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Sept. 6, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:17:13
Wrecking America
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hello, my friends.
Dennis Prager here with you.
One of the most difficult things for me to talk about is the damage that a man named Biden is doing to this country.
The only thing I'm not certain about is, is it deliberate?
Does he want Too weak in the country.
Of course, it doesn't matter.
As you know, I am an action judge, not a motive judger.
Motives are too complex in general for us to understand and judge.
The human being must judge conduct.
If he wanted to hurt this country terribly, then he would do what he is doing.
So, that's the way I will put it.
I will give you three examples.
All from recent reports in the Wall Street Journal.
We'll begin with California's assault on trucks.
Probably don't know about this because the press is part of the Democratic Party.
It's as simple as that.
An accelerated ban on diesel fleets will wreak havoc on the industry.
That's right.
Listen to this.
Climate policy keeps colliding with economic and technological reality and California is ground zero.
The state's latest efforts is a forced sprint to ban diesel trucks With no concern for costs or consequences.
That, of course, is the signal feature of all left-wing thought, and that is that there is, as they put it, no thought or concern for costs or consequences.
As Tom Sowell put it, first, stage one thinking.
Stage one thinking is the characteristic of the left.
I've mentioned to you the great Talmudic.
Talmud is the second holiest work of Judaism written in the early centuries of A.D. or C.E., whichever initials you use, Common Era or Anno Domini.
And I learned it as a child.
Who is the wise man?
The answer?
The one who sees what will be born.
That is a literal translation.
In other words, the one who sees the consequences.
There is no wisdom on the left.
None.
It is not possible to be a leftist and wise.
You can be sweet in a personal way.
You can have friends.
Love your spouse.
Many good things are possible.
But you cannot be wise.
If you were wise, you'd be a liberal or a conservative.
And I mean traditional liberal.
This is a perfect example, then.
No thought to the consequences on the ban on diesel trucks.
Listen to how bad it's going to get.
Truckers are raising alarms about a new mandate proposed by the California Air Resources Board.
CARB. And I'm essentially on a no-carb diet, so I identify with how bad this is.
To electrify their fleets.
Starting next year, operators that transport goods between states' ports...
And distribution centers would be prohibited from registering new diesel trucks.
Starting when?
next year?
Americans don't understand that how much of the price, horrible price hike in food, for example, is related horrible price hike in food, for example, is related to the Greens, many of whom do want to wreck the society.
They have a whole new theory called Beyond Growth, where they're anti-growth.
They think that people should just live on less, live in a smaller home, not have a car, not eat meat, etc.
The board...
Affluent of the West.
Excuse me.
The bored, secular, affluent of the West.
Starting next year, those who transport goods between the state's ports and distribution centers will be prohibited from registering new diesel trucks.
By 2035, almost all package delivery, dryage...
And box trucks would have to be zero emission.
Now, do you understand, among other things, this will have no effect on the climate.
None.
None.
It is done to wreck the way in which the world lives.
That is what communists have always wanted to do.
They destroy the middle-class, boring, bourgeois existence that we have.
There is no point to this.
It will have no effect.
Bjorn Lomborg has pointed this out repeatedly.
This is why they, during the time that China is, I don't know why, every month or every two weeks, opening up a new coal mine.
That's the same year California's ban on new gas-powered cars takes effect.
But electrifying trucks will be even more costly and difficult.
A mere 272 electric trucks were registered in California as of last year.
And starting next year, no new truck.
Every new truck has to be electric.
Electric.
How far will an electric truck go?
On the CARB's mandate, some 510,000 trucks would have to be zero emission by 2035 in under 12 years.
Here is a classic example of regulating first and thinking later.
Start with the costs.
Electric heavy-duty trucks are about three times more expensive than new diesel big rigs.
You hear that?
Who's going to be able to buy that?
Since the ports of California are entryways to all of America, this is going to hurt the economy all over the country.
Goods will be so much more expensive.
Trucking companies will go out of business.
Who is going to make a new trucking company when a truck is three times more expensive?
And worse.
And it's a worse truck.
The Inflation Reduction Act, that is Orwellian.
All it did was increase inflation.
Tax credits will offset only $40,000 of the $400,000 to $500,000 cost.
Really?
Who's going to buy a truck for $400,000?
The estimate the electric truck can go 290 miles.
Go 290 miles?
It's not towing anything.
It's towing $400,000 to more than half of that.
Installing chargers can cost millions of dollars and requires coordination with charging equipment makers and local utilities.
That's another, right?
Every 200-something miles.
This is not including towing, which halves the number, I am told.
Trucks suck up loads of power which can destabilize the electric grid.
That's right.
Life in California will become untenable as it has already in San Francisco.
It's so vicious.
It's such senseless destruction.
Charging a small trucking fleet can require three times more power than a factory and is...
About as much juice as a shopping mall or a sports stadium.
Where are we going to get all of that electric from?
Wind is going to power a trucking fleet.
One trucking company wanted to install charging stations for 30 trucks at a terminal in Joliet, Illinois, only to be told by local officials they would draw more power than the entire city.
In January, Northern California Utility PG&E told a charging provider that one of its large fleet customers couldn't charge its trucks on summer afternoons, owing to a power crunch.
Okay, this is only one of three immediate damages.
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The destruction of the country by the Greens, it goes unnoted because the press is virtually all left-wing.
This mandate, this law, I mean, it's unbelievable.
We'll have to go to diesel trucks in California.
You realize how bad things are?
What it'll do to the grid?
That no trucking company can afford a truck that costs three times as much?
To do nothing?
To do nothing?
A Southern California Edison executive recently said some fleets are powering chargers using diesel generators.
So electric trucks don't go unused.
This captures the folly of California's climate policies.
Who cares if policies don't reduce CO2 emissions or improve public health as long as regulators claim they do?
It gets more ridiculous.
As of last month, there's a Wall Street Journal editorial.
There were fewer than 700 chargers at trucking depots, yet California's Energy Commission estimates 157,000 more will be needed for medium and heavy-duty trucks by 2030. That's six years, six and a half years and four months.
This would require more than 450 to be constructed every week.
You think inflation's bad now?
Thanks to the damn Greens, these sickos, these hysterics, and of course the Democratic Party, the most damaging major institution in American history.
It's always been damaging.
This was the Slavery Party.
The history of the Democratic Party.
With few exceptions.
It's disgusting.
Then there's the weight problem.
Electric trucks run on two batteries that each weigh about 8,000 pounds.
Since trucks must comply with strict federal weight limits, they won't be able to carry as large a load as diesel big rigs.
PepsiCo this year is deploying Tesla's electric semi-truck to deliver Frito-Lay products, but the trucks can't go as far as delivering soda.
It's all done to hurt America, do you understand?
The entire purpose, conscious or not, is to damage the country.
These are bored, sick, secular, wealthy people.
Who do you think make up the environmentalist movement?
Poor Chicanos.
It's a sick movement.
And it will mean nothing.
And people will continue to vote Democrat as they pay more and more and get less and less.
And they will be lied to by the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle and the other lying left-wing newspapers.
Lying left-wing is redundant.
Why will they say the reason that you have fewer things at much greater prices?
They'll blame it on Trump, but I don't exactly know how.
Or the war in Ukraine, perhaps.
Among the losers will be independent contractors who won't be able to afford electric trucks.
Some may retire or leave the state.
This could disrupt supply chains.
California's ports process about 40% of U.S. imports and 30% of exports.
Recall how a shortage of truck drivers two years ago contributed to a backup at the state's ports.
And finally, shippers will invariably pass on their electric truck costs to customers around the country, so Americans enjoy it.
We'll have to pay more for whatever travels by truck while the U.S. Constitution grants states police powers to regulate public health and safety.
Congress can preempt states that regulate recklessly outside of their lane.
The current Congress is too gridlocked to pass anything.
But GOP candidates could start talking about California's climate assault on truckers.
I'm quiet because I am so aware that 95% of people living in California have no clue as to what I just read.
No idea of what's in store for them to utterly disrupt their lives.
And for that matter, since the amount of imports and exports of the whole country come through California.
What will happen?
It's all feel-good drivel, and the proof, of course, is that they're against nuclear power.
The whole thing could be solved with nuclear power.
The whole thing.
But they won't do it.
Because they don't want a solution.
They want destruction.
Everything the left touches, it destroys.
That's a fact.
It's not an opinion.
Sometimes I admit I'm going to go a little off the beaten track here.
I wish we could appeal to a supernatural judge.
Oh God in heaven, who's right?
I know who's right.
But that would be helpful, I admit.
However, I also think it would make no difference to the left.
If God himself said, you know, you're destroying the family, you're destroying children, you're destroying schools, you're destroying the economy, you're destroying people's savings.
It would have no impact.
They have eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and have decided to be gods.
That was the promise of the serpent.
You see it before your eyes.
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You're listening to the Dennis Prager Show.
You lucky...
What do they say?
Lucky dog?
You lucky dog, you.
I haven't heard that phrase in about half my lifetime.
Well, I gave you one example of what the Democrats are doing to destroy the country.
Another example.
This ban on diesel fleets.
It's inconceivable that it won't have massive damage.
It means everything that you care about will be more expensive, way more expensive.
It won't get to you.
Truck drivers will be laid off because they just can't have as many trucks.
They cost three times as much.
They weigh tons more because of their battery.
They don't even mention what that does to roads.
Having even heavier trucks go on roads.
Doesn't matter.
Once you ask what are the consequences, you are no longer a leftist.
Consequences don't matter.
Next.
In the list of tragic stuff.
This is all done in the last month.
Here's another one.
Again, a Wall Street Journal editorial.
A gift to Putin.
No uranium mining near the Grand Canyon.
A new government land grab makes the U.S. more dependent on Russia.
With a stroke of his pen, President Biden...
Walled off from development nearly a million acres of land that includes some of America's richest uranium deposits.
See, this is why I do believe that there is an intention to wreck this country, because they believe that after the wreckage, they will have more power.
There is no explanation other than wreck our society for this example.
A million acres of land that includes some of America's richest uranium deposits.
This is another monument to the administration's destructive energy policy.
Destructive.
Destructive?
That's correct.
There is nothing constructive about the left.
The Antiquities Act of 1906 lets presidents set aside federal land for national monuments to protect historic objects.
Barack Obama used the law to remove millions of acres of federal land from oil and gas development.
See, that's it.
That's what they do.
What does this have to do with protecting monuments, historic objects?
Nothing.
They use the law for a completely different purpose.
Yet even Obama resisted progressive calls to set aside uranium-rich land outside the Grand Canyon.
Mr. Biden shows no such restraint.
He declared a national monument on 1,562 square miles in Arizona called Baj and Wavjo Leta Kukveni.
You all know about that.
meaning where tribes roam.
The monument will conserve, quote, landscape sacred to tribal nations and indigenous peoples and advance President Biden's historic climate and conservation agenda.
Really?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Wow.
So where will we get uranium that we need?
We'll find out.
The statement omits that the land also includes America's only...
Only source of high-grade uranium ore that is economically competitive on the global market.
The U.S. imports about 95% of uranium used for nuclear power reactors, mostly from Kazakhstan, Canada, Russia, and Australia.
Russia is the U.S.'s third biggest uranium source.
We have uranium for nuclear reactors.
But we're dependent upon other countries.
Including Kazakhstan and Russia.
Mr. Biden banned imports of Russian fossil fuels by executive order last spring, but U.S. nuclear plants continue to rely on Russian uranium for 12% of their fuel supply.
The new national monument, the fifth of the Biden presidency, will make it that much harder for the U.S. to replace Russian uranium.
Vladimir Putin sends his thanks.
The unstated purpose of the National Monument appears to be block uranium mining.
That's exactly right.
That's what it is.
It's not about indigenous tribes.
Arizona Democrat Representative Paul Grijalva has proposed legislation that would permanently withdraw the Grand Canyon area from new mining claims.
Democrats couldn't pass this through Congress, so Mr. Biden is doing so by decree.
And they said that Trump was a dictator.
Dennis Prager here.
Sure.
So I've read to you about the diesel truck mandate, and now based on the Antiquities Act of 1906, he's taking more and more land away from mining essentials.
Progressives want to block all mining in the U.S., including for critical minerals such as lithium and nickel that are needed to power their green energy transition.
That means mining will occur in countries with fewer environmental protections.
They don't give a damn.
There is currently no limit to a president's power under the Antiquities Act to remove land from development and public use.
Environmental groups even argue that presidents can't roll back predecessors' designations.
This interpretation of one-way executive power is more sweeping than the Grand Canyon and is crying out for a legal challenge.
So that was the second deliberate harm to this country.
And now a third one.
This is all in the last month, these editorials.
Washington stages a peacetime fiscal blowout.
Interest on federal debt has hit 15.5% of all federal revenue.
15.5% of everything that comes into the government is just paying off the debt on what we owe.
The immoral, destructive spending Both parties have done it, but the Democrats, of course, more, and Biden the worst.
Congratulations of a perverse sort to President Biden and his congressional comrades.
The latest budget figures show that they are breaking peacetime, non-crisis records for spending and deficits.
And there's no respite in sight.
The Beltway brethren racked up a deficit of $1.62 trillion for the first 10 months of the fiscal year, according to the Congressional Budget Office's monthly review for July.
That's up from $726 billion a year earlier.
What's astounding is that this Beltway blowout is happening when the economy is growing.
The COVID crisis has passed.
And there are no domestic emergencies to address.
This is when deficits are supposed to decline, as they did during the economic expansions of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.
Deficits also fell under President Obama after Republicans regained control of the House in 2010. CBO, Congressional Budget Office, lays out the gory details.
Revenues have fallen about 10%, despite the Democrats' increase in corporate taxes.
Individual income tax revenue is down 20%, or about $442 billion.
And CBO speculates one reason is smaller capital gains realizations.
Soaking the rich doesn't work when the rich aren't making money in the financial markets.
Outlays are up 11% for this year, or $473 billion.
That's more in spending.
And they would have been higher at $536 billion without the shifts in payment timing.
Spending lowlights, as opposed to highlights, includes $71 billion more for Mr. Biden's latest student loan non-repayment plan.
$71 billion.
So that those who pay them off, like my wife, those who pay them off are suckers.
That's right.
That is what...
Progressives think if you paid off your student loan, you're a sucker.
In fact, there's a good chance you're a Republican.
I'm curious.
Do you think that the payment of student loans, the repayment, do you think that left and right former students equally pay back their loans?
Wouldn't it be interesting to find out?
I don't have any data to suggest that it's more likely that a conservative will pay back the loan.
But if you had to bet your house, which group would you bet on?
Those who believe the government will bail them out?
Or those who don't?
So what was that?
Let's see, $71 billion.
Sucker!
That's the motto of the Democratic Party for those who pay their bills.
$111 billion more for Social Security, largely for cost of living adjustments, for inflation, which is caused by the government and its energy policies overwhelmingly.
And $104 billion for Medicare from higher payment rates and more care.
Taxpayers also doled out $52 billion for the spring bailouts of Silicon Valley Bank and others.
CBO says Treasury will get much of that back from asset liquidations and higher premiums for deposit insurance.
But the failures wouldn't have cost so much if Biden regulators hadn't been so choosy about which institutions they let bid on the falling banks, failing banks.
The biggest increase in outlay so far this year has been net interest on the soaring federal debt.
A rise of $146 billion to $572 billion.
That's 34%.
Do you understand that?
Just the interest on the national debt per year is $572 billion.
That interest total is nearly double all corporate tax revenue so far this year.
Yeah.
But, let's expand the government.
More entitlements.
That's right.
You shouldn't have to pay for daycare.
Or student lunches or breakfasts?
We'll be back.
The Wall Street Journal ends its editorial about the $570 billion a year just on the interest on the debt.
This is all the more dismaying because the booming deficit That's right.
The problem is that the...
Three things I've mentioned here, depending on other countries, including bad actors, for our uranium.
The mandatory conversion to electric trucks, which will wreck the trucking industry and therefore...
Massively increased prices on items that come through ports in California, which is almost half of the country.
And the deficit.
This is the problem that was foreseen many years ago.
Thank you.
When people know that there are two parties and one will give them more money than the other, Most people will vote for the party that gives them more money or more benefits, which is the same thing.
And that is the immediate, or no, the long-term damage.
A country cannot survive that.
Where parties compete on how much money they can give to the voter who votes for them, you have essentially...
Ended the ability to have a country survive.
So what happens?
Chaos.
Have you noticed that?
Years ago, I came up with an answer to a very hard question.
What does the left want?
Consciously or not, the answer is chaos.
And the proof is that they want it to be legal for men to compete in women's sports, so long as they say they're women.
Amen.
My friends, go to pragerhighholidays.net and join me for a very deep religious experience.
Pragerhighholidays.net Everybody, it's the Male Female Hour because it is Wed-Nesday.
That's why I picked it.
Wed as in Wedding-Nesday.
That's not true, but it's cute.
Every Wednesday we talk about men and women.
I think it's the most honest talk about men and women in the American media.
And one of the reasons is I don't shy away from any subject and because...
I am neither a man fan nor a woman fan.
I'm a good person fan.
There are many good men and many good women and many awful men and many awful women.
And so it is and so it has always been.
Today's subject is based on perhaps the funniest single cartoon picture I have ever seen.
We will put it up at DennisPrager.com.
It is not there yet.
It was sent to me by Dr. Bob.
And I don't know where he found it, but he is a central clearinghouse for the greatest articles and cartoons.
This cartoon, this illustration...
Shows a man hanging by his neck.
The chair is kicked over and on the floor he has clearly committed suicide by hanging.
His wife is looking at his note pinned to his chest.
His suicide note.
And this is what she said.
To her dead husband.
You misspelled constant criticism.
Seeing it is funnier than reading it.
But it's funny even just hearing it.
The cartoon is brilliant.
A number of years ago, I came up with...
A totally made-up idea.
And I said on the air, in one of my throwaway lines that I thought would never be heard or said again, you know, wife in Sanskrit means flaw finder.
And it then had a life of its own.
There were a fair number of people who believed it, incidentally.
So let's talk about that, given the cartoon and how many people took my Sanskrit line seriously.
What is in women's nature that prompts them to find flaws in their husband?
Not everyone does it, but almost everyone to a certain extent.
It's pretty much a laughable joke between them, and in some cases I am sure it is troubling.
I don't have an answer.
But first I'm asking you, do you believe that this is accurate?
I mean, humor is a very, very big indicator of truth.
And the reason we know that...
Is that everybody laughs.
Nobody looks at this cartoon of a woman at her suicide man's body hanging from the ceiling with a note on it and saying to him, you misspelled constant criticism.
Nobody says, I don't get it.
Why is that funny?
Right?
Now, if nobody says, I don't get it, it obviously reveals a truth.
So where does this come from?
And I'm very interested to hear from both men and women on this.
1-8 Prager 776. Sean, I think you should play the jingle.
We have not heard the 877 jingle in quite some time.
And I think the show is poorer for it.
877-243-7776 877-243-7776 I wonder if there is another talk show in the country that has such a jingle for its phone number.
Or...
1-8 Prager 776. 877-243-776.
1-8 Prager 776. So when I reflect on this, it has to be close to a universal truth, or as I said, nobody would understand the cartoon.
I think that there are a number of factors.
One is, I think that there is a primal desire in women that their husband be close to perfect.
This is not a criticism, it's just a theory.
And another one is, women notice more things than men do.
So, you know, the proverbial socks on the floor, you know.
He doesn't even know they're on the floor.
And for her, they are the residue.
of a nuclear attack.
So it's an interesting question.
That's why I'm posing it.
Given that, in fact, it is an interesting question.
Let's see here, my friends.
How many people relate to this?
Okay, not only does he think it appropriate, but he thinks it's by design.
I'll gamble on that because I'm not clear about what that means.
Clarksville, Tennessee.
And Don, hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
Thanks for taking my call.
Yeah, I think it's by God's design because...
What is the it?
What is the it?
I think that this...
Scrutiny or finding flaws in their husband, I call it scrutiny.
Finding flaws in their husband, I think it's not only right, I think it's necessary.
Because I've got blind sides of aspects of me that I really don't see that my wife would.
And if I take it in all humility, I need...
This kind of scrutiny so I would become, as a Christian, more like Christ.
But I need...
Listen, if I put yes people around me in my life, I'm going to end up like Michael Jackson and only have people who agree with me.
I need people who bring scrutiny upon my character and my life so I can get it right, so my character can be conformed to be a better man.
That's good.
Good thesis.
By the way, Jesus wasn't married.
So I think there may be a lesson there, since he is perfect.
So he wouldn't need the scrutinizer.
Is that fair to say?
Very fair.
Yeah.
So what about our male role?
So if that's the female's role, what's the male role?
The male role is, since she's a weaker vessel, I need to be one who takes the lead and takes charge of matters.
And oftentimes, women think emotionally, and they need the objective reasoning of a husband to lead them well.
Boy, that isn't going to fit well with most of...
Yeah, but you see, it's interesting.
Nobody objects to your saying how...
A man needs a woman.
I'm Dennis Prager.
Sorry that we were...
I was cut off.
Sean was preoccupied with a nuclear attack on the building.
And he saved many lives.
But it did affect the show.
So, I'm talking to you on the Male Female Hour about women's tendency to criticize their man.
Exemplified by a hilarious cartoon that we'll be putting up at DennisPrager.com.
A guy who's committed suicide, the husband has a note dangling from his chest, and his wife looks at his dead body hanging from the ceiling and looks at the note and says, you misspelled constant criticism.
It's awesome.
So where is our man?
Is he gone?
I guess he's gone.
In Tennessee.
So he had a very interesting view that this is part of the way God made male and female nature.
And I don't fully object.
I don't even object at all now that I think of it.
Okay, let's see.
New Braunfels, Texas.
Tim, hello.
Oh, yes, sir.
It's a great topic, Dennis, and I was laughing hilariously on this.
Oh, good.
So, in other words, it works even without seeing it.
Oh, yeah.
When you said you really have to have a picture to make it funny, I disagreed.
I was laughing.
Oh, good.
I'm glad.
It is hilarious, yeah.
But I wanted to sum it up, I think, by people coming to grips with the difference between men and women.
And one thing that I've noticed over the years, I'm 61 years old, and my wife comes from a very large family.
And we take care of her mother, in case she lives with us.
But they have all these other kids, but we are the ones that take care of them.
And I noticed that it's always, it seems to me, all my friends, everybody I've ever run into, it's always the man.
It's always the The wife's mother that lives with them.
In other words, it's never the man's mother living with it.
In other words, women would never put up with the mother-in-law living with it.
Interesting.
That's an interesting theory.
And we've been, you know, doing it for 10 years.
And so, you know, it matters to me.
So I look and I really try to distill it down and crystallize it in my head.
And I go, wow, that is so interesting.
I brought it up to my wife.
I say, Andrew, do you notice how it's always the...
The wife's mother.
Yes, right.
Always, always.
It's always.
And so the criticism of the male today is so overwhelming, but the male just puts up with all this and just has a grin, like myself.
We just put up with it and let it happen.
But we don't say, absolutely not.
They're not going to live here.
It shows the difference between men and women.
That's all I can say, and I'm very happily married.
I've been married for almost 30 years, and it's fantastic marriage.
Thank you.
So, I believe that ideally, in some idealized understanding of marriage, there is not a symmetry, there is not a symmetry, but a fitting in of the two sexes.
So, for example, if you put your fingers in front of you, both hands, and you can put each finger between the other hand's fingers, and so they fit perfectly.
Or you could have them clash.
So I have a fit perfectly idealized image of what is possible.
It's not easy, but it is possible.
So the question is, and I'm not going to get into that during this hour, but what is the equivalent on his part?
But the, see, if he criticized as much as she, I think it would have a deleterious effect.
I'm not.
Remember the Geico commercial of Honest Abe Lincoln and his wife, who was on the heavy side?
Asked him, do I look heavy or do I look fat?
I don't remember.
In this dress.
And on a stay of Man Who Couldn't Lie was sort of biting his tongue, not knowing what does he say.
Okay, we'll continue.
And...
Any women calling?
Let's see.
Megan in Orland Park, Illinois.
Hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
So I'm going to point out that my husband, I do have one criticism, but I am super guilty of causing him to have this fault, if you will.
And that is, I talk a lot to him.
So he tends to filter out some of the stuff I say, and that does at times kind of cause some rifts between us.
We get over it.
So he comes home from work, and he's tired.
Maybe during the weekend he wants to watch a sport, and I'm kind of rattling on, and he will hear a part of what I say.
Or maybe nothing.
So that causes some problems.
But once again, we work it out.
Right, but how does that apply to my theme?
Well, that's my criticism of him, that he does not hear me.
I see.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's the nature of it.
Okay.
Yeah.
So, it is an interesting question.
How does a woman balance her innate tendency to civilize her husband, to put it in the nicest way, which I think is true, and...
Believing that, on occasion, silence is the better part of valor.
Is there a struggle in the female in that regard?
Let's see, what do we have here?
No, what do we have?
Mostly men, isn't that interesting?
Very interesting.
Male-female hour?
Women criticizing their men.
I've used this cartoon, which we'll put up, at DennisPrager.com.
you'll love it and why is it built into women to do it because And how does the woman know when to do it and when not to bother?
These are all important questions.
And it's certainly, generally, not in the other direction.
But it happens.
Here's for example.
Let's see.
Yep, here.
Kelly in Santa Clarita, California.
Hi.
Hi there, Dennis.
Thanks for taking my call.
So when I first met my husband, one thing that he said to me was, you know, I saw my mom nag my dad.
So, I made it a promise to him that I wasn't going to criticize him and nag him, and I truly don't.
It's in my nature, and I have a lot I want to criticize him on, but I kind of just bite my tongue and move on.
And what's funny is that he now is the one that finds my faults and points them out to me and criticizes me on the things he sees.
And I did ask him one time, like, why do you do that?
I find that you do this often.
And he told me that he felt that it was his role as my husband to make me a better person.
And so he felt that if he...
Why isn't it reciprocal?
Well, I agreed with that.
I just didn't think that criticizing him...
No, no, no.
But why doesn't he think the other way around?
That it's your role to make him a better person?
He does believe that.
He does.
But I find that when I criticize him, it's not taken well.
So I avoid doing it because I don't want to cause conflict in our relationship.
But I think he does find...
Are his critiques of you fair?
I think that's hard to say because I get so emotionally...
I think that's a good question.
I think he would agree with what I'm saying, but probably also have more to add about why he's doing it.
And that he really does love me, and that's why he's doing it.
But he very well may be listening, so I'll find out soon.
Yeah, then I want to call from you next week.
Okay.
That will be very interesting.
Minneapolis and Tim, hello.
Hey, Dennis.
Hi.
I think when you get married, you kind of become an extension and a reflection of each other.
Obviously.
And women tend to, at least in America, grow up kind of naturally judging themselves on everything all the time.
So when the husband, you know, when they have a husband, that's an extension of them and they can't help themselves, I don't think.
And one thing I believe I've learned about women over the years is they...
They like to have something other women want, and if you have some flaws as their husband, then they think they're coming up short with, you know, other women aren't going to want the husband they have.
So they just point out those flaws, and they can't help themselves because they're really the reflection of how they look at themselves to a degree.
Well, explain that part.
You might be right, but explain it.
I mean, women are always, you know, they're looking at magazines and what other women are wearing, what other people are doing, what other women are doing, their careers, what they, you know, the money they make, the things they have.
They're comparing it all to what they have.
And do they have more?
Do they have less?
Do they have as nice of a dress, as nice of jewelry?
All that.
And then they get married, and now they have this husband who's an extension of them.
Does he look as good as he can?
Does he look as good as the other husband?
Does he have the job?
Like my friend's husband has.
It's just a natural comparison and judgment.
It's not always bad, but it's just different than guys.
Are you married?
I am married.
And does this take place in your marriage?
My wife grew up in a home where her mom, as your previous caller said, I don't know if it was nagging, but there was a lot of...
You know, her husband, which would be my wife's dad...
All right, hold on there.
One of my favorite people is in the studio, Barack Murray. - Okay.
Barack Lurie is a lawyer and a thinker, and believe it or not, they're not mutually exclusive.
By the way, in light of that, Barack, it is an interesting question.
How many lawyers write books that have nothing to do with law?
Wow, I've not thought about that.
I suppose you've got the fiction authors like Scott Grisham and otherwise, but in terms of nonfiction, I just don't see it.
I don't either.
When I said that, it occurred to me, because 40 years of interviewing people, I'm sure there have been, but I don't remember an author of a non-fiction book that had nothing to do with law or politics that was a lawyer.
So you're a renaissance man.
I'm not just throwing fluff here.
You care about a lot of subjects.
Yeah, I don't see the point of being a lawyer if you can't analyze the issues deeply and to apply it to the issues that are the most important issues of our day, whether it's about God and the lack of God that we're seeing.
We talk about this a lot, Dennis, the rise of secularism and godlessness, for that matter.
And I see the death of that as a major problem.
That's why I wrote my Atheism Kill series.
Right, which is terrific.
Thank you.
And then relationships are dying, and that's really killing.
And now, partly because of your show, Dennis, you talked a lot about...
How many people are not talking to their parents anymore or vice versa because, God forbid, they voted this man named Donald J. Trump or otherwise are conservative and that's just too much for them.
And I thought, how devastating that must be for those parents.
I could hear in their voices.
People cry on the air to me.
Literally cry.
My heart breaks for them and it's a crisis.
It's a pandemic.
So, I just want to talk about you a little more.
Were you always interested in everything?
Yes, always.
Even as an 11-year-old.
So, you know, it corresponds to an increasing belief I have, which is not a great insight, I admit, but it's been just more keenly felt as I get older.
We all have natures.
We all have human nature, but we all have our own natures.
And it seems to be present early.
So, since you and I both love philosophical questions, this arose in a discussion I had.
You know, I do this wonderful podcast with Julie Hartman, Dennis and Julie.
So it came up.
There are people who naturally...
Tend toward deep questions.
You're one of them.
I'm one of them.
She's one of them.
I don't even take credit.
I'm tall.
I don't take any credit for my height.
It's just built in.
Right.
So can we make people deeper who are not predisposed?
I think you can.
We see so many people who are suddenly interested in a deep passion of something else.
For me, it was the law.
I suddenly became very interested in the law a long time ago.
But now that I think about it, it was like when I was 11 or 12 years old, I was fascinated with the concept of law enforcement.
And what do I mean by that?
I mean, I wondered, what keeps people in line in terms of doing the right thing?
Just the fear that they might be arrested or fined, or is it something greater?
In other words, if we took away the law, would we still see a civilization that we enjoy today?
And that was fascinating to me.
And I thought, well, I'll never know.
How old were you?
Eleven.
And that, to me, was a big issue for the day.
And I always wanted to study that.
Well, that's probably one of the questions that led you to God.
That is exactly what it was.
And at some point, I began to realize you can make all the laws, all the regulations, all the demands and requirements you can possibly imagine, but you'll never be able to get people to act morally just with the law.
You have to have God in the equation.
Otherwise, you'll make yourself dizzy with all the regulations and laws imaginable, and it'll never work.
So you'll like this.
People, I'm sure you've heard this, follow your heart.
Yes.
So I have a great rejoinder, which I don't think you have heard from me because it's pretty recent.
To anyone who says follow your heart, I ask, what if we now got rid of speed limits and just had signed speed limit, follow your heart?
Yes.
Oh my God.
It's so true, follow your heart.
And this is, I'm glad you bring up traffic laws.
Because I always ask people, isn't it interesting that the one area of civilization that no one really seems to debate or get agitated about are traffic laws?
And I ask them, do people debate this?
We should not have traffic lights anymore.
Nobody says that.
We should not have stop signs anymore.
Nobody says that.
We should not have any speed limits.
Nobody says that.
Defund the traffic lights.
Exactly.
Nobody says that.
And I ask them, why?
We talk about education and what we should teach them in schools.
We talk about global warming.
We talk about minimum wage and affirmative action.
But nobody talks about traffic laws.
And here's the answer.
Because when you make a mistake in the traffic laws, when you violate the law, the consequences are immediate.
Right?
You run that red light, you will get in a big crash.
Right?
So everyone recognizes right away that this is what happens when you don't have traffic lights.
That's an excellent point.
Whereas so much else, it's a delayed consequence.
Right.
You don't see the result.
That's right.
And you can say, well, I attribute the...
That's the whole green agenda.
Right.
Exactly right.
So who knows what we can blame or give credit to in the Green Agenda, or for that matter, affirmative action.
I think affirmative action has been incredibly destructive.
The party of irony is what I call the Democrat Party, because everything they do ends up doing exactly the opposite of what they intend.
But it's so much time has passed that they can't necessarily narrow it down, as you would if you ran through a red light.
You ran the red light, you killed that man.
That's the reason why.
So, this man has written on atheism, God, sex robots, and now, keeping the kids all right, how to empower your children against the leftist agenda without homeschooling.
Whoa.
I know you're a big fan of homeschooling.
And I am, too.
Well, I'm sure you are, too.
I am very much so.
How could you not be, right?
But for those who...
But obviously, most people aren't going to do it.
Right.
For those who don't do it or are afraid to do it or whatever it is, you have to have a system in place where you don't have to worry about the madness that they're teaching the kids.
How do you do that?
I make the analogy of a hurricane hunter plane, right?
These are the hurricane hunter planes that go through hurricanes and they don't get agitated.
They don't get phased at all, right?
They just study the weather and then they come back.
How do you make your kid like a hurricane hunter plane?
That's a good analogy.
And this hurricane of our civilization today, of our culture.
And I was fascinated with this, because the last thing I want are my kids, because I have young kids.
How many kids do you have?
Three.
And what are their ages?
18, a boy 18, a girl 15, and a young boy 11. Have they had any temptations to wokeism?
No.
No, because I developed this system a long time ago.
I saw that this would be happening.
I didn't expect the transgenderism madness, but still the whole concept was there.
Global warming, the evolution, the idea that America is a terrible country somehow.
I wanted to get ahead of that.
And I want to make sure that my kids never have to deal with this.
I never want to be...
You know, after the fact, having to deal with these woke issues.
So, no, they've never been tempted.
They never will be tempted.
They are rock-solid conservatives.
They love America.
They love God.
And they laugh at all the woke issues.
They probably even love you.
I think they do.
I think they do.
I have a lot of challenges with them as well.
I do a lot of mountain biking.
So during mountain biking, when you're out in the trails, you get to talk a lot.
And it's a lot of fun.
Look, this program, Keeping the Kids All Right...
When did you become aware that you needed to do this?
Oh, before my first child was born.
Really?
Yeah.
I saw it right away.
You were ahead of the curve.
Yeah.
Well, look, I went to college.
I went to a very liberal college.
And I saw how...
Where?
At Stanford.
It was very, very liberal at the time.
By the way, is Stanford the S-bomb like Harvard is the H-bomb?
I don't know.
I know what you mean by that.
Well, Harvard graduates refer to it as the H-bomb.
They know if they say, I'm at Harvard or I went to Harvard.
Oh, I see.
It's sort of...
The dynamic, yeah.
It is.
The S-bomb, I guess it is.
If you say you went to Stanford, it definitely changes the dynamic.
I, generally speaking, will say when I went to college.
You did that.
No, you did that.
That's why I was very curious.
Yeah, because if you say you went to Stanford, then they say, oh, why is he saying you went to Stanford?
That's right.
But if I went to University of Puget Sound, which is a great school, nobody would say, oh, what an arrogant SOB. Right, right.
Anyway, so that's the answer to that.
Why don't you study at Stanford?
Economics and Humanity.
The book, Keeping the Kids Alright, Preparing Them for Wokeism, as it were.
The book is up at DennisPrager.com.
You can order it at Amazon.
Keeping the Kids Alright.
I am with a real thinker, Barack Lurie, who is also a lawyer, and an excellent lawyer, I might add.
The book, the latest.
I mean, given the variety of issues you address, I wouldn't be surprised if your next book will be Great Short Stops.
Yes, that would be surprising.
But, you know, they're all related to books.
They all kind of center around the God issue.
Well, let me say the name.
I want to sell your book.
Keeping the Kids All Right.
How to Empower Your Children Against the Leftist Agenda Without Homeschooling.
Keeping the Kids All Right.
Barack Lurie, L-U-R-I-E. Go ahead.
Thank you.
Look, all the books center around God, one way or the other.
This book, even, Keeping the Kids All Right, is about how we need to embrace Godfulness, God in our culture, God with our kids.
If you don't have that, then they lack purpose.
And that's one of the key aspects of this book.
Well, yeah, because their purpose will be filled.
With fighting on behalf of gender care.
That's right.
And on behalf of ruining the economy for green reasons.
That's exactly right.
Everyone needs a purpose, and you've got to give them purpose.
So that's right.
You have a chapter, Purpose and Passion.
Yeah.
Kids need passion.
They need purpose.
So what did you do in that regard?
What did you do?
Oh, I made sure that they understood.
Who God is and why God is so significant in their lives.
That life is meaningless without God.
That you can achieve fantastic great things.
By the way, I just want to just forgive me.
I want to just make sure that my listeners understand.
That's not an opinion.
Yeah.
That life is meaningless without God is not opinion.
And every atheist philosopher that I know of acknowledges that.
That's right.
That's right.
There's no God.
We are a coincidence.
We're random chance.
And we're here for a blink, a half a blink.
And then for eternity, it's over.
That's exactly right.
And I ask those people, by the way, especially when they have kids, I say, why did you have kids?
What's the point?
And they'll say, they pause because they never really thought about that.
Well, to continue my values, they say.
And I said, well, what values?
Values don't matter.
And why do you care whether they continue your values?
What does that matter at all?
And especially if you become nothing after you die.
So I know why I have kids.
I have kids because it's an obligation on the one hand and it's a joy that God gives me on the other.
That's the reason why.
And I want to have as many kids as I can.
I wish we had six kids.
We have three.
But nevertheless, that's the reason why you have kids.
And God rewards you.
By the way, there's a proof to that, too.
Secular people are not reproducing like religious people.
It's not comparable.
Right.
Right.
I'd like to see a movie in the future, one day, Dennis, where it takes place, let's say, in the year 2063, 40 years from now.
And you look into the future and look at America, and they look around, they see all sorts of conservative signs everywhere, flags everywhere, Donald Trump was the greatest president, etc.
The church is everywhere.
And the guy coming from the year 2023 says, wow, what happened?
I can't believe it.
Some sort of cataclysmic event?
And his friend says, no, you guys just didn't have any kids.
And we had a lot of kids.
And then you're surprised that everything is conservative.
Barack, do you know I wrote a column?
I was so moved.
And I did a show.
There was a piece in the New York Times about a year ago wherein, I don't remember if it was a male or female, writing about how It's inadvisable to have children given climate change.
Right.
Why would you want to bring a child into existential threats?
That means threats to the existence of humanity.
Right.
All right.
So I always read the comments, and all the comments there are New York Times subscribers.
So I actually wrote a column on how many said as follows.
Well, to be honest...
I really, really all of my life wanted grandchildren.
But I agree with my daughter's decision not to have a child because of global warming.
I remember one of your episodes where a grandmother spoke exactly to that point and it was so heartbreaking to me for her sake and I think also for the daughter's sake who has decided not to have kids because she will regret later on.
She will regret.
And that's the problem, is that they imagine this concept of this abyss, but in addition to that, Dennis, they think that by having a child, that that child is also just eating up resources of the planet and also spewing out carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming, right?
So this is their thinking and not realizing, well, what if everyone thought this way?
What if everyone decided not to have a kid?
I think there was another piece in the New York Times.
That's my source for woke ideas.
And there was a piece a couple of years ago that it would not be a calamity if humanity stopped reproducing.
So your question is not rhetorical.
They'd be fine with that.
Yes, they'd be fine with that.
There's something called natalism to that very issue.
It's a movement to not have humankind anymore, to not have kids at all.
And this is kind of the inversion.
This is the new default that you'll be seeing, that as you have kids, they will look at you as the devil, that you are selfish for having kids.
You are a bad person.
You may be even evil.
Selfish for having a car, having kids, for eating meat.
Yes.
Yeah.
Is to be undone.
Yeah.
But they don't see the consequences.
We talked about this before, about all the things they had said before, including population control, the big population bomb of the 1970s, right?
The early 70s with Paul Ehrlich and his book and how wrong he was.
I mean, he said that the whole planet, and I have this in my book, by the way, is one of the talking points that parents can use with their kids, that there would be no more sea life in the oceans.
By the year 1990. And then to say nothing of the fact they would all be starving and be eating each other like Soylent Green, that movie.
So they were wrong there, but they don't seem to understand that the conservatives, we think expansively.
There's always innovation on the horizon.
The Democrats, the lefts in particular, they think restrictively, always in terms of limitation.
They can't imagine a world where things might be different, right?
What if?
To them, it's still the Iceman, the days of the Iceman, or the horse and buggy sort of guys.
They can't imagine a world beyond that, that maybe somehow we'll be able to go beyond.
That's a good, a limited vision versus an expansive.
It's true.
The book, my friends, and if you want to call in about raising kids, 1-8-Prager-776, Keeping the Kids All Right, How to Empower Your Children Against the Leftist Agenda, Barack Lurie.
Dennis Prager here.
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