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Oct. 13, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:30:37
Antisemite U
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Dennis Prager here.
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Now it's a question.
Do you consider a student and an adult?
But you know what I mean.
I just learned from the one and only, and he is one and only, Lee Habib, who made this possible, that one of the points that I spoke about that really touched people And I love getting feedback, which is part of the reason that I love doing a talk show.
I won't be able to take calls.
It's not set up where I am right now.
It's not set up for me to take calls, unfortunately.
But you have me.
And I got feedback that of all the many points that I made in my talk last night, actually I was interviewed on stage, is when I spoke about fear of parents, Fear of God.
And those are the two fears, the only two beings that we're supposed to fear, at least in the Bible.
It's fascinating.
And people are not comfortable with either.
Now we'll get back to the Middle East, I assure you.
But this is a very important issue that I will spend time on in the course of the show.
That's the beauty of my show.
I get to talk to you about everything in life, and this is a big one.
I used to have my father on every July of his birthday.
And as he lived to 96, it was a fair number of years that I had him on.
And I remember asking him Not every year, but periodically, maybe every few years.
So, Dad, what's the biggest difference between America today and when you grew up?
He grew up in the 20s and 30s of the 19th century.
He always gave me the same answer.
Children run the house, not the parents.
And they don't fear their parents.
That's what I'm adding.
That's really what he was talking about.
And I noted that it's a very good thing.
And one of the ways I learned it was on this radio show when I asked many years ago, why didn't you take drugs in high school if you didn't take drugs?
And it was fascinating to me how many people said virtually the same thing because my mother would have killed me.
Isn't that fear of a parent?
If there is no fear of a parent, that's not good parenting.
It's not the only emotion, ideally, that a child has to a parent, of course.
But without any fear, no matter what I do, I don't fear my parents' reaction.
And of course, fear of God, which incidentally also bothers moderns.
A lot of translations, most translations in English don't say fear God.
They say revere God.
What the hell does that mean?
I revere God.
Good, it's nice that you revere God.
But fearing God is not nice.
It's essential.
And what we now have in America is no fear of any authority.
Well, that's not fear.
People today fear.
They don't fear police.
They don't fear teachers.
Tell me what they fear.
So it's a very interesting thing.
I'll tell you what people fear.
And only people on the right fear this.
That if they say something the left doesn't agree with, they lose their livelihood.
They lose their reputation.
That's the animating fear in America.
As for people on the left, I don't know what they fear.
There's really nothing for them to fear.
So it's interesting that that's part of the feedback that I got about my talk at the University of Mississippi last night.
Incidentally, we have here in Mississippi a phenomenon which is common in the United States of conservative students and left-wing faculty.
The faculty at any university in the United States, virtually any, Hillsdale College is an exception.
There are a few religious exceptions.
Not many religious exceptions, for example.
It's very important to know that, but some.
But with a few exceptions, that's the way it is.
The faculty is left-wing.
That means it's totalitarian.
Liberal is not totalitarian.
Left-wing is totalitarian.
So I wanted to share with you what was...
What shook people up and they took with them, and one of those things was fear of parents, fear of God, fear of teachers, fear of police.
It's all been broken by the left.
There's a fascinating piece here by the great John Hinderaker at Powerline, and he writes a very fascinating thing.
I'm so old, he writes, I can remember when it would have been shocking to suggest that Playboy magazine has more moral sense than Harvard University.
Nowadays, maybe that doesn't come as a surprise.
In any event, it's true.
When former porn performer Mia Khalifa tweeted her support for Hamas mass murderers, Playboy promptly cashiered her.
This is a vastly clearer and stronger statement than anything that has come out of Cambridge.
On the bright side, though, student groups at Harvard that rush to support Hamas' attacks are in full retreat.
Some groups have rescinded their approval of the pro-Hamas statement they signed, while students have been resigning from boards of directors of signatory organizations.
My theme yesterday on the show, much of the three hours, was that 10-7, October 7th, last Saturday, may be one of the clarifying moments of modern history.
Because if you can't fully and thoroughly condemn Hamas, you are morally sick.
And a lot of people realize that.
Conservatives have always realized that.
But now even liberals are starting to realize that.
I read to you yesterday from the chairman of the board of overseers of Wharton College at the University of Pennsylvania, and he is calling for people not to give any money to universities.
So he's a very wealthy man.
Who is the head of the board of a major college at the University of Pennsylvania.
Don't give this university a penny.
And he says, I would not have said this prior to 10-7.
But now he has awakened.
By the way, this is a way to look at things.
The answer to woke is awake.
That's the proper answer.
When people become awakened to the evil of the left and to the evil of pro-Palestinian groups, I mean evil, then we have a sea change.
What is the word they use?
Inter, not intercultural.
They always have an inter-word, that there's always a relationship between one and another.
There is a relationship between the left and the others.
Here is a very interesting, really powerful statement in the Wall Street Journal, which I must admit has really been a moral beacon in these last days.
And here, let's see.
The Harvard Media Office didn't respond to my request for comment on Monday afternoon.
That night, 18 administrators put out an equivocal statement titled, War in the Middle East, that only mildly criticized Hamas and made no mention of the student groups cheering its atrocities.
Only on Tuesday did President Claudine Gay, quote, condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas.
Tuesday?
So she had Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday to do this.
Well, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.
It happened on the American clock early in the day.
She didn't condemn the statement excusing Hamas, but merely distanced herself from it.
No student group, not even 30 student groups, speaks for Harvard or its leadership.
How's our timing?
I have much more on this.
There was another powerful thing from the Wall Street Journal yesterday.
What happened on 10-7 was not 9-11.
9-11 was not an existential threat to the United States of America.
10-7 was an existential threat.
And that is the only existential threat.
I'm sorry, not climate change.
The one real existential threat that exists is to the tiny state called Israel.
Back in a moment.
The Dennis Prager Show.
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By the way, my friends, Dennis Prager here.
My friend.
So I'm really emphasizing something.
It seems to me, and see, here's where I have credibility with you.
I have not tried to cheer you up about America's situation or the world's situation.
My task is to tell you how I understand the world.
And if it's dire, I tell you it's dire.
And by the way, I do.
I get feedback, Dennis, you know, it's almost relentlessly bad news.
And I said, that's right.
It is almost relentlessly bad news.
That is correct.
Do you want your oncologist, if you have cancer, to give you relentlessly good news when it's not true?
How will you fight the cancer?
Well...
So here's good news.
I admit, I don't often have to tell you.
350, that's right, 350 members of the Harvard faculty wrote a letter distancing themselves from the Harvard student groups that condemned Israel for the murderous attack.
Of these truly evil human beings, of Hamas.
I mean, if that's not evil, and remember, that's the point.
It's what the left has done.
It has disordered the universe.
Good is bad, bad is good.
Israel bad, Hamas good.
I debated that very issue at Oxford.
You should see it.
It's prophetic, as it were, because the subject was, who's the bigger threat to Middle East peace, Hamas or Israel?
And I had the audacity to say, Hamas!
I'm laughing because who is the world of the absurd?
It's a debate.
As I asked, in the history of the modern civilization of the world, In a battle between a free society and a police state, when was the free society wrong?
When was the free society the pursuer of non-peace?
Free societies, by definition, want to live in peace.
By the way, I lost the debate, because I knew it would.
I don't know what the numbers were.
Oxford students voted that Israel was the greater threat to Middle East peace.
Well, I guess, by the way, in some sick, perverse way, that's true.
If Israel didn't exist, there might, well, there wouldn't be Middle East peace.
They'd kill each other, but still, there would be more Middle East peace.
That's correct.
That's right.
It's a strange way of looking at the world, but we live in strange times.
We, the faculty, we are faculty of Harvard who are deeply concerned about the events in the Middle East.
As well as the safety of our students here on campus, on October 7th, Hamas launched a premeditated attack on the Israeli population.
Hundreds of terrorists, not militants, New York Times.
Terrorists, New York Times.
Infiltrated Israeli towns and houses.
Children were killed in front of their parents.
Entire families were executed.
Grandmothers, mothers, and their babies were kidnapped.
I'm not going to read the entire statement.
Every innocent death is a tragedy, yet this should not mislead us to create false equivalencies between the actions leading to this loss.
That's right, false equivalency.
Hamas planned and executed the murder and kidnapping of civilians, particularly women, children, and the elderly.
With no military or other specific objective.
This meets the definition of a war crime.
The Israeli security forces were engaging in self-defense against this attack while dealing with numerous hostage situations and the barrage of thousands of rockets hidden deliberately in dense urban settings.
The leaders of the major democratic countries united in saying that, quote, the terrorist actions of Hamas have no justification, no legitimacy, and must be universally condemned.
Remember, this is a statement from 350 members of the Harvard faculty.
Mind you, a vast number of the faculty didn't sign it.
But I'm only mentioning that for a different reason, not to condemn them, though they are worthy of contempt and condemnation.
But there will now be a rift, finally, between liberal and left at Harvard.
That is the rift I have been working relentlessly for for years, for liberals to understand that the enemy of the good is the left, that they are bad.
I'm sorry.
They're bad.
And this reveals it.
It's okay for Hamas to do what it did.
It's the left-wing view.
Not every leftist, but it is only leftists that have that view.
The leaders of the major democratic countries united in saying that the terrorist actions of Hamas have no justification, no legitimacy, and must be universally condemned, unquote.
And that Israel should be supported, quote, in its efforts to defend itself and its people against such atrocities.
Wow, that's good.
That's a good statement.
In contrast, while terrorists were still killing Israelis in their homes, 35 Harvard student organizations wrote that they hold, quote, the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence, with not a single word denouncing the horrific acts by Hamas.
Do you realize what I'm reading to you?
350 Harvard professors condemning, morally condemning, 35 Harvard student organizations, all of them, nearly every one of them, black and Arab and Muslim?
350 members?
This couldn't have happened a week ago!
In the context of the unfolding events, this statement can be seen as nothing less than condoning the mass murder of civilians based only on their nationality.
Well, that's not accurate.
The nationality is Israel.
The ethnicity and religion is Jewish.
That's what it's based on.
I'll be back.
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In these pretty dark times, domestically and internationally, 350 members of the faculty of Harvard have condemned their own Harvard students.
Did you think you would live to see this moment?
I mean, condemning the left.
That's the point.
Condemning their leftist students.
Because the left is sick.
A lot of these people are liberal.
Very few are conservative.
Which is fine.
I've been begging liberals to understand that the enemy of liberalism is leftism, not conservatism.
For decades.
So I am seeing this happening.
350 professors at Harvard.
So I'm up to the part where they have praised the leaders of major democratic countries that utterly condemned Hamas.
And then they write...
35 Harvard student organizations wrote that they hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence, with not a single word denouncing the horrific act by Hamas.
In the context of the unfolding events, this statement can be seen as nothing less than condoning the mass murder of civilians based only on their nationality.
I wish they'd have been precise.
The mass murder of Jews because they're Jews.
But okay, I'm not complaining.
We've heard reports of even worse instances with Harvard students celebrating the, quote, victory or, quote, resistance on social media.
Did you think you would live to see 350 Harvard faculty condemn Harvard students?
Left-wing Harvard students at that?
As a university aimed at future leaders, this could have been a teaching moment and an opportunity to remind our students that beyond our political debates, some acts, such as war crimes, are simply wrong.
And now they go on 350 Harvard faculty to condemn their own administration at Harvard.
However, the statement by Harvard's administration fell short of this goal.
While justly denouncing Hamas, it still contributed to the false equivalency between attacks on noncombatants and self-defense against those atrocities.
Furthermore, the statement failed to condemn the justifications for violence that come from our own campus.
In other words, The faculty is condemning the president of Harvard for not condemning all of those Harvard student groups.
If you're pinching yourself, let me say you are awake.
You don't have to pinch yourself, but I fully acknowledge that that would be an appropriate response.
350 Harvard faculty condemning the president administration of Harvard for not condemning Harvard students?
On the left, no less?
Wow.
That's why I said yesterday was devoted to the theory that 10-7 may be a deal breaker between liberals and leftists.
Maybe.
I never get too optimistic.
Because the media will start showing you dead Palestinians, and then everybody will go, oh, well, they both do it.
And I know this because I read to you New York Times readers' comments on Bret Stephens, New York Times, columnists condemning Hamas.
Well, savagery is savagery.
One of my first inklings as to the moral bankruptcy of the left was the moral equivalence argument.
As I explained to you earlier in this week, I was at the School of International Affairs, as it was known at the time at Columbia University, doing graduate work, especially on the Cold War.
It was common for professors to refer to the U.S. Soviet rift as two superpowers aiming for power, not a fight between freedom and tyranny.
It was never characterized at Columbia when I was there as a fight between liberty and tyranny.
So this stuff is not new, shall we say.
But this is now a potential sea change.
When you have Harvard faculty condemning the president of Harvard for not condemning left-wing student groups, it's a new day.
Everybody, Dennis Prager here.
This is a big deal.
The 350 members of the Harvard faculty condemning 35 student groups.
There's so many numbers to keep in mind here.
Let's see.
Anyway, whatever is this large number of student groups, all, yeah, 35, that's right.
Virtually all in some way affiliated with the Middle East, with Arab students, Muslim students, but there were black groups in it as well.
And they condemned them, and they condemned the university administration for not condemning them.
This is mind-blowing.
Now, my friends, I did something I am very proud of.
You're going to enjoy this one.
I did a search, because you can search any document.
I did a search on the following words, and I will do more searches on more words.
350 professors at Harvard.
So I started to notice a pattern.
Overwhelmingly, they were at the medical school, and I couldn't find, like, professors of, let's say, sociology.
So I did a search on the word sociology, and I came up with one.
One professor of sociology signed this.
There it is.
Christopher Winship, Diker Tishman Professor of Sociology.
One out of 350. Then I did another search on anthropology.
How many do you think I came up with?
That's right.
You got it.
Zero.
Not one professor in the anthropology department of Harvard University could say that Hamas was evil.
I want you to think of that.
And I did another search on women's, like women's studies.
How many you think came up?
How many lecturers, professors in the women's Studies department could say that Hamas did evil.
Zero.
Let's see.
I'm going to do some more live with you.
Okay.
Well, let's check on black studies.
And the answer is zero.
That's not a good sign.
It's a bad sign.
I didn't even look up gender.
I'll look up gender just to make sure that the world is still balanced.
Under gender, I got zero.
What?
So what?
What did I know?
Oh, English.
Yes.
Another department of moral idiots.
Yes.
And the answer is zero.
Do I know my colleges or what?
You realize if your kid goes to Harvard, and by the way, it doesn't matter if it's Harvard or Boise State, if your kid goes and majors in English, the odds are a moral idiot is teaching your child to be a moral idiot.
Moral idiots are very dangerous human beings, by the way.
It's not a cute term.
It's an acute term.
English, sociology, anthropology, black studies, women's studies.
What else?
What did we miss here?
What?
Oh, I wonder.
Oh, education.
Another field of giants.
How many?
Well, let's see.
We're good.
Elizabeth Bonowitz, Associate Professor of Learning Sciences, Graduate School of Education.
That's nice.
And no, that doesn't count medical education.
Michael Horne, adjunct lecturer, Harvard Graduate School of Education.
That's two.
That one is not it.
No, two.
So two people at the education school.
Now, here's the question.
How do the 99% of professors in the education school now regard these two professors?
Oh my God, we have to have some of these on the show.
I'm telling you, this is a seriously interesting and important subject.
What did I miss?
Anthropology?
I think I got them all right.
English?
I pretty much hit it.
My tip-off to the idiocy-dominating departments of English was the removal of the Shakespeare mural.
At the Department of English building at the University of Pennsylvania because he was a white male.
Greatest writer of English in the history of the English language doesn't matter.
He was white and male.
That means that the Department of English doesn't care about great English writing.
It cares about the color of people writing.
Isn't that deep?
So whose mural is up there now?
A woman of color who's a lesbian.
Isn't that awesome?
Because that's what matters.
Doesn't matter if she writes well.
Doesn't matter if anybody ever heard of her.
She has basically the most important qualities you can have in life.
She's a lesbian and she's not white.
Right?
This is what your kids are studying.
At any college, this is Harvard, but it's irrelevant.
It doesn't matter what college.
I'm here.
I just spoke at the University of Mississippi.
So I suggested to Lee Habib, who is a giant in changing this country for the better.
And he has a lot of, I don't want to say tentacles because it sounds conspiratorial.
He has a lot of friends.
Is that fair?
Friends would be better.
Friends would be better.
And we'll see if we can get a statement from the University of Mississippi faculty.
I want Lee to go on a suicide mission.
I love him, but nevertheless, sometimes duty calls, and he should visit the Department of Anthropology.
Here at the University of Mississippi.
So basically, the entire what's called liberal arts in the United States has been corrupted by the left.
I mean, morally corrupted.
It would be interesting.
I wonder if we could follow this up with a statement on the part of Harvard faculty against allowing young women to have their breasts cut off if they say they're men.
Or allowing young men to have their penis or testicles cut off because they say they're women.
Then it would be interesting, because I don't think you would get as many from the medical school, but I do wonder.
These are things worthy of looking into and investigating.
The statement by these people, by this faculty, is very important.
This is the first rift.
That I have seen between left and liberal.
And it happened, not oddly, over Jews.
That's why I wrote my book, Why the Jews?
Because anti-Semitism is the key to evil.
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So this final segment, I brought to you a really important thing.
350 Harvard faculty condemning their own administration and 35 pro-Palestinian student groups for their incapacity in calling out evil.
The events of this week are not complicated, they write.
Sometimes there is such a thing as evil, and it is incumbent upon educators and leaders to call it out, as they have with school shootings and terrorist attacks.
It is imperative that our academic leadership, whose good faith we do not doubt, state this clearly and unequivocally.
We stand with any member of the Harvard community who feels unsafe or alone and pledge to do what we can individually and collectively.
How can Jewish and Israeli students feel safe on a campus in which it is considered acceptable to justify and even celebrate the deaths of Jewish children and families?
It's astonishing.
Look at that.
Well, nothing can be said to reduce the pain of family and friends of the people slaughtered, your children and grandchildren murdered.
It's hard to go on.
But I think we can say that if this continues, this moral clarity, then in some sense they may not have died in vain.
That is the hope.
Moral clarity is everything.
The Dennis Prager Show, live from the Relief Factor Pain-Free Studio.
You are listening to the best of The Dennis Prager Show.
It's the happy, happy, happy, happy hour.
Yes, it is.
It's the da-da-da-da-dee-doo-doo.
Hello, everybody.
I'm Dennis Prager.
The happy make the world better.
The unhappy make it worse.
That's a fact.
A fact of life that you must know.
If you don't.
You'll really, really screw it up.
Those are the original lyrics.
Yes, it is.
Hi, everybody.
Every Friday since 1999. That's the 20th century.
I've been doing this since the century of World War I. That is how long I have been doing the Happiness Hour.
The century after the American Civil War.
This...
Happiness Hour began.
Yes, the happy make the world better.
It's a moral obligation to pursue happiness.
Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.
The giants who wrote the Declaration of Independence.
And remember, by many, many aphorisms, midgets hate giants.
I'm not talking about physical midgets or physical giants.
Moral midgets hate moral giants.
Those who hate the founders.
Are the midgets.
And that's why they hate them.
I have a new topic.
I would give a lot of money to see a list of all the topics I've had on the Happiness Hour.
If this is the 24th year that it is, So 24 times 50. Well, 20 times 50 is 1,000.
And then 4 times...
So 1,200, about 1,200 shows, would you say?
1,200 hours on happiness.
And I would say that at least 400 separate topics.
That's amazing.
Well, anyway, here's a new one.
It's a thought question here, but I will, however, offer my own thoughts as well.
What do parents give to a child that is most likely to contribute to adult happiness?
I'm letting you think.
So I'd like to offer you some of my thoughts.
Then, of course, I'll take your calls.
You might very well speak autobiographically.
My parents did X, and that really did enable me to be happy.
Or my parents didn't do X, and that has had repercussions.
Now, if you were abused, that's not a call that I'm looking for because that's obvious.
That if you were abused by, I mean, truly abused by a parent, sexually, physically, verbally, then it's going to create obstacles to happiness to understate the case.
I think you can still achieve it, but it is obviously an obstacle.
But I'm asking, what is it that parents give that is most likely To produce a happy adult.
And I would say it is not love.
The vast majority of people in this society, I believe, I have no data, I admit it, but I believe that the majority, let's say, I don't know, 70%?
I'm trying to give a conservative number.
We're loved by their parents.
Zach is sitting in for show today.
Zach, were you loved by your parents?
Yes, extremely.
Well, you radiate unhappiness, so it proves that love is not sufficient.
I'm kidding.
Zach actually radiates a certain degree of happiness despite the fact that he works on the show.
I'm introducing you to the world, Zach.
Just want you to know.
In fact, he's smiling the whole time I'm saying this.
It's a very interesting and important subject because I think parents got it wrong since World War II. Everything has been concentrated on loving your child.
Love your child, love your child, love your child.
For the record, for the left who monitor my show and lie about it later.
I believe it is truly important to love your child.
I wanted to just make that clear.
However, there are things that might be as important.
As important!
Maybe there are things that are more important.
I don't know.
But when you are an adult...
You have to live with you, and the way you have been formed, and your parents are not the only formation, that's very important to remember, but the way you have been formed is a major factor in how happy you are.
So, how much of your formation is a result of your parents is a very fair question, and how much of that formation I don't know the answer, but I don't believe that it is determinative.
I think that what is equally determinative, or really are equally determinative, is the ability to take care of yourself.
If you can't take care of yourself, you can't be happy.
So what produces a person who can take care of him or herself?
Is it that they were loved by their parents?
Well, since most people were loved by their parents, and so many people are emotional wrecks, are the one-third of young people who are depressed?
Time Magazine reported, if Time says the sky is blue, I still go out and check.
Nevertheless, they cited some report that one-third of American teenage girls considered or thought about suicide last year or the year before.
Are all these girls unloved by their parents or at least by one parent?
I doubt it.
Something else must be missing from the equation.
So what can parents do to help produce a happy person?
I say help produce because there are no guarantees no matter what.
There are children with crappy parents who are happy.
There are children with loving parents who are profoundly unhappy.
So then what can parents do to help produce a happy adult?
Well, one thing I already mentioned was to be self-sufficient.
To learn how to take care of yourself.
Therefore, I believe helicopter parenting produces a less happy adult than much more removed parenting from the child's life.
Because one day, that helicopter will have to land at some base, at some heliport.
And then what does the child do whose parents were omnipresent?
In their lives.
Maybe omnipresence in your child's life is not a good idea for your child's, I don't believe, moral health or emotional health.
But those parents presumably love their child a great deal.
So I believe that Somehow figuring out how to make your child self-reliant is a major step towards the hopeful creation, manufacture, production of a happy adult.
Remember something, too.
You're not raising a child.
You're raising a future adult.
Your child remains a child for a very small fraction of his or her life.
They will be an adult, at least chronologically, most of their lives.
The vast majority.
Teaching your child to be self-sufficient involves criticism.
Involves non-helicoptery.
Love is not enough.
You might want to say that might be the theme of this Happiness Hour.
We return.
I'll take your calls.
1-8-Prager-776.
Hello, everybody.
The Happiness Hour, Friday, second hour of the Dennis Prager Show.
I am he.
The question is...
What can parents give?
What is the most important thing parents can do or give to help make a happy adult?
There is no perfect answer because you can do everything right and just love an unhappy adult.
But what can parents do?
Notice I'm not only saying give, do, but do and or give to produce a happy adult.
And I don't think that love...
is at the top of the list.
Love is important.
However, I believe that they shower too much love on many kids and they end up narcissistic.
And no narcissist is happy.
Nobody who deals with a narcissist is happy.
I have other things that I think are number one.
Stability.
Security, guardrails, and teach a child to take care of him or herself.
First, make your bed!
Right?
As Jordan Peterson would say.
First, make your bed.
From a very early age, I knew that I could rely on me.
I had to rely on me.
It was a big help in my life.
Showering a child with love, especially the old unconditional love, eh, you may act like an a-hole, but I love you, is not a great message.
I'm sorry.
It sounds like it should be.
Maybe unconditional love for a newborn is appropriate.
It probably is.
Anyway, on what can you condition the love?
But if you shower your child with love no matter how or she behaves, I have told the story, but not on the radio in maybe decades.
When my older son was about, let's see, two, he was in a park in L.A., and his mom was with him, my wife at the time, and so she saw this, I didn't.
A kid about five years of age went over and just threw him on the ground.
Simple as that.
Well, the mother saw this happening, the mother of that proto-Nazi, and she ran over and she said, What's troubling you, darling?
Wow.
Well, that's unconditional love, isn't it?
He threw down a toddler, and that's what she was worried about.
What's troubling him?
Okay.
Let's see what you have to say, my friends.
We have a...
Is that a pediatrician in South Carolina?
Adam, are you a pediatrician?
Well, actually, it's a pediatric therapist.
And I agree with you.
So when I sit down and talk with my children and my families, I work with a lot of kids with a lot of mental health diagnoses and issues.
And my number one thing I tell families is that children need rules, limits, boundaries, and expectations.
And that truly shows your love by sacrificing possibly how your children view you so that they become able, like you said, to be self-sufficient and to be able to rely on themselves to cope and to calm themselves and to regulate.
Instead of having to have the parent there present to be able to do so.
How do I schedule an appointment with you?
I live in California.
Oh, well, we can do telehealth.
I do that as well.
Well, I'm no longer in the pediatric realm, but that was my way of praising you.
Do you consider yourself...
So what are you?
Are you a psychologist?
No, actually, I am in occupational therapy, but we handle mental health, and so most of the children I deal with have severe mental health issues.
So, do most of your colleagues who work with children know your position?
Well, they do, actually, because I'm a male, and so occupational therapy, it's rare to have men, but I get requested personally.
But the thing is, for most of my profession, it's woman-based, and it's very young.
And they just moved occupational therapy into a doctorate degree.
So we get a lot of these young girls coming out of the program with doctorate degrees, like, hey, I have a doctorate degree.
And so most of them are kind of brainwashed.
But I tend to, I have a son who is disabled.
And I also went through a part of my life where...
You know, I had to learn what actually brought me happiness, and I found out that it was in the restricting of my desires and passions where I was truly able to fully, to be happy.
So when I talk to children and stuff and parents, they say, oh, like you said, I have to give, give, give, and give.
That's going to make my kid happy.
That's going to make my kid look at me and see, great, you know, great, my parents are great.
But see, I don't care how my parents, I don't care how my kids look at me.
I want to raise, like you said, children who can rely on themselves because that's only when they're going to achieve happiness.
And if I have to sacrifice their view of me, so be it.
Yes, you said that earlier.
I was so impressed I wrote it down.
If you really love your child, then you sacrifice how they look at you.
That's right.
That's correct.
That was really intelligent.
That guy, he's got it right.
That's why I get calls periodically.
Some of you might have actually heard them.
So, Dennis, my spouse and I were pregnant.
My husband, my wife were pregnant.
And give us a piece of advice on raising a child.
Well, there's a ton of advice I could give, to use the vernacular.
But I do have an answer, and I have a one-sentence answer.
Self-control is more important than self-esteem.
And you want to make a happy adult?
Teach them self-control.
That's really loving.
And really hard.
People do it a lot with boys, teach them not to hit, hopefully not to be sexual predators, but they do it very little with girls, within whom emotions rage, and if a girl cannot control those emotions, she is crippled for life, and so is society.
Self-control, let's say, Massive doses of teaching that is more important than massive doses of love.
Trails, self-control, teaching self-control.
I asked this of my producer, this very question, and he said, one, a sense of security.
That's big.
I think security beats love, by the way.
A model of responsibility.
That's why I said, what can they do?
Not just what can they give.
Guardrails.
And I could push things only so far.
That's right.
That's what I believe.
That's what I got.
And it worked with me.
I'm a happy adult.
I've been since a very early age.
I was an unhappy child.
Not teenager child.
Just for the record.
All right, everybody.
Let's see here.
Plano, Texas.
Chris, hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
So this subject has come up recently in my family.
We have two sons, both raised pretty much with love all the way around, raised in the Catholic Church, so the younger did experience a lot of emotional so the younger did experience a lot of emotional setbacks as a preteen.
He questioned God, his religion, his faith.
I just lost him to depression in April.
So, I don't have an answer, because we raised him both equally as well.
When you say lost him to depression, he's alive, but you lost him because he's depressed.
Is that what you're saying?
Or did he actually die?
Yes.
He ended his life.
I see.
My heart goes out to you.
Please know that.
Yes, there are things parents cannot overcome.
You must know that.
And as much as I emphasize good parenting, you didn't do this, my friend.
You didn't do this any more than if he had had an aneurysm or pancreatic cancer.
I'm happy you called so that I could say that to you.
I don't even know if that helps because that may not be an issue in your life, but in case it is, there is no explaining certain depressions.
They are as physiological and uncontrollable, I believe, as cancer.
I didn't realize how much of an impression Or an impact he had on those around him until we had his memorial service and we were just overwhelmed.
So it really made me sad thinking why he never thought of himself as being more valuable.
His mother and I, we struggled with this, and luckily we're going through counseling, grief counseling, and one thing that we've come to realize, and it's been repeated, that he gave in to his depression.
He didn't do this to harm anyone.
He just gave up.
He was just tired of battling demons.
That's exactly right.
So again, I just want to...
I want to emphasize, I don't know if you do hold yourself in some way responsible.
What could I have done better?
What did I do wrong?
I want you to understand you didn't do any more wrong, probably, than someone whose child died of cancer.
I wish we had a better take on pathological depression.
People who have it, it's heartbreaking.
We return.
Hi everybody, Dennis Prager of the Happiness Hour.
What do you think parents can do or give to their child?
That can help most to make a happy adult.
We understand parents do not have complete control over anything that you become.
Let's make that clear.
Parents need to understand that.
It's humbling and important.
If they turn out great, you're not the only reason.
If they turn out lousy, you're not the only reason.
Well, if they turn out lousy, you might be.
Let's put it this way.
We have a better chance of screwing up our kids than we do of ensuring how they'll develop in a positive way.
That's just the way life works.
It's easier to damage than to create.
If that weren't true, the left wouldn't be powerful.
All right.
Well, look who's calling.
One of my favorite comedians.
Live.
Tom Dreesen.
Hello there, Tom.
Hi, Dennis.
How you doing?
Well, I must have really provoked something in you to have you spontaneously call.
Yes, because I give motivation talks on four subjects.
Perception, visualization, self-talk, and develop a sense of humor.
And I elaborate on those four points.
But the greatest gift that God can bestow upon a human being is a sense of humor.
And a sense of humor, by my humble definition, is not when you have the ability to laugh at other shortcomings or misfortunes, when you have the ability to laugh at yourself.
And parents can teach this to children.
And the way you do that is, whenever you do something dumb or stupid, come home and share it with those kids.
You know, if you're a housewife and you're shopping and you reach up for a box of Cheerios and you slip and fall and your dress cups over your head, all the boxes fall on top of you, come home and tell the children about that and laugh with them.
It teaches them it's okay to laugh when you do dumb things.
Laughter...
It's no longer a theory that laughter is healing.
Because of Norman Cousins, we know now laughter is not only psychologically a deterrent, it's physiologically therapeutic through research done at UCLA Research Medical Center.
So that's the gift, the greatest gift you can give them.
Learn to laugh at yourself.
Don't take yourself so serious.
And I'll end with this.
I was on Hollywood Squares one time, and 3,500 women polled, what's the number one characteristic you look for in a man?
And the biggest answer was a sense of humor.
Someone who didn't take themselves so serious.
Someone who was fun to be around.
Laughter in the home is just the greatest gift you can teach them.
And teach them by laughing at yourself.
Yes, well, bless you.
I'll just tell you all, this is a wise man.
And thank you.
He is a wise man.
I think you have to have a level of wisdom to be a truly funny comedian, by the way.
Because you have to perceive life and know how to make people laugh as a result of it.
That's a very important thing.
Somebody called, actually, and said it was laughter in their home that contributed the most to their later happiness.
They actually gave up staying on the line, but I remember reading that line.
Yes, learning to laugh at yourself.
That's right.
It's easy to laugh at others, but that's not therapeutic.
It's mean.
Well said, Tom Dreesen.
Look for his stuff.
He's extremely funny.
Okay, let's see here.
Okay, I'm going to take an older caller here.
Ginny in Pinellas, Florida.
It says here you're 87. Is that correct?
That's correct, yes.
So are you 87 and a half, 87 and a quarter?
I would say approaching about 90. I don't play bingo.
I keep busy all the time.
Wait, wait, wait.
You're approaching 90, but you told the screener you were 87?
Well, mentally, I'm approaching 90. I made it to 87. Okay, fair enough.
And I am blessed with a sense of humor.
That was a wonderful, wonderful comment that both you and Tom...
That's one of the most important things in life.
But I was a child in the Second World War, and I remember it as clear as a bell.
And my father worked, he was a supervisor at an oil refinery.
My mother had spinal meningitis.
My brother went off to war.
And we had a farm, and I was a grown woman by the time I was 12. So I had to help run the farm, go to school, and everybody just did what they had to do.
And so basically, you teach a child responsibility so they can have respect.
Respect to me is...
It's the most important thing in life.
Respect for what?
Respect for themselves?
Respect for others?
For everything in general.
Respect for what you have, what you possibly will have, so that you can work toward it when you're responsible.
But to basically have some sort of spiritual connection by the parents.
Right, okay.
Well, those...
Quite rightly, throwing in a lot of thoughts here.
I want to emphasize your prior thought.
You learned by 12, when you say you were grown up, what you did was, what your parents or life forced you to do, was to take care of yourself at 12. Exactly correct.
That is right.
We have prolonged adolescence.
It now reaches to 30. And in many cases, beyond 30. That's why I began this hour with the statement that the best you can do to ensure a happy adult is teach them how to take care of themselves.
You are raising an adult, not a child.
If you're raising a child, both you and he or she are in trouble.
Your task is to make an adult.
And an adult is a person who takes care of himself or herself, as it were.
And that's why I emphasize self-control over self-esteem.
And none of this is oodles of love.
I don't see how oodles of love prepare you to become an adult.
You can't go swimming in a baseball pool.
One of my favorite of the happiness themes.
Happiness Hour.
What can you most do or give to your child to help create a happy adult with the understanding that we don't create, we help.
You can certainly destroy, but you can't create.
As a, other than making life.
Anyway, obviously parents have a big role to play.
Just, it's not guaranteed to be determinative, that's all I'm saying.
But what can you do?
And in terms of a happy adult, my first recommendation, more than love, is to teach your child to take care of him or herself.
And, well...
By the way, Paul in Chicago, stay on for the next hour.
I want to deal with that issue.
Let's see here.
Yep.
Got so many good calls, and I take time looking at them, which is not a great idea, but I can't help it.
Denver, Colorado.
Scott, hello.
Happy Friday.
Thank you for taking my call.
I think the number one thing is simply pay attention.
In the day of everybody being connected on their phones, on their tablets, and everything else, it's amazing how often families can be in a room and don't say a word to each other for minutes and hours on end.
And Tom mentioned it earlier, and it really struck home.
To this day, even with my grown kids, we get together and we simply laugh.
And we have such a good time because we're connected and we pay attention to each other, and it just means so much.
That's great.
Get together and laugh.
That's a...
What is it?
Maybe we could reword or offer an additional thought family that laughs together, stays together.
That's a good one.
I thank you that.
Let's see here.
Courtney in Highland Park, Illinois.
It comes down to freedom within a loving and safe environment.
That's right.
I would say that safe is even bigger than loving.
I think parents should love their kids, but I think that most parents do.
It's the showering of love and the helicoptering that I'm worried about.
All right, my friends.
Dennis.
Wow.
53-year-old Dennis in Miami.
Patsy in South Carolina.
Ron.
Dan.
Thank you for calling.
You've got to think about that.
Helicopters don't do the job.
Now call in on any subject under the sun.
You are listening to the best of the Dennis Prager Show.
*music* Let Dennis be Dennis.
Yes, indeed.
I agree with that.
This is the hour where you set the agenda.
Whatever's on your mind about you, about me, about life, about death.
About cigars, audio equipment, photography equipment, fountain pens, and classical music.
I think I've gotten that down more or less.
But not about gardening.
Not that it is not a great thing.
I have nothing to say.
Enjoy the music.
Okay, everybody.
What's on your mind?
Here we go.
Alvin in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Hello.
Come in, Alvin.
Can you hear me?
Now I can.
Is that better?
It's infinitely better.
It went from inaudible to audible.
Sorry about that.
Thanks for taking my call.
I've listened to you for years, and you've always teased on the subject of studying a boring person.
Yes.
And then a few weeks ago, you finally exposed an answer.
You gave two of them.
One.
You won't be a boring person if you have a passion for something.
And the other thing was to show interest in the person that you're with.
That's right.
I know I've said that for years, but you did correctly summarize my conclusions.
You could do a book on that.
That's always fascinated me as well.
I never thought anyone else even considered it.
I also wanted to see if you had any more answers in terms of not being a boring person to being a boring person.
Well, I love your question.
It's a good way to start the hour.
So let me give the background.
When I dated women looking for either just a date or looking for hopefully a wife, and I always had that in mind from a very early age.
I always knew I was going to get married, and I always knew I wanted to get married, and I always knew I wanted to have children.
So, like everybody who has dated, there were some dates that were boring.
So I decided, and I'm proud of myself, because it was a great decision, I decided that the only way I could make a boring date interesting Is if I became interested in boring people.
In other words, why is somebody boring?
Or at least, I found boring.
Maybe others would not have.
I fully acknowledge it now and then.
And I concluded two things, just as Alvin in Pittsburgh summarized, that they had few, if any, passions.
And the other was that they were completely disinterested in me, the person they were on a date with.
I was in public life, but I was nothing comparable to today.
So usually I was on a date with someone who didn't know of any of my public work.
And even if they did, and they didn't ask any questions, then it was even more revealing.
I always ask questions.
In fact, the truth is, to this day, I am more interested in asking people questions than in talking about me.
I have more than enough opportunities to talk about what I think about and about my opinions and about me.
So the last thing I need to do at a dinner party is talk about me again.
Those two things, disinterest in the other individual or other individuals and no passions.
The other day, I was with one of the great broadcasters.
Of my lifetime.
And he did a show on automobiles.
Leon Kaplan.
It's ironic that I just bumped into him.
He looked great.
And Leon Kaplan taught me something very interesting.
That a person could hold your interest for an hour.
On a subject you had no interest in, if he was passionate and interesting.
That taught me a great deal, is a big lesson, and I have certainly applied it in my life.
I don't assume that every subject that I raise, everybody is interested in.
But I am.
And I convey my passion and I convey my interest and that keeps people listening.
And you can do the same.
So those were two big factors in not being boring.
Another one, which I didn't raise because it had nothing to do with what I learned on a date, is one of the reasons I'm interesting.
And it's foolish for me to deny that.
I wouldn't have this job if I were boring.
I mean, there's one thing you could say about every talk show host.
They're not boring.
You lose your audience and therefore you go to another profession.
That's obvious.
So, I have had an advantage based on a limitation, which is very common in life.
And that is, I am bored very, very easily.
And therefore, I can bore me.
So since my threshold of interest is so low or high, depending on how you look at it, I have to keep me interested, and that has been a major factor in my being interesting.
It's very hard to keep my interest.
And I have to measure up to that standard too.
That's a good example.
See, one of my friends is a psychiatrist.
One of my closest friends.
And I am always fascinated when we're together and I will tune out.
While listening to somebody talk, and he won't.
He follows every word they say.
He hears, even boring people, he hears every word they say, which is a good thing, given his profession.
But I am much more easily, I'm much more readily tuned out.
But that has kept me...
I think interesting.
I remember in one of my earliest speeches, in my early 20s, I actually said to myself while giving a speech, Dennis, you're boring me.
And I never did that since.
Okay, San Diego, California.
Jeff, hello.
Good morning, Dennis.
Hi.
Hi, how are you?
I'm probably, I'm theist.
You know, I believe in Creator.
I believe in God.
I have a Christian background, probably somewhere between Protestant, liberal, theologically, not socially, and a deist, you know, like a Thomas Jefferson deist.
There's been this question that's come up with Christian discussions about God, and some people assert that in the old Catholic times, Everybody believed that God kind of permeates the entire world, permeates everything.
And I look at—my belief is that God is separate from the creation.
I think that's the Genesis belief.
And I don't think that God is always, like, right there.
It's just—I can't believe that.
You know, like, maybe when a tick is biting a mammal or somebody's doing a crime, is God right there?
I don't believe that God kind of hovers over us like a helicopter parent, but I wanted your take from the Jewish point of view, because the Jewish point of view sometimes differs from the Christian point of view, and I'm just...
Right, so I very rarely do I say the Jewish point of view.
Yeah, sorry, I'm sorry.
No, no, no, no, you don't have to be sorry at all.
It's a perfectly legitimate question.
I'm answering it, though.
In the most honest way I can.
First of all, I don't want to wear the mantle of I am speaking on behalf of all of Judaism.
Certainly nobody speaks on behalf of all Jews.
But even within Christianity, the Christian view is a tough one.
Is it the Catholic, the Protestant, or even within there?
I mean, clearly.
Protestants differ tremendously among themselves and Catholics among themselves.
All right, having said that, however, yes, God is separate from his creation.
But God permeating creation and being separate from creation are not mutually exclusive.
I'll explain when we return.
Okay, all Dennis Prager here.
So the last caller.
One of my favorite subjects, theology.
He believes in God.
He doesn't believe the rhetoric that God permeates creation because he believes God is separate from his creation.
God is separate from his creation and permeates creation.
They're not mutually exclusive.
God is not part of nature, but he permeates nature, because if it weren't for God's will, it would cease to exist.
Why do electrons continue to revolve around a nucleus?
I believe it's this supernatural force put it in place.
It is so fascinating to me, the arrogance of, not all by any means, but many atheists, that the idea that the physical world did not create itself is stupid.
Yes, they think we're stupid.
We're just superstitious fools for thinking that there might be a beyond natural cause of nature.
Because after all, every intelligent person just knows that nature made itself.
It all came about by fluke.
Fluke for these atheists.
That's really logical.
Charles Krauthammer was agnostic, but he thought atheism was the stupidest idea he had ever heard.
It was something I've played often.
He was a Harvard-trained doctor.
For those curious about where scientists lie.
Anyway, back to you, my friend, Jeff in San Diego.
I'm very curious.
You say you believe in God, so I'm very curious what that means to you.
Do you believe that God ever revealed His will?
I think so, in the Bible, but I don't think it's, what do you call it, inerrant.
It's not like He talked to people, maybe to Moses.
Maybe he revealed himself very powerfully to Jesus.
Yeah.
These days he's kind of silent to me.
Yeah, no, I hear you on that.
I think that's true, by the way.
I think that is largely true.
I think he spoke much more then.
This is one of the reasons I read the Bible, because I do think he spoke there.
And do you believe that God judges good and evil?
That's a hard one, because, yes, God is moral, and he's put the moral inclination to man.
Okay, so where do you and I differ?
I'm not saying we do.
I'm just curious.
Do you think we differ theologically?
See, to me, that is one of the two, three bottom lines.
Do you believe that God judges human beings?
If you don't, then there's no difference between belief in God and atheism.
But you don't believe that.
You do believe God judges humans.
I think so, but I don't know.
I don't have the traditional heaven-hell purgatory thing worked out.
Okay, well, I don't know what worked out means.
Nobody has it worked out.
If you believe that Hitler and Mother Teresa have different fates after death, that's all that matters.
I think so.
I have a faith there.
But once again, it's speculation.
No, no, but you said it correctly.
You said if God is good, then there is different fates for different people.
And that's my bottom line.
By the way, Jefferson was not a deist.
None of them were.
Maybe Thomas Paine.
Tom Paine.
Jefferson believed that God worked in history.
Okay, let's see here.
I got a few of those, and that, and...
Forgive me, folks.
All right, let's go to Mountain View, Arkansas, and Dave.
Hello, Dave.
Hello.
Hi.
Hi, you say that you hate Nazis, and I just wanted to know, do you know that they wanted Europe to be European?
No, they wanted Europe to be Aryan.
European was not a value system to them, it was a racial system.
Right, they wanted European to be all Europeans, Frenchmen, British, Spanish.
And that's it.
They wanted everyone else out.
Yeah, of course I am.
Before I ask you why you raised the issue...
Because you say you hate Nazis.
Well, because of what they did.
I don't hate people because of their theories.
I hate people because of their actions.
What action do you hate?
Is that a serious question?
Are you talking about the Jews?
Among other things, but...
Okay, they aren't from Europe.
Oh, so then it's okay to murder six million of them.
What choice did they have?
Oh, my God.
Okay, so this is a debate I have.
I don't know the answer.
I don't know the right answer.
I don't think it would be...
I don't think it's helpful to continue.
If you believe Europe is for Europeans, well, Jews were Europeans.
The greatest German poet, Heinrich Heine, was a Jew.
Every German thought he was German.
But it doesn't matter.
So you can gas children?
That's it.
All right, well...
I guess I'll put you back on.
It's a phenomenon if you're still there.
Yeah, you are.
So wait a minute.
Let me understand something.
Let us say Jews were not Europeans.
Then it is okay to gas children and families?
They were a future threat.
Okay, so you think it was okay?
Yes.
They had no choice.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Well...
Bye.
Thank you.
There is a level of moral decay that I can't fully address.
Doesn't happen often.
It hasn't happened often in my 40 years of radio.
What am I going to say?
It's okay.
To massacre everyone who is different than you.
All right, we'll return.
Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
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