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Nov. 3, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:18:57
Return from London
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hi, everybody.
I hope you remember me.
I'm Dennis Prager.
This is the Dennis Prager Show.
And thank you to all those who sat in for me.
I was in London all week.
What was interesting, among other things, and I will tell you a little about that, because there's certainly a lot to talk about with regard to America and the world, a lot of people said to me, oh, you better be careful.
I mean, people who like me, this is without warnings of enemies.
And I felt no danger whatsoever at any time, and yet people were quite surprised that I was just going over to London.
My wife and I went Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, came home last night.
Those of you who have not taken long airplane trips, Life is so much a matter of what you get used to.
So these are 11-hour flights, basically.
And when you do it enough, it's like the guy who was my flight attendant, he had done it three times in the previous four days in London, Los Angeles.
Life truly is a matter of getting used to all sorts of things.
I was at a conference.
ARC, A-R-C, I don't even remember what it stands for, although there's a play on words because it's the ARC that will, in effect, be like Noah's Ark, and hopefully good folks with good values will be saved.
Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.
Not a sexy name, but a very wonderful conference.
And I got to be with people I adore, conservatives all over the world.
I will say on a personal note that my work embodies the perfect example of the internet being a blessing as well as a curse.
My whole life I've wanted to touch people with good ideas, and the Internet has made that possible.
And yet the Internet has so much bad stuff on it as well.
I don't know.
It's very hard to achieve purity.
There's a great line in the Bible where God says through Moses, I have put before you blessings and curses.
And one of my reads on that verse is, blessings come with curses.
Not all curses come with blessings.
Some do.
But that's the nature of things.
People came over to me from Paraguay and Albania and Poland and so many other countries who knew me, as it were.
That means that they're listening to things that I'm saying, which, you know, when you sit and you broadcast or you podcast, you have no idea.
Jordan Peterson was saying the same thing when we spoke.
Anyway, there is a very large contingent of human beings that acknowledges.
I think there were 1,200 to 1,500 people there.
We're not alone.
I want you to understand that.
If you have traditional Western values, truth, beauty, and goodness, that's the way, in some ways, to consolidate those values.
You are not alone.
It seems like you're alone because the media and the educational institutions and so many others are against you.
As committed to leftism as Christians are to Christianity and Jews, religious Jews to Judaism, has a headline I just saw.
PragerU is going to get someone killed if they haven't already.
And X, Twitter, has joined them.
We have a documentary out about people who have detransitioned.
I have read to you stories of detransitioning people regularly over the last year.
And if you say, if you feature such people, that means you will cause some people to commit suicide.
This is the threat that is placed on parents.
Your daughter comes home and says she is a boy and she's 10 years old.
You better listen to her because they say to you, the left-wing therapists and others, Would you like, let me figure it out here, would you like a dead girl or a live boy?
That is the common argument.
If you say, no, no, my dear daughter, you really are a girl, that is the way you were made by nature, or if you wish to add, by God as well.
But I don't think you need a religious argument, but if you have a religious home, it is certainly more...
Not more, but at least equally effective as nature may view this way.
So what we have to do is we have to participate in one of the greatest lies in history, that men can become women, and women can become men, in order to prevent suicides.
That is what we're told.
There is no argument that a man can become a woman.
It is not tenable.
So the argument is, do you want to induce suicide?
So here is a headline, PragerU is going to get someone killed if they haven't already.
So you are not allowed to argue that if you're born a boy, you're a boy, and if you're born a girl, you're a girl.
Incidentally, intersex, on the rarest of rare occasions with people who have What is it called?
Ambiguous genitalia?
Is that the term?
I don't know how it is determined, but the genitalia alone do not determine who you are.
There is also a chromosomal matter.
Do people who have both a penis and a vagina, do they also have eggs and sperm?
Do you know the answer to that?
So you're not allowed to argue this matter.
Who would have predicted that people would be hated if they say that men are men and women are women?
That if you're born male, you're a male.
That you're hated.
That you're accused of essentially committing murder.
You're going to get someone killed.
I'm not a big fan of lawsuits, but is that...
I wonder, is that...
Is that suable?
We're going to get someone killed.
Well, yes, these are some of the battles that might as well mention.
It is up at PragerU, and it's called?
D-Trans.
D-Trans.
D-Trans, right.
I am a trans woman who was raised male due to being born with an intersex condition.
I woke up this morning to find that PragerU was not only trending but being pushed by ex-Twitter.
Not only that it is doing so by pushing anti-trans PragerU misinformation.
Anyone can easily learn online that less than 1% of all trans people are unsatisfied with their transition and less than half of those detransition.
What does it mean you can learn online that less than 1 out of 100 trans people are dissatisfied?
What does that mean?
Do you believe that?
99 out of 100 people who transitioned are happy that they did?
No.
And how does he know?
What does that mean?
They cite a study.
They cite a study, of course.
Done by.
Yeah.
Done by people who want these conclusions.
Wow.
Well, I'll tell you this.
It certainly has scared a number of...
Of places that do, in fact, hurt children by giving them hormone blockers.
Because if it's less than one out of a hundred, what are they worried about?
These places that facilitate the mutilation of children.
That's what it is.
Boy, there's a lot of sick stuff.
Really a lot of sick stuff.
The pro-Hamas world that is out there.
That's part of the reason people didn't want me to go to London.
See 100,000 people demonstrating on behalf of Hamas.
Did London ever have such big pro-Nazi rallies?
Can you name a difference between Hamas and the Nazis vis-a-vis Jews?
Okay.
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It's an interesting thing to be an academic, an Israeli academic.
They're noted for their scholarship.
Just as they're noted for their science in Israel, the technological innovations, you realize if they weren't for the hate-filled radical Islamic world in which Israel lives, do you realize that the Middle East, if there was cooperation among the states, if the purpose of Arab life around Israel was not to destroy Israel, this is truly the purpose.
It is the greatest single yearning.
80% of Lebanese support Hamas.
Where was that poll taken?
Who took that poll?
That's astonishing to me.
It's a poll in Lebanon.
Oh, taken in Lebanon.
Yeah.
80%?
It's the first time in my life where I would say that there is a concerted effort to murder Jews.
Never thought I would say that.
Never.
Leaders of Israeli universities and research institutions have written an open letter to academic leaders in the West, dated November 1st.
It's worth my bringing to your attention.
On that darkest of days, in a tragedy unprecedented in Israel's 75-year history, the Hamas terrorists infiltrated into the country and murdered more than 1,400 people.
Including infants, children, students, and senior citizens, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian alike.
The attack also included the abduction of 240 civilians of all ages into Gaza.
In the aftermath of all these horrific events, we find it disturbing that certain narratives from academic institutions misrepresent the situation, or in the worst cases, actively target Israelis and Jews.
We find ourselves facing a war on two fronts, one against the atrocities of Hamas and another in the global arena of public opinion.
Regrettably, we have noticed an alarming trend in which Israel, despite its right to self-defense, is mischaracterized as an oppressor.
This is a false equivalence between the actions of a murderous terrorist organization, and a sovereign state's right to defend its citizens, which unfortunately results in the loss of innocent Palestinian lives.
Any attempt to justify or equivocate Hamas's brutal and grotesque actions is intellectually and morally indefensible.
It is unsettling to note that many college campuses have become breeding grounds for anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments.
Largely fueled by a naive and biased understanding of the conflict.
It is ironic that the very halls of enlightenment in America and Europe, ostensibly the bastions of intellectual and progressive thought that are your campuses, have adopted Hamas as the cause celebre while Israel is demonized.
Universities as hubs of enlightenment and rational discourse must take responsibility for the views they perpetuate.
I want to read the first sentence of that paragraph again.
It is unsettling to note that many college campuses have become breeding grounds for anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments.
The left and Hamas are in agreement about Israel, about Zionism, which has always had a very large Christian contingent.
Of people celebrating the Jews' return to Zion.
Biblical term for Jerusalem and Israel.
How many times is it in the Old Testament?
700 or something?
Take a look.
How many times is Zion mentioned in the Old Testament?
So much for it.
Oh, it's a modern movement.
What about all the cities in the United States named Zion?
There were Christians who named the cities in the United States Zion.
Zion National Park.
That's arguably the most beautiful of the national parks in Utah.
It is disconcerting, what is the word that they use?
Unsettling, yeah.
That universities are breeding grounds for Jew hatred and Israel hatred.
They're breeding grounds for despicable views, my friends.
I've said this all of my life, sending your child to colleges playing Russian roulette with his or her values.
The only difference today from when I started was there was one bullet in the Russian roulette gun.
Today there are three, maybe four.
The odds are, your child, Unless your child is in science, technology, engineering, or math, or unless your child is inebriated for much of his or her college career, there's a very good chance you will get back a meaner, worse human being.
Did you get the number?
No, but it's not 700. I think it's more like 50 or 60. All right, 50 or 60. Then what am I thinking of 700?
Is it Jerusalem?
Jerusalem?
It doesn't matter.
That's why I had to look up, because I had no idea of the actual number.
But anyway, it's central.
The term is central to a 3,000-year-old text.
It has been central to Jewish life, all of Jewish history.
There's no room for a Jewish state.
There's 152 times in the entire Tanakh.
Okay, 152. Okay.
Not in the Torah.
I didn't say Torah.
I said the Old Testament.
Yeah.
That's a lot, 152 times the word Zion.
So these Israeli academics, I wonder what they're thinking.
What does an Israeli historian think about the historians at Columbia University?
And more important to me, How does he explain it?
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So now the U.S. administration is calling for a pause.
They're making clear they don't mean a ceasefire.
They mean a pause, which is a semantic difference, as the National Review has pointed out.
Biden's support for Israel hits its limit.
The support was great, but the Democratic Party is not particularly committed, and there's a great piece on this.
The Democrats have an anti-Semitism problem.
Dan Henninger, one of the editors of the Wall Street Journal.
The party never expected Jew hatred to be a feature of its coalition.
Now it is.
After the House last week overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning Hamas for its attack, New Jersey Democrat Josh Gottheimer wrote on social media that the 15 Democrats who didn't vote for the measure We're despicable, quote, despicable and do not speak for the party.
Mr. Gottheimer was only half right.
Those 15 members from progressive constituencies may in fact represent the democratic future.
The party of Franklin D. Roosevelt has an anti-Semitism problem.
This week, progressive activist groups released a Gaza 2024 statement asserting that they won't vote for Joe Biden if he does not end U.S. support for Israel's brutal war in Gaza.
The announcement offers background on Israeli ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza.
This would be like the Nazis saying the Jews or the Allies were intending on genocide of the German people.
Because of the bombings in Germany.
Not that the Germans intended genocide against the Jews.
The Jews and the Allies intended genocide against the Germans.
Things have really gone downhill since World War II in terms of truth and a moral compass in the Western world.
An open letter this week from 100 Columbia professors called the Hamas massacre a military response by people who had endured crushing and unrelenting state violence from an occupying power.
100 Columbia professors.
Wow.
Wow.
That's really something.
An open letter from Columbia University and Barnard College faculty.
In defense of robust debate about the history and meaning of the war in Israel slash Gaza.
Catherine Frank, Professor of Law.
Rashid Khalidi, Professor of Modern Arab Studies.
Gray Tuttle, Professor of Modern Tibet.
Jack Halberstam, Professor of the Humanities.
James Shamus, Professor of Professional Practice School of the Arts.
This is really something.
Wow.
Wow, I'm looking at it.
I mean, this is, and they're all in the social studies arenas.
I don't see anybody in the anthropology, no kidding, anthropology.
Wow.
The sick world of academia.
Because the Democrats now consider Muslim Americans an important part of the party's voting coalition, meetings were held this week at the White House with Muslim leaders.
Mr. Biden, in his national address last month, spoke at length against Islamophobia.
Really, who has more to worry about on a campus these days?
A Muslim student or a Jewish student?
A Muslim student or an Israeli student?
Just asking.
Islamophobia.
Anti-Israel protesters paraded in front of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's house in San Francisco last Saturday evening.
Let's revisit the subject of false equivalence.
By the way, Dan Henninger is not a Jew, just for the record.
Not that it should matter, but...
Such is the sick world in which we live.
The Hamas massacre of some 1,400 Israelis described in media reports is the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
Readers of this column do not need this summary, but what is going on now among the American left requires it.
The Jewish Holocaust ran from 1933 to 1945. Collected and sent Jews to 23 main concentration camps.
So he gives this for the history.
It's sad that you have to.
One reason the U.S.'s greatest generation is called the greatest is that it includes thousands of American G.I.s who helped liberate the concentration camps.
There was a time when most American schoolchildren had a functioning knowledge of the Holocaust and the camps.
No longer.
Back in a moment.
Back in a moment.
Dan Hellinger, one of the editors of the Wall Street Journal.
If you want to know the difference between right and left, just read the difference between the Wall Street Journal and the, let's say, the LA Times on the Middle East issue.
Everything I've been telling you about the left should be quite apparent now. - No.
There was a time, he writes, when most American schoolchildren had a functioning knowledge of the Holocaust and the camps no longer, universities hiring and enabling of left-wing professors.
Proponents of the anti-Israel movement called boycott, divestment, and sanctions has affected a generation of students.
A Quinnipiac poll found 51% of Democrats younger than 35 don't support sending military aid to Israel after Hamas' attack.
Democrats under the age of 35, a drop more than half.
And of course, Jews will still vote Democrat.
I'm not aware of any ethnic group, any religious group, whatever term you wish to use, that so injures itself as Jews.
Political parties don't care much what adherents think so long as the votes go in their column.
Maybe Democrats never expected Jew hatred to be a feature of their coalition.
Now it is.
This is a gutsy column by Dan Henninger.
It is possible today to divide the Democratic Party between those who know what the Holocaust was and those who have no clue or don't care.
For the record, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer gave a strong floor statement October 17th.
Recalling his own family's Holocaust experience.
Is he speaking out against the 15 who wouldn't vote to condemn Hamas?
On balance, the Biden administration's support for Israel has been firm because of its representatives' understanding the direct line between the 1930s and October 7th.
Testifying to the Senate Tuesday, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken related in frankly unbearable detail Hamas's dismemberment of an Israeli father, mother, daughter, and son in their kitchen.
What did I read about another one?
And I have been very, very careful to only report what I am certain of.
A girl whose hand they cut off and just let her, after killing the family, let her bleed to death.
And then there are people who think, "Well, you have to understand, they live in an outdoor prison." Israel abandoned Gaza.
Can you listen to what I said in my original video for PragerU on the Middle East?
If Israel laid down its arms and announced no more fighting, what would happen?
If the Palestinians said, we lay down our arms, no more fighting, what would happen?
In the first case, the Jews of Israel would be wiped out.
Israel would be destroyed.
And in the second case, there would be peace within a week.
And life would blossom for the Arabs in the area.
They're not interested in blossoming lives.
Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, they have no interest in elevating the quality of life for their people.
They're interested in destroying Israel and killing Jews, the Jews of Israel.
And Jews elsewhere.
Any of you remember?
What was the year when...
Iran blew up the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
What did that have to do with Israel?
These things happen.
People even remember ISIS's beheadings of vast numbers of innocent people.
Not Jews.
1994. 1994 in Buenos Aires.
How many were killed?
Do you have that number?
The insistent by party activists on an Israeli-Gaza equivalence is false.
October 7th was the return after 80 years of Jewish extermination, an explicit goal of both Hamas and Iran, whose leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sits placidly pondering the completion of the final solution.
85 were killed, 300 injured.
That was in the Argentina case.
FBI Director Christopher Wray testified Tuesday that Islamic State, quote, urged its followers to target Jewish communities in the United States and Europe.
Perfect timing with bringing to you Buenos Aires.
Democratic progressives had already pushed the party into the bubble.
With many voters over litmus test issues like gender identity, systemic racism, and defunding the police, despite that most Democrats would still vote the party line.
But maybe not now.
The Hamas person-by-person slaughter is an event on a scale beyond any standard political issue.
The question is whether the embrace by so much of the party's emerging rank-and-file of anti-Semitism, a euphemism for active Jew hatred, We'll finally push Democrats over the line with voters, not least the historically reliable Jewish vote?
Yeah.
Don't bet on it.
Some moron wrote in the Jerusalem Post a piece, an American Jewish moron.
None of this should have any effect on us Jews voting.
we would never vote for MAGA.
Right.
I don't remember the age, but there was a certain age that I reached when I realized, wow, many adults are fools.
When you're a kid, you tend to think adults know more than you do in terms of wisdom.
And as you get older, you realize, hmm, not necessarily.
We return.
The Democratic Party embracing anti-Semitism.
Dan Henninger, he is not a grenade thrower.
Dan Henninger of the Wall Street Journal.
He has some optimism that some people, including Jewish Democrats, will pull the plug and no longer vote Democrat.
I don't have the same optimism.
Cynics will reply that anyone but Trump factor will overcome even this, but don't count on it.
Rationally, many large Jewish donors are already pulling the plug on giving to anti-Semitic fermentation tanks such as Harvard, Columbia, and Penn.
The party of FDR could be next.
Could be.
So you know what I do always?
I look at comments.
There are 2,500 comments.
So I always go by most liked.
The first most liked one.
477 likes.
Democrats have an anti-Semitism problem.
Democrats were the slave party, the party of KKK. Party of Jim Crow laws, anti-civil rights party, the party of hate groups like Antifa and BLM. What did you expect?
That's why it's the most popular comment.
The Democratic Party is a cesspool.
There have been individual exceptions, Harry Truman, for example.
But it's a cesspool.
the whole history of the Democratic Party is despicable.
Comment on that one.
The Democratic Party has more than an anti-Semitism problem.
It has an anti-Western civilization problem.
I'm not overstating the reality of what the academic post-modernist movement has spawned.
I would happily enumerate the examples, but I have learned from frustrating experience that when I criticize certain groups that comprise the party's base, I get, quote, moderated.
Tells you a lot about how deep the movement has gone.
The Democratic Party is but one of its hostages.
The various newsrooms throughout the industry have been compromised for decades.
That's right.
This Democratic wildfire of racial is another comment.
Racial, ethnic, and creed conflict.
Which the party thought would be of benefit seems destined to consume the party.
We'll see.
Nothing has consumed the party.
It was the pro-slavery party.
It didn't get consumed by that.
Want to understand the Middle East?
PragerU has magnificent videos on every aspect of it.
Happiness Hour coming up.
Yes, it's the Happiness Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.
I'm not singing it, and you'll understand why in a moment.
But with all the evil, I never cancel a happiness hour.
But I do take the evil into consideration in the subject, as you will hear.
All right, let's hear the band.
Okay, everybody, Dennis Prager here.
Every week, every Friday that I broadcast, which is, I gotta believe, about 48 out of 52, maybe 47. I have had the Happiness Hour since 1999. Happiness is an incredibly important thing.
So part of my opening routine, as it were, every week on the Happiness Hour is that the The happy make the world better and the unhappy make it worse.
I want to talk to you about that because I don't feel, given the horrors that we have just seen and will see more of, that a regular happiness hour is quite what is needed right now.
We need a happiness hour on the macro rather than what I usually do.
Which is the micro.
The happy make the world better.
So I have a very simple question.
Have you found that in your life?
That the happy people in your life are better human beings?
1-8 Prager 776. 877-243-7776.
Simple.
As is my proposition.
That the happy make the world better accurate.
Is there this direct relationship between happiness and decency?
I am 100% convinced that it is.
I don't believe that the vast majority of bad people are happy.
There are some good people who are not happy. .
But happy people overwhelmingly are better human beings.
The Middle East conflict is very interesting how often Israel has been cited by whoever does these international surveys as Being among the happiest people in the world, Israelis.
And one indication of that is one of the only Western countries increasing its population.
Israelis get married and have babies.
That is indicative of a happier place than, let's say, us where more and more people don't get married and don't have babies.
What was the percentage now?
25% of all people under the age of 40, 40 and younger, 25% in America have never been married.
Not single after divorce.
Never been married.
1-8 Prager, 7-7-6-8-7-7-2-4-3-3-7-7-6.
When you look at the conflicts, the world of Hamas...
do they strike you as happy people?
Do happy people slaughter families?
Maybe in some perverse sense.
It brought them joy at the moment because they're sadists.
But it's hard to imagine that these are happy people.
Maybe I'm wrong, by the way.
You know, it is possible.
There are pictures of Nazi concentration camp guards having parties on their free time.
So it's an interesting...
I challenge myself whenever I make an assertion, I always have a voice that says, Dennis, are you right?
So even without dealing only with the macro, deal with it in your own lives.
Are the people you know in your life, if you know people who are particularly decent, particularly indecent, do you find a correlation with their happiness level?
So in other words, is my assertion each week that the happy make the world better accurate?
How have you found that in your own life?
If you have three children, Is the happiest likely to have a certain value structure?
Or is there no correlation between happiness and the values that they hold?
1-8-Prager-776-877-243-7776 Have you found a correlation?
Do you believe there is?
It's hard to think otherwise.
Happy people want other people to be happy.
Unhappy people want other people to be unhappy or to suffer.
As a general rule, everything has exceptions, so it's pointless to point out exceptions.
The question is whether it is generally true.
So it's a very good...
Way of assessing this is if you have a number of children and assessing the happy versus the unhappy and how much good they do.
I don't know if the unhappy...
I'm not saying sad.
Listen, everybody has sadness and I certainly have had my own share because I'm a living human being.
So I've had it.
But there's a difference between sadness and unhappiness.
Sad is somewhat like having the flu.
And if somebody says, how's your health?
You don't say awful because I have the flu.
You say, I have wonderful health, but right now I have the flu.
So you could say, I'm a happy person, but right now I am sad.
That's absolutely doable.
You could be a happy person who has sad periods.
And by the way, macro events could make you sad.
It's hard to see the prevalence of evil that permeates Western society.
The broken moral compass and not have sadness over it.
Unless you absolutely decide to tune out, and a fair number of people do tune out, until it's too late.
Because the bad don't ever confine their badness to one time or one group.
So my battle for happiness in my life, from my book on happiness to my lectures on happiness and the happiness hour on the radio each week, is really in large part motivated by the belief that more goodness will come about on our planet.
With more happy people.
I speak of happiness as a moral obligation because, as I've said so often, you owe it to all those in your life, from your co-worker to your sibling, to your parents, and especially to your children and your spouse, to at least act happy.
But that's the micro obligation.
There's a macro obligation.
Happy people make the world better.
Or at least they don't make it worse.
It's a very big subject, happiness.
Then there are so many happiness writers, speakers, experts, quote-unquote, say, oh, you can't pursue happiness.
Really?
It's a bizarre notion.
The founders of the United States of America knew better.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
If you don't pursue happiness, you'll probably be unhappy.
Take your calls when we return.
Forget your troubles and just get happy You better chase all your cares away Sing hallelujah, come on, get happy Hi, everybody.
I'm Dennis Prager.
It's the Happiness Hour.
In light of the terrible events of this very moment, I'm directing the topic to this huge issue, which, of course, I have said the whole time, the happy make the world better.
My preoccupation with happiness Is because I want people to be happy because it's so good for them.
But half of it is because it is good for the world.
You know, it's interesting because there are people I respect who say you can't pursue happiness.
Let's do an hour on that.
Because that is so common among people who write and talk about happiness.
Oh, you can't pursue happiness.
It's a byproduct of other things.
And by the way, I know it in my own book.
It's a byproduct of other things.
So pursue the other things of which this is a byproduct.
Isn't that the obvious answer to that?
Oh, it's a byproduct of, I don't know, say whatever you like.
It's a byproduct of volunteering to help people Who are in bad condition.
So then help people in a bad condition and you'll have the byproduct.
It's a very moral crusade, my crusade for happiness.
The fight against having your feelings dominate you So And making you unhappy as a result is a moral fight.
I'll take your calls right after I tell you this story from many years ago.
I was invited by a very prestigious high school called a prep school, a private high school in the L.A. area.
Some conservative students raised some money.
I didn't charge my normal fee, but raised some money.
To have me speak.
And amazingly, because at that time, the utter censorship of conservative voices in schools had not yet taken place, I was actually allowed to speak to the entire school body and faculty.
When I arrived at the school, my wife was with me.
She can attest to this.
These terrific young people.
Who worked so hard to bring me to their school, greeted me with such enthusiasm, said, so Dennis, what's your topic?
And I said, happiness.
And they couldn't hide their disappointment.
They thought it would be conservatism, conservative politics.
And I said, trust me.
This will have a bigger impact on their politics than any speech on politics I could give.
Because the theme was, don't be guided by your feelings, but behave happy and you will become happy, rather than wait till you'll feel it.
Feelings cannot guide you.
This drives a lot of young people.
And a lot of left-wing professors crazy.
It's a feelings world.
In fact, I was actually quite, not in any vulgar way, but attacked by at least one teacher who raised his hand and who made the case for unhappy people making the world better.
Because he said, oh, composers like Mahler and...
Beethoven, they were unhappy, and look at what they produced.
Had they been happy, they wouldn't have produced this work.
This is a romantic theory that I never bought, that if they were happy, they wouldn't have produced their great works.
Well, I think he was surprised at how much I knew about Mahler.
As I noted, I could tell you the keys of all nine of his symphonies.
The tenth is unfinished, for those of you who know Mahler.
And I know a lot, look, a man who wrote Kinder Totenlieder, a piece of music called Songs on the Death of Children.
It's not exactly a radiating happy guy.
I fully acknowledge that.
But Bach was happy.
Haydn was happy.
He wasn't happily married.
He was married to a witch.
Anyway, learning to not be guided by your feelings is about as determinative a worldview producer as anything else.
The happy make the world better.
Pittsburgh and Lisa.
Hello, Lisa.
Hey, Dennis.
Hi.
How are you?
I'm okay.
Better than the world.
Seriously.
I just want to say, yet again, you are spot on.
We met several years ago when you were in Pittsburgh.
I had my birthday dinner with you at the Montour Country Club.
And then again, just last year, but my parents had three children, and all in the same house, all the same parents, all girls, and I'm the only one that I can say is inherently happy, because why not?
What difference, for as much as it would take to be miserable, I choose joy.
I choose to be happy, to smile at everybody.
You know, I've got issues.
I've had breast cancer.
I've got a little thing in my head, on my pituitary.
But the alternative is so much worse.
You would think everybody who's unhappy would realize that.
I don't think.
But they don't think that is the point.
So I'm curious.
And, you know, I'm totally okay if it violates my generalization.
So, I assume you're on the conservative side.
Your two sisters who were not happy, where are they philosophically, politically?
So, one of them was really unhappy when she was younger.
And, like, just miserable.
Like, people avoided her.
As she has gotten older, has become much more nice.
She's evolved.
The other one...
Wait, and have her politics evolved as well?
Exactly.
And she is conservative.
The other one was significantly younger than us and truly like the princess, but not happy.
And she has no reason not to be shy.
She has a beautiful...
All right, and where is she politically?
Because we've got to take a break.
Very liberal.
Okay.
We'll be back.
There you go.
And this is the happiness hour, and it is about, because of all the evil we're witnessing and the acceptance of evil in the elite world, like the universities.
I'm referring to the obvious as an attempt to annihilate Israel off the map.
There's no such attempt anywhere else about any other country, and vast numbers of intellectuals Are supportive, just as so many were supportive of Stalin.
The secular academic world is a sick, sick, sick, sick place.
It's the place that tells you men can become women.
And if you deny it, you're a hater.
That's sick.
I don't know if these people are happy.
It's hard to imagine.
Happy professor.
It's almost an oxymoron.
Stupid professor is redundant.
Not always.
There are exceptions.
Exceptions to every rule, so it's irrelevant.
The happy make the world better, my friends.
All right, Penny in Chicago.
Hello.
There's a happy place.
Hi, Dennis.
How are you?
Okay.
Better than the world.
Everything you say, I agree with.
I just want to say, though, I was riding in the car once with my four children, who are all amazing, good children, and it gave me the biggest compliment.
One of them said, oh, I'll just tell Mommy that if she doesn't do this, if she does this, then it'll make me happy.
And my other kid said to the younger one, Mommy doesn't care about your happiness.
She just wants you to do what's right.
Wow.
Oh, my God.
I want to give that kid a cigar.
So I should be there and tell you I'm a husset of a little father.
Ah, figures.
In case many of you, 99% of you who have no idea what she just said.
There is a religious Jewish group called Chabad.
Many of you are familiar.
They're the ones who do often the big Hanukkah lighting in your city.
There are Chabad houses in all 50 states and around the world.
And I am a very big fan of that group, and I speak for them around the world.
So it's not surprising to me that you would have that view.
That's a good one.
So I have here that you told the screener that happiness is a byproduct of doing what is right and just.
You are right.
My argument, which to use language you would be familiar with, my chiddush, my innovative idea on this, is turning it around.
That just as doing what is good and just will make you happier, The more happy you are, the more you will do what is good and just.
Agreed.
Okay, bless you.
Thank you.
Yeah.
All these so interesting, all the parents of the last two, three generations who were preoccupied with their kids being happy.
Have produced so many unhappy kids.
That's the irony.
Because what they thought was, oh, if I make life as easy as possible for you, and I fix your unhappiness whenever you have it, you'll be happy.
The idea that you want your kids to be happy is fine.
Who wants their kids to be unhappy?
But this mother was right.
There are things that are more important than that and ironically will make a happier kid.
Also, having a happy kid at all times is not in your province.
You can't do it.
The only people who can make a person happy is that person.
Parents cannot make happy children.
They can do things to make unhappy children, presumably, but you can't make your child happy.
Your child will make your child happy.
So you teach them what is right, and you teach them to act happy even if they don't feel it.
We should do an hour just on that.
Raising happy children.
Anyway, that's not your task.
The task is to raise a happy adult.
Clop for the moment.
And clop for the moment.
Hi, everybody.
Final hour of the week.
I'm back from London. - Ooh.
I had a week at an extraordinary conference of conservatives from all over the world, convened by Jordan Peterson.
And this is the hour you set the agenda.
Whatever is on your mind about you, about me, about life, about death.
Enjoy the music.
A lot of death.
1-8 Prager, 776-877-243-7776.
People warned me not to go to London.
The pictures of 100,000 pro-Hamas demonstrators, do you understand what has happened to England and other parts of Europe because of a vast immigration from the Middle East?
People bring their values with them when they immigrate.
I warned about it at the time.
And as usual, I was called the usual name, xenophobic, Islamophobic, because that is a way of not dealing with arguments.
It is just a way of smearing the person and thereby invalidating anything they have to say.
It's a left-wing tactic.
It's often effective, at least temporarily.
In the long run, I'm not so sure.
The idea that people don't bring their values with them when they immigrate, isn't that stupid?
What is xenophobic about hating Jew-hatred?
The naive West bathes in naivete, and as a result, a complete distortion of the world.
They live in the world of make-believe, of wishful thinking.
Everybody is the same.
All over the world, people are basically the same.
So if you bring in a million people into Europe from the Middle East, they'll just be like others with their own religious practices, but they'll be nice, Western, liberal.
Tolerant types.
But it doesn't work that way.
The second generation is often more hating of the West, Israel, and Jews than even the original generation.
Because they haven't assimilated.
They haven't adopted the West's liberal values.
And I use liberal values positively.
I believe in liberal values.
That's why I'm a conservative.
The only people today who really do believe in liberal values are conservatives.
Free speech is a perfect example.
I went on Nigel Farage, the architect of Brexit.
He has a program, is now British television.
What is it?
Is that a British TV? I think that's the name.
It is a new creation in Britain to rival the left-wing BBC. And it's apparently outdrawing the BBC in numbers.
Though the BBC is awash in money because it's funded by the government.
And there was a time, like in World War I, excuse me, World War II, when the BBC did have...
A truly positive aura about it.
It takes a while to ruin institutions.
No, that's not true.
You can ruin institutions overnight.
But long-term institutions, I mean, the universities have been ruined over time.
They weren't ruined overnight by the left.
And they're now, more than ever in my lifetime, people are acknowledging The moral wastelands of the universities.
Yeah.
GB News.
That's it.
Thank you.
GB News.
That's right.
What did I say?
What I said was wrong.
Mine wasn't even close.
I think it was close.
I said British News.
GB News.
That's what it is.
Yeah.
I made a point, by the way, with Nigel Farage.
He had me on.
Which for national TV in any country is a long time.
Ten minutes.
And I'm sure you could watch it if you just do Dennis Prager, GB News.
And my final comment was one that I thought was worthy of remembering because I had never made it quite that way.
I don't know what prompted it, but I said the only existential threats, there were two existential threats.
At this time.
Neither is from climate change.
That is not an existential threat.
I consider that to be as dishonest as lockdowns are important and good for children.
That was a gigantic, at best mistake, at worst lie.
There's no existential threat to humanity coming from...
Carbon dioxide created warming.
I don't deny warming.
I don't deny carbon dioxide having a contribution.
I deny that it's an existential threat.
There are two existential threats, real ones.
Existential threat means threat to the existence of.
That's what existential threat means.
There are two, I told Nigel Farage.
On British News, on GB News, one is the left to Western civilization.
That is an existential threat.
They don't deny it.
They hate what we stand for.
They hate the truth, beauty, and goodness ideal.
And the other existential threat is to Israel, the only country in the world targeted for extinction.
By Iran.
By Hezbollah.
By Hamas.
By vast numbers of Muslims around the world.
And their left-wing supporters.
I've said the left is despicable all of my life.
I knew they were despicable when I was in high school because they didn't hate communism.
You're as despicable if you don't hate communism as you are despicable if you don't hate Nazism.
It means you don't hate evil.
That's why my favorite verse in the Bible is those of you who love God must hate evil.
It's a command.
The Hebrew has a command form in its verbal construction.
You don't hate evil, you don't love God.
That's good.
I like that, man.
That's my kind of God.
Okie dokie, everybody.
Let's see what you have to say.
Chatsworth, California.
Eric, hello.
Dennis, good Friday to you.
God bless you.
Thank you.
It's been many years since I've spoken to you.
In the past, I have told you that I consider you a modern American prophet.
I was going to go into my comment for my call immediately, but I have to say this based on the profundity of your comments today and just then.
In the New Testament, as Christians, we have a list of spiritual gifts.
When I say you're a modern American prophet, I'm, of course, not saying you're Isaiah or Elisha or Jeremiah.
What we understand in the New Testament as the prophetic gift is the gift of vision.
The gift of vision.
You have great vision, sir, and you bless us with your vision.
Thank you.
I'm a little embarrassed, but only a little.
I admit it.
By the way, I agree.
I'm not Elijah or Isaiah or Jeremiah, but how about Habakkuk?
Oh, brother, you just mentioned my favorite Old Testament book.
For Protestants out there, you need to study the first and second chapter of Habakkuk.
Well, there are only three chapters.
I know.
I know, but you know why I mentioned that, because it was...
All right, all right, let's not get into it.
We're going to go off the rails here.
Most people can't spell it.
All right, so what did you have in mind?
So I'm calling about your detailed analysis of the commandment.
Please forgive my...
Lack of memory of the number, I believe it's the fifth commandment, about honoring our parents.
And I know you have a very detailed, refined comment there, that when we're dealing with abusive parents, I believe, if you can please elaborate, I believe it's something more along the lines of saying we honor them as those who brought us life, but that doesn't mean there's some kind of ongoing respect.
That we have to submit ourselves to their abuse.
Yeah, hold on with me.
I'm going to keep you on because this is such an important subject to me.
The ongoing...
One of the ongoing propositions I've offered is we're commanded to honor our parents, not to love them.
We'll be back.
The hour you ask whatever you would like about whatever you would like.
And Eric in Chatsworth was...
Talking to me about the issue of honoring parents.
So what exactly are you concerned with?
Do you have this issue of parents who have been abusive?
Yes, I do.
Right.
And I didn't know if you wanted the context because it gets a little dark, but I can sum it up quickly.
Do that.
Sum it up quickly.
So this is my mother-in-law.
Actively, from very early in our marriage, works to end our marriage.
I'm married to a Hispanic immigrant to our country, a Latina, and it is prevalent in many places in the world.
People are not aware of this.
It's more prevalent in our culture nowadays.
But the existence and the following of witchcraft in Africa, Latin America, What you might call small rural communities.
You mean witchcraft or voodoo?
Well, in this case, she's not a witch.
But what you have in these small rural communities is essentially the shaman.
Yes, okay, so okay, all right, fair enough.
So how does that affect you?
She's trying to break up your marriage the whole time?
Absolutely.
Okay, is your wife more committed to her mother or to you?
She doesn't have the strength to stand up to her mother.
Okay.
Well, first of all, honor your father and mother is not honor your father-in-law and mother-in-law.
It's honor your father and mother.
So you're not obligated to have a relationship with her or show her honor.
The question is more with regard to your wife.
I can only tell you that, again, as usual, the Bible, in my belief especially, the Torah has the answer, the first five books.
Therefore a man shall leave his mother and father and cling unto his wife, and they shall be as one flesh.
If you can't leave your mother and father and cling unto your spouse, then you have not done what God wants you to do.
Leaving your mother and father does not mean stop loving them or stop respecting them or anything like that.
We don't consider it a victory for parents if their child is still living with them when he or she is 30 years old.
There are always exceptional circumstances.
I'm not interested in exceptional circumstances.
Your wife has not left her mother and father, or at least not her mother.
If you are religious Christians, you should cite that verse.
Your first duty is to your spouse.
That's my view.
Hopefully there's no conflict.
You love your parents, but your first duty is to the spouse.
Okie dokie.
Let's see here.
Elizabeth in Wilmette, Illinois.
Hello.
It's a little muffled, so can you talk right into your phone?
Can you hear me now?
Yes, but it's not that much better.
Let me take you...
Can you hear me now, Dennis?
Yeah.
Sean says yes.
Okay, go ahead.
Great.
There's something that you stated several months ago that stayed with me.
You stated we were to boycott all the woke companies.
We would be wearing burlap sacks.
Do you remember that statement?
I don't remember the burlap sack statement, but what I do remember saying is if we boycotted all woke companies, there wouldn't be many we could actually patronize.
Exactly. - Exactly.
So I've selected a few companies, Target, Bud Light, and all the AB InBev products, and Coke, and a few others.
But I struggle because there are companies that, you know, like you stated, if we work out at our mall, we wouldn't have much to choose from.
So I struggle with the fact that there are still products that I buy that I know are low.
And can you help me with that?
Wait, I didn't hear you every word there.
You struggle with buying products that are what?
That are woke.
Oh, that are woke.
Yes, of course.
Look, first of all, I admire the fact that you struggle.
That's a good thing.
It's very hard to boycott all of them.
But...
My bigger concern is the people that patronize the worst of them.
Braun Shaver is an example of one of the worst.
These are people who celebrate.
It's one thing to commiserate with, but it is another to celebrate.
I don't celebrate transitioning from one sex to another.
I recognize human freedom and people's right to do so.
I would never deliberately mistreat such a human being.
But it's not to be celebrated as Braun Shavers has.
I have two.
I no longer use them.
I would never buy any.
I beg people not to.
There are a whole host of companies that we have talked about.
Nike has celebrated hatred of this country.
Inducing blacks to loathe the country.
Celebrating those who do.
I don't buy any Nike products.
I mean, the list is quite long.
And at any given point, you just have to decide which ones they will be.
For years, I ate Ben& Jerry ice cream.
And I celebrated the fact, because I said, in America, you buy a product based on whether you want that product.
Not on the views of its owners.
But as they became sicker and sicker, Ben& Jerry, I finally had to cut my links to Ben& Jerry ice cream.
Which is a damn good ice cream.
That's true.
It's the least I could do.
Nobody's asking me to storm Normandy Beach.
We'll return.
Dennis Prager here.
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