sick Maoist, evil, it is okay to slaughter human beings culture.
But Americans were raised in a good culture.
So, of course one expects more from them.
Well, yesterday I noted that California, what is it, California, Massachusetts, and one other state, the California, oh yeah, Massachusetts, California, and New York.
Hospitals were increasingly demanding that people wear masks and requiring their doctors and nurses and staff to wear masks.
A doctor called my show.
I almost never remember to cite a call because there are so many calls, obviously.
But this stayed in my mind.
A doctor called and respectfully said, well, they're doing it because they fear lawsuits.
And I heard him respectfully, and I didn't even differ with him.
Except to say that I used to be on the side of the doctors, and now I'm ambivalent.
The medical profession has lost my respect.
Many doctors still have my respect.
But not the profession.
But then I said to him, well, if it's lawsuits, why are the hospitals all located in left-wing states?
Massachusetts, New York, and California.
And he said, good point.
And I thought about that.
It's more than a good point.
It seems to me to be dispositive.
Yes.
They're not requiring masks because of medicine.
They're not requiring it because the science says.
They're requiring it because ideology has taken over medicine.
Just as the left has taken over everything it can everywhere.
Hospitals in Texas, in Florida, in Oklahoma, Alabama, they're not doing this.
Why not?
Why aren't they as afraid of lawsuits as hospitals in New York, Massachusetts, and California?
This is a perfect...
I would think it's as close to perfect as you get example of how the left has poisoned medicine.
But it is also one other thing.
It's not only because they want to control people.
There is another reason.
These people live in fear.
They are all hypochondriacs.
Back in a moment.
Have any of you read the President Trump discussion with the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, where the left says he said, find me X number of Brad Raffensperger, where the left says he said, find me X number of votes, as if he was demanding that which is a lie.
He believed that he was cheated out of X number of votes, and he told the Secretary of State to find him.
He may be right, he may be wrong in whether it was stolen from him, that number of votes.
But it isn't a fraud.
It isn't coercion to commit a crime.
Re-read it.
It's not that long.
And now, Breitbart...
Reveals testimony this week in federal court by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger reportedly contradicted claims that former President Donald Trump insisted he violate his oath of office by fabricating enough votes to win the state.
The media have represented the January 2021 phone call between Trump and Raffensperger Quoting Trump as telling Raffensperger that he should find the votes necessary for him to win.
In fact, Trump said, I just want to find the votes.
Referring to his own state of mind.
Moreover, the context was that Trump believed he actually had won the state of Georgia, and the votes simply had not been properly counted yet.
Raffensperger took the stand in the federal court in the northern district of Georgia, As part of a hearing on a motion by former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who was one of Trump's 18 co-defendants in the criminal case in Fulton County, Georgia.
Meadows argued that the case should be removed to federal court because he was just working for the president and therefore cannot be tried in state court under the Constitution's supremacy clause.
Yeah.
Meadows stunned many observers by testifying in his own defense.
Wow.
Jonathan Turley is a liberal like Alan Dershowitz.
He pursues truth, even though he called me years ago a Judeo-Christian fascist.
I've always remembered that because that was a first.
A Judeo-Christian fascist.
I'd love to have him on.
I'm going to invite him on the show because I think he's done a lot of good work.
It's very hard for me to be permanently annoyed with a human being.
I really try to live by what I preach about the moral bank account.
Good things you do are deposits.
Bad things you do are withdrawals.
Well, he's done a lot more depositing than withdrawing, Turley.
So, even though I was the butt of a withdrawal, I don't care.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley wrote, The call was misrepresented by the Washington Post.
No kidding.
Oh, wow.
You know the motto of the Washington Post, Democracy Dies in Darkness?
That is almost hilarious, since the darkness is produced so much by the Washington Posts of our country.
And the transcript later showed that Trump was not simply demanding that votes be added to the count, but rather asking for another recount or continued investigation.
Again, I disagreed with that position, but the words about the finding of 11,780 votes...
were in reference to what he was seeking in a continued investigation.
Critics were enraged by the suggestion that Trump was making the case for a recount, as opposed to just demanding the addition of votes to the tally, Or fraudulent findings.
Raffensperger described the call in the same terms.
He correctly described the call as extraordinary in a president personally seeking such an investigation.
That is manifestly true.
However, he also acknowledged that this was a settlement negotiation.
And what was the subject of the settlement talks?
Another recount or further investigation, the very thing that critics this week were apoplectic about in the coverage.
That does not mean that Trump had grounds for the demand.
Trump's participation in the call was extraordinary, and his demands were equally so.
However, the reference to the vote deficit in demanding continued investigation was a predictable argument in such a settlement negotiation.
As I previously stated, Turley ends, I have covered such challenges for years as a legal analyst for CBS, NBC, BBC, and Fox.
Unsupported legal claims may be sanctionable in court, but they have not been treated as crimes.
This is really a dark day.
Proud Boy's head sent to 17 years.
What did he do?
Terrorist?
My heart breaks for the guy. .
One day there will be a payback.
But maybe there won't.
I don't know if Republicans can rationalize using the government and courts like the Communists did in the Soviet Union.
It's an interesting moral question.
Is it wrong to do to the Democrats when you're in power what they did when they were in power?
Back in a moment.
Deed.
Hi, everybody.
Dennis Prager here.
Hi.
Got a few announcements here.
These are not paid.
These are...
Just personal for your interest.
Chabad, the national, international, most dynamic Jewish organization in the world of Orthodox Jews.
You probably know them, the Black Hat and the Beard and the House, where Chabad House at a university or in your city.
A great organization and they help people of every background.
So they have an annual telethon and I've been the emcee for At least 25 years.
It's on Sunday.
You can watch it on TV. This is not a paid ad.
I'm just letting you know because I did it.
Of course, I contributed my time.
But you'll get a kick out of it.
It's a world that you may know nothing about.
It'll be fascinating to you.
Go to tolife.com.
That's all you have to do is tolife.com and find out the information.
It's on Sunday.
Sunday early evening it says 5 p.m.
But I got to tell them they got to put 5 p.m.
Eastern or Pacific in an event to life.com You'll get a kick out of it.
That'd be interesting to you.
While I'm on the religious note, for the, I don't know, 17th year, I will be conducting high holiday services in the Los Angeles area, if you'd like to attend.
Go to pragerhighholidays.org.
Or is it.net?
God, it's too many dots.
I'll tell you in a moment.
Because it's life-changing, the services that I do.
And yes,.net.
So pragerhighholidays.net.
You'll be able to stream it.
You'll be able to attend it.
It's, again, whatever your background, there are a number of non-Jews who attend.
I don't know why they wouldn't.
Worship the same God.
PragerHighHolidays.net It's just in a couple of weeks.
Religion keeps society sane.
With all its flaws in the...
And the flaws of many religious people.
Nevertheless, look at the garbage secular institutions are producing.
The most obvious being universities.
Yep, that's where people believe you can be any gender.
PragerHighHolidays.net It's the happy, happy, happy, happy year!
Ladies and gentlemen, I have really made the case for the importance of happiness, the moral significance, not just the obvious emotional one.
The happy make the world better, and the unhappy make it worse.
Think of what a beautiful world it would be if everybody were happy.
Relatively happy.
That would be the end of the woke.
Because they're so unhappy.
Yeah, the unhappy, the miserable want others to be miserable.
The happy want others to be happy, and the unhappy want others to be unhappy.
Not every single one.
But the ones who revel.
In their unhappiness.
It's a very big deal.
People tell me all over the country how much it has affected them to understand that happiness is a moral obligation.
I'm still blown away by all these writers on happiness, including people I respect who say, you can't pursue happiness, it's a byproduct.
It's such an obvious example of not thinking something through.
If happiness is a byproduct, which I'm perfectly in agreement with, if happiness is a byproduct, then isn't it obvious you would pursue the things that make happiness a byproduct?
It's an amazing thing.
If A produces B and you want B, then pursue A. It's not difficult.
So, you know, I have been talking about preoccupied.
I have been preoccupied with the millions, it is now millions in the United States, of adults who don't, adult children who don't speak to their parents.
Many of them for ideological reasons, which is particularly disgusting, and many for emotional, psychological reasons.
In a handful of cases, it's warranted.
In the vast majority of cases, it is not warranted.
And it is a violation of the commandment to honor your father and mother.
But of course, the number of people who believe that God told us to honor our parents and who do this is infinitesimally small, one would think.
I knew one religious home where The mother poisoned the children against their dad.
And the father, his life was ruined.
All his children after the divorce were taken away.
I think of him periodically.
I even had him visit my show here.
I reached out to him.
He may have been the saddest human being that I... That I ever knew.
Not most depressed, saddest.
To lose all your children like that.
I mean, maybe he committed some horrible evil, but I just doubt it.
You know.
And anyway, he died a few years ago.
He died because of heartache.
That can happen.
Men have called my show and cried about children who won't speak to them.
So I'd like to do something I never did in that on this subject.
I've done the subject but not this aspect.
If you didn't speak to a parent for some period of time and then opted To resume contact.
Why did you?
It's a risk.
I may get no calls.
I went over this fact with my producer, and those are his words.
It's risky, and I know it is risky.
I'm so committed to the topic, however, that I'm prepared to take that risk.
If you resumed speaking to a parent.
Why did that come about?
Or, if you're the parent and your child resumed, why do you think it came about?
The reason I'm doing this is, A, to learn, B, to give hope to people who have a narcissist for a child.
It takes a level of narcissism, of selfishness that is...
Beyond my ability to understand why you would hurt a parent that much.
There's nothing you could do that hurts a parent that much as breaking off relations, all relations with them.
Minimizing, I'm not talking about, I'm talking about no relation whatsoever.
Don't call, don't text, don't email, nothing.
Not letting them see their grandchildren.
People have told me, I'm not going to let my parents see my grandchildren.
They voted for Trump.
I'm not going to let them bring such toxic ideas into my children's lives.
Well, all I could think of is if my parents were communists, I would let my parents see my children.
And pray tell if you have any moral compass, communism was ineffably worse than Trump.
1-8 Prager 776 is the number.
How did it happen that after a somewhat extended period of time, Where the child did not speak, where you did not speak to a parent or your child did not speak to you.
What happened?
I'm doing this because I want to bring hope to the vast number of people.
I've told you that on many occasions I've asked audiences, raise your hand if you know a family so you don't have to be embarrassed.
You're not raising your hand about your family.
Any family that you know of where an adult child does not speak to a parent.
And, I don't know, 30%, 40% of the hands almost always go up.
And remember, these are the people who know of such families.
There are many families where it takes place where they're so embarrassed that they don't let anybody know that their child does not speak to them.
These are just...
The 40% who know when this happens.
So what turned it around?
That's my issue here.
Kelly in Orlando, Florida.
Hello.
Hey there.
Hi.
So my situation is a little different.
I didn't talk to my father, my real father.
For quite a while when I was a child because of my mother, because my mother lied about my father.
And the only reason we started talking again was because he finally thought we were old enough, my sister and I, old enough to know the truth.
And he started telling us, you know, what had really happened.
But now we don't actually talk to our mother at all.
She's the one that we don't talk to because of what she's done.
So she poisoned you and your sister against your father?
Yes.
After divorce?
Yes.
Right.
Or after the break, after separation.
Correct.
So how long did you believe her lies about your father?
Until I was about 13, 14.
And then I really started seeing my mom for what she was.
Um...
Consciously made a decision never to be like my mother.
And at that point, we moved back to Florida.
We had lived out of state.
We moved back to Florida, and my father, you know, made the effort to see us.
And my sister and I were kind of, at that stage, old enough to say, Give me one example, briefly of a lie your mother told about him?
She accused him of being a drunk, of beating her, of beating us.
She told his family this story, and, you know, half of his family believed him and kind of disowned him.
And Wow.
I have a lot to say about that.
We'll be back in a moment.
That's happy music, my friends.
Is that the happy organ?
No, that's not.
It is a happy organ.
Happiness Hour, Dennis Prager Show, second hour every Friday.
Okay.
If you reconnected with a parent after not speaking with him or her for a long period of time, why did that happen?
I'm trying to give hope for the millions who have children who are the product of a poisoning by the ex-spouse.
Or who are just narcissistic?
Or who are ideologically driven?
Well, my parent is a Republican or voted for Trump.
How could I possibly let the grandchildren meet them?
Sick stuff.
The last call was about the poisoning by the mother against the father.
He beat you.
I'm surprised she didn't say molested.
Sometimes that is true.
Often it is not true.
It's usually the mother who poisons the children.
She's so angry over the divorce that she feels that she could ruin her children and her ex.
As I have noted on this matter, for most people, they will never do anything as cruel as not speak to a parent.
Isn't that interesting?
That may in fact be the cruelest thing they have done in their lives.
As for the mother or father, usually mother, who poisons children against the ex, that will undoubtedly be the cruelest thing you have done in your life.
And that's a level of viciousness that is quite remarkable.
You're angry at your ex, and therefore you will deprive him of contact with his children.
You will tell them horrible things about him.
Don't children deserve to have both parents?
Most people are not enamored of their ex, otherwise they'd have stayed married.
See, this is a perfect example of why I am adamant that actions, essentially in life, only actions matter.
You have bad thoughts about your ex?
I don't give a damn!
I care how you treat your ex, especially if there are children.
Only if there are children.
I don't care how you treat your ex if there are no children.
Within bounds.
If people were more behavior-oriented, the world would be such a kinder place.
It's a real difference I have with many of my religious supporters who are as preoccupied with thought as they are with behavior.
Okay, let's continue here.
Nancy, in Dresher, Pennsylvania.
Where is Dresher?
Outside of Philly?
That's right, Dennis, yes.
Okay, hi.
Hi.
So, I was raised to believe in the biblical concept of honoring thy father and mother.
It does not say, honor thy children.
And I always did conduct myself, honoring my mother and father.
However, the topic that you're discussing is so incredibly painful to me, vis-a-vis my mother who adopted me.
And I just want to caution that it's somewhat dishonoring to the actual pain to the children to generalize, saying that it's the cruelest thing to not speak to a parent.
It is.
Sometimes it's deserved.
I've always acknowledged that, but the vast majority of times that I have known personally or heard on the radio, it has not been warranted.
So I accept that's why I took your call.
I think it's important for people to hear that.
What did your mother do that justified your not being in contact with her?
Well, it's very complicated, as many of these situations often are.
And I'll just summarize it by saying this, that she believed lies about me and did not believe the truth about her biological daughter.
Oh, you mean she...
So your belief was she treasured you much less than her biological child.
Well, she stated so much to me.
Okay.
It's interesting.
I believe you completely, by the way.
And that is a horrible thing.
It's so sick.
I am the parent.
You really told this to the perfect person.
I have one biological son and one non-biological son.
The idea that there is any difference in terms of one's love, Strikes me as so bizarre that it could only be reflective of a very sick person.
Morally sick and psychologically sick.
When people think, oh, I couldn't love an adopted child like a biological, I say that I'm just curious.
Do you have a dog?
Yeah, you love your dog?
Oh, do I love my dog.
Is your dog a biological child?
Or did you adopt your dog?
I mean, people don't think clearly.
If people thought clearly, I don't know what I would do for a living.
It's an interesting...
Yeah, I would be willing to forego my wonderful livelihood to live in a world where people thought clearly.
These reactions of people just blow my mind.
My view of blood is blood schmud.
In a nutshell.
My book, Think a Second Time, is a book of my essays, 44 on 44 Subjects.
It's a good introduction to my thought, my thinking.
The largest by far is, I think it's Love vs.
Blood or something to that effect.
It is about this very subject.
I've thought about this.
Much of my life.
As I always say, I am much more interested in passing on my values than passing on my genes.
I will return in a moment.
The Dennis Prager Show.
Standing in a car wearing concrete shoes With my frozen smile and my lighted fuse Now every time I start to feel like that I roll my heart out like a welcome man All right, everybody.
Dennis Prager here.
A truly important subject for this Happiness Hour.
If you reconnected with your parent after not talking to them for a while, why did you?
And from the parental view, if your child is reconnected with you, why did that happen?
Well, so many...
Everybody has an interesting story.
Sophia in Orland Park, Illinois.
Hello, Sophia.
Hi, Dennis.
I listen to you often.
Thank you.
So it's an honor to talk to you.
Thank you again.
Well, what happened with my situation is my father used to treat my mother really bad.
Locked her out of the house one time.
Spread so many lies about her to, like, especially our church.
And I switched churches because I was embarrassed of the things that he would say.
And when he locked her out of the house one time, that's when I kicked him out of my house.
Didn't talk to him for at least a couple years.
Hold on one sec.
He locked your mom out once you had already left the house because you were...
Oh, I'm sorry.
After I was married, that happened.
Yeah, right.
Okay, I'm understanding.
So how do you know he locked her out?
Your mother told you?
She told me, yes.
And was he drunk?
No, he did not drink.
Why did they stay together?
I think it's because they thought they're supposed to, you know?
They did not get along.
He was very jealous of her because everybody liked her a lot.
And he was very jealous of her.
That's how I feel.
Everybody likes my wife.
But I never thought of locking her out.
But, you know, I think his mother really put him on a pedestal, and then when my mother didn't do that, I think that's what started it.
And then when everybody liked my mother, then that really...
Right, so I understand that.
It's pretty, it's pathologic.
But I want to go back to the divorce issue.
They didn't divorce because of religious reasons, or they just believed you don't divorce?
Both.
What was the religious reason?
Are they Catholic?
No, Greek Orthodox.
Greek Orthodox.
Does Greek Orthodoxy allow for divorce?
They do.
Yeah, I thought so.
It's very similar to Catholic, but we allow...
But not in that regard.
You can remarry in the church if you divorce?
Yes, if you get an ecclesiastical divorce.
If you get a what?
Ecclesiastical divorce through the church.
Okay, there's such a thing.
Okay, so it's not an annulment as in Catholicism.
So, are they still together?
So, a few years later, they did end up getting divorced.
Right.
So, did you stop talking to your dad after he locked your mother out?
That was the main reason.
Right.
And for how long did that last?
Probably two or three years.
And I had children then.
I'm just curious.
Was he hurt?
Yes.
Very hurt.
Did your mother ask you to talk to him or she was neutral?
She didn't know what to do with the whole situation because she didn't know what she was going to come home to every time she'd come home.
Right.
Sounds bad.
Yes.
So what happened?
So you had a child?
I have two children.
And after I had my second child, he got sick.
He was diagnosed with, you know, whatever, long story, but, I mean, mental decline eventually, you know, slow mental decline.
And that's when, you know, and I'm a very religious person, and I know that God tells you to, you know, honor your father and mother, and I decided to Give him another chance after that.
Are you happy you did?
Yes, I am.
Wow.
I told you folks, I said this from the beginning, a secular society puts no obligations like that on you.
Honor your father and mother.
That's from the Bronze Age.
Back in a moment.
Let Dennis be Dennis.
Let Dennis be Dennis.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here.
Final segment of the week.
Final hour, not segment.
Yes, it's whatsoever on your mind about you, about me, about life, about death.
About fountain pens, audio equipment, photography, classical music, and cigars.
The timing was perfect.
I mean, I could not have scheduled it better.
Regarding cigars, I go to cigar lounges all over the country.
Whenever I arrive at a city to speak, which is almost every week of the year, I rent a car and immediately drive.
To a cigar lounge if one is open.
And I'll go a half hour if I have to.
And it's a great joy in my life.
It's about as innocuous a pleasure as exists.
And it is a great place for guys to hang out.
I don't know where there is any other place now.
Where men gather.
Used to be, you know, a long time ago, Rotary Clubs, Kiwanis Clubs.
I assume, I know Rotary Clubs.
I assume Kiwanis and Lions as well were for men.
My father would go to the synagogue, brotherhood meetings.
My mother to the sisterhood meetings.
I don't even think most have brotherhoods and sisterhoods anymore.
Where do guys go in a healthy sense?
To be with other guys, which is very important to men.
And I don't know other than the cigar lounge.
And strangers talk, it's so fascinating, the ease with which strangers talk to one another in cigar lounges.
It's assumed somebody will start talking to you immediately.
It's assumed.
You sort of have to in some cases, in my case, because I do a lot of work there too.
After speaking for a while, I'll excuse myself.
Forgive me, I've got to get some work done.
They're fine with it.
But the assumption is you're going to speak.
So where is another place?
It never occurred to me quite until I started speaking now, quite so much.
It occurred to me like now.
Where do men go?
All right, everybody.
1-8-Prager-776.
Whatever's on your mind.
If I let you go, don't be insulted.
People get insulted too easily.
All right, let's see.
Hmm.
Jill in Hilltown.
Hi, Jill.
Hi, Dennis.
How are you?
Where's Hilltown?
Hilltown is in Fox County, Pennsylvania.
In fact, it's the same county as Warminster, Pennsylvania, where you will be speaking on September 11th.
So I'm hoping to...
Well, I'm going to invite my parents and my husband, so hopefully we can get in.
Yeah, that would be nice.
Good.
Thank you.
But speaking of my parents, I told your screener that I'm not involved in this exactly.
I just want to weigh in on some of the other callers, and I just have a couple of thoughts about parents and children cutting ties and the stories that you might be being told.
So I'm going to ask you to take pause.
The parents that tell you that their kids won't contact them or won't let them see their grandchildren, none of those callers, the women that called in, none of those were for political reasons.
And I wonder, is it possible that the parents...
To be telling you fragments of the truth and make it look like it was only politics when clearly people have mental issues that might deserve to be chastened for a little bit of a time.
Everything you said is valid.
I have no way of ascertaining if somebody calls me And says, my son or my daughter won't talk to me.
She's so angry that I support Trump and believes that I will be a toxic influence on the grandchildren.
So there are the following possibilities.
What he's saying is true, what he's saying is completely untrue, and what he's saying is partially true.
There's no way for me to know.
The reason I believe many of them is because of the toxic line about the grandchildren.
That, I don't think people invent that.
Yes, unless that person is severely...
Yeah, well, yes, really severely.
I mean...
Unless we're talking a level of pathology that almost ends up...
Yeah.
Right.
But the women who called in, every single one of those parents had a degree of personality disorder.
Well, that I don't remember.
I do remember one with the borderline personality and the one who lied about the father.
Look, Your points, that's why I took your call.
I knew it's somewhat different with what I had been saying, and that's why I took it.
And I thank you.
Look, if...
And I know that my caller would agree, but I still want to say this.
If we ruled out...
Contact with parents with psychological problems.
There will be very little contact with parents on planet Earth.
So, obviously, it's all a matter of degree.
Not only how psychologically defective, whatever term you want to use, is my parent, but how badly does it hurt my life?
Not subjectively, but really objectively.
Look, the very first time I did this subject, many years ago, a woman, I remember it well, a woman in her 20s from Santa Monica, California called.
And she said, I don't talk to my mother.
I said, okay, why?
Oh, no, no, I didn't say why.
I said, did she abuse you?
Oh, no.
Not physically, not verbally, not sexually.
Correct.
In fact, I'll never forget, she said to me, she really loved me and loves me.
So I was really puzzled.
So I said, you don't speak to a mother whom you acknowledge has never abused you and loves you?
Why?
I said, well, she's a very controlling person, and if I let her back into my life, she would control it.
So instead of learning how not to be controlled, she decided to punish her mother in the worst possible way and never speak to her.
Somebody, I don't know if it is even doable, but it would be interesting, not just interesting, important, to ascertain the motives in most cases.
I know of a case that has nothing to do with politics.
The child is left, and the parent, especially the father, because the animus is mostly against the father, is liberal.
And it has nothing to do with politics.
But perceived hurts.
Most children have been hurt at times by a parent.
You've got to give parents a lot of slack on the honor your parents and honor your father and mother.
You just do.
And that's why I'm in love with the Bible and particularly the Torah.
There's no command to love your parents.
Nobody's asking you to love them.
Texting doesn't mean you love them.
It means you're not being cruel to them.
We'll continue.
The Dennis Prager Show.
Okay, whatever is on your mind.
Let's see here.
And now.
Let's see.
Okay.
All right.
Very nice.
All right.
Littleton, Colorado.
Mike, hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Question for you.
I have three teenage girls.
Are you sane?
Are you still sane?
Are you losing your mind?
I'm getting close.
Our eldest is going to the Coast Guard, so she's making us proud.
But the two of them that are left, one of them is wearing some slightly provocative wear, and when I challenge her on that, and when she does her daily changing her clothes, she says, Boys shouldn't be looking anyway.
And I'm not coming up with the right words to retort.
That's really interesting.
So there are two separate issues.
One is parental authority.
The other is boys shouldn't be looking anyway.
That is sort of like saying dogs should not be biting anyway.
Yes.
That is what men do, and the earlier she knows this, the less likely she is to become an idiot, which is what college makes many young women and then very depressed idiots because they see her comment is in keeping with the belief that men and women are the same.
This is what feminism and the intellectual, whole intellectual class of the last 50 years has taught.
We are not women.
My dear daughter, okay?
Men, look.
End of issue.
Alright?
Your comment is stupid.
I remember when my father first told me that something I said was nonsense.
It changed my life.
It said to me, wow, I am capable of coming out with nonsense.
And ever since then, I have always asked myself whenever I have spoken, publicly or privately, did you say anything that was nonsense?
It was a great learning moment.
That girl, your daughter, said something that's nonsense.
Boys shouldn't look is basically, well, we'll put out all the most delicious desserts possible.
People shouldn't smell them and look at them.
Okay, I mean, it's not a perfect analogy, but it's damn good.
So what she is doing is saying she knows the male mind.
She doesn't.
She cannot.
She can only be taught about it.
And the other is parental authority.
While she's under your roof, you have the right to tell her some dress is appropriate, some not.
That's not an easy call on your part.
I do fully acknowledge that.
I mean, obviously, the length of a skirt on a 16-year-old...
It's not going to be the same as on a 50-year-old.
We all acknowledge that there's leeway in that arena for a teenager or a 20-year-old.
So that's a call you'll have to make.
But you have, A, the authority to tell her how to dress, hopefully within reason, and understanding her own desires.
But I am more interested in anything in having her divest of the notion That she understands the male brain.
We've been a long follower, and I got it into their heads early on about the male brain, so this is just a lesson she needs to have repeated.
So, totally agree.
And when she changes her clothes, she gives me a dirty look on the way out.
That's fine.
You know what?
Any parent who never gets a dirty look from a child is doing a lousy job.
Hey, real quick, I got a...
Happy Husband line for you.
Yeah, what is it?
Happy Husband, no need for Dr. Fussbend.
Oh, God.
Well, to make your day, Sean finds it funny.
At least one of us does.
Anyway, well, yeah, it doesn't matter.
It's Fassbend.
It's pronounced Fussbend.
I get it.
That was cute.
But the number of people who would even know your reference.
Is in the single digits percentage-wise.
My answer to happy wife, happy life took me 20 years to come up with since nothing rhymes with husband.
Except husband, which doesn't help.
And that is rational spouse, happy house.
And every one of you listening knows how good that is.
1-8 Prager 776. Cleveland, Ohio, and Jim.
The famous Jim of Cleveland.
Hi, Dennis.
Just had another idea for you.
I know you have a lot of free time, but every city you go to, you go to a cigar place.
Why don't you do like a review there, like a three-minute clip of you review the cigar place, you review the cigar you picked out.
I think that you go across the country so much that I think it'd be widely popular.
That is adorable.
I think it would be popular.
But you know what?
This will be, I guess, somewhat revealing.
I don't have the heart to give any of the cigar lounges a bad review.
So it wouldn't be an honest review.
Hi, this is Dennis here at Joe's Cigar Lounge in Cleveland.
Truth is, it's one of the worst I've been to in the country.
I couldn't do it.
I couldn't do it.
Now, you might say, well then, at least so.
Only give the positive ones, which is a possible response.
But then I feel guilty in another way.
Why am I singling out this one if I haven't tried all the other contenders?
You can't review a product if you haven't tried any of the others or nearly all the others.
And there are not that many top flights, cigar lounges in any given city.
But it would be a fun thing to do, I acknowledge.
Returning in a moment.
The Dennis Prager Show.
Dennis Prager here.
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