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Sept. 21, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:19:09
Tear It Down
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Dennis Prager here.
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Dennis Prager here, and I am in Florida.
I'm back tomorrow.
Sitting in for me is Julie Hartman.
I do a broadcast with her, the only person I have ever done a broadcast with, Dennis and Julie.
That's how highly I regard her.
You'll understand why.
Here she is.
Well, I hope I live up to the hype.
What a nice introduction by our dear friend, Dennis Prager.
Welcome, everyone.
It is Thursday, September 21st, 2023.
It is a joy to be with you.
As Dennis just said, I'm Julie Hartman.
I am the co-host of the Dennis and Julie podcast.
That is the show we have together that airs on Mondays here on the Salem News Channel.
You can catch it at 1 o'clock Pacific, 4 o'clock Eastern.
And I'm also the host of my three times weekly show.
Timeless with Julie Hartman.
That is also to be found on the Salem News channel, as well as on the Julie Hartman YouTube channel.
That's Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, also at 1 o'clock Pacific, 4 o'clock Eastern.
So please do check those pieces of content out, especially if you are a Dennis Prager fan.
fan.
I can imagine that many of you listening are big Dennis Prager fans and the long form style of Dennis and Julie really lends itself well to having Dennis talk about stories from his life that you may not have heard about when on the radio the segments are just too short for him to really expound on certain things.
So you really learn a lot about the man Dennis Prager in addition to the talk show host.
So please do go.
And as I said, check those pieces of content out.
Maybe I'm a little naive, but I thought that as we moved away from the quote-unquote racial reckoning that we as a country had in 2020, that we would leave the discussions of reparations and tearing down statues behind.
I thought, okay, that was a moment.
And certainly the wokeism in many ways that sprung up during that moment has continued to today.
But I thought some of the Well, I was wrong.
New York City, the New York City Council, is considering proposals about tearing down even more monuments, honoring certain historical figures.
And they are also, like San Francisco, assembling a reparations task force.
Seems like we are not going to see any end to this.
Anytime soon.
There's a cultural affairs committee that was brought together in New York City.
And it proposed to the city council in a meeting earlier this week that they should remove publicly displayed artwork that progressive activists deemed, quote, a celebration of those who perpetuate oppression.
In New York City, there are a lot of people who are actually living and walking the streets all around us who perpetuate oppression.
It's amazing.
That this is what the New York City Council is focusing its time and energy and resources on.
Meanwhile, there is a huge migrant crisis going on in that city.
There are over 100,000 undocumented immigrants in New York City alone.
So you can only imagine how many more are scattered throughout the rest of the country.
People are saying that the number is high as 7 million undocumented immigrants.
But New York City is really bearing the brunt of it, even though it's a northern state.
Because the mayor, Eric Adams, said, we are a tolerant place.
Come to our sanctuary city.
We will take care of you.
We will not discriminate against you.
And now, even he is saying that this problem is destroying the city.
But it's just incredible that given that issue that they are facing, that they spend, as I said, their time and focus and energy and resources on statues.
Really?
Reading from the Epoch Times, the bill directs the city's Public Design Commission, another committee, commission, task force.
Someone should compile a list of how many of these quote-unquote committees there are across the country.
Oh yes, Sean's saying you need a committee to do that.
Yes, there should be a task force and a committee to track the numbers of task forces and committees.
The bill directs the city's public design commission to review and remove artwork depicting historical figures who, quote, owned enslaved persons.
Why don't they say people, as an aside?
I'm truly confused.
Why did they say persons as opposed to people?
Anyway, I digress.
Removing artworks who depict historical figures who owned enslaved persons or directly benefited economically from slavery or who participated in the systemic crimes against indigenous peoples or other crimes against humanity.
According to Councilwoman Sandy Nurse, who is a Democrat from Brooklyn, It's a bit redundant, don't you think?
A Democrat from Brooklyn.
I should just say she's from Brooklyn and you'll get that she's a Democrat.
Actually, there's an exception to that rule.
Dennis Prager is from Brooklyn.
According to Councilwoman Sandy Nurse, this bill allows New York City to address the deep-rooted legacies of slavery, colonization, and systemic crimes against humanity.
I was in Berlin a few weeks ago.
It was an incredible experience.
And a large part of what made it an incredible experience was seeing all of the monuments throughout the city that recognized the ugly historical past.
Now, of course, it is the bare minimum for a country like Germany to erect such monuments because of the particularly egregious crimes that they committed in the 20th century.
But the point is, everywhere that you went in Berlin, you were reminded For instance, there is a huge Jewish memorial that is right in the center of the city.
It's adjacent to the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag.
There are these stumbling stones scattered all throughout Berlin.
Which are stones which commemorate the Jews who lived in the building that you are standing in front of.
And they have the names of the Jews as well as the dates that they were sent to the concentration camps and even the dates that they died.
And so when you see the way that Berlin goes about its past, it's a bit tricky to consider.
Or it's a bit disheartening, I should say, to consider the way that the United States is going in a different direction of tearing down these statues, which wrongly or rightfully commemorate our past.
Now, those of you listening who may have an opinion, which is that in Berlin, there are these statues or monuments that are...
In other words, it is a monument that purposefully is intended to state we have done wrong against these people, whereas a monument that is commemorating a slave owner is celebrating the person's wrongdoing instead of recognizing the wrongdoing.
But in Berlin, in addition to the Jewish memorials and the Jewish plaques, there is also a huge Soviet.
That is in the middle of Berlin, a few steps away, actually, from the Jewish memorial.
The Soviets, yes, it is true, in 1945, quote-unquote liberated Berlin with the Battle of Berlin, defeating the Nazis.
But the Soviets committed egregious atrocities in Germany.
For instance, there are hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers who were believed to have raped German women.
Of course, we know that in Berlin also, the Soviets committed terrible crimes against those who were living in the communist East Germany and East Berlin.
But yet, a Soviet memorial there still stands.
So there could be the argument, as people are making here in the United States, there could be an argument made in Berlin, why are we keeping up this Soviet memorial when the Soviets did so much wrongdoing here in our city and in our country, just as some of these why are we keeping up this Soviet memorial when the Soviets did so much wrongdoing here in our city and in our country, just Again, it's because it reminds us of the history.
It's amazing to me that the left talks all about how we need to confront our history.
We need to talk about it, educate people, learn about the past.
And yet...
The same people who are saying that are wanting to tear it down.
It is a powerful thing to walk down the street and see a Confederate monument because you realize, oh my gosh, evil was right here in my city.
If that Confederate monument is taken to a museum, only a select number of people are going to go see that.
1-8 Prager, 7-7-6, 1-8 Prager, 7-7-6.
I'm very eager to hear your thoughts.
We'll be continuing this tear down the statue task force assembled in New York City in just a few moments.
I'm Julie Hartman.
This is The Dennis Prager Show.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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Julie Hartman here, co-host of the Dennis and Julie show and host of my own three times weekly show, Timeless with Julie Hartman.
We are discussing the New York City Council's proposal or hearing of a proposal that would tear down even more statues in the city of people who, quote, celebrate those who perpetuate oppression.
Or who owned enslaved persons or directly benefited economically from slavery or who participated in systemic crimes against indigenous peoples or other crimes against humanity.
I was arguing in the previous segment that one of the important things about keeping statues up of people who might have been despicable is that it reminds us that evil was right where we are.
If you take those monuments or those statues and you put them in a museum, only the museum goers, the small segment of the population who actually cares to see such things, will be confronted, as the left says, with that ugly history.
So it doesn't quite add up, this argument that we need to constantly be reminded of our defective past, but yet we're removing things that would remind us of that defective past.
These statues, though, that are called into question in New York City right now in 2023 are not statues of people who were in the Confederacy.
George Washington statue is one of the statues that they propose tearing down.
One of the former mayors of New York City is another statue that they propose tearing down.
And we see that back in January of 2022, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City took down the iconic bronze statue of President Theodore Roosevelt.
My gosh, Teddy!
What was so bad about Teddy?
They took his statue down that was standing in front of the building for 80 years.
The removal and restoration process of tearing down that Teddy Roosevelt statue was, you guess, actually, pause right now, those of you who are listening, and guess how much it cost.
Two million dollars.
$2 million to take down the Teddy Roosevelt statue.
And that didn't even include the expense of storage and the eventual transportation to North Dakota, where the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library is scheduled to open in 2026. Okay, so let's get this straight.
New York City, which has a huge crime, homelessness, and migrant problem, is spending $2 million on taking down One of the most iconic statues in the city of a great person, a great American president, in the name of so-called racial reparations, and yet it is costing that city $2 million.
Can you imagine what would happen if that $2 million was just dispersed to the homeless population on the street?
Or even to the migrants, who I do not believe should be getting that money because they are not American citizens.
That doesn't mean that we shouldn't have sympathy for the situation that they are in.
But that money should be first and foremost going to Americans.
But $2 million for a statue?
Mayor Eric Adams recently announced that he is cutting the New York City budget by 15% from every department in order to accommodate the migrant crisis, which is mentioned has over 100,000 people, undocumented which is mentioned has over 100,000 people, undocumented immigrants, living in America.
So let's get this straight.
Our money is going towards these stupid, stupid projects like taking down a statue of an American president.
And money is going away from the programs that supposedly help the American people and going towards non-American citizens.
We are living in a profoundly confused time.
A morally confused time, as Dennis would say.
Let's go to Jason in Studio City, California.
Hi, Jason.
Thanks for calling in.
Hi, how are you?
I'd like to recommend and suggest that we restore these monuments and charge these committees once the presidency changes hands.
You know what?
I totally agree with you, especially when it comes to someone like George Washington.
Thank you so much for your call.
You know, Dennis, being the Torah and Bible scholar that he is, talks a lot about the story of Noah when God saved Noah and his family from the destruction of the flood.
God decided to destroy the world by inflicting a flood because the world had just gotten so wicked.
And Dennis says that, or he writes about this, that the reason why Noah God doesn't practice affirmative action in any other way besides moral righteousness, and that's why he selected Noah.
But those last few words are important, that he was the most righteous in his generation.
Meaning that God judged Noah and his actions on the standards of the time.
Maybe Noah wouldn't be deemed as fantastic or righteous of a person by our standards today in 2023, but we have to judge people based on the time in which they were living.
And so when people wag their fingers at those who owned slaves or those who condoned slavery, I would like to ask them this question.
If you are so afraid to stand up to wokeism in 2023, how are you so confident that you would have been one of those people centuries earlier than our time now who would have stood up to the moral atrocity of slavery? how are you so confident that you would have been
It is so much easier to stand up to the absurdity and ridiculousness of wokeism than it was to stand up to this mainstream institution that was sadly existing in a prior time.
Why is it so much easier to stand up to wokeism?
Precisely because of the adjectives I used.
It is absurd and ridiculous.
It's not exactly brave to say, hey, there are two genders.
Sorry.
That's just reality.
That is not somehow an act of courage to say that there is objective reality.
Also, we live in a time in the United States where despite the political persecution against conservatives, and that really is becoming an ever-growing problem, we live in a time and in a place where it is incredibly easy compared to other times and places on Earth to stand up.
To bigotry and to wokeism.
If you say that there are only two genders, you will not be carted away and imprisoned.
Again, I recognize that that is sadly changing in the United States, but at least right now, if you say that, you're pretty much protected.
So don't give me this nonsense that you would have been one of those righteous people back in the day, but you won't even stand up to the ridiculousness now.
That is what everyone should be saying to these wokesters who want to get rid of Teddy Roosevelt and George Washington.
Are you kidding me?
Absurd.
We're going to be talking about another task force, another committee that President Biden has assembled.
And you guessed it, it's woke in addition to this one.
Back in a moment.
1-8 Prager 776-1877-243-7776.
I guess the theme of this first hour is the task force and committetization of the United States of America.
That's one to stumble over.
So many task forces, so many committees, so many people assembling together to fight against the bigotry that is supposedly rampant all around the country.
And here's another one.
President Biden issued an executive order yesterday, so Wednesday, September 20, where he is creating what's called an American Climate Corp.
Which is employing over 20,000 young adults to work for the government, to be paid by the government in order to fight the existential threat of climate change, which bigoted white supremacists have supposedly exacerbated through their love of capitalism and fossil fuels.
Reading from the Huffington Post, after being thwarted by Congress, President Joe Biden will use his executive authority to create a New Deal-style American climate court that will serve as a major green jobs training program.
There was a similar group that was created under President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s.
It was called the Civilian Conservation Corps.
And it was part of the New Deal.
This was after the time of the Great Depression, and FDR was compiling all of these, as people say, alphabet soup programs to stimulate the economy.
In an announcement Wednesday, President Biden and the White House said that the program will employ more than 20,000 young adults who will build trails, plant trees, Well,
that's exactly right.
I hate to break it to people, but we cannot afford this.
We are $33 trillion in debt, which is truly a staggering amount, given that just 40 years ago, we were $1 trillion in debt.
That has skyrocketed to 33. But let's just keep creating these programs, having all of these subsidies, government-sponsored committees and task forces and groups.
To fight the bigotry, the horrible, horrible, horrible bigotry of America.
Reading from Varshini Prakash, this is a quote from the executive director of the Sunrise Movement, after years of demonstrating and fighting for a climate group, we turned a generational rallying cry into real jobs that will put a new generation to work, stopping the climate crisis.
So the White House has conveniently not told the American people how much this would cost.
But if we go back to that earlier bill, Which the Democrats proposed in Congress and then was shot down by the Republicans.
In that bill, this climate group was costing us, it was proposed to have cost us, $10 billion.
$10 billion.
That's about a tenth or an eleventh of the amount that we are sending to fight the war in Ukraine.
There are roughly 500,000 homeless people in the United States all across the country.
If you took that $10 billion and gave it out to homeless people, each person would be given roughly...
$17,000, which is not insignificant, especially when you probably just have coins or $1 bills in your pocket.
But no, we need to give this $10 billion to fight climate change.
Never mind the people like John Kerry.
You know, conservatives talk a lot about the environmental damage done by private planes.
I recently looked this up.
It was way worse than I had thought.
Do you know that an eight-hour private plane journey, ride, if you will, emits the same amount of carbon as the average American emits in one year?
But let's just hand out all these billions of dollars to these people who are going to plant trees, but not take away one's ability to fly on these gas-guzzling, carbon-fueling private jets.
1-8 Prager 776 back in a moment the Dennis Prager show Dennis Prager here and I am in Florida I'm back tomorrow, but sitting in for me is Julie Hartman.
I do a broadcast with her, the only person I have ever done a broadcast with, Dennis and Julie.
That's how highly I regard her.
You'll understand why.
Here she is.
Welcome to the show, everyone.
As Dennis just said, I'm Julie Hartman, the co-host of the Dennis and Julie podcast.
You can catch that on the Salem News Channel or also on the Julie Hartman YouTube page.
It premieres every Monday at 1 o'clock Pacific, 4 o'clock Eastern.
I'm also the host of my own three-times weekly show, Timeless, with Julie Hartman, also on the Salem News Channel and the Julie Hartman YouTube channel.
We like to keep things consistent here at the Salem Media Group.
It's great to be with you.
Thanks so much for tuning in.
I see that there are a lot of calls from the previous hour.
Please do stay on.
I would love to hear your thoughts on some of the things that we discussed.
But starting off with some news.
Rupert Murdoch has officially announced that he will step down as the Fox News Corp chairman in favor of his son, Lachlan.
He has said at 92 years old, that is how old Rupert Murdoch is, that the time is right for him to take on, quote, different roles.
He launched Fox News in 1996. It is now the most watched news channel in the United States, according to BBC, which, by the way, I think that's great news.
Really.
We focus so much on all of the many things that are going wrong in this country.
But the fact that a conservative network is the most watched of any other network in the United States, that's cause for optimism, I think.
Murdoch says that he will transition to the role of chairman emeritus of both firms in mid-November.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the top of this hour.
As many of us know, RFK Jr. is running for President of the United States in the Democratic Party.
He is the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and the son of former U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator Robert F. He has actually really been rising in the polls a lot recently, which has caused for us to pay more attention to him.
It seems that...
People both on the right and on the left are not giving him the attention that he deserves because people on the right are focused on Trump, DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, and rightfully so.
And people on the left are focused primarily on whether President Joe Biden will seek re-election.
But there are all of these polls which are indicating that RFK is ever-growing in his popularity.
For instance, there's an economist.
Which has found that RFK Jr. has the highest net favorability of all of the 2024 presidential candidates.
There's also a July poll, which has him at a 47% approval rating and a 26% unapproval rating compared to President Biden's 39% approval rating compared to 53% unfavorable rating.
I think I said unapproval.
That's not a word.
Unfavorable rating.
So RFK is 8%.
And President Biden is about double percentage points ahead of RFK in his unfavorable approval rating.
There's another component of this discussion of RFK Jr. that we ought to pay attention to, and that is that the Democratic Party has, for the first time in over 50 years, changed the primary schedule.
The primaries are the process by which the respective parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, choose who their nominee will be for the President of the United States.
And for 50 years, the order has been that the Iowa caucus goes first.
A caucus is a little bit different from a primary in terms of its procedures, but the Iowa caucus is the first presidential contest that is held in the presidential primary season.
And then after the Iowa caucus comes the New Hampshire primary.
As I said, for decades, this has been the procedure that both parties go along with.
But recently, The Democratic National Committee, the DNC, at the direction of President Biden, who is their favored nominee for 2024, has said that they are actually going to change the Democratic Party's primary order to put South Carolina ahead.
Of the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary.
Well, why does this matter?
Why should we care whichever state goes first?
What they're trying to do is get a big victory and a big lead out front for President Biden.
Because if you look at what happened in 2020, in the Iowa caucus, President Biden came in fourth place with 15.8% of the vote.
Also in the New Hampshire primary, he came in fifth with 8.4% of the vote.
So those two presidential contests, the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, President Biden did not do particularly well.
But in the South Carolina primary, he did extraordinarily well.
He came in first place with 48.6% of the vote.
So what the Democratic Party is trying to do by putting South Carolina first is It means that they get more media attention, more donation money, and more of a sense that they might see it through and do particularly well in the presidential contest.
But still, this is upending decades of the way that things were done.
And another fly in the ointment is that the state of New Hampshire has a law which says that it must be the first...
Primary in the country.
On Timeless with Julie Hartman, I interviewed David Scanlon, who is the Secretary of State of New Hampshire, and I asked him, I said, okay, so let's say that the DNC sticks to its guns and says, no, no, no, we're holding a South Carolina primary head of an Iowa and New Hampshire one.
What are you, a Secretary of State of New Hampshire, So when the Democratic Party schedules the South Carolina primary, which they recognize as the first primary, New Hampshire is going to do their own primary a week before that.
So bringing this back to the discussion, of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., this matters hugely for him because if New Hampshire is holding its first primary ahead of South Carolina, it is actually pretty likely that President Biden will not be on the ballot because the Biden administration and the Democratic Party think that the first official primary is held in South Carolina.
So what it could mean...
Is that RFK Jr., who is leading in the Democratic Party, could win that first New Hampshire primary because President Biden won't be on the ballot.
And as I just said, when you win a primary, when you win a presidential contest out front, it certainly gives you a huge advantage in your subsequent days and months of the campaign.
So we really should be paying attention to RFK because of this whole primary debacle, as well as his outstanding performance in the polls.
Here are some positions of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I want to summarize them because RFK Jr. is so maligned in the media, and he actually talks about this as one of the things that he is running against.
He's running against this censorship of people who deviate from right-think, if you will, what is deemed acceptable to think and believe in the Democratic Party.
He has said that over $2 million has been allocated by the DNC to malign and marginalize him.
Quote, this is from RFK, I think that most Democrats care about one thing more than anything else, which is to beat Donald Trump.
So Kennedy is saying, I don't know why the DNC is maligning me.
If I can be that Democrat that does this ahead of President Biden, who is clearly not doing so well cognitively and also in terms of his governance, then why is the DNC going to such lengths to try to quash me?
Continuing with the discussion of RFK Jr., I want to hear what you think about this candidate.
at 1-8 Prager 776.
I'm interested to hear your opinions of RFK Jr. 1-8 Prager 776-1877-243-7777.
RFK Jr. is doing spectacularly well in the polls, given that he is a challenger of the President of the United States within the President's own party.
As I mentioned, there's one poll that has him several points ahead in favorability ratings to President Biden and many points behind President Biden in unfavorability ratings.
So let's go through here some of RFK Jr.'s positions, because this will, I think, explain a lot about why the Democratic Party is allocating $2 billion in media financing to try to smear him and marginalize him.
And it also shows why the Biden administration views him as such a threat.
You know what was really sad to see?
There was a video that circulated on Instagram from Caroline Kennedy's son, Jack Schlossberg, and he was so, so harsh when he was speaking about RFK Jr. Putting out this video was to say that he disapproves of RFK Jr. He said that he is an embarrassment to the Kennedy family because given that this...
This man, Jack Schlossberg, is Caroline Kennedy's son.
That makes him the second cousin of RFK Jr. So Jack Schlossberg was saying that Kennedy is an embarrassment to the family and that he is corrupting and using for his own purposes this idea of Camelot and that he should just be quiet, go to the sidelines, and support President Joe Biden because...
As Jack Schlossberg says, apparently Joe Biden has done immense good for the country economically in terms of his civil rights record, his climate change record.
La-di-da-di-da, etc.
But it's really sad to see that even members of the Kennedy family are going against him and being so rude and unsupportive of his, I believe, noble efforts to try to reform the Democratic Party from within, and then from there, reform the country for the better.
So one of the main things that RFK Jr. campaigns on is that we as a country are, quote, addicted to war, as he would say.
One of the big problems we have in our federal government is the addiction to war.
RFK Jr. said in a recent interview, President Biden went to Congress and asked for another $24 billion for the Ukraine war.
We've already spent $8 trillion on wars since 9-11.
If we kept that money at home, we could have childcare for every American.
We could have free college for every American.
We'd be able to pay for our social security system.
So he is pledging that if he becomes president of the United States, that he will stop this war industrial complex, and he will try to give that money towards people, the American people, and their institutions.
He's also talked about the dangers of the COVID-19 vaccine, that he is not anti-vaccine on principle, but he thinks that the American people have not been told the truth about the possible downsides.
bad effects of the COVID vaccine and that they ought to be aware of that information to make an informed decision about whether or not they would like to take the vaccine.
He has also talked about his opposition to the Democratic Party's border policies.
This is really amazing that someone who identifies as a Democrat is being so bold as to say that the party in power is not doing so well with regard to this issue.
He has said that the southern border poses A humanitarian crisis to the United States.
It's been, quote, a disaster to our country.
Seven million people have come in to the United States.
That's taken up a lot of our resources, monetary and psychological, too, as people are trying to figure out ways to support these everyday...
Undocumented immigrants on our streets.
And he has also said that, you know, it's a humanitarian catastrophe because these 7 million undocumented immigrants don't have any legal status in this country.
So they're vulnerable to being exploited by people who will pay them $5 or $6 an hour to do work because they know that they can't sue them for paying them such a low cost because they don't have any legal status.
Every woke, left-wing position to take seriously, that you have these people who are vulnerable and might be exploited?
RFK Jr. is saying that, and it is certainly true.
I mean, my gosh, what is happening to a lot of these migrants, in addition to being exploited professionally, many of them are being exploited sexually.
The amount of trafficked sex workers that are migrants is huge.
So why is RFK Jr. being so maligned in the Democratic Party for expressing this very humanitarian position?
I'll give you a few more that RFK Jr. stands on.
He really is a, it seems he is a true Democrat.
In the sense that he is a liberal, Dennis often makes the distinction between liberal and leftist.
Liberals support free speech.
They support the basic principles that were founded in our country and that have impelled us forward.
Leftists don't.
But nevertheless, the Democratic Party is going against RFK Jr. because the Democratic Party has turned into a leftist party, not into a liberal party.
RFK Jr. has talked about the economic downfall of the United States, the fact that all of these corporations, 200 corporations, according to the Wall Street Journal, have bought tens of thousands of single-family homes in the United States, including entire neighborhoods, and they are increasing rental prices in order to...
Economically benefit their own corporations.
He's come against the World Economic Forum.
People like Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, and Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, waxing eloquent about the need to create a new world order and a gray reset, but that new world order and gray reset are on their terms.
I.e.
imposing fossil fuel restrictions for- And of course, RFK Jr. has also talked about big tech censorship.
He's actually filed a legal action against the Biden administration and Google over censorship because he was barred from Instagram at one point because supposedly he defied Instagram's COVID-19 rules.
I can see that many of you have thoughts about RFK Jr.
I'm eager to hear them in the next segment.
1-8 Prager, 7-7-6-1-8-7-7-2-4-3-triple-seven-six.
The Dennis Prager Show.
The Dennis Prager Show.
There are two Denises in Florida today.
Dennis Prager, who is in Florida for his grandson's bar mitzvah.
And then there's Dennis in Tampa, who has some thoughts on RFK Jr. Hi, Dennis.
Hi, how you doing?
Well, thanks.
I just recently saw Trump's speech in Erie, Pennsylvania, where he mentioned that he was going to go after and try and look about the vaccines for kids with autism and stuff like that.
I was just wondering if you thought maybe that he would probably pick RFK to run that portion of it, because Trump always likes picking people who know what they're doing in a certain area.
I mean, I know he's a liberal.
I'm not a big fan of that.
But, I mean, you know, I just wanted to know what your thought was that he'd pick RFK to run that portion of going after the vaccines for children.
Oh, I think RFK Jr. would be a great pick that President Trump might make because he has been...
He actually wrote a book on vaccination, and so he has been pretty consistent with regard to his views.
And most recently, since the advent of the COVID-19 vaccine, he has said, wait a minute, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but why don't we just slow it down a bit and not mandate people to get it?
Let it be up to their own personal choice, and if they think that they ought to receive such a thing.
So yes, I think President Trump would do that.
It seems, I mean, when he was president, he passed the First Step Act, which was this huge prison reform bill, which many people, especially on the left, would not expect someone like President Trump to even consider passing, let alone pass.
So it seems that he is willing to bring in people or bring in causes that are, quote-unquote, not in line with conservatism.
Or including bringing in someone who is a Democrat.
So yes, I do think that might be a possibility and I think it would be a great one.
We have a fantastic guest for the last portion of this hour.
His name is Marion Tupi.
He actually did a PragerU video on his recent book called Super Abundance, the story of population growth, innovation, and human flourishing on an infinitely bountiful planet.
I love watching PragerU videos.
And no, it's not just because I have a show with Dennis Prager or I guest host for his show.
PragerU is such an informative resource for people, especially who are right of center.
And I watched this video and it kind of upended my understanding of all of the things that we have been taught about the world today, that we are somehow in this state of not having enough resources.
Marion Tupi upends that understanding.
He is a fellow at the Cato Institute, and I'm so happy to welcome him on the Dennis Prager Show.
Thanks for coming on.
Hello.
Hello.
Thanks for having me.
So your book disputes that there is going to be a scarcity here in the United States.
Can you just for the audience give a synopsis, for those who may not have watched your PragerU video, of why you think that?
Well, sure.
I mean, historically people thought that when population increases, things will become scarcer, right?
If there's a fixed path, then the more people you have...
You invite to dinner, then people will have to have smaller slices, right?
Except that the pie isn't fixed.
We can grow the pie.
We can increase resources so that even as the population of the United States grows or the population of the world grows, we can have more.
And we grow the pie through the application of human intelligence or human brain.
For example, per acre of land, we can now get much more corn, wheat or rice than we used to in the past.
We can grow more food than our ancestors could.
So all that we need is really more minds, more brains.
And if you think about human progress or abundance of resources from perspective of the human brain, then what we need is more people to have new ideas, to apply their minds toward bettering of humanity and bettering of the world.
And if you think that way, then suddenly humans are not just a detraction.
They are not just bad for the world.
It's the opposite.
They are good for the world.
Instead of being cancer on the planet, humans become the benefactors of the planet.
In this previous segment, I was talking about RFK Jr. and his immense popularity in the Democratic Party.
And one of the things that he is campaigning on is that the American elite...
Really run by the Democratic Party has told us a lot of lies about the state of our country and of our world.
And one of them is this idea of food scarcity.
And also a supplemental part of that food scarcity is this booming population.
So I'm eager to hear what your response to that is.
We're going to continue with Marion Tupi in the next segment.
He is the author of Super Abundance, the story of population growth.
Back in a moment.
Welcome back to The Dennis Prager Show.
I'm Julie Hartman, co-host of The Dennis and Julie Show and host of my own three times weekly show, Timeless, with Julie Hartman.
We have Marion Tupi here as a guest.
He is a fellow at the Cato Institute and he is also the author of Super Abundance.
So Marion, in the previous segment, I was asking you this question that Sort of goes against the understanding that most Americans have of our idea of abundance and that we're constantly told, at least I was told this a lot in college, that there is a food scarcity.
In the United States and all around the world.
And that food scarcity is being fueled by a boom in the world population.
We've now reached over 7 billion people.
So what is your response to that?
Is there a food scarcity and is there a population problem?
No.
I mean, let me first recognize that food is actually more expensive than it was two years ago, in large part because the idiots in Washington, D.C. have brought about inflation, which has increased prices of food.
And also we had the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which also contributed to the rise in prices.
But in the long run, we are not talking about the last two years.
Let's say in the last 100 years.
Food is substantially less expensive in terms of the amount of time that people in America have to work in order to buy something.
Let me give you just a few examples.
In the book Superabundance, we looked at food prices between 1919 and 2019. And what we found, for example, was that eggs have fallen in price relative to wages by 97%.
So instead of one egg for the same amount of time that you work to...
You know, chicken fell in price by 96%, rice by 96%, corn by 96%, you know, butter by 94%.
So when you look at the broader scope of history, if you look at how this country has performed over the last 100 years or so, it is nothing but staggering.
And so in spite of the fact that we now have 330 million Americans and we have 8 billion people in the world, So,
if this idea of food scarcity is largely unfounded, Where does it come from?
And we know that I was actually recently reading an editorial that went back a few months in the Wall Street Journal that said that...
The myth of overpopulation was actually really fueled here in the United States.
Robert McNamara gave a speech, for instance, to the United Nations back in the 1970s saying that overpopulation and the subsequent effect of food scarcity is posing the biggest existential threat to the world.
So why did people have this understanding?
Well, partly because it's of outdated ideas.
McNamara was a Malthusian.
Basically, Thomas Malthus was the British economist who came up with the idea of overpopulation.
But in the 1970s, especially, and well into the 1980s, people believed in overpopulation.
And I think the biggest problem is that people like that sort of tend to look at humans only as consumers.
Okay, so everybody in the world, you know, has an empty stomach, needs to be fed, etc.
Every human being comes into the world not just with an empty stomach but also with a brain capable of creating more abundance for all of us.
You know, all those technological changes that happened increased productivity in the agricultural sector and therefore we have more food.
But where did those ideas come from?
Where did those technological breakthroughs come from?
And they came from the human mind.
So the human being is not just a consumer.
He is, above all, a creator.
And I think that a lot of people don't understand.
You were talking about the problem of obesity, which is a super abundance problem, apropos of the title of your book.
What can we do in the United States to mitigate that issue?
Well, you know, every time humanity solves a problem, it creates other problems.
That's just how the world is.
We have eliminated a massive problem, which was starvation.
For most of human history, people were constantly hungry.
It is almost unimaginable to an American or for the European today to understand what life was like 200 or 300 years ago when hunger was something that people felt on average every day, you know, all of us.
And we have abolished that.
Today, as you say, we have so much food and many of us are obese.
And for a long time, we have tried to get around the problem by, you know, better diet and exercise and all those things are important.
But only recently, again, humanity has solved this problem with a new drug called Wegovi and Ozempic.
We now have drugs that if you simply don't have for the will to exercise and to watch what you eat, you can now take drugs that actually decrease your craving for food.
So, you know, maybe this is a problem that has a solution after all.
Now, right now, Wegovi and Ozempi are very expensive, but, you know, they will be off-patent within 15 years.
Generic drugs will be available, and people who are obese will have access to cheap drugs to make them thin again.
You know, Marianne, one of my heroes is Niccolo Machiavelli, and people on the left would probably hear me say that and go, of course, the bigot conservative Julie Hartman loves the Machiavellian Niccolo Machiavelli.
But one of the things that I appreciate is that he has such a great judgment and wisdom with regard to human nature, and he has this...
Particularly controversial, but not unfounded part of his book, The Prince, where he says that if you want a civilization to function properly, you should actually settle your civilization on land that is difficult to manage because it keeps people busy and it keeps people sort of in check.
In other words, it doesn't give them enough leisure time to toy around with.
Crazy experiments and crazy supposed problems as we are seeing here in the United States.
And I sort of extend that line of logic to abundance.
My question for you is, a la the Machiavellian wisdom, are we worse off for our super abundance?
Historically, we've been talking about the threat that a lack of abundance would pose.
But here we have, as you say in your book, an excess of abundance.
Are we worse off for that?
Forgive me, we're going to have to continue in the next segment because of limited time.
Back in a moment with Marian Tupi.
I'm Julie Hartman.
The Dennis Prager Show.
Dennis Prager here, and I am in Florida.
I'm back tomorrow, but sitting in for me is Julie Hartman.
I do a broadcast with her, the only person I have ever done a broadcast with, Dennis and Julie.
That's how highly I regard her.
You'll understand why.
Here she is.
Welcome to the third hour of the Dennis Prager Show.
show.
I'm Julia Hartman, the co-host of the Dennis and Julie podcast and also the host of my own three times weekly show, Timeless with Julia Hartman.
You can check those shows out on the Salem News channel.
They are also on the Julia Hartman YouTube channel.
You can also download them on Apple and Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts and Dennis and Julie premieres every Monday and Timeless is Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
For this hour, I would like to follow a question that has captivated me, and that is, has the sexual revolution failed?
I recently attended a debate in downtown Los Angeles that was moderated by Barry Weiss.
For those of you who haven't heard the name Barry Weiss, she is this fantastic journalist.
She actually worked for the New York Times for several years and then resigned.
And wrote this article about the groupthink that has permeated the publication and how Barry was bullied for some of her opinions, which deviated from that groupthink.
And she has gone on to found her own organization called The Free Press, where she publishes news articles daily.
And she's also the host of her own podcast called Honestly with Barry Weiss.
So Barry had this brilliant idea, I thought, to host On one side, there were two women who were saying that, yes, the sexual revolution has failed.
One of those two was actually Louise Perry.
She is the author of the book called How the Sexual Revolution Failed.
And she was great alongside her co-defender of her position.
And then on the other side were these two women who were saying the opposite, that it is succeeded.
And one of them was actually a woman who goes by the name Grimes.
She is a singer and she is the mother of three of Elon Musk's children.
So it was a very interesting debate.
debate, I thought that, as I said, it was a brilliant idea because a lot of people want to get out into their communities, into the world.
But it's hard nowadays because we no longer have something like the Kiwanis Club or the Rotary Club or people don't really go to churches or synagogue so much anymore.
So it's difficult to know where to congregate in order to feel like a It was great for just meeting people and showing up to something that fostered filial connection.
And also, I think it scratched the itch that a lot of people have to be exposed to different ideas.
As difficult as the situation in the United States has gotten, as much as this Corrosive, anti-free speech sentiment has taken hold in our institutions.
I really do believe that a lot of Americans crave that kind of disagreement.
So for those reasons, the event was fantastic.
But it impelled me to consider my own.
Thoughts about the subject, the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s.
And I'm eager to hear your thoughts on that movement.
1-8 Prager 776. 1-877-243-7776.
Has the sexual revolution failed?
Is the theme of this third hour.
In order to...
Understand or have an opinion about whether the sexual revolution succeeded or failed.
We first need to know what the sexual revolution was.
That is the movement in the 60s and 70s.
I make the argument.
That we are actually in an ever-continuing and evolving sexual revolution, which is even more malignant than the malignant parts of the first sexual revolution.
But let's go back for a moment to that movement in the 60s and 70s and consider what it was about.
Like the sexual revolution of today.
The sexual revolution of a few decades ago, I think, was characterized by both a cultural and a social movement and also a technological movement in a time of rapid technological innovation.
So we had this understanding, or at least this in vogue idea, So there was already that political or social idea brewing.
And then alongside that, and adding gasoline to that cultural fire, were these advancements in technology, such as...
Contraception.
The idea, or not just the idea, the reality, that you could use condoms and the birth control pill as a way to have safe sex without the possibility of bearing a child.
We underestimate just how revolutionary this development was as far as the way human beings interact with one another.
Jordan Peterson says that the advent of birth control was just as revolutionary as the atomic bomb, as the creation of the internet, of social media, of automobiles and airplanes.
The fact that women could now be free from involuntary reproduction really made women different.
And subsequently, it made men different.
Because when men and women would enter into a sexual relationship or a sexual encounter, both of them, for the past thousands and thousands and thousands of years of human history, had to understand that that sexual encounter had consequences.
That it was very likely that the woman was going to get pregnant and bear a child.
But all of a sudden...
Not even a hundred years ago, there was this new development that totally changed that, where you could now have sex and not necessarily reproduce.
So, of course, that...
As I said, added gasoline on the already brewing cultural fire of wanting to liberate women from these traditional norms.
And it created this new kind of relationship that was possible and that you could have unprotected sex or, I guess, Sex that was deemed outside of the realms of marriage and of reproduction and that way unprotected from certain norms and not have to worry about those consequences.
So during the 60s and 70s, there was this idea that these old things that we once considered to be tawdry or to be off limits, these things that were stigmatized, Ought to be mainstream and accepted and celebrated as just regular parts of life.
For instance, premarital sex.
Why shouldn't?
A woman and a man who are both consenting to an encounter decide to engage in sex before the commitment of marriage.
That was deemed as something that should be destigmatized.
Sexual education in schools was yet another thing.
Starting in the 60s and 70s, people said, oh, well, if we just teach adolescents about sex and about protection in sex, then there'll be fewer.
Teenage pregnancies, and there will be fewer abortions, and it will be more likely that people will engage in responsible sexual encounters.
But that actually wasn't true.
We see that with the advent of sexual education, the amount of abortions and premarital, outside-of-committed relationships sexual encounters has actually proliferated instead of becoming mitigated.
And by the way, so have STDs, or sexually transmitted diseases, as a result of this legitimized promiscuity.
Having births outside of wedlock, masturbating, doing all of these things that were not in line with the traditional ideas of dealing with sex were brought into the mainstream and legitimized in the 60s and 70s.
So the question is, are women better for it?
And are men better for it?
But the sexual revolution was packaged as liberating women.
Do women benefit from this culture where sex is devoid from consequences?
Do they benefit from a culture that celebrates promiscuity?
1-8 Prager, 7-7-6.
Back in a moment.
On to this subject of the hour, Has the sexual revolution failed?
I'd like to make you aware of a few statistics about the certain developments or outcomes of the sexual revolution that you may find to be surprising.
If we look at the amount of women in the workforce, That was one of the main things about the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s.
It was that why are men predominantly in the workforce?
Women should be able to have the same opportunities as men.
And by the way, that's not wrong.
That's absolutely true.
If we look at those statistics, then the sexual revolution has been a success.
In 1950, the population of women in the workforce was 34% compared to 70%.
5% of men.
Which, just as a note, as an aside, you know, we hear often about the 1950s as this terribly oppressive time for women where they were confined to the home to be domestic workers and mothers and wives.
That's a pretty significant statistic that a third Of the female population of the United States, even back in the so-called bigoted decade of the 1950s, those women were in the workforce, a third of them.
But over time, this has just increased and increased and increased.
In 1960, it was 38%.
By 1980, it was 52% of women in the workforce.
And by 2019, nearly 60% of women are in the workforce.
You may remember a few moments ago that I said that in 1950, 34% of women were in the workforce compared to around 75% of men.
By 2019, that number dropped to about 68% of men.
So as women have been ever increasing their presence in the workforce, men have been dwindling slightly as far as their presence.
Men must think this is wonderful.
Sex unattached from consequences.
Sex unattached from marriage.
Promiscuity legitimized.
And more women working in the place of men.
Men must be like, thank God for the sexual revolution.
What was such a failure about this movement?
Well, again, it overwhelmingly was a...
It was a beneficial thing to men, but not to women, which social justice warriors should care about.
Though, of course, it's heresy to even suggest the sexual revolution might have some downsides.
Some of those downsides include that the marriage rates have gone down over the past few decades hugely.
In 1948, 16.2 per 1,000 Americans were getting married.
In 2000, it was 8 per 1,000, so half of what it was in 1948.
And then in 2022, it was 6 per 1,000.
Marriage is an institution that, contrary to the left-wing belief, actually benefits women.
Why?
Because it makes a man both legally And in the case of religious marriages, spiritually obligated to and committed to a woman.
And when a woman takes a man's last name, which is deemed as so awful and bigoted in 2023, it is actually the opposite of that because it indicates a sort of exchange.
The woman is saying, As our family name.
And in return of my honoring you in this way, you will honor me by protecting me, by protecting our children, by being the financial and authoritative head of the household.
So women have been the...
I could go on and on.
The birth rate has gone down.
In 1950, it was about 25 per 1,000 people were giving birth, and now it's about 12 per 1,000.
There's a proliferation of pornography.
If you look at Pornhub.com, that is just one.
It has 33.5 billion visits annually.
The population of the world is just 7 billion, and Pornhub has become in the top five most visited websites ever in the past five years.
STDs!
Have proliferated.
Since the 80s, eight new sexually transmitted diseases have been recognized and developed in the United States as a result of this.
Constant, rampant, premarital sex out of wedlock birth rates have gone up in the same time.
Fatherlessness has also gone up.
Hookup culture on college campuses is rampant where fewer people are dating, more people are just having these one-off casual sexual encounters.
So yes, in some ways, primarily by bringing women into the workforce, it has benefited women.
But with all these other developments, Can we really say that women have stood to gain as a result of this cultural and technological transformation?
I'm not so sure, but let's hear from you.
Grace in Denver, Colorado has some thoughts on this subject.
Hi, Grace.
Thanks for calling in.
Yeah, for sure.
I wanted to just make a statement that I feel like the Internet...
It's actually really dangerous for the so-called sexual revolution.
I see a lot of terrible videos and conversations and YouTube, like talk shows about being, you know, being empowered or independent or whatever for women particularly.
And I'm only in my late 30s.
What I remember...
That music took a dramatic shift about a decade ago and really kind of talked about women being empowered because they are promiscuous and because they don't subscribe to any of the standard things.
Grace, we'll continue with you in the next segment.
You raise a very important point here about so-called empowerment.
back in a moment.
The final segment of the third hour of the Dennis Prager show.
I'm Julie Hartman.
Let's go to Cindy in Washington.
Hi, Cindy.
Hi, Julie.
I wanted to thank you for a great show and your take on this.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Yes.
And I wanted to say that I really agree that men and women have equal value.
You know, because God made us in His image.
So that value is placed on us, and it doesn't change.
Just like a painter makes a painting, he sets the price.
So it is different roles.
And I loved reading the book called The Rules.
And she said men need to court women because it helps them grow up.
Yes.
And women want men to court us because maybe it doesn't help us grow up, but it certainly makes us feel valued.
And it's this gentle dance between men and women that needs to happen.
The time, you know, you do it God's timing.
You take time to see if this person is thoughtful or whatever you're looking for.
And I'm happily married for five years.
We're both believers in Christ.
And it's just such a best friend.
It's my second marriage, but boy, is it so much better than my first.
Well good for you, Cindy, and thank you so much for calling in.
It's very inspiring to hear.
That you have found such happiness in marriage.
If only colleges could host speakers which talk about the benefits of the so-called conventional, traditional lifestyle of getting married, having children, building a religious community, loving your country.
I think that part of the resistance to those values is that they're seen as boring.
boring, that if you follow that quote unquote status quo traditional path, then you're consigning yourself to a diminished or dull life.
But it's actually the opposite.
The way to have the most fulfilled, energetic, vivacious life is to follow those benchmarks because human beings need benchmarks.
I love what you said, Cindy, about this distinction.
Men and women are equal but they are not the same.
In Genesis, God says in the Bible when he's creating Eve, he says to Adam, I will make you a helper who is your equal.
And that sentence reflects both of these.
I'll make you a helper, i.e.
someone who is distinguished from you, someone who is different from you in their abilities and in their purpose, but who is your equal, and that they are the same as far as their worth.
If only both sexes.
And both sides of the political aisle could understand this.
It would create such a more harmonious situation, not just for women, but for men!
And not just for women and for men, but for children and for everyone in society involved.
It is a case for reality because no matter how long and no matter how hard we try to run away from reality, it brings us back in every interaction.
We cannot avoid it.
So we should understand it and seek to make it the best that we can be instead of running away from it.
I'm Julie Hartman.
You can follow me at Julie R. Hartman.
Thanks so much for being here.
Dennis Prager here with Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
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