All Episodes
Previous Next
Oct. 5, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:13:22
King Coal
| 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 and welcome to Minneapolis, Minnesota. -Hora!
AM 1280, The Patriot.
Hi guys.
My longest standing station outside of L.A., I believe.
I have deep affection for this station.
It is always a joy when I go to states like Minnesota and people meet me at the airport and very kind to me.
We get a selfie together and very frequently what will happen is people say, where do you live?
I say, Los Angeles.
What?
You're staying in California?
And then in a place like here I will say, wait a minute, you live in Minnesota and you're puzzled as to why I live in California?
Can you tell me any difference?
Not speaking about weather.
Talking about weather.
If today is not one of the most beautiful days in recorded history, weather-wise, then no such thing exists.
I hit it at perfect because it's really hot in the summer.
I mean, really.
And humid.
I know from the Minnesota State Fair.
Germany brings back mothballed coal plants to help keep the lights on.
Headline in Bloomberg I'm laughing, but it's a bitter laugh Let me just say Ha!
It's a bitter laugh.
This is what is happening all over.
England, the same thing.
Sweden, the same thing.
The most, perhaps the craziest country in terms of self-destruction by Greens is the United States of America.
Thanks to the Democratic Party, which is hostage to every single left-wing movement that we have.
It is on record as supporting quote-unquote gender care, meaning the mutilation and the poisoning of young people in the name of gender transition.
By poisoning, I am referring to hormone blockers.
Nature has made it such that boys and girls will produce different hormones as they reach adolescence.
And then these sick doctors, sick therapists, psychotherapists, such as psychologists and psychiatrists, Not all are sick by any means, only the ones who participate in this mutilation of children.
Then they will prescribe, based on some girl saying, I'm a boy, or some boy saying, I'm a girl, hormone blockers.
Do we know what the long-term effects of such a thing is to so undo what nature wants done?
In the human, it is amazing.
People who will wear masks when there is no reason whatsoever to, they're scared of contracting a virus outdoors or indoors or anywhere.
But they're okay with hormone blockers.
And they go together.
I am convinced that 80% of the people wearing masks outdoors are okay with hormone blockers in kids.
So they're utter hypochondriacs when it comes to themselves.
But when it comes to young people, screw them, baby!
Let them take the stuff that hurts them.
It's a sick world, the world of the left.
It is just sick.
I use sick more than I do evil because there is no way to explain.
Evil is not enough.
It is not a sufficient explanation.
You have to be sick to affirm the vast majority of leftist, not liberal, leftist, not liberal, leftist, not liberal positions.
This is a perfect example.
Wouldn't it be great if we could somehow...
Quiz people who are wearing masks.
Do you support hormone blockers for kids?
Do you think it's right if a guy says he's a girl to compete in women's sports?
The Greens are ruining this country financially, and I have now adopted a new meme to understand the world in which we live.
I am far, far more certain of the existential threat of national debt than I am of the existential threat of carbon emissions.
Okay?
Pick your existential threat.
That is mine.
What we have done to the dollar and what the results will be, the results of staggering inflation and staggering the rupture of people's savings, You work your whole life, you work hard, you put away money, and then your money isn't worth half of what you put away?
Because the United States government has decided to spend more and more and more, especially now hundreds of billions of dollars, probably trillions, on the cockamamie electrification of the country, which is making China richer.
And us poorer.
So Germany brings back coal plants because they simply can't afford this idiocy of moving a country, a whole country, to wind and solar.
It's an idiocy.
It is up there with hormone blockers.
It's idiocy.
It's destructive.
It's the bored, rich, secular all behind this.
That's all.
They need a cause, because the traditional causes of patriotism and religion are dead.
Same, by the way, Sweden is doing similar things, abandoning a fair amount of its movement toward green, and England is doing the same thing.
Finally, Boris Johnson, who was as conservative as I am female.
is no longer the Prime Minister and the current Prime Minister said this is enough.
We cannot bankrupt our people based on computer models from scientists who get paid a lot of money to come up with these things.
Do you think scientists, I ask you listening, even those watching, do you believe that a scientist who differs with the narrative On global warming, do you think that that scientist is likely to make as much money as one who goes along with the government grants, the staggering amount of government grants?
It's a form of payola.
It's so interesting.
If a scientist works for an oil company, he's completely dismissed by the left.
But if you get a grant from the government, Oh, then you're absolutely credible.
Germany, England, Sweden are all undoing a fair amount of their commitment to an idiocy only rivaled by hormone blockers.
And that is the movement of the country toward wind and solar.
It's quite remarkable.
people.
Victor Davis Hanson notes that the left lives, it's correct, we see eye to eye in an alternate reality.
Our establishment's alternate realities, realities, that's the way he puts it.
That's right.
The Biden administration, he writes, sees some unstated advantage in destroying U.S. immigration law and welcoming would-be new constituents.
Yes, the more the millions arrive, the more Joe Biden and his Homeland Security director Alejandro Mayorkas flat-out lie that the border is secure.
There is no question that Donald Trump told some whoppers, exaggerated frequently, but his lies do not come close to the lies of the left because the lies of the left destroy the country, destroy children.
Men give birth.
There is no equivalent.
There is no equivalent lie on the part of Donald Trump to men give birth or the border is secure.
I would be curious.
Tell me one.
One.
He had four years in office.
Tell me a lie he told that is as damaging to the country as either of those.
Well, truth is not a left-wing value as I... Have said all of my life since I've studied Russian to read Pravda.
They live in a world of make-believe, passed off to the American people as reality.
Perfectly put.
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.
Whenever I'm down, I call on you, my friend.
I've been telling you about the crushing of the economy.
I always remind people, I wrote a book on anti-Semitism, taught Jewish history at Brooklyn College.
The Nazis' primary appeal was economic.
In 1932, the last free elections of Germany until after World War II, he toned down his Jew hatred, which was the most animating impulse in Hitler's life.
He hated Jews more than he hated the United States, Britain, even Russia.
That was what animated him, but it is not the primary thing They campaigned on.
They campaigned on the economy.
When you see your savings become worthless, you know how dispiriting that is, demoralizing?
The sense of utter and total hopelessness, the belief that your life was a waste with all that work, and to see that Your currency, in their case the Reichsmark, in our case the dollar, becomes less and less worth anything.
Because truly destructive people just believe, print baby, print baby.
People take out loans for college, we'll pay your loan for you.
Because the people who did pay their loans, like my wife, they're suckers.
That's right.
Every leftist who supports the government taking over college loans believes that my wife and everyone else who paid off a student loan is a sucker.
Yeah.
How else can you understand that?
You paid it off?
You didn't wait for a Democrat to be elected?
You paid that loan off?
How stupid can you get?
The Democrats will come into power.
You won't have to pay your loan.
Aside from the economic disaster, it is moral disaster.
It is a statement to the American people, wait enough time to vote in a left-wing...
President, which means a Democrat today, any Democrat.
Well, Joe Manchin is not a leftist.
His chance of being president is equivalent to mine.
And that's the lesson.
Why be financially responsible when the government can bail you out?
Yeah?
Why apply for citizenship in the United States when you can just cross the border?
Why follow any law?
Why not steal $950 worth of goods from a store in California when up to $950 is just a misdemeanor?
It's sort of like jaywalking.
They won't bug you.
And therefore, what we have is this massive crisis of...
Retail.
Theft.
That is the legacy of the despicable Democratic Party.
When you see D, think despicable.
Does that mean that every Democrat is despicable?
No, no more than it means that every Republican is a saint.
The party is despicable.
But not every single person who votes it.
Every person who votes it.
It's doing something spectacularly destructive to the United States of America.
It's a phenomenon.
It is a phenomenon.
The number of Republicans I know, no, I can't say it's a large number, but I know some, who, because they have such contempt for Donald Trump, decided to vote Democrat.
I hate Trump, therefore I will vote for the party that is destroying my country.
Get that?
Never think for a moment that intellectual and wise are related.
They're completely unrelated.
Completely unrelated.
The odds are if you got a PhD, you are a fool.
The odds are some are not.
And I'm talking about outside of STEM, outside of science, technology.
Engineering and math.
Well, here's another ode to the Democrats, which just showed up here.
Starbucks to close seven San Francisco locations in coming weeks.
I haven't been to San Francisco in, I don't know how long, maybe a year or whatever.
I live in California.
I don't get there much.
I get to Minnesota more than I get to San Francisco.
I get to England more than I get to downtown Los Angeles.
How's that?
I think I've been in Poland more often recently in the last few years that I have downtown Los Angeles.
Seven locations.
But here's the charm.
If there were an election, A Democrat would win again.
Is there an example of suicidal voting that is anywhere analogous to the voting for the Democratic Party in any major city?
I can't think of any, to be honest.
It is truly a form of...
Fiscal, no, forget fiscal.
Just cultural.
The suicide of a city.
Seven more Starbucks.
Well, you already know about Target and CVS. I don't know, as I said, I don't know what's left in San Francisco.
Maybe fecal cleaners.
That should be a booming industry.
When the government used emergency edicts during COVID to restrict the gathering and worship of churches, three pastors, facing the risk of imprisonment, unlimited fines, and their own churches being ripped apart, took a courageous stand and reopened their doors in the face of a world that chose to comply.
The Essential Church is a feature-length documentary that explores the struggle between the church and government throughout history.
This fascinating story uncovers those who've sacrificed their lives throughout history for what they truly believe in.
We discover why the church is essential and how we prove that this stand remains true from a scientific, legal, and most importantly, biblical perspective.
This is not your typical movie.
It'll change your life.
You need to see this movie with your friends and family.
The Essential Church is streaming today exclusively at SalemNow.com.
That's Essential Church.
Streaming at SalemNow.com Hello everybody, I'm Dennis Prager.
Wonderful to be with you.
The man I am about to introduce is considered by Alan Estrin, who reads more fiction than I do.
The finest living novelist.
In the English language.
And Alan Estrin does not throw out accolades with ease.
His name is Mark Helperin.
I have had Mark Helperin on my show on a number of occasions in the past.
He is not only one of the, or perhaps the greatest living writer in English fiction, novels specifically, But is also one of the leading authorities on defense matters.
It's probably a unique combination of talents.
As an example, just, not just, as much as five years ago, literally, almost to the day, October 11, 2018, he wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal titled, Defining Defense Down.
Across the spectrum of military technologies, the U.S. is losing its edge as competitors gain ground.
So, first of all, please know the name of the novel that just came out.
He doesn't write them frequently, but they are, by general recognition, great works.
The Oceans and the Stars, a sea story, a war story, a love story, a novel.
The Oceans and the Stars.
Just came out two days ago, and it is his latest novel.
I am going to read it, because how could I miss a piece by someone Alan Estrin, the living martyr, considers the greatest living writer in English.
The Oceans and the Stars is up at DennisPrager.com.
And Mark Helperin.
Welcome to my show.
Dennis, can you hear me?
Now I can.
Thank you so much.
That's a great introduction.
I've done thousands of radio shows, literally, because I'm 76 now and I've been doing this for more than half a century.
When my wife and I came to visit you in your studio in Glendale, we had...
The warmest, most lovely welcome that we have ever received.
You and Alan and the other people, too, in the studio.
It was just fantastic.
We felt as if we were among family.
So thank you for that.
I think of that frequently ever since.
And thank you for your introduction as well.
That's very sweet of you to say.
It really is.
Thank you for remembering that.
Oh, yes.
And it was genuine, obviously.
It was very genuine.
If you're free to say, where do you live?
I live in Charlottesville.
You know, the famed Charlottesville where...
Yeah, oh my God.
Supposedly, yeah.
And I was a cop for ten years in Charlottesville.
And so I witnessed this stuff and I have an insider view of it.
And it's different from what most people think.
It was different.
It was two sides battling.
And it wasn't just the bad Nazis, and there were plenty of bad Nazis, literally Nazis, but it was also Antifa and black bloc anarchists who came armed and itching for a fight, and they fought.
And so when actually when Trump, and you know that I'm not a Trumpist, but when Trump said there were good people on both sides, he was correct because the one side he was referring to, and there's no question about this, one side was people who did not want to get rid of the monuments, and the other side was people who did.
That's what he was referring to, not the battling extremists.
I can't thank you enough for noting that.
And you're not, as you say, a Trumpist.
At PragerU, we actually have a video, The Charlottesville Lie.
And it delineates how untrue it is that he called Nazis fine people.
It was clear as a bell at the time.
You don't even have to react to this, but it is part, I think, of the larger frightening issue that truth is not a left-wing value.
It's a liberal value.
It's a conservative value, but it's not a left-wing value, and that is part of the crisis of our society.
Let me say that Biden repeats this again and again, and again, I've heard him repeat it a dozen times, that Trump called Nazis fine people, and it wasn't true.
I want my listeners to understand...
Not only did we not speak prior to this, but it never occurred to me that this would be raised as an issue, and it only is because Mark Elprin lives in Charlottesville.
I'm glad I asked you where you live.
Yeah.
Because all of this came out.
So let me again remind people that this great novelist...
In Alan Estrin's opinion, the greatest living English language novelist.
The novel that has just been published is The Oceans and the Stars.
It's even getting me to read a novel, which is a big deal.
I realized early in my life I have to specialize, given my work, in just reading and reading and reading about history and about current events.
Let's talk about your expertise in defense.
And I'm reminded, when you said you were a policeman in Charlottesville for 10 years, I don't believe you're 76. I think you are 176. I think you are removing a digit from your age because nobody would really believe.
The number of things you have done does not allow for that age span that you purportedly have lived.
How did you get 10 years to the Charlottesville Cup in the middle of everything else you did?
Okay, well, I've got to talk to you about that.
First of all, it was Albemarle County Cup, which encompasses Charlottesville.
Our station was in Charlottesville, and Albemarle sort of intertwines with Charlottesville.
But about being older, here's the trick in that.
My father was born in 1904. And I was a very unusual, strange kid in that we lived in the middle of a 2,000-acre wilderness.
There was nobody around.
But he was around because he retired early.
And all I did was follow him.
Well, forgive me.
Where was that?
Where was this 2,000 acres?
That was 35 miles north of Manhattan in Westchester County on the river.
And the land was owned by the railroad and by various monasteries and things like that, but it was absolute wilderness with eagles and everything.
And I wasn't very social at all, to say the least.
But what I did do was follow my father around, and it must have driven him crazy, but I think he liked it because he liked narration.
And I just asked him about everything in his life.
And I'm talking about eight, ten hours a day.
So I have lived, in a sense, I have lived his life since 1904. Oh, how interesting.
Yeah, yeah.
Again, I throw out this line, and you have a fascinating comeback.
I'm glad I mentioned that.
I thought you were 176. I think I am, yeah.
So you lived his life.
That is fascinating.
How many people can say that, that they lived their parents' life?
Was your father born in the United States?
Where did your father grow up?
He was born in the United States in Patterson, New Jersey, and he had the most spectacular life.
I mean, he worked for Winston Churchill.
He was the theatrical editor of the New York Times and a film critic for them.
He made movies.
He was in intelligence, in American intelligence, and as I said, he worked for Churchill.
And he was an extraordinary man who had extraordinary experiences.
He tried to see the world as much as he possibly could.
When I say see the world, I don't mean take a trip or a cruise.
I mean see how the world operates, the richness of the world, to insert yourself wherever you could in order to observe and experience what life is.
I followed him in that, in questioning, and he was eloquent, and he would describe to me at great length all the things he would see, and I would ask further questions.
And by the way, he had an absolute photographic memory, which is another thing, which is why he was trained at Camp X in Canada, which is a British SAS, among other places, also in the United States.
And his mission would have been, although I think the Poles beat us to it, to be parachuted in uniform, he was a major, behind...
Hold on, hold on with that story.
I have to take a break.
I have no choice.
But I want everyone to read this brand new book, The Oceans and the Stars, of Mark Halperin, arguably the greatest living writer.
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 $29.98, depending on the size.
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.
Let me give you some more thoughts on my guest.
I am, to me, I'm in Minnesota right now.
Mark Helperin should have gotten the Nobel Prize, not some obscure Norwegian guy no one ever heard of.
Mark Helperin writes about the good, the true, and the beautiful, not about the latest social justice fad.
He wants to preserve what is good, not trash everything, which is what most modern novelists want to do.
Well, that's a good description of my guest, Mark Helperin.
And his latest novel has just been published, and it is titled The Oceans and the Stars.
By the way, whoever did the artwork for your jacket did a really beautiful job.
A sea story, a war story, a love story.
It is up at DennisPrager.com, The Oceans and the Stars.
So, I want to talk to you about defense, but go on with your dad and his exploits.
You obviously had a remarkable father.
I did.
It was such an interesting thing because you're obviously remarkable.
You don't have to react because I'm sure it's slightly embarrassing, so don't worry about it.
So, I do wonder about these things.
Is it genes?
Is it environment?
Is it both?
Is it equal?
And you're free to ignore it or address it, but it is fascinating that you had such a father and we have you, as it were.
Anyway, so go on about his photographic memory and being parachuted, is that correct, into Poland?
No, no.
He was supposed to be...
Parachuted into the, more or less right next to the fortress where Heydrich, the author of the final solution, was to be deliberately captured.
And once he was captured, because of his photographic memory, he could read German upside down and backwards, speed read it and commit it to memory.
Figure out, you know, by counting the steps, the actual construction of where he was taken to be.
To be interrogated, etc., etc., and then escape so he could give this intelligence to the allies.
And, in fact, he had done this with Trotsky in Mexico City.
We wanted to protect Trotsky.
My father infiltrated Trotsky's compound by getting to know Eisenstein, the Russian director, and then he gave that information to U.S. intelligence.
But to answer, the polls beat us to it.
You don't understand.
It's beyond belief what you're telling me.
It's true.
Beyond belief.
You can read, I think it's in the Library of Congress, Upton Sinclair, who was a communist, used to write to Stalin.
And one of the things he wrote to Stalin was, you have to watch out for this guy, Morris Halperin, because he knows about Trotsky and he knows about what's going on in Mexico, etc.
My daughter found that.
I didn't even know it was there.
But anyway, to answer your question and then add to your question, and then ask you a question.
In answer of your question, it's a good question.
Where does it come from?
Of course, it's nature and it's nurture.
But I'm also someone who believes that marriages are made in heaven.
I do believe that.
My own was.
And essentially, yeah, there's nature and there's nurture.
There's also God.
Everything that happens is more or less as a result of some divine spark that we are not necessarily aware of.
But if there's something that happens, I attribute it to some extent anyway, where we're not involved, where it appears that we couldn't be involved, to the divine intervention.
And that's what makes really everything.
And in that regard, also, here's the thing.
I wrote this book, and I've written all my books, as a strong affirmation of exactly the kind of beliefs and conducts that you, Dennis, have devoted your life to advancing.
But not in an ideological way, because it's first and foremost intended to be a story in which you can lose yourself, although not your way.
You get absorbed in it.
And unlike the modern convention, the book is not a mirror.
People buy books because it's about them.
It's about their particular identity.
And they say, oh, there I am.
I can see myself.
Isn't it wonderful?
Self-flattery.
Rather, a book, any kind of literature, should be a window in which you look out and you see and then engage with a captivating, beautiful world in which, and here's my point about God, in which rests a complex and yet indelible purpose, a real purpose that is the work, as Rensselaer, who's the captain in my book, says to his crew, echoing Jefferson, it's the work of nature and nature's...
God.
That's in the Declaration of Independence.
And it's the most important phrase, those words, the most important phrase in American history, maybe in the world history, of nature and nature's God.
And why is that?
Can I go on?
If everything that we do will disappear, we will be forgotten, you will be forgotten, I will be forgotten, the earth will be a cinder, right?
So what's the point of it?
There's only one point, as far as I can see, I've always believed this ever since I was a small child, there's only one point, which is that if it is registered in the eyes of God, then it's permanent.
That's the only permanence that we have.
And if you recognize that, there's a kind of an echo back, which you feel.
And if you apply yourself with that in mind...
Then you haven't lost anything.
It's not for naught.
It's not as if there's no purpose.
It's forever, and it stays that way.
Otherwise, there's no point.
But I have a question for you, Dennis.
It may seem like it comes completely out of nowhere.
Are you ready for that?
Do you know what a camel is?
I think so.
No, I bet you think it's an animal.
All right, hold it there, hold it there.
We'll keep everybody waiting.
Mark Helprin's book, The Oceans and the Stars, up at DennisPrager.com.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here, and I can only say you are in luck, because Tom Sowell is my guest.
and Tom Sowell...
One of the most important thinkers of the last half century in the Western world is a fellow, let's see, what is the official title?
Yeah, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Every one of his books is a masterpiece of clarity, research, persuasion, and the undoing of the dominant thinking of our academic class.
So, Tom Sowell's latest book is Social Justice Fallacies.
This is what the flap says.
The quest for social justice is a powerful crusade of our time with an appeal to many different people for many different reasons.
But those who use the same words do not always present the same meanings.
Clarifying those meanings is the first step.
Toward finding out what we agree on and disagree on.
From there, it is largely a question of what the facts are.
That's right, what the facts are.
That's Tom Sowell's middle name.
Tom, what the facts are, Sowell.
Social justice fallacies.
Tom Sowell, it is a delight.
It is great to have you on.
Oh, it's good to be back with you, Dennis.
Thank you.
On a totally non-political, non-social, non-profound note, how is your photography going?
It has gone.
I've been tied up with many medical things and stuff like that.
And so one of the things I'm looking forward to now that the book is finished is getting out and taking some pictures.
Oh, good.
Good.
Good to hear.
Okay, so...
First of all, on social justice, let me just bounce an idea off you because this is one of the benefits of my work.
I can bounce off my ideas off the people I most admire.
I have always found the term social justice as undermining justice.
Either there's justice or there's injustice.
But once you attach an adjective to the word justice, you have changed the...
The entire meaning.
Is that fair?
Oh, absolutely.
I wish, my goodness, I wish so many other people understood that.
But people seem to think that this is something you add to it.
No, it's something that you subtract from it.
It's no longer justice.
It's now policymaking.
And I think so much of the judicial history of the 20th century has been a history of judges rushing in with angels free of the tread, you know, and twisting the law to mean what they want it to mean.
In light of that, I'll just note to you, there is a biblical law.
You cannot favor the poor in a courtroom.
It is a biblical law.
It's in the book of Exodus.
That alone is, if you will, a conflict between biblical thinking It's one of many conflicts.
My gosh.
The tragedy is when they twist the law to help the poor, the net result is often that the poor are hurt by their new interpretation.
Affirmative action is a classic example.
Out here in the University of California at Berkeley, They had affirmative action policies, and they would admit minority students to play with standards that were lower than the other students.
And the majority of the minority students failed to graduate.
So they would come in there, waste years of their life, and leave with nothing.
People talk about the harm done to groups such as the Asians and the Jews and so forth.
All that is perfectly legitimate.
What they also need to know, this hurts blacks who are admitted more so than it hurts the other people who are qualified and were not admitted.
Because the other people will go to their second choice.
They will succeed and go on in life.
When the people that they admitted in their place come in and then flunk out, they have nothing and they wasted all that time.
And they picked up a lot of silly notions from the wokeness that is taught instead of other things.
God.
Uh, you...
You'll love this story.
I met a strapping young man, about 30, really good-looking guy, tall.
Kent comes over to me at the Philadelphia airport and says, I just want you to know I love your work.
I thanked him so much.
I detected a tiny accent.
His English was perfect, but I detected a tiny accent.
I asked, where are you from?
He said, Norway.
I said, really, Norway?
You're a conservative in Norway?
And he said, I don't know if I'm conservative.
I just follow common sense.
Isn't that perfect?
It is.
You see, one of the reasons I think that the intellectuals reject common sense is precisely because it's common.
And their whole life is dominated by the fact...
Oh, what a great point.
What a great point!
That's right.
I never thought of that.
Oh, my gosh.
Go on.
I think back to one of the great tragedies of the 1930s was that the intellectuals got the idea that disarmament was the way to avoid war.
And, of course, that was not a view shared by Germany, Italy, and Japan.
And so they made themselves needlessly vulnerable, even though their...
Industrial capacity was greater than that of Germany and Japan.
But they brought on this very war.
But the idea that this was something that should be tested against some fact or counter-argument, that's what's really chilling when you study these kinds of things.
They simply dismiss other people with some ad hominem remark, and that's the end of it.
That's right.
So why do you think the collapse of the intellectual world took place?
I know this is a gigantic question, but do you have a theory on why?
I'll be blunt.
I assume if you're a professor in any social studies arena, or any what they call political science, sociology, anthropology, English, in other words, not STEM, science, technology, engineering, math.
I assume you're a fool.
Am I being too harsh?
In a sense, you're absolutely right.
In other sense, they are enormously competent within some narrow area.
And they have their Nobel Prizes, they have their PhDs and stuff like that.
And it gives them a feeling that they're omnicompetent.
And I've never understood why.
For example, international grandmasters in chess don't do that.
Musical prodigies don't do that.
But people who have academic credentials do that all the time.
That is the puzzle to me.
Another great point.
All right, so let's go to your book.
So here, for example, even accurate statistics on income...
On income trends over time can be grossly misleading when turnover is the proverbial 800-pound gorilla in the room that no one seems to notice.
Internal revenue service data show that over a 23-year period, there were 4,584 people in the so-called top 400 income recipients.
More than two-thirds of those people were in that bracket for just one year out of those 23 years.
Why is that turnover point important?
Because, for one thing, they're attributing the amount of money received by 4,000 people to 400 people.
So that automatically is a tenfold exaggeration of income disparities.
But in addition to that, the question that might arise is, why is it that all these supposedly rich people are rich one time, only one year?
That all of them are rich and the next year they're not rich.
And I think the answer might well be that the incomes of those people for those years was not their annual income.
It was a capital gain over a period of years that got cashed out that year.
And the next year they don't have another business to sell or whatever it is that they're doing.
And they're gone.
But even if that's not the case, all the data, not just on the top 400 income people, proceeds on the assumption that there's a top 10% that is in the top 10% as a class in an ongoing time period.
Whereas most of the people who are in the top 10% today will not be in the top 10%.
Ten years from now.
Well, another...
Okay.
The book is Social Justice Fallacies, Thomas Sowell.
It is up at DennisPrager.com.
It is short and brilliant.
Back in a moment.
Thomas Sowell, one of the truly luminous minds of our time and gutsy.
You have to have courage to be a truth pursuer in any age at any time, but especially...
In the last half century.
His latest book is short and brilliant, Social Justice Fallacies.
It's up at DennisPrager.com.
I'm amazed that Basic Books continues to publish Tom Sowell.
Even the publishing industry has been taken over by censorious leftists.
Social Justice Fallacies.
I want to go back to affirmative action.
And you pointed out how it hurts those it's intended purportedly to help, especially black students, many of whom, because of affirmative action, would get into a college where they couldn't keep up with the work, not because of their color, just because of their preparation.
I could not have kept up in undergraduate or in high school, I should say, with the work needed to get into an illustrious college.
I ended up at Brooklyn College, eventually Columbia, but I didn't do enough work to get into a great undergraduate school.
So it's not a reflection on the person, but it is a fact.
So if in fact affirmative action has hurt blacks more than it has helped them, why is virtually every black organization pro-affirmative action?
Wow, that's a great question.
I think that the pattern I see in studying I think it's much easier to illustrate to show the opposite.
If you look at groups such as Asian Americans in the United States today who were in poverty, let's say, 100 years ago.
And very much powerless, but who've now become more prosperous than the general population.
You'll be hard-pressed to name even one leader of those people.
Leaders do not produce success, except for the leaders themselves.
One of the reasons is, the leaders, one of their key ideas...
It's that all your problems are caused by other people.
And if that is the case, why in the world should you knock yourself out in order to get ahead knowing that these evil people are going to stop you anyway?
There was a story that President Obama mentioned a few years back, saying about some black young man who wanted to become a pilot.
And he said, you know, I thought at first that I would join the Air Force.
And become a pilot.
But then I realized that white people will not let a black man become a pilot.
And as of the time he said that, there were not only black pilots in the Air Force, there were black generals in the Air Force.
But this victimhood ideology that they're teaching has done him far more harm than any racists are capable of doing to him under current conditions.
Wow.
Wow.
These are truths.
Did you know that the Oregon Education Department, that's the official arm of the Oregon state government in education, has said that the idea that there is one correct answer in math is white supremacist.
Have you heard that?
No, I hadn't, but I've heard stuff like that.
Oh, my gosh.
It's just white people have copyrighted mathematics.
I'm sorry to say that again.
You blocked out for a moment.
I'll say that the idea that white people have copyrighted mathematics.
But, you know, you see...
Yeah, yeah.
If you go back 100 years...
When they were claiming that people from Southern and Eastern Europe were genetically inferior to people from Northern and Western Europe.
You know, what anyone with any history would know, Western civilization began in Southern Europe.
That the Greeks had all kinds of achievements at a time when people in Britain and Scandinavia, you know, were barely able to learn agriculture.
And you realize the utter insanity to which people with high IQs can go on.
For those of us who care about truth, everything you write is so clearly right.
And what you're saying, and I'm not saying this to compliment you, I'm saying this actually To indict our cultured class as not desiring to pursue truth.
Again, is that an overstated accusation?
No, it's not.
And it's been that way for a long time.
What is different about, say, the 20th century is that for the first time, intellectuals acquired a degree of influence that they never had before.
Don't forget that...
As of the 19th century, there were whole nations where a vast majority of the people were illiterate.
So literacy is not something we can take for granted.
As late as the middle of the 20th century, a U.N. group estimated that most of the adults in Asia and Africa at that time were illiterate.
So literacy becomes one of the things that increases the power of the intellectuals with their written words.
But even in addition to that, you have things like radio, television, the Internet.
They have a vast audience.
Now virtually every country wants all its people to be literate.
And the completely autocratic governments that were common for centuries have been democratized, at least to some extent.
And so now this is the intellectual great chance.
To make their ideas felt.
And they've done it.
And they've created, I would say, most of the man-made disasters of the 20th century.
Genocide.
Oh yeah, let's continue with that in a moment.
I want to remind everybody, the book is Social Justice Fallacies.
Thomas Sowell.
The unique Thomas Sowell, I might add.
Tom Sowell, I'm afraid to keep praising him because I don't want to embarrass him, but he's gifted with a clarity, a combination of the two C's, clarity and courage, both of which are necessary.
We're talking about his book, Social Justice Fallacies.
Thomas Sowell, by the way, his writing is so clear, you don't...
Need any academic background to understand what he's writing.
And he probably doesn't use the word matrix.
Or, wait, I'm not done.
Or intersectional.
Oh, boy.
He actually writes in English.
Not in the new language of the academic world.
So I pose this very depressing question to you, but I want to explore it further.
The academic world, which basically you're a part of, but you're an outlier completely.
I mean, when did the pursuit of truth become insignificant?
This is a riddle for me.
Well, unfortunately, the answer to this, as to the answer to a number of other questions, is the 1960s.
This was the era, not just in the United States, but in much of the Western world, that people now had a different vision.
And so all sorts of things changed for the worse.
In Britain, for example, Britain was famous for its sportsmanship.
There was some, I think it was a soccer match with two minutes to the goal.
And the team that was leading, the team that was behind, one guy made some spectacular play that won for his team.
And the members of the other team was applauded.
That is not the way that the British fans or players act today.
They are considered a scourge whenever they engage in international.
Soccer, because of the bad behavior of both the fans and the players.
And it took a long time to create this social degeneracy.
So, yes.
So, the reason that I'm puzzled, because I agree with every word you said, is they didn't come ex nihilo.
They meaning my generation, the baby boomers, the 60s generation.
So there had to be something that helped make this generation as anti-truth and anti-social as they became.
Isn't that fair to say?
So it predates the 1960s.
The intellectuals were this way for a very long time.
It's a matter of history.
That much of the stuff that is considered to be new stuff in the 1960s, you can read William Godwin in the 1790s and find many of the same ideas that you see in Birchley or the Ivy League right there back then.
So this group had this tendency all along, but they didn't have the opportunity to get power and publicity to the extent that they could in the 20th century.
It was not as totally degenerate because there were other people with other views.
But once the circumstances came together in politics and in the academic world in the 1960s, they ran away with it.
So I'll ask you a question I doubt many people who have interviewed you have asked you in light of all of this.
So to the extent that I know you, I don't know you as specifically a religious man.
I don't suspect I'd find you at church every Sunday.
I may be wrong, and correct me if I am.
But if I am right, it makes the question all the more important for me to ask you.
To what extent do you believe that, as it were, the death of the Bible, the death of the God of the West, or at least the dying, Play a role.
And I'll just give you one example that I often cite in speeches.
It is only secular people who say men give birth.
And of course, not all people who say that, and not all secular people say that, obviously.
But all those who say it are post-Judeo-Christian.
Do you think it's fair for me to bring that in?
Let me give...
I'll give you time.
Not that you need it, but I just want to promote your book before we have the break and you answer my question.
Social Justice Fallacies by Thomas Sowell.
And it is up at DennisPrager.com.
The amount you will learn from this brief book.
I mean, every page.
If you underline, be prepared to underline in every paragraph.
Social Justice Fallacies up at my website.
Back in a moment with Thomas Sowell.
Tom Soule is my guest, and his brand new book is Social Justice Fallacies.
It is up at DennisPrager.com.
So I pose the question to you in light of the decline in the West that you so brilliantly document in essentially all your books, by implication, if not explicitly.
Do you think it's related to the post-Judeo-Christian, post-biblical, post-God, if you will, age in which we live?
I think that religions are more than theology.
They're theology, and they're also a moral code, and they differ from one religion to another in that respect.
So I think this is not a phenomenon.
I think that this decline in the West...
It's due to decline in the dominant moral philosophy of the West, which is based on these religions.
But it's also a case in Japan that because they have their moral standards, and all these sillinesses that plague the Western intellectuals especially, have not plagued Japan.
In Japan, when a criminal commits a crime, they take him to court.
And they find him guilty and they punish him.
And it's hard to get an organized opposition to the dominant law or code, whether it's religion or whatever it might be.
But in the West, for reasons that are not completely clear to me, there's been a greater freedom for the intellectuals.
And they've used their freedom to reduce the freedom of other people.
That's entirely accurate.
So here's another thesis of mine I'd like to bounce off you.
Maybe liberty is not built into the human constitution.
Maybe liberty is a value more than a human instinct.
What do you think?
Wow.
That's a tough one, but I do believe that people want to be free.
And in fact, I think that it's so important that one of the things that the early progressives tried to do, and to some extent done, is redefine freedom so that when the government reduces your options.
They say, you have more freedom now because the government will use their power to give you this and give you that.
But of course, that's not what freedom means.
As I mentioned in the book, you know, when Spartacus led a slave revolt in the days of the Roman Empire, he was not in order to get welfare state benefits.
Right.
So the acceptance of lockdowns.
Is what really drew my attention.
I had thought about this all of my life, but this sort of confirmed my sad conclusion that people yearn for some things more than they yearn for freedom.
The ease with which the government told people what to do on the basis of nothing.
See, we all understand that if there's a fire, The government says, evacuate your house, there's probably a good reason.
But there was no good reason to close schools for nearly two years.
All it did was harm.
Sweden didn't do it, and they were fine.
So that's what led me to really double down on my belief that maybe freedom has to be taught.
It is not necessarily instinctive to the human being.
Although I tend to attest on this one issue, I think the evidence shows otherwise.
In the 28 years during which Berlin was divided into the communist half and the western half, more than 100 people were killed trying to escape from East Berlin to West Berlin.
Sometimes they took their whole families with them, knowing that they could be killed.
And they would take that risk.
Similarly with the boat people who fled after the communists took over South Vietnam.
The people from Cuba who get on these unseaworthy boats, trying desperately to get across 90 miles to Florida, suggest they want to be free.
I think there was a song among blacks, a black spiritual, saying, what is it?
Free at last, free at last.
Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last.
And they weren't asking for welfare state benefits.
What Woodrow Wilson, among others, did was redefine freedom to mean the ability of you to have a wider economic scope, that the government would give you things.
And that that would make you freer.
They would redefine freedom that way, as I pointed out a few times in the book.
And so it suggests that they have to, in every way, alienate you from freedom, and have successfully done so for many people.
That suggests that people do want freedom.
That's a facet.
Right.
Go on.
John Dewey, among his many...
He said this in 1939, after there had been a couple of decades of totalitarian dictatorships,
which were favorably viewed by many Western intellectuals prior to the outbreak of World War II. Your answer is fascinating, and I have to incorporate it.
So what you're saying is people do cherish freedom, but the left has redefined the term.
Yes.
Just as they have redefined the term racist, it is now racist if you oppose an all-black dormitory or an all-black graduation exercise.
Oh.
So people, so in effect you're saying, People aren't racist, but they've redefined racist.
Oh, yes.
My gosh.
Redefination is one of the great talents of people with high IQs and low information.
I have to remember that sentence.
Final segment coming up.
Unfortunately, Social Justice Fallacies is the book.
Thomas Sowell is the author.
And it is up at DennisPrager.com.
We continue momentarily.
Well, time flies when you're having fun.
At least I could say that for me.
I won't speak for my guest.
Tom Sowell is the guest.
The book, Social Justice Fallacies.
Here's another example.
Something so few Americans know.
From his book, the 2020 U.S. Census showed that Asians of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Korean ancestry had higher incomes than whites.
Among full-time, year-round male workers, Asian Indian males earned over $39,000 a year more than white male full-time, year-round workers.
Is this the white supremacy we hear so much about?
So let's see.
Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Indian Americans, and Korean Americans.
Higher income than whites.
By the way, which in and of itself renders the white supremacy idea somewhat foolish.
But I'm curious, do you offhand remember...
How are West Africans doing, West African immigrants in the U.S.? Nigerians have been doing very well.
And in fact, in a lot of programs set up for black Americans, some of the Nigerians and other Africans sometimes outnumber the American blacks, even though the programs were set up.
But in average income, are they around what whites make?
Do they sometimes exceed it?
Are they usually below it?
Do you happen to remember?
I don't remember the exact numbers, but they certainly were well ahead of American-born blacks.
And by the way, this pattern is also found in Britain, where among poor people in Britain, in education, The black students from foreign countries are ahead of the white students in passing the test in the British educational system.
Amazing.
Your books are an ode to the saying, the truth shall set you free.
Well, keep writing for many years.
Thank you for coming on.
Thank you for everything you've done for half a century.
Social Justice Fallacies is the book.
Tom Sowell is the author.
I'm Dennis Prager.
Thank you, Dennis.
Thank you.
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.
▲
Export Selection