All Episodes
Previous Next
Sept. 19, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:20:03
Who Gets Kidnapped Next?
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
To hear the entire three hours of my radio show, commercial-free, every single day, become a member of PragerTopia.
You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives, as well as the daily show prep.
Subscribe at pragertopia.com.
Hello, everybody.
Dennis Prager here with you.
$6 billion given by the government for American hostages.
Six of them in Iran.
So what Iran does is just arrest people and then gets billions of dollars.
Why this will not increase the chances of more Americans visiting Iran, usually of Iranian background.
I feel for these people, needless to say, I have to admit, That I feel, it's an interesting analogy that comes to my mind, but it's a feeling, so you're allowed it.
I don't claim in this case that it is completely analogous.
But I think that anyone, especially of Iranian extraction who visits Iran, is doing something very foolish, just as I think most people who send their kids to a regular American school today are doing something foolish.
Overwhelmingly, the odds against your being kidnapped if you go to Iran are quite high.
The odds against your child becoming a bad human being with sick values is actually much greater than being kidnapped if you go to Iran.
But people really do walk through life thinking bad will not happen to them.
That's what you must think if you're an Iranian-American and you visit Iran.
Nothing will happen to me.
But why?
It's $6 billion to Iran.
We don't have the money.
It just increases the chances of others doing it.
I mean, the truth of the matter is, maybe the United States should kidnap six Iranians.
I mean, these people are innocent.
They didn't do anything wrong.
Why will Iran not do it again?
And why will Iranian Americans continue to visit Iran?
Maybe because they are convinced that so long as Joe Biden is in office, they'll pay any price and do this.
I'll tell you, it takes a lot to get me scared.
And there is an article in the New York Times that did make me scared.
It's with regard to the United States budget.
We are now at, what is it, $30 trillion?
What is the sum?
$33 trillion.
$33 trillion.
I think most of you recognize that there is a point wherein the economy of this country will be in deep jeopardy.
Now, there is a line in this.
Well, America's gross national debt, again, this is from the supporters of this debt, the New York Times.
They want all this money spent.
Do you know what is amazing?
I'll tell you, there are so many amazing things in this article.
America's gross national debt exceeded $33 trillion.
That's $33,000 billion.
I don't know how to make it clear how big it is.
You can't.
That's a good point.
Yeah, you can't.
That's right.
That's right.
You're right, you're right, you're right, you're right.
Providing a stark reminder of the country's shaky fiscal trajectory at a moment when Washington faces the prospect of a government shutdown this month and another fight over federal spending.
It came as Congress appeared to be faltering in its efforts to fund the government ahead of a September 30th deadline.
So, of course, what happens is if the Republicans insist that we have to spend less and that's the condition of keeping the government open, then the Republicans are blamed for hurting people.
The inherent flaws of democracy when you have a people, many of whom...
Have been weaned at the breast of government is an insoluble problem.
Vote for us, we'll hire you or we'll pay you.
The expansion of the government is analogous to the expansion of college budgets on staggering numbers of administrators.
Administrators, deans, vice presidents, and the other drivel, the other useless, I wish, I wish they were useless positions.
They're harmful positions.
As many as it has students.
Over the weekend, House Republicans considered a short-term proposal that would slash spending for most federal agencies.
And resurrect tough Trump-era border initiatives to extend funding through the end of October.
But the plan had little hope of breaking the impasse on Capitol Hill, with Republicans still divided on their demands and Democrats unlikely to support whatever compromise they reach among themselves.
There you go.
This is the New York Times.
Democratic Party has been the single most damaging institution in American history.
It's pro-slavery, pro-Jim Crow, and now pro-woke and pro-bankruptcy.
The debate over the debt has grown louder this year, punctuated by an extended standoff over raising the nation's borrowing cap.
Yeah.
Why should there be a borrowing cap?
We can print more money.
That fight ended with the bipartisan agreement to...
Now listen to the agreement.
Listen to this.
This is really painful.
This was the bipartisan agreement to cut federal spending by one and a half trillion dollars over a decade.
That is one of the two big lines I wanted to read.
Or maybe that is the line.
That's nothing.
That's what they've agreed to?
By essentially freezing some funding that had been projected to increase.
Do you understand?
It doesn't actually cut federal spending.
It cuts projected increases.
And then limiting spending to 1% growth.
In 2025, but the debt is on track.
Oh yeah, this was it.
I'm telling you, folks, this is so much more frightening than climate change.
This is real.
This is not models.
The debt is on track to top $50 trillion by the end of the decade.
We're already practically in 2024. Then within six years, $50 trillion, even after newly passed spending cuts are taken into account, as interest on the debt mounts and the cost of the nation's social safety net programs keeps growing.
Of course.
The social safety net programs.
That's the language.
social safety net programs.
How many able-bodied people are receiving assistance?
How much money?
Oh, yes, you know what?
I'm not done.
This article has so much that needs to be addressed.
Some federal spending programs that passed during the Biden administration are expected to be more costly than previously projected.
I'm telling you, this article If I get one good line in an article, I consider it a mine, a gold mine.
This one, it's just bombshell after bombshell.
Some federal spending programs that passed during the Biden administration are expected to be more costly than previously projected.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. You talk about lying?
The name of that act?
I'm good at analogies.
I can't think of an analogy of a lie as great as the Inflation Reduction Act, which was an inflation expansion act.
It increased inflation.
Listen, please, listen, please, please, the cherry on top, was previously estimated to cost about $400 billion over a decade.
But according to estimates by the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Wharton budget model, it could cost more than $1 trillion.
Thanks to strong demand for the law's generous clean energy tax cuts.
See that?
The damage the Greens are doing to Western civilization is almost immeasurable.
In the name of models of temperature at the end of the century, we are destroying our country.
Gold dealers are a dime a dozen.
They're everywhere.
What sets these companies apart and whom can you really trust?
This is Dennis Prager for AmFedCoin and Bullion.
My choice for buying precious metals.
When you buy precious metals, it's imperative that you buy from a trustworthy and transparent dealer that protects your best interests.
So many companies use gimmicks to take advantage of inexperienced gold and silver buyers.
Be cautious of brokers offering free gold and silver or brokers that want to sell you overpriced collectible coins.
They appreciate more than gold and silver.
What about hidden commissions and huge markups?
Nick Grovich and his team at AmFed always have your back.
I trust this man.
That's why I mention him by name.
Nick's been in this industry over 42 years, and he's proud of providing transparency and fair pricing to build trusted relationships.
If you're interested in buying or selling, call Nick Grovich and his team at AmFed, Coin& Bullion, 800-221-7694, AmericanFederal.com, American...
Well, you heard what I read to you.
The amount of spending taking place, the wreckage of the Green Movement is such that If people started out with the question, how can we hurt the United States of America,
They would do everything the Biden administration has been doing and everything the Greens have been advocating.
As the Hebrew is saying, "What is certain is certain." Existential threat to humanity is not certain.
It's probably hysteria.
What is certain is the financial ruin of the West.
I always remind people that it was not Jew hatred, which was central to Hitler's outlook on life, but it was not Jew hatred that got Hitler elected nearly as much as economics.
The horrific inflation.
That had destroyed the German economy.
Where you actually took Reichsmark, that was the currency, in a wheelbarrow to buy a loaf of bread.
You could see pictures of it on the internet.
How much it would cost to get a loaf of bread.
When people need a cause, they are willing to destroy everything, even in some cases, not Al Gore's case, their own lives.
I remind you of the obituary in the New York Times two weeks ago, or last week, that I read to you.
A woman, a communist, a British communist, died at age 106. She and her husband were big supporters of Mao.
Which is equivalent to being a big supporter of Hitler.
But it has no such stigma.
None.
Part of it is, I think part of it is racism.
Not entirely, but part.
Because Mao murdered, slaughtered about 60 million Chinese.
And that doesn't have an effect on the left.
It just doesn't.
It doesn't mean a damn thing.
There were no leftist anti-communists, almost none, let's put it that way.
PragerU is criticized for having videos on the evils of communism.
The left.
Liberals, many liberals hated communism, but leftists somehow had a soft spot.
This woman...
She continued to support Mao even when her husband was arrested in the 50s for six years.
And it was not a plush prison or wherever he was put.
And she still continued to support him.
You don't know, most of you don't know, some of you do, that leftists believe in leftism as much as Christians believe in Christ.
And Orthodox Jews believe in the Torah.
You must understand that.
Or you can't understand them.
There was a daughter of a German European Union official who was gang-raped by immigrants.
And she said Germans did it.
Because she didn't want to get immigrants in trouble.
When you're gang-raped...
And you lie about who attacked you for ideological reasons?
That, my friends, is a true believer.
These people are true believers.
Because their soul has been emptied of depth, the depth of the Judeo-Christian tradition, of the motto and God we trust of the country, it had to be filled with something.
And the substitutes for Judaism and Christianity almost always stink.
They're usually vile because they have no biblical wisdom, and in the West, that's where virtually all our wisdom came from.
Good intentions without wisdom almost always leads to damage.
Real, real serious damage.
The universities are the perfect living example of the post-biblical age in which we live, producing morons, despicable in character and superficial in intellect.
That is the average humanities professor, as exemplified by the 37 professors at Arizona State University.
Who condemned the university for having Charlie Kirk and me speak at the university earlier this year.
Because we are purveyors of hate.
The only purveyor of hate, the only hate that I purvey hate of is evil.
That's my purveyor of hate.
I hate evil.
Those of you who love God must hate evil.
I fulfilled that one.
Don't say you love God if you don't hate evil.
What are the great lines in the great book?
What's the great book for the left?
I always wonder about that.
We have the Bible.
Where do you get your wisdom from?
And the answer for them is, never thought about it because I have no wisdom.
How can you answer the question, where did you get your wisdom from, if not the Bible, if you lack wisdom?
It's like asking me, where did you get your first billion dollars from?
Well, I don't have that, so the question is unanswerable.
Projected $50 trillion deficit by the end of this decade?
I fear.
I do fear.
It's going to get much worse as the Greens get more power and crush more of the economy.
You've got to fight, my friends.
And it starts with fighting any Democratic Party victory.
Dennis Prager here, reading to you about our budget.
And reminding you again that economic chaos leads to moral chaos.
Thank you.
Although it didn't in the 1920s, you know that I just read a scholarly report.
Do you know that the mortality rate among Americans decreased during the Depression?
Did you know that?
There was less suicide, less sickness, less loneliness.
People were so much stronger, and their shock absorbers were so much more robust.
Their communities were so much stronger that in a time of prosperity, there is more loneliness and depression and suicide in the United States than during the there is more loneliness and depression and suicide in the United That's what happens when the morons of the secular left take over influence in the country.
The fools who run every major newspaper.
The fools who run every major and even minor university.
virtually every you know it's so interesting There was an article in the New York Times about the need to have two parents.
Would you believe it?
Did you see that article?
You know, couched, and of course we're not making any judgments and all that.
It's fine.
And it noted, if you're college educated, you're much more likely to marry than if you're not college educated.
So this is what happens.
The college-educated advocate ideas that perkle...
Is that the word?
Perkle?
Is that a word?
Trickle.
How did I get perkle out of trickle?
I like perkle.
I have to think of the context in which I can use it.
Have you percled recently?
I got a bumper sticker.
Just with the word, don't forget to prickle.
Their ideas trickle down to the rest of society, and they don't live by them.
It's like Al Gore flies to carbon reduction conferences in a private plane.
These things don't apply to them.
Bill Gates...
Is doing more damage to the world than almost anyone alive, but he won't suffer from the consequences of what he is advocating.
Why is he buying up so much land in the United States?
Do you know?
He wants to make artificial meat.
He wants to make artificial meat?
Why does he need all that land to make artificial meat?
You need soybeans?
Really?
Is that what you believe the reason is?
Because, of course, cows, this is the truth, right?
Cows toot.
That's the issue.
Raising them and their emissions cause global warming.
He's a truly bored man.
Secular.
It doesn't know what to do.
It is not a blessing to have billions of dollars.
I do not envy.
Forget that I don't envy.
I don't have an envy streak.
I only envy people with private planes.
That's my one envy in life.
And I somehow handle it rather well.
Because all I do is walk around grateful for my life.
But they have a burden.
See, there's a lot of meaning.
I have to make a living.
I've always had to.
That was strengthening.
That was somewhat fulfilling.
But if you don't have to, you really have to find some meaning elsewhere.
I told you, affluence plus secularism equals boredom.
And boredom produces very bad things.
No more bail in Illinois?
When you sent me this piece, I thought, no, that's not possible.
But it's got another sick person, the governor of Illinois.
People voted for this man.
I blame him not one whit less than the people of Illinois who voted for him.
You deserve the wreckage you voted for.
You deserve the consequences of your vote, Republican or Democrat.
Criminals will run wild.
Illinois becomes first state to abolish cash bail as fears mount.
This is from Breitbart.
We return.
Mike Lindell has a passion to help you get the best sleep of your life.
He didn't stop at the pillow.
Mike also created the Giza Dream bed sheets.
These sheets look and feel great, which means an even better night's sleep, which is crucial for overall health.
Mike found the world's best cotton called Giza.
It's ultra soft and breathable, but extremely durable.
Mike's latest deal is the sale of the year for a limited time.
You'll receive 50% off the Giza Dream sheets, marking prices down as low as $20.
Go to MyPillow.com, click on the radio podcast square, and use the promo code Prager.
There you'll find not only this amazing offer, but also deep discounts on all MyPillow products, including the MyPillow 2.0 mattress topper, MyPillow kitchen towel sets, and so much more.
Call 800-761-6302 or go to MyPillow.com and use the promo code Prager.
Wow.
Yesterday I reported to you that Chuck Schumer has abolished dress codes for the Senate because John Fetterman goes in shorts.
The disdain that they have for middle class values is remarkable.
I've lived long enough to see such changes.
My mother taught me that if I go on an airplane, I should dress, you know, she doesn't expect a suit and tie, but the notion in the past, you could see people dressed at baseball games the way they dressed.
Let me put it to you this way.
way, people dressed better at baseball games in the 1950s and 40s than they do today at church.
It's rare for me to be surprised by people's reactions, but I have great respect and affection for so many American Christians.
And I have always been surprised when they call in and tell me, it doesn't matter what you wear at church, God doesn't care.
You ever see the Midnight Mass?
From Rome, Christmas, midnight on Christmas.
See how people are dressed?
They dressed everybody who was there in their seats a lot.
Everyone is dressed as if they were at something as holy as the Oscars.
You can, in certain sense, tell what people value by how they dress.
So since so many educators lack wisdom, they thought that dress codes were foolish.
I had to wear a tie and a shirt and pants, not jeans, to school through high school.
And the girls had to dress accordingly in amazingly, distinctively female garb.
How do you like that?
No pants.
A skirt or a dress.
It had a big effect on all of us.
It was a good effect.
You know why Schumer does this?
Because he lacks wisdom.
There's no wisdom on the left.
How can there be wisdom?
There's nothing to learn from the masters of the past.
Nothing to learn from them.
And European.
And presumably straight.
What on Lucifer's Earth are you going to learn from the past?
It does seem like Lucifer's Earth at the time, does it not?
I have been told on a few occasions, not a lot, that I need to give people good news.
I'm serious.
Somebody said that to me just recently.
I don't think you were present.
Well, there is a lot of good news.
But the good news is not news.
See, it's not an event.
Although it's good news that Florida and now Oklahoma and New Hampshire...
And maybe Texas will be, some teachers will be using PragerU materials in their schools.
That's good news.
It was thanks to listeners to this program that PragerU raised its first funds.
I'll never forget that.
If you were among them, you did something really, really good and really important.
So there is good news in the sense that there's continuing...
Riley Gaines is good news.
This fighting, wonderful, powerful young woman, championship swimmer, attractive in every way, is leading a campaign to undo the damage of the pathological people.
Who are not pathological for being trans, although I don't think that is a healthy aspect of the human psyche, but that's not what I'm referring to.
I'm referring to the pathology of their narcissism, like this Leah Thomas, the guy who says that he got it from his name, William, who says he's a girl, so he beats the women in swimming meets.
And the University of Pennsylvania really, really forced the girls on their team to shut up and not talk to the press.
The University of Pennsylvania is another shameful wasteland in the Ivy League.
Just another one.
So yes, there's plenty of good news in that there are so many people fighting.
But on day-to-day good news, it's not...
What can I tell you?
What's the good news about the American budget?
We can't even afford good weapons.
Because the Democrats, between guns and butter, as the old phrase from Lyndon Johnson's era goes, chooses butter.
And you know why?
A, they don't believe in a strong military, but B, you get much more votes, many more votes, when you give people things.
You're not going to give people tomahawk missiles.
That just defends America and the West.
And yet, those who vote Democrat know none of this.
They just know they hate Republicans.
It's not just Trump.
They hate Republicans.
The party of the rich.
They still believe that.
But the richer zip codes, don't the richer zip codes overwhelmingly vote Democrat?
Is that what we have achieved?
1-8 Prager 776 if you want information on my upcoming holy services that I am directing I'll give you the website Hello there everybody Dennis Prager here.
I open the show with the article in the New York Times about the debt of the United States.
It will reach $50 trillion within six years.
Obviously, that's not sustainable, and this is the way these things work.
The Democrats ruin the country.
Just like they ruined New York City, then they voted for the Republican Giuliani, he fixed up the city, and then they went back to voting for Democrats.
Because people vote for those who promise them free things.
That is the great, great problem of democracy.
Well, it's one of the great problems of democracy.
That is why Churchill...
It is the worst form of government except for all the others.
I mean, what is your choice, ultimately?
But the founders of the United States did not think of it entirely as a democracy.
We don't elect president by popular vote.
We don't elect the US Senate by popular vote.
The left, of course, wants both of those changed.
That Wyoming and California have the same number of senators is 100% undemocratic and 100% wise.
When people are promised things, they vote for the person promising them things.
What is the saying?
That's human nature?
That's human nature, everybody!
That's right.
Well, Well, I read to you at the end of the last hour as well, the fascinating thing I just came across from the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that mortality rates, the fascinating thing I just came across from the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that mortality rates, suicide
If we have a Great Depression today, that will not happen.
The American is so much weaker today in personality and psyche and courage and values, there's no comparison.
The deterioration of the generations, that's a Hebrew phrase, the decline of the generations.
That's what we're witnessing.
There are still many Americans who raise terrific kids.
I don't forget that.
I know it.
My work is dependent upon that and dependent upon changing minds of kids.
Do you know that every major newspaper media outlet has written an attack on PragerU in the last couple of months?
Because states are adopting it in their curriculum.
In other words, adopting doesn't mean that you have to teach it.
You don't have to show a Prager video.
I would like to spend three hours one day just reading you the titles of our videos.
And it will, better than anything, reveal the immorality, the vileness, the destructiveness, the loathing of the wholesome on the part of the left.
There is such healthy stuff there.
They all criticize the exact same two videos.
We have Christopher Columbus telling Leo and Leila, who go from the present to the past to meet figures, and he says something like, well, slavery is not all that bad.
And that's exactly what Columbus believed.
That would be like, what if they visited Stalin and Stalin said, you know, killing the middle class, killing people who own land is not all that bad.
Would we be attacked for it?
Does that mean we believe that?
Didn't Columbus believe that?
Shouldn't they be saluting us?
If it's wholesome, the left hates it.
They find middle-class, bourgeois, Judeo-Christian values boring.
Look at your museums.
The museums of contemporary art, modern art.
Look at those museums.
By the way, Robert Florzak's coming out with a book on how to understand great art.
I'll bet it'll be the single best book on that subject.
Does he have one or two videos for us?
Two.
Well, the first one was, what's wrong with modern art, right?
Why is modern art so bad?
Why is modern art so bad?
It's brilliant.
It is so brilliant.
It is one of the most viewed videos we ever put up, by the way.
Now, let me ask a question.
What would the left say about allowing kids to see a five-minute video by an artist explaining why so much contemporary art isn't good?
They would be hysterical, correct?
That would trigger them.
Every teacher should show this.
If you believe in expanding the mind, we could do in five minutes, we could undo the entire appreciation of garbage.
The garbage that poses as art in museums of contemporary art.
In Orange County, California, do you know that there is a giant...
I don't know if it's still there.
I'll have to check.
I think it's still there.
It's a giant dog, a sculpture of a dog.
And the dog is urinating in front of the museum or on the museum.
I can't think of a more appropriate symbol.
For so much contemporary art.
It's not a matter of, well, you like contemporary art and I like Michelangelo.
That's not the issue.
The issue is, is there junk?
Does junk exist?
Remember, what was one of the great new ones?
The guy who tacked a banana peel.
Remember that?
You don't remember the banana peel?
Look that up, please.
Museum banana peel.
Just Google that.
I wish I could say other than Google.
Bing that.
Yeah, but that goes to Microsoft.
DuckGoGo that.
There you go.
DuckDuckGo.
What did I say?
DuckGoGo?
That's hilarious.
That's up there with Perkle.
PerkleDuckGoGo.
I'm in love with the word Perkle.
I'm not kidding.
I'm in love with it.
It came out of nowhere.
I think it was a combination of trickle and perk.
But there was no perk in the context.
I don't know how it happened.
This is the $120,000 banana.
Is that it?
So I'm right, right?
Yeah.
So tell me...
Put it in IM here.
I want to read it to people.
I would like to know what the view would be of the...
National Association, what is it?
National Federation of Teachers.
What teachers unions would say about the PragerU video on this?
So here we go.
And it's from the art newspaper Permanent Appeal.
Cute.
A-P-E-E-L. A-P-E-L. $120,000 banana will enter museum collection.
Miami collectors William and Beatrice Cox will donate the fruit piece to an unnamed institution.
It is a banana peel taped onto a wall.
Duct tape.
There you go.
All right.
Nothing symbolizes the secular world better than the crap art and music that it has produced.
In the classical realm in music, there has been some wonderful music in other realms, especially movie music.
I fully acknowledge that.
But generally speaking, the classical world went to noise.
I wonder if they would show this video.
So I spoke yesterday on this show to...
Ryan Walters, the Superintendent of Education of Oklahoma.
We have to arrange my going to Oklahoma.
PragerU will send me and we'll go.
I hope they rent out a big arena so I can read to them what their newspapers and their NPR and their news outlets have said about PragerU.
And what we actually stand for.
It's a war of health versus sickness in the moral and even psychological realms.
If you say men menstruate, there is a lot wrong with you.
we continue I gotta give you here some an example here Let's see.
In the further deterioration of Jewish life, the Jewish Publication Society of America has now come out with a gender-sensitive translation of the Hebrew Bible.
The JPS Tanakh.
Tanakh is the Hebrew word for...
It's an acronym for Torah Prophets Writings.
Gender Sensitive Edition.
That's what we need.
That's what's really keeping Jews from taking the Torah and the Bible seriously.
The non-sensitivity, the insensitivity of the original text.
How can you do that?
On what grounds?
What is the moral grounds of changing the text?
That's what's being done.
References to persons are gender sensitive yet consistent with ancient gender norms and the translation strives for inclusive language when referring broadly to people, ancestors and humankind.
References to God are typically gender neutral.
And generally avoid grammatically masculine pronouns and labels.
Yeah, but the Hebrew has that.
I'm sorry.
That's what it says.
If you are that staggeringly superficial as to reject the Bible because it speaks of God as He, which, by the way, I explain in one of my many, many, many essays in my...
Commentary on Genesis.
I have also commentary on two other books.
Deuteronomy and Exodus.
Next year, Numbers comes out.
And then finally, Leviticus.
I'm one chapter away from finishing Numbers.
The hardest project of my life.
As usual, most worthwhile in many ways.
Revising.
Revising the venerable JPS translation.
The gender-sensitive edition...
Are you ready for their verb?
You'll love this.
It's a giveaway.
The gender-sensitive edition empowers readers.
Is that the best?
See, you were weak until you got a non-gender Bible translation.
You had been weak.
Now, my dear friends, you are empowered to experience Scripture with all the power of the original Hebrew.
But that's not true.
How could they say that?
They're changing the original Hebrew.
It's false.
It is sure to become the new Bible translation of choice for readers who embrace biblical scholarship with reference for tradition and for communities and individuals who adopt an inclusive, egalitarian perspective in today's world.
You know what this reminds me of?
I'm old enough to remember when I would engage in dialogue, because I used to speak to Jewish audiences regularly, my book introducing...
Introduction to Judaism, called The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, has been the best-selling English introduction to Judaism, to the best of my knowledge, ever written.
And it is now in print almost 50 years.
I wrote it in my early 20s.
With Rabbi Joseph Telushkin.
A very, very powerful force in Jewish writing.
So I remember the debates, should women be ordained rabbis?
And there was a very good argument for it, the egalitarian argument, because certainly a woman could be a scholar, biblically, telmudically, etc.
But the biggest argument, or an equally big argument that they made was, Having women rabbis will attract young women to synagogue.
And I knew that was false.
If anything, it will repel young men from going to synagogue.
Whether it has repelled young men from going to synagogue or not, I don't know.
But I do know this.
The denominations of Judaism that ordained women are dying.
Now, if you don't like the word dying, and I don't like it, I'm not happy about it, but if you don't like the word dying, how about this?
They are slowly disappearing.
What happened to the argument that women rabbis would attract Jews to synagogue?
By the way, have women pastors attracted Christians to church?
I doubt it.
I doubt it.
And some of these people are wonderful people.
This is not an attack on these women.
It's an attack on an argument.
Likewise here, you think at JPS, the Jewish Public Health Society, you think this is going to attract more people to biblical study?
No more than women rabbis attracted people to synagogue.
Let's see an example.
I think this page offers examples, but I'm not sure.
I can't really find it.
On what gender inclusive gender is...
Okay, here.
Let's see.
Do we have an example?
Is this the gender revised JPS?
Well, this is not, that's not going to be helpful.
I'm going to give it one more choice to try to find for you.
Ah, sample passages.
There we go.
Yay!
Okay, so here.
So it says, let us make man in our image.
So they now have, let us make humankind in our image.
It's not that bad, because that is...
The case.
Women are in God's image just as much.
But now they don't even like the Lord.
I don't understand that.
Originally, the Lord God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden.
The eternal God settled the human.
But it was a man.
And that's what they wrote.
So I don't talk about Ukraine often.
um I think about it regularly.
So allow me a moment here.
I have backed backing Ukraine from the beginning.
I have also been pushing and advocating passionately that we push for peace as strongly as we back them.
I read to you yesterday a very, very frightening piece about hypersonic missiles that can go anywhere on Earth in under an hour carrying a nuclear or non-nuclear payload.
They fly very low.
They can be undetectable.
They're too fast, often to be shot down.
I think it's five times the speed of sound, if I'm not mistaken.
Is that right?
I mean, again, it's like trillion.
You can't understand how fast that is.
And China and Russia have them much more than we do.
In fact, have them and we don't.
When you realize that in dictatorships it just takes one man to decide to do something apocalyptic and it can be done, I would like peace.
To reign.
And the peace would have to include some territorial compromise, I am sorry.
Otherwise, Russia has no inducement to make peace.
Maybe you have within it, and there will be a plebiscite in five years in that territory.
Do people want to be part of Russia or Ukraine?
I'm not thrilled with it.
Nobody's thrilled with compromise.
But let me give you an example of one of the problems.
This is from Reuters yesterday.
Rising ammunition prices set back NATO efforts to boost security.
Oslo, September 16th.
A top NATO military official warned on Saturday, that's this past Saturday, that a drastic rise in ammunition price means that Allies' higher defense spending does not automatically translate into greater security.
That's correct, obviously.
You're paying more, but you're not getting more because of the price.
Prices for equipment and ammunition are shooting up.
Right now we are paying more and more for exactly the same, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, the chair of NATO's military committee, said on Saturday.
That means that we cannot make sure that the increased defense spending actually leads to more security.
NATO has been pressing for a boost in defense production to satisfy a demand for weapons and equipment.
That has soared since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as allies not only rush supplies to Kiev, but also build up their own inventories.
One major concern has been a shortage of 155mm artillery rounds, with Kiev firing up to 10,000 of these per day.
That's a lot.
I know it's hard to imagine, isn't it?
155mm artillery shells.
Up to that number per day.
In February, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned Kiev was burning through shells much faster than the West could produce them.
That was February.
So that was seven months ago.
Bauer pushed for more private investment in the defense sector to ramp up production capacity.
Urging pension funds and banks to stop labeling defense investments as unethical.
Geniuses.
Geniuses.
Unethical.
It's unethical for democracies, for free countries, to spend on defense.
It's a left-wing position.
Everything the left touches, it destroys.
There is no exception, ladies and gentlemen.
There has not been an exception.
Since 1917. Long-term stability needs to prevail over short-term profits.
As we have seen in Ukraine, war is a whole-of-society event.
Forty percent of the Ukrainian economy evaporated in the first days of the war.
That was private money to a large extent.
That money is gone, he noted.
Bauer also pressed business leaders to speed up the expansion of production capacity.
Well, this is what we have to do.
between the hypersonic missiles of Russia and China, and this, we should pursue peace as well as war.
This is it, the Ultimate Issues Hour, the third hour on Tuesdays. - Yes.
I have a piece out today.
It was sheer coincidence that Tuesday is my column day, and I want you to know there are more than 1,000 columns of mine up on the Internet.
50 a year, 20 years.
1,000.
If the average book, what is the average book?
About 75,000 words.
50,000 words was my happiness book.
But three times or four times that size is my commentaries on the Bible.
So let's say it's 75,000 words.
The average column is 850 words.
I don't know if I can figure this out quickly.
But there are a lot of books there.
And they come out on Tuesdays.
Today, my column is on what I spoke on, on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.
There are two High Holy Days, as they're called.
Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, they have a 10-day period, including the days between them.
I will be conducting Yom Kippur services.
People of all faiths watch it or attend it.
Go to pragerhighholidays.net.
Pragerhighholidays.net.
Whatever I talk about is of universal interest as well as Jewish interest.
So I gave a sermon, two sermons actually, on what does God most want?
And that is my column in today's Town Hall, and then we'll go to Daily Wire and American Greatness and many other sites.
What does God most care about?
What would you answer that question?
Before I give my answer, whether you're religious or not religious, even if you're an atheist, you could just answer, what do you think, if there is a God, God most cares about?
So everybody can offer their own answer.
You're a Christian.
You're a Jew.
You're a Muslim.
You're a Hindu.
You're an atheist.
You're an agnostic.
What do you think?
What does God most care about?
So I have an answer, and it's biblically based.
It's not my answer, I think.
And it matters what the Bible says, because the Bible gave us this God.
So, if the Bible didn't invent God, the Bible revealed God.
So if the revealer of something says something about what it revealed, it's pretty, I think, dispositive.
That's the answer.
You want to know what God most cares about?
It's in the Bible.
So here is my answer.
The answer is good and evil.
How human beings treat each other.
That's what God most cares about.
Good and evil.
So I have some proofs.
I offer, let's see, one, two, three, four, I number them, five, six, seven, eight.
The article is up at dennisprager.com or townhall.com.
What does God most care about?
The answer is good and evil, how we human beings treat each other.
Here are some proofs from the Bible, the book that gave us God.
1. The reason the Bible gives for why God brought the flood that destroyed the world, saving Lino and his family, is that humans were evil.
Virtually every ancient society had a flood story.
But as far as I could deduce, only in the Bible's story, Did God destroy mankind because people were evil?
For example, according to the contemporaneous ancient Near East Babylonian story, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the gods destroyed humanity, except for a man named Utnapishtim, because humans made so much noise, they kept the gods awake at night.
I want you to know.
That is by far my favorite pagan tale.
The gods in the Babylonian world destroyed the world, killed all human beings except for Utnapishtim and some others who could climb high mountains.
Because they made so much noise, they kept the gods awake.
When you realize how different the Bible is from the world in which it developed, the only rational answer is that something above humans created it, which is what I believe.
And I make the case repeatedly in The Rational Bible, my Bible commentary of the first five books.
How do you know God cares more about good and evil than anything else?
He destroyed the world because of evil.
Number two.
By the way, even if you think it's a myth, it doesn't matter.
That's the way the story is presented.
This is a God who most cares about good and evil.
Number two.
In every flood story, God saved an individual and a mate.
Otherwise the flood would have ended human life.
The only reason God saved Noah, Was that he was, quote, a righteous man in his generations.
Again, the sole concern in the Bible's flood story is moral.
Number three.
God is repeatedly described as a moral being.
Here's one example from Deuteronomy.
The Lord your God is mighty and awesome, not partial, and takes no bribe.
Executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and loves the stranger, providing them with food and clothing.
God is repeatedly described as good.
4. The fundamental human division in the Hebrew Bible is not between Jew and non-Jew, but between good and bad people.
That is why the Hebrew Bible describes so many non-Jews as good.
In addition to Noah, the daughter of Pharaoh, Jethro a Midianite priest, Caleb whose ethnicity is not Hebrew but Kenizzite, Rahab the Canaanite prostitute who hid the Hebrew spies, and Ruth the Moabite who becomes the ancestor of the Messiah.
And...
So often criticizes the Jews for their bad behavior.
So if this were an ethnocentric book, the Hebrew Bible, the Jews would look great, the Israelites, the Hebrews, whichever term you wish to use, and the non-Jews would look bad.
But so many non-Jews are depicted as good, and so often the Jews are not depicted as good, or as not good.
The division of the Hebrew Bible, which gave us God, is between the decent and the indecent, not between religions or races or anything else.
No holy work is so critical of the people of that holy works religion as the Hebrew Bible is of the Hebrews.
Again, that is because God is preoccupied with moral differences, not with differences of ethnicity or even of religion.
As Viktor Frankl wrote in his seminal book, Man's Search for Meaning, there are only two races, the decent and the indecent.
I got this idea from the Bible.
I got the words from Frankl, but I got the idea from the Bible.
The only division that matters is good and bad.
That is why I hate the left.
It is the opposite of biblical morality.
It divides the world between rich and poor and between black and white, not between good and evil.
It is disinterested.
In promoting the good, it is in promoting by race or by class.
The Soviets by class, the left-wing in America by race.
All whites are racist is an inconceivable comment in the Bible.
Inconceivable.
All indecent people, or all racists, are indecent.
Dennis Prager here, Ultimate Issues Hour.
What does God most care about?
It's my article today at DennisPrager.com and Town Hall.
It'll migrate to many other sites in the course of the week.
Daily Wire, American Greatness, Jewish Press, Jewish World Review.
Which is good.
I wouldn't write so often if I didn't think I had people reading it.
I offer proof of my argument that the thing God most cares about is good and evil, how we treat other people.
Yep.
So I gave you, let's see, what did I give you?
Yeah, four proofs, and here's number five.
The Hebrew Bible, and therefore God, is also preoccupied with moral treatment of animals.
Most people do not realize that treatment of animals is included in the Ten Commandments.
Not only must one's animals be allowed to rest every week on the Sabbath, but there are also laws in the Torah, the five books of Moses, that prohibit muzzling animals while they work in the field so that they are free to eat while they work, yoking animals of two different species,
and therefore having different gaits and sizes to the same 6. While slavery was not outright banned, 3,000 years ago the Torah prohibited returning a slave to his master, kidnapping people to sell them as slaves—that alone should have made Bible believers abolitionists—and sentence a master who murdered his slave to death.
That is what the punishment, avenged, must likely mean.
Seven, the prophets, the Hebrew word means spokesman, God's spokesman, were preoccupied with moral behavior.
Eight, God is repeatedly depicted as more interested, more concerned with moral behavior than anything else.
God has told you, O humans.
This is from Micah.
God has told you, O humans.
What is good and what the Lord demands of you only to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God?
Hate evil and love good and establish justice.
Amos.
Those of you who love God must hate evil.
Psalms.
And I conclude with two paragraphs.
If rabbis, priests, and ministers...
Or to be true to the Bible, they need to emphasize that what God demands most from their co-religionists is good behavior.
That is not only obvious from the Hebrew Bible, but from the New Testament as well.
Yes, the New Testament teaches that there is no salvation without right faith, i.e.
faith in Christ.
But there is no right faith without right behavior.
Did you get that?
There is no right faith without right behavior.
That is why Christians, when challenged, well, look at all the atrocities Christians committed against Jews and others in the Middle Ages, and later on, Protestants and Catholics slaughtering one another.
And so the answer is, well, they weren't really Christians.
They're not real Christians.
To act that way.
Okay, so you're agreeing.
You know somebody believes by their behavior.
So my thesis is right.
As James puts it, I write, faith without works is dead.
And as Jesus quoted in Matthew put it, in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the law and the prophets.
The religious tragedy is that too often religious people have placed something above moral behavior.
Ritual practice among Jews and theology among Christians.
Both are very important because goodness will not survive the death of Judeo-Christian values.
Just look at the moral chaos in large parts of secular America today.
The most secular institutions of our society, The universities have become moral and intellectual wastelands.
And finally, we need God and concern with goodness.
God without concern with goodness leads to evil, and so does concern with goodness without God.
Okay, what do you think?
That's my argument.
DennisPrager.com and TownHall.com until they migrate elsewhere.
1-8-Prager-776-877-243-7776 And let's see.
Let's see.
What do you say?
Love.
I'll take that one.
Weatherford, Texas.
And Jay, hello.
Good afternoon, Dennis.
How are you, sir?
Thank you.
Well.
Good.
Real quick, just want to tell you, I think you're one of the most intelligent men that I've ever heard speak.
I listen to you every day.
Thank you.
And as a Christian man, I love you so very much.
Thank you.
Anyway, I did want to let you know that.
It means a lot.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
I'm glad it does.
I think I'm saying the same thing, but I'm saying it in a little bit of a different way because God is good and Satan is evil.
God will not go into the evil realm except for, as a Christian, I believe Jesus came to earth, put himself in that evil realm to save, to give the opportunity for...
Mankind to be safe.
And I say all that to say that I think the most important thing, it's the same thing you're saying in a lot of senses.
Yeah, is love.
I'm going to react to that.
Forgive me for anticipating.
Ultimate Issues Hour and What Is It God Most Cares About is my subject, and I say, based on biblical arguments I gave, God most cares about good and evil, that we do good and we resist evil.
Those of you who love God must hate evil.
I have a whole series.
I gave seven or eight arguments that that's what God most cares about.
A lot of religious people don't agree with me.
And secular people don't think that you need God for goodness.
But only secular people say men give birth.
Only secular people believe America is systemically racist.
I mean, there are a few religious people who claim it as well, but not believers in the divine nature of the Bible.
We need both.
We need God and we need goodness.
So, alright, so my caller in Texas, Jay, thank you, and he was arguing that we basically hold similar views.
He's a Christian, I'm a Jew, but he would use the word love.
I don't use the word love because it is much less precise than good and evil.
And in any event, to be perfectly honest, this is a personal note, if you will.
I don't mean about me personally, but it's my view more than I'm giving you a biblical basis, just a reasonable one.
I don't care if you love me.
I care if you hurt me.
If you don't treat me bad or treat me good...
If you really, and I mean me, anybody.
I know it says love your neighbor as yourself.
It is a phenomenally great general view.
It is almost impossible to love your neighbor as yourself, as we all know.
But it doesn't matter.
It is a beautiful thought.
And it really is shreit, because the Hebrew has the word to.
It's really love to your neighbor in Hebrew.
For those of you who know Hebrew, good and evil, that's the biggest thing.
You know, it's amazing.
I'm looking at this newspaper here in front of me.
So, where was the, uh...
Here.
Where was this article on, uh...
What's happening?
Oh, bummer.
I wanted to read you something here.
Yeah.
Sexual violence still rampant in Ethiopia.
Rights Paddle reports.
Canada expels India envoy amid slaying inquiry of a Canadian Sikh.
Slovakia frontrunner wants to end Ukraine aid.
And he's a leftist.
Iran frees five Americans who were kidnapped by the Iranians for $6 billion.
Suspect held after deputies slaying.
That's just the first two pages.
God made a really, really flawed creature when he made human beings.
Capable of being magnificent and angelic.
But they are outliers, let's be honest.
Okay.
Lake Elsinore, California, and Bruce.
Hello, Bruce.
Hi, Dennis.
How are you?
Well, thank you.
I've admired you for a long time, but I need to challenge you a little bit.
We have a moral compass.
Putin is an evil dictator.
I think we can agree on that.
Correct.
He has done evil to Ukraine.
I think we agree on that.
Correct.
Why would you compromise when all the great leaders like Churchill and Roosevelt would never compromise to give up territory, ever?
And I must say this, Israel should never give up territory to give up to evil.
So why would you...
By the way, as it happens, Roosevelt and Churchill gave Stalin more territory than was ever given to a dictator in history.
You can't use them as good examples in that.
I'm sorry.
And I love them both.
Back in a moment.
Don't go away.
Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
To hear the entire three hours of my radio show, commercial-free, every single day, You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives, as well as the daily show prep.
▲
Export Selection