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Nov. 6, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:20:32
Murderer’s Manifesto
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hello, my friends.
I'm Dennis Prager, and I hope you had a good weekend.
I have delved into the question of how good a weekend or a good any day one could have when the world is so filled with evil and one has to try despair as a sin, as I have noted on a number of occasions based on my Bible commentary.
Hi, everybody.
Good to be with you.
This is late breaking.
I normally don't have the show driven by news as it breaks, but this is an important, many of them are important, but this is, I believe, worthy of immediate attention.
This is from Newsweek.
Conservative social media personality Stephen Crowder teased the release of a manifesto allegedly written by an accused school shooter in Nashville, Tennessee.
Where six victims died earlier this year.
Boy, I'll tell you, Newsweek is really...
This sentence is so gingerly phrased.
Let's see.
The manifesto is allegedly written by an accused shooter, not the shooter.
And six victims died, not were murdered.
All right.
In a video posted Monday, that's today, To YouTube, Crowder said the manifesto was leaked and shared screenshots of portions of the document which was believed to be written by Audrey Hale 28, whom authorities identified as the shooter.
They also said Hale, who died at the scene, once attended the school.
By the way, that is interesting that they say allegedly...
You say allegedly when somebody is about to...
Stand trial.
But if the person was shot at the scene, you don't say allegedly.
What was Audrey Hale doing there?
Checking out school curricula?
No, it's a little too ginger.
Anyway, I will be reading the manifesto here on this show.
I wish that I wouldn't have to, Crowder said in the video.
In a post to X, formerly Twitter, Crowder shared other images of the manifesto, including one part that said, I hope I have a high death count.
Newsweek has been unable to independently verify that the manifesto was written by Hale.
A Metro Nashville Police Department spokesperson told Newsweek that the police are unable to confirm the manifesto, but said they are actively looking into the matter.
Here's a question for Nashville police.
Why didn't you release it immediately?
Some authorities had it.
And my suspicion is because the manifesto reveals, as was suspected, a left-winger and it was a trans person.
So the left sort of has the view, there are no enemies on the left.
And whereas if the manifesto were some racist anti-black screed, we would have known about it immediately.
So three children and three adults at Nashville's Covenant School were murdered.
She later died from gunshot wounds.
Shortly after the shooting occurred, this is again from this Newsweek article, Police said that they had recovered a manifesto believed to be written by Hale.
So why was it never released?
The ongoing investigation into the March 27 murders of six persons inside the Covenant School continues to show, from all information currently available, that killer Audrey Hale acted totally alone.
But that's not the question.
Well, I'll report to you.
There is a report somewhere, but since I haven't seen it, I won't report it yet, about what it revealed.
And it seems to me that if the report is correct, it was a big anti-white kid screed.
All right.
So, we live...
In an age of moral confusion, as I have warned all of my life, and the charge against Israel that it commits genocide against the Palestinians, which a charge that has been made for decades, this is not new to the current war against Hamas, is another gigantic lie of the left.
But the truth is not a left-wing value.
So I have data here from Statista, which has no political bias that I know of.
Do you agree with me?
I don't know.
Okay, fine.
Statista Infographic Newsletter.
Statista puts out statistics.
So this is from 2020. Growth of Palestine.
Let's see now.
The need for peace continues to grow in urgency as Palestine's population is growing at a larger rate than Israel.
Israel.
Jewish and Arab populations are on a collision course of parity in the coming decades.
With Arab Israelis also growing faster than Jewish Israelis and gaining more voting power.
Then there's a chart.
Growth of Palestine.
It begins in 1960. And the green is Palestine.
The blue is Israel.
They have gone from 1.1 million To 5.1 million in 2020. So there is a growth of essentially five times growth, quintupled,
since 1960. The Jewish population has quadrupled, has gone up four times the Arab population of the area, five times.
Have you ever heard of a genocide where the people being genocided have a population growth of 5X? The lie is so grandiose, but you have to know something.
The people screaming it believe it.
Especially those who are Palestinian or from other Arab or Muslim countries.
They believe they're lies.
Read David Price Jones' book, The Closed Circle.
You'll see that he's an Arab expert, lived there a long time in the Arab world.
And he writes about truth and exaggeration and lies as being very frequently in the public sphere conflated.
Anyway, we're catching up.
Truth is not a left-wing value, and the left-wing dominates academia and the media.
So much for the charge of genocide.
The only attempt at genocide is that of the Palestinians and their Muslim supporters around the world.
They wish to commit genocide against the Jews of Israel.
Perhaps all Jews in the world, but certainly Jews of Israel.
That is the only genocide that can be alleged in the Middle East.
Well, there was one, but I don't know.
Yeah, I guess you'd call it the Middle East, of course.
Do you remember the Yazidis?
How they were wiped out by ISIS? I don't know if they were wiped out.
Well, virtually, yeah.
There was a real, well, let's put it, an ethnic cleansing, let's put it that way.
Genocide.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free is a call for genocide.
It is a call for the eradication of the Jewish state.
There are 22 Arab states, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, but there's no room for a Jewish state the size of New Jersey.
People just always need to remember that.
Should there be a 24th Arab state?
One that never existed in the history of the world?
I hear some Palestinian speakers actually saying, we are the descendants of the Canaanites.
Did you know that?
You can meet a living Canaanite.
Can you meet a Perizzite and a Jebusite?
He said he was a Jebusite?
Arafat said he was a Jebusite?
I didn't know the man had a sense of humor.
And this is what your kids are learning.
At college, we return.
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Barack Obama spoke to hundreds of his former aides with regard to the Middle East.
And the New York Times reports he urged his former aides to, quote, take in the whole truth.
Seemingly attempting to strike a balance between the killings on both sides.
Would he have done that in World War II? Strike a balance between the killings?
Look at how many German civilians we killed.
Look at how many Japanese civilians we killed.
Would he have said that?
I don't know, but to me it would be the same thing.
The moral difference between the Allies and the Nazis and the Allies and the Japanese...
Was no greater than the moral difference between Israel and Hamas.
We live in the age of moral relativism.
It's infected almost the entire intellectual class.
I saw it when I was at graduate school at Columbia University.
And professors generally...
It equated the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
It was not a battle, the Cold War, in their view, between freedom and tyranny, or between, if you will, light and dark, with all the darkness that exists, obviously, in everyone and in every country.
There was an unbridgeable gulf between light and dark, between the United States and the Soviet Union.
But they would not agree to that.
It was a superpower battle or a battle of two economic systems, communism and capitalism, as if they are morally equivalent, let alone just equally effective.
Well, there are people who build their society with communism and slaughter tens of millions of their people while doing it, and there's another free society.
Which is infinitely wealthier.
I remember that when I wanted to get soda from a soda machine when I was there during the Cold War, and as I noted, I speak Russian.
And so the machine would say, gas, gaseous water, meaning like sparkling water.
The machines were quite common in Moscow.
I don't know about the rest of the Soviet Union.
And there was a plastic cup, like you would have in a house, there.
And everyone who got the sparkling water used that cup.
Isn't that fascinating?
One cup.
I drank from it.
You know me.
They reported internationally that if a fork drops in a restaurant, I will actually use it.
I am not, shall we say, a hypochondriac.
But it struck me as an example, they didn't have the money to have a paper cup used every time and thrown away.
Incidentally, I'll tell you what else moved me.
I will acknowledge this, because truth is the number one obligation.
Nobody stole the cup.
I found that fascinating.
Here's this former aide to take in the whole truth, unquote.
This is Barack Obama this weekend, seemingly attempting to strike a balance between the killings on both sides.
What Hamas did was horrific, and there's no justification for it, Mr. Obama said.
And what is also true is that the occupation and what's happening to Palestinians is unbearable.
Really, what is happening to Palestinians that is unbearable?
I'm not talking about the current war in Gaza.
Which they brought upon themselves just like the Germans did and the Japanese did.
Unbearable?
Really?
Has he or anybody he talked to gone to visit the West Bank?
Is life on the West Bank unbearable?
Hmm.
Didn't strike me as that way.
I've been there a number of times.
All I remember was a lot of cranes building new buildings.
And they're obviously having a lot of kids.
Generally having a lot of kids in an unbearable situation tend not to go hand in hand.
What is true is that there are people right now who are dying...
Who have nothing to do with what Hamas did.
There were Germans who died who had nothing to do with what Hitler did.
That's correct.
And you blame Hitler for their deaths.
You blame Hamas for the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza.
All their money is used to buy rockets and dig tunnels everywhere, including right under hospitals.
If there is such a thing as evil, Hamas is it.
But after all, if you raise a generation to believe that America is evil, then evil loses its meaning, doesn't it?
That is what has happened.
Okay.
There are no comments.
It's interesting.
They don't have comments on me.
On this particular story.
Dennis Ross is a major figure in Middle Eastern diplomacy.
For 35 years, this former U.S. envoy to the Middle East, who has generally been critical of Israel, not anti-Israel, but critical of Israel.
For 35 years, I've devoted my professional life to U.S. peacemaking policy and conflict resolution planning.
Nothing has preoccupied me like finding a peaceful and lasting solution between Israel and the Palestinians.
In the past, I might have favored a ceasefire with Hamas during a conflict with Israel, but today it is clear to me, this is the New York Times, that peace is not going to be possible now or in the future, as long as Hamas remains intact and in control of Gaza.
Back in a moment.
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Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here.
Whatever time it is right now for you, if you're listening in America, it is finally...
The actual time of day.
We have left the make-believe daylight saving time.
Why we have daylight saving time is a puzzle to me.
People like daylight.
I get it.
Ask the people in Arizona who have never shifted to daylight saving time.
Is it...
The quality of life, has it deteriorated as a result of having one time all year?
Most people think the changes twice a year are absurd.
And they are.
Whatever the reason, what was it, almost 100 years ago?
When did they start their light saving time?
Is that 100 years ago?
What was the reason?
Commercial so that people could shop later?
What was the reason?
Kids working on the farm?
Well, you would know.
I mean, you grew up on a farm.
What was your specialty?
Alfalfa?
I don't remember.
Avocados.
I think it started with an A. Anyway, it's my annual anti-daylight saving time.
Have the real time all year.
Like they do in Arizona.
I think they don't change the clock in Hawaii, but is it because they stay on Daylight Saving Time or are they on regular time, on real time?
Yeah.
I look to him.
I think of him as knowing the answers to everything.
It's a very odd position for him to be in.
Dennis Ross has...
Been a peace seeker for 35 years and critical of Israel.
He's been involved a lot in...
I mean, not anti-Israel, critical.
And he's been involved in Middle East negotiations for much of that time.
And he writes in the New York Times, of all places, Israel has to defeat Hamas.
So I'd like to read to you from the piece in the New York Times.
After October 7th, there are many Israelis who believe that their survival as a state is at stake.
I found that an odd sentence.
He doesn't believe that?
That may sound like an exaggeration, but to them it is not.
If Hamas persists as a military force and is still running Gaza after this war is over, it will attack Israel again.
Remember, there was a ceasefire on October 6th.
The calls for ceasefire are made by the naive, and my contempt for naive adults has increased every year of my life.
At first, I just thought it was a charming, a charming, let's see, flaw.
Then I thought it was an uncharming flaw.
Then I thought it was a bad flaw.
And that's where I am now.
It is a bad flaw.
There's something wrong with you.
You're a weakling if you're a naive adult.
That's what you are.
There's no excuse to be a naive adult.
And anybody calling for a ceasefire is either for Israel's destruction, Palestinian demonstration is for Israel's destruction, or you're not for Israel's destruction, and you are just naive.
Because what you're saying is, let Hamas do what it wants.
That's what a ceasefire means.
Let the most evil organization on earth, tied only with ISIS and Hezbollah and the Iranian regime, ironically all Muslim, That's another subject.
Not all Muslims are evil, to say the least.
Some are beautiful human beings.
But much of the evil that is coming from religion is coming from the Islamic world.
That's a fact, and therefore you can't teach it at school because they don't teach facts.
Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, they're the problem.
Not anything to do with the contemporary Islamic world.
The contemporary Islamic world.
If Hamas persists as a military force and is still running Gaza after this war is over, it will attack Israel again.
And whether or not Hezbollah opens a true second front from Lebanon, it too will attack Israel in the future.
The aim of these groups, both of which are backed by Iran, is to make Israel unlivable and drive Israelis to leave.
That's a ginger way of putting.
It's to exterminate Israel and the Jews in it.
That's their aim.
They don't hide it.
So why does Dennis Ross tiptoe around it?
But, at least you now know, he is trying as hard as possible to be even-handed, and even he says it is completely wrong to call for a ceasefire.
Hamas must be destroyed.
While Iran has denied involvement in the Hamas attack, Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, has long talked about Israel not surviving for another 25 years.
It means exterminating Israel.
And the strategy has been to use these militant proxies to achieve that goal.
Given the strength of Israel's military, the aims of Iran and its collaborators seemed implausible until a few weeks ago.
But the events of October 7th changed everything.
As one commander in the Israeli military said, if we do not defeat Hamas, we cannot survive here.
Israel is not alone in believing it must defeat Hamas.
Over the past two weeks, when I talked to Arab officials throughout the region, whom I have long known, every single one told me that Hamas must be destroyed in Gaza.
These are Arab leaders.
They made clear that if Hamas is perceived as winning, it will validate the group's ideology of rejection, give leverage and momentum to Iran and put their own governments on the defensive.
But they only say this in private.
Their public postures have been quite different.
That's right.
Nowhere was the instinct to cater to the mood of the street more vividly revealed than in the quick denunciations of Israel after Hamas claimed that Israel bombed Al-Ahle hospital in Gaza.
Turns out that they didn't.
As Israel's aerial bombardment of Gaza picks up its pace, And civilian casualties rise.
International calls for an immediate ceasefire are mounting.
Some are calling for Israel to call off a ground invasion.
But ending the war now would mean Hamas would win.
Right?
Hello, naive?
There are two types calling for a ceasefire.
The naive and those who wish Israel to be exterminated.
But ending the war now would mean Hamas would win.
At present, its military infrastructure still exists, its leadership remains largely intact, and its political control of Gaza is unchallenged.
An Israeli ground campaign would come at an extremely high cost.
If it proceeds invading, Israeli soldiers will surely lose their lives.
And there will be even more Palestinian casualties.
A tragedy Hamas has ensured by embedding itself in its military capability in communities using hospitals, mosques, and schools to store its ammunition.
But defeating Hamas cannot be done only with strategic strikes from the air any more than we were able to root out ISIS in Mosul, Iraq, or Raqqa, Syria.
from the air.
In that fight, the United States had local partners who did the terrible and costly ground fighting in cities while our forces largely devastated them from above.
What would a defeat of Hamas mean?
It would mean its military infrastructure, much of which is physically connected to civilian infrastructure, That's
the article.
There isn't a lot more.
But that's the gist of it.
By Dennis Ross, spent his life trying to make peace in the Middle East.
Calls for a ceasefire.
Would they have called for a ceasefire in World War II, given how many German civilians were killed?
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I'd like to remind you, actually not remind you, I haven't told you once.
It's a very powerful 20-minute documentary.
It's free.
Everything PragerU does is free.
PragerU made a documentary called D-Trans.
It's very, even, non-emotional almost.
It's just...
The stories of two young people who were encouraged to transition to the other sex, which is, of course, not possible.
You can mutilate yourself.
This pretty young woman who has a male voice, and she knows it, obviously, that she can't get back her voice.
When she said, I wish I could get my voice back, I almost cried.
So see this documentary, Detrans.
It cites at least another four young people who have also detransitioned, affirmed what they were born, what they are.
The amount of hate from the hate-filled left for that movie or documentary is because they hate truth.
They cite studies that 99%, you hear this?
99% of people who have changed their sex, at least in their mind, are happy they did so.
Is there one person listening to me who believes that lie?
No.
Drop the word lie.
Just who believes that?
You believe 99%?
By the way, How about on something that is not even remotely as radical?
Let's say any cosmetic surgery.
You think 99% of people who had, let's say, breast augmentation of women who have had that, 99% are happy?
99% of people who had a facelift are happy with their facelift?
99%?
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Half this country can't even agree on when America was founded.
So, Daily Kos.
Prager, what was their headline?
PragerU will lead to death among trans people?
Why would that happen?
Isn't it fair that anyone considering, for example, having her breasts removed to be like a boy, having one's penis removed to be like a girl, Shouldn't they hear both sides before they do something so permanent and radical?
No.
Hearing both sides is not a left-wing belief.
Anyway, see the 20-minute documentary.
It's beautifully done at PragerU.com.
This is not an ad.
This is just telling you what is being put out there.
I was reading to you from Dennis Ross about Hamas must be defeated.
There's a very interesting thing taking place on the left.
There are people who are not happy.
There are people even on the left.
And certainly liberals, I distinguish between liberals and leftists all the time, who are not happy with the pro-Palestinian exterminate Israel crowd.
Pro-Palestinian in real life has come to mean exterminate Israel.
If you want to be naive, well, that's a major flaw in you.
Grown-ups should know reality.
Pro-Palestinian means today exterminate Israel.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free means exterminate Israel.
Just for the record.
Hamas makes no bones about it.
Its charter is to exterminate Israel.
Same with Hezbollah.
And the same with the leadership of Iran.
You deny it.
It's because it's comfortable to lie to yourself.
But now, some liberals and leftists are awakening to the scummy world of the left.
Everything the left touches, it destroys.
It's one of the mottos of my life because it is one of the only ways to understand the chaos that has been created.
The moral chaos in the arts.
In education, in media, and everywhere the left touches.
The left destroys everything it touches.
So many of them sleep well proves how weak the human conscience is.
The human conscience is so malleable as to be, in effect, putty.
Your conscience...
for most people is what you want it to be.
Leftists are at peace with their conscience as they destroy everything that is noble and good and beautiful and pure.
And that includes this.
However, there is now a rift.
Some left-wing People, especially some left-wing Jews, are saying we're so disappointed.
This is amazing to me.
We are so disappointed with the left.
How could that be?
We've been allies on every issue.
Shame on Jewish leftists for being allies with the left.
It's a disgrace to Judaism.
But it's true in Catholicism.
It's true with the Pope.
For all intents and purposes, the Pope is a leftist.
Catholics who are true to Catholicism know that.
And what is the latest from the Anglican Church in England?
That the Bible should be retranslated to have no gender identity for God.
Okay, so leftism is poisoned, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism.
But the left-wing Jews, many of them not even religious at all, but some seem to be or think they are, and...
They're going, wow, how did that happen?
How did my left-wing friends become pro-exterminating Israel?
Now, there are left-wing Jews who are also for exterminating Israel, but a lot aren't.
And then there are the liberals, Jew and non-Jew, who are not happy with their leftists.
I'm Dennis Prager, talking about Christians and Jews who've flipped out.
Here's another one as a writer, Peter Wehner, who is a committed Christian who has devoted, I would say, the last...
I never knew of him before, but...
He worked in the Reagan administration, so he considers himself conservative.
I don't know if that's true.
I'm not saying it isn't.
But his life has really been devoted to hatred of Donald Trump.
And during the four years of the Trump administration, I never once used the term Trump derangement syndrome.
And so there's no political end.
I don't understand it at all, this fixation on hatred of Donald Trump.
He actually did a really good job as president.
But the people who hate him, especially the erstwhile Republicans like Peter Wehner, they don't ask What did he do?
They ask the narcissistic question, do I like him?
Whether you like a public figure or not is of interest to you and perhaps your spouse.
No one else gives a damn whom you like in public life.
What we should all be asking is, is it better or worse that person's participation for America?
That is why I wrote...
Thirty years ago that I don't care if a politician committed adultery.
It is none of my business.
It is the business of God and his family.
It's usually a he.
I have one question as an American about any politician.
Do you increase good in my country or increase bad?
That is the only question worthy of serious people, which Peter Wehner is not.
I don't think I have said this about him in all these years, but I finally had it.
He has an op-ed about, listen to this man who considers himself a serious Christian.
Okay, so let's see.
Alright, here we go.
He's talking about how...
Cultural sickness.
Today it is the American right that most fully embodies the attitudes that so alarmed Mr. Bloom.
Writing about the...
What was Bloom's for?
Alan Bloom.
Yeah, the closing of the American mind.
About the dangers posed by moral relativism and nihilism.
And he thinks that today it is most embodied on the right and he considers himself a conservative.
He's a dummy.
The right is a greater threat to America than the left?
And do you know why he believes that?
Because he so hates Donald Trump.
There is a narcissism in that position.
How I feel about Trump is what matters.
Not America.
Trump.
He had four years to exercise his fascism and his racism and his anti-Semitism.
Did any of that come out in four years?
Or did the country thrive under Donald Trump's presidency?
But Peter Wehner and the Never Trumpers never ask that.
It is the American right that most fully embodies the attitudes that so alarmed Mr. Bloom.
We see that most clearly in the right's embrace of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement he represents.
Mr. Trump is cruel and remorseless.
Compulsive and vindictive, an accomplished conspiracy theorist.
He delights in inflaming hatreds and shattering moral codes.
No other president has been as disdainful of knowledge or is untroubled by his benightedness.
No other has been as intentional not just to lie but to annihilate truth.
And no other president has explicitly attempted to overturn an election and encourage an angry mob to march on the Capitol.
With every passing week, the former president's statements are getting more deranged, more menacing, and more authoritarian.
He's a child.
Peter Wehner is a child.
I never said anything like that about any Democrat in office who have really done damage.
This is a rant.
No, not a rant.
It is a tantrum.
We'll be back.
Hey, everybody.
Dennis Prager here, and it is Veterans Day this Saturday.
I take the holidays that are meaningful seriously.
And we do so on this show.
Holidays are extremely important in any civilization.
It says what they care about.
By the way, tangentially, before I get to my guest, the remarkable man, tangentially, I was just thinking, not even when I was a kid, I would say most of my life, it was common for stadiums to be named whatever Memorial Stadium, right?
Of a ballpark, baseball park, football stadium.
And now they all have names of companies on them to make more money for the team and the players.
So when I said that holidays represent a civilization, I was very serious.
In Israel, on their Memorial Day, I was there once at that time by coincidence.
At a given moment, maybe noon, sirens go off and all traffic stops.
And every single person gets out of his or her car and just stands quietly for a minute.
I have the chills as I recollect this.
Imagine major highways.
All over the United States, stopping for a minute.
People getting out of their cars and honoring those who fell for the country.
Holidays are very, very important.
And obviously, I'm referring in this case to Veterans Day.
So I have a veteran, very high-ranking veteran, I might add.
A Major General, James Mukoyama, U.S. Army, retired.
And he wrote a book.
When did it come out, General?
Actually, the official release is this week.
Oh, cool.
And there's a great picture of him serving in Vietnam as a young man.
And the book is Faith, Family, and Flag.
Is it up at DennisPrager.com?
Well done.
Faith, Family, and Flag.
Listen to the subtitle.
Memoirs of an Unlikely American Samurai Crusader.
We'll find out why unlikely is appropriate.
Jocko Willink, who does PragerU videos for us, wrote the foreword.
It's one of the most popular videos, by the way.
Major General James Mukayama.
General, thank you.
You have a beautiful page here, largely about me, and I can't tell you how moved I am by that fact.
You flew in from Chicago just to be here, is that right?
That's correct.
I was given the option of doing this over the internet, and I said, no way.
If my wife and I get a chance to be with Dennis and Alan, we're there.
Are you sure about Alan?
Oh, absolutely.
You know, I'm a big PragerU guy, so I've seen him on the Book of the Month with Michael, and, you know, he did Tale of Two Cities, and he did The Intellectuals.
And then, of course, I've seen you, too, because you did the first one.
Boy, you really know.
No, we're very moved by that, Alan and I, just so you'll know.
And thank you for coming.
And Mrs. Mukuyama, thank you for coming as well.
So if I would have spoken to you when you were 15 years old and said, you know, you'll be a major general in the U.S. Army, would you have said, that sounds great, or what are you talking about?
I would have said, probably not a large chance.
At that point, actually when I joined the Army, there had never been an Asian American admiral or general.
Wow.
In our armed forces.
I wasn't the first.
I was like the third or fourth, but I was the first to command an army division in the history of the army.
And where was that?
That was the 70th Infantry Division training out of Livonia, Michigan.
My career, I had five years of active duty, two combat tours, one on the DMZ in Korea, one in Vietnam.
And I was a regular Army Airborne guy.
I was what they called a lifer.
And when I came back...
From Vietnam, I said, you know, I don't want to do this 24-7.
So I resigned my regular Army commission, and I joined the Army Reserves, because I was committed to serve 20 years, period.
And so I actually served 32 years.
But my division, the 70th, was an Army Reserve division that was mobilized for Desert Storm.
It's just like I died and went to heaven.
I mean, I took my division of Fort Benning, Georgia, and we took over the training of the infantry soldiers at Fort Benning.
So I have no idea what the answer will be.
So you were the first Asian American to...
To command a combat unit, is that correct?
No, not combat.
It was an army division here in the States.
Okay, right.
No, I know.
It was a training division.
Right, fair enough.
But it was during war.
I thought they went to combat, whether they went with you or not.
Okay, it doesn't matter.
What I want to ask you is, America is accused of being xenophobic and racist.
Did you experience that much in the army?
Because you're a first.
No.
As a matter of fact, through my Army career, I actually caught myself forgetting the race of our soldiers.
It didn't make any difference to me, whether they were white, black, yellow.
And it didn't make any difference to them about you.
Right, right.
Everybody to me was olive green.
And that was it.
I love that.
My dad, may he rest in peace, was an officer on a transport ship in World War II in the Pacific for two and a half years, I believe.
And he was a committed Jew.
He would have Sabbath services on Friday night for Jews who were on board.
So everybody knew he was a Jew.
And the captain of the ship, my father told the story, and it meant so much to me as a child.
It means a lot to me now.
And the captain basically told everyone on board, if he ever hears an anti-Semitic word, that guy is doomed.
And my father said two and a half years, his being a Jew was not an issue.
That's what you're saying.
Yes.
Whatever the color of the navy, that was the only color that mattered.
See, that's why it is so awful, charging Americans with systemic racism and xenophobia.
It's probably the least racist, least xenophobic country in the modern world.
Absolutely, and I reflect on that in my book, because my mother...
Bless her soul.
Grew up during the Depression.
Her family had lived in Montana.
In Nebraska, in Wisconsin, in Oklahoma, in California, until she married my dad and she moved up to Chicago.
And she was interviewed by a University of San Francisco researcher about the Nisei, the second generation Japanese Americans.
And it was like a two hour interview.
And this woman, the researcher, kept on asking my mom, well, when did you experience racism?
Perfect.
You know what my mother said?
She said, I didn't.
And this woman was just, you know, she kept on probing.
And in fact, during World War II, we were in Chicago.
And my family, my parents had assimilated into our community.
We didn't have a Japantown, so to speak, right?
And our neighbors not realizing that...
Japanese could not become naturalized citizens of the United States until 1952. They sent a telegram to our congressman vouching for the loyalty of my father as an American citizen.
So we did not experience that.
The interview of your mother, that's who you're talking about?
You'll love this.
As loyal a listener as you might be, I don't know if you would remember, I played this once on my show.
A black in Poland, born in Poland, and parent's African, and he's a championship boxer in Poland.
And the interviewer on Polish television...
Kept asking him, so you experience a lot of racism here in Poland, don't you?
And the guy kept saying, no.
And she was so annoyed with him.
So your mother's story is exactly the same thing.
You're not experiencing all this anti-Asian, anti-Japanese racism in America?
We'll be back in a moment.
The book by the Major General is up at DennisPrager.com.
faith, family, and flag.
It's not often I have a Brigadier General on my show, to be honest.
But Major General James Mukayama is my guest.
He has written Faith, Family, and Flag.
He was the first Asian American to, again, fill in the rest of the sentence.
Command and Army Division.
Command and Army Division.
The subtitle is Memoirs of an Unlikely American Samurai Crusader.
So the picture of you on the cover is of you in Vietnam.
And what does it say on your helmet there?
It says hardcore.
Meaning?
Meaning.
That was the nickname for the battalion that I served in Vietnam in 1969. It was the 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry.
Commanded by the legendary Colonel David H. Hackworth.
And I had the honor of...
I knew Colonel Hackworth at Fort Lewis, Washington, before Vietnam.
I'm back at Fort Lewis.
He writes me a letter.
He called me Muk, because he couldn't pronounce Mukoyama.
And I used to call him Sir.
So basically, he writes me a letter, and he said, Hey, Muk, we got a war going on.
If you want a company, it's yours.
And it's like I hit the lotto.
Because to serve as an infantry company commander in combat under David Hackworth, it doesn't get any better than that.
So I immediately volunteered again for Vietnam.
First time they sent me to Korea, but this time they took me up on my offer and I went to Vietnam.
So I'm going to ask again.
So 1969, Japanese-American...
In the Army, in Vietnam.
Did you experience racism then?
No, no.
I was a captain, and that's all that counted, other than the fact that I was infantry, which I'm very proud of.
But no, we did not look at each other in terms of race.
This is 1969, ladies and gentlemen.
The great grand left-wing lie about racist America.
It's truly destructive.
All lies are destructive, but that one in particular.
Well, in fact, the Army was one of the first institutions in our society that integrated.
1948, President Truman.
Prior to that, we had segregated units.
We had black units.
We had Japanese-American units, of which, by the way, I'm proud to say, I had uncles in it.
I had relatives who...
Served in Europe and in the Pacific, fighting the Japanese.
Were you raised to love America?
Absolutely.
First of all, I'm a very strong man of faith, and the church was the center.
Of our family life.
You know, Chicago is a city of neighborhoods.
It's really cool, especially in those days.
Every neighborhood had a tavern, had a barber shop, had a local grocery store, and had a house of worship.
And our church was three blocks away.
Every Sunday, we would put on our Sunday best clothes as a family and walk to church together.
I literally was a choir boy in the church, and I was in Cub Scouts.
I was in Boy Scouts.
All of that was centered around the church.
Community.
And as I'm sure you know, the motto of Boy Scouts is for God and country, in that order.
That's important that you added in that order.
That's right.
You describe an America that is disappearing.
Do you agree with me?
Absolutely.
And in fact, I did write...
Just recently, earlier this year, I was so disgusted and disappointed with the polling that showed a significant decrease in American public about faith and patriotism.
And so I wrote something called the Mukherjama Life Manifesto, which basically...
Talked about what I saw as the deterioration of the American values that have made this the most exceptional, least racist, large, multicultural nation in the world.
That's exactly right.
I wish you could speak in every high school in the country.
I've gone back, as a matter of fact.
Towards the end of my book, I spoke at a high school.
I have a standard daily mantra, which is, every day is a great day.
I have my faith, my family, and live in the finest country in the world.
And so I gave this speech at a high school, and one of the students who heard me wrote me a letter, and actually a thank you letter for speaking.
And that young man said that, I've adopted your mantra.
And I said, this guy gets it.
That's right.
It's funny because I pull up near my house, there's a Starbucks, and I get a coffee most days.
So the young guy goes, so how's your day?
And I go, wonderful.
All my days are wonderful.
And whoever it is, sometimes a young woman, doesn't matter, obviously, whoever it is, they really like the answer.
It's funny, they say, that's great.
It's so good to hear.
So I have a question I like to ask exceptional people like you.
So has this always been your nature?
You're obviously grateful, upbeat.
Is that the nature God or nature gave you?
Yes.
Only because I've witnessed the...
My father came to the United States at the age of 18. And he came here because of the opportunity and freedoms that were...
A Japanese man.
Yeah, in fact...
A lot of people understand that.
Yeah, in fact, he was born in 1900. And during grammar school, Japan, in one generation, went from a third world country to a world power that defeated not only China, but defeated Russia.
All right, continue with the story in a moment.
The book by the Major General Mukuyama is Faith, Family, and Flag, up at my website.
Given that it is Memorial Day this week, excuse me, Veterans Day.
Thank God.
I'm speaking to a ghost.
It is Veterans Day this week.
I have a great veteran, Major General James Mukayama, the first Asian American to lead a...
Give me the exact title again.
Say it again.
Army Division.
An Army Division.
I should be able to remember that.
Yep, that's a big deal.
And his life has been gratitude for being an American.
His parents were born in Japan.
Well, no, your father was, and your mother's parents were.
Right.
Your mother was born in Madison, Wisconsin?
Yes, she was.
Right.
And with all...
As I was saying to...
Both the general and his wife here during the break, because the left runs our schools, they depict the Japanese-American experiences, essentially the intern camps that Franklin Roosevelt set up for many Japanese-Americans during World War II. That's it.
People know nothing else.
And so we're talking about your father.
It's so interesting for people to understand this.
Your father came to the United States in 1918?
Yes.
He did.
That was the year my father was born.
So, your dad came.
Now, let's imagine this, folks, because I want to talk to you about this, General.
Your father came from Japan.
Did he come alone?
Yes.
Yeah.
So, no parents, no siblings.
No, but his father was already here.
Oh, his father was already here.
Yeah, that's a pretty interesting story.
We're from...
A place in Japan called Yamanashi.
It's right near Mount Fuji.
In fact, that's where our name comes from.
Mukoyama.
Muko means over there, and yama means mountain.
So when people ask me, you know, what does your name mean?
I'm an English major, so I like to say yonder mountain.
It sounds better than the mountain over there.
But anyway, when he was in grammar school, he was taught, English was mandatory.
That's fascinating.
In fact, he had to memorize the Gettysburg Address in English.
And that inculcated into him the ideas of freedom and equal opportunity, and he wanted to be here and come here.
My grandfather was here because he had...
Kind of invested in the Japanese sake market or something like that and lost half of the family fortune.
So he came to America, get this, in 1901. My father was born in 1900, right?
1901, when my father was 18 years old, his father was still in the States.
So he didn't see his father his entire childhood.
Right.
And so my grandmother...
Where was the grandfather?
Where was your father's father?
He was in Kearney, Nebraska.
Oh, can you imagine that?
I can't.
Imagine that in the 19-0s, a Japanese man comes to Nebraska and thrived?
Yeah, he was the head of a farm, immigrant labor group of Japanese Americans.
Did your father love America?
Oh, absolutely.
He taught my brother and I the core values of the Japanese culture, which I talk about in the book.
Honor, dignity, perseverance, respect for elderly, respect for our teachers, education.
But he always emphasized to us, you are Americans.
You were born here.
This is your country.
You are blessed to be here, and you should be proud of it.
He had always told us, never disgrace.
The Japanese race or the Mukoyama name.
But more importantly, never disgrace America because you're Americans.
I'm telling you, it's so important for people to hear this.
If you'd asked the average kid in the high school today, a Japanese man came to the United States in 1901 and in Nebraska, basically all white.
How was he treated?
And the answer?
Really well.
And loved America.
These are the stories people don't hear.
That's a really important story.
My dad, I'm telling you, I wish they'd have met.
My father was born in 1918. My father, as I said, was an officer in the war.
And he raised my brother and me.
You're the luckiest Jews in history to live in America.
Just like your dad.
Back in a moment.
The way I know that that's the next commercial is Sean barks into my earphones.
Has the public heard you do a dog imitation, by the way?
It has.
It's really effective.
It's not a talent that gets you far in life, but it does have a level of amusement.
I am speaking to a wonderful man and telling you, this is exactly the opposite of what kids are taught about America.
I can't get over your dad coming from Japan in 1901 to Nebraska.
If he was not the only Japanese person in his town, Then I have a very wrong picture of Nebraska in 1901. That was my grandfather.
Yeah, I'm sorry, your grandfather.
Yeah, that's right.
Oh my God.
Do I wish, I so wish I could go on the time machine and just watch him there.
He must have been a remarkable man, your grandfather.
Oh yeah, yeah.
In fact...
I never met him because he died in Japan.
Because my father did succeed in his mission.
He got his father to go back to Japan.
But my grandfather was a Christian.
And I don't know how he ever became a Christian.
Because that was extremely rare.
Oh, at that time in Japan.
Really?
It's rare today.
Not only...
Oh, really?
Oh, yes.
Oh, so Koreans are much...
Oh, yeah.
No, no.
Koreans are...
You know, they have the largest church in the world, I believe, in Seoul.
And they send out more missionaries than we do.
That's right.
Which is a commentary on both countries, unfortunately.
I mean, at least, unfortunately, vis-a-vis America.
God...
So, let me ask you...
I'm sorry?
How did he even get into the army?
How did he get into the army?
How did you get into the army?
Part of the book is the samurai tradition.
In Japan, in the Japanese culture, it used to be that the warrior was at the top of the culture.
Unlike China, where the scholar was at the top.
So the samurai tradition in Japan was...
You know, handed down from generation to generation because they were in charge.
The samurai were the only ones, by the way, who could carry weapons, the swords.
Common citizens could not, which, by the way, is something to reflect on the Second Amendment because they controlled.
The populace.
There used to be a phrase in Japan, in Japanese, which was to cut down and walk away.
The samurai could be judge, jury, and executioner on the spot.
If they saw somebody doing something wrong, they take out their sword.
They could kill them and walk away.
So that's why it was important to have what was called Bushido.
Bushido was the way of the warrior.
It was like the chivalric code.
Wasn't that you can't surrender?
What?
No.
Bushido, bushi means warrior.
Do is the way.
So which was the doctrine of you can't surrender?
It wasn't part of Bushido?
Yeah.
No, it was.
It was, actually.
Yeah, that's why the Japanese were so fanatic.
Because the emperor was considered a divinity, a deity.
So basically, the most honorable way you could die was to die for the emperor and for the country.
And the other thing is, you didn't want to disgrace yourself.
Shame.
It's a shame culture.
Yes.
So, again, how did you get into the army?
You had a samurai tradition, and so you volunteered?
You enlisted?
Oh, yes.
I was big into the warrior culture.
But I also, it might sound like it's a dichotomous, but I was very religious, and I wanted to become a minister.
So I had this dilemma of, you know, would it be the cross or the rifle, so to speak.
But I had a solution.
I'd become a chaplain in the Army, so I could do both.
And is that what you became?
No, because what happened was, you know, God plans all this, right?
And I'm Protestant, and my denomination went so far to the left, theologically, that I couldn't buy into it.
So basically, I was in a dilemma, because in the military, in order to become a chaplain, you have to be...
Sponsored by your denomination.
So when I was praying to God at that time, I said...
What was your denomination?
Methodist.
No, no.
But at that time, I'm sorry, it was Congregationalist.
But the Congregationalist Church merged with the Evangelical and Reformed Church to become the United Church of Christ.
Which is very left-wing.
Yeah, yeah.
So that's why...
And it was left-wing then.
Yes, yes.
So who sponsored you?
Oh, nobody!
That's why you became a regular soldier.
Exactly.
When I was praying at the time...
Yeah, it does sound like God meant that...
Because you would not have become a brigadier general as a chaplain.
Yeah, a major general.
But what happened was...
I'm sorry, major general.
Yeah.
But what happened was, fast forward, Dennis, 50 years, 60 years, what am I doing?
I'm ministering to veterans.
Oh, how ironic.
You're a special man.
This is a special day this coming week, Veterans Day.
It's painful that your story and the millions of stories like yours are not told.
It's just America is racist.
America is the gigantic lie of the left.
And your family, I mean, even I'm surprised, to be honest, that your grandfather in Nebraska in 1902 felt comfortable.
I mean, that's astonishing.
But that's the norm.
That has been the norm.
There have been bad things, but that has been the norm.
You do a good job, I'm going to go to your store.
Yeah, now I want to make it very clear.
It's not like I've never experienced racism or prejudice, but it's been overwhelmingly the minority experience in my life.
Of course.
Because we're all human.
Yes, that's right.
With hundreds of millions of people, you're going to get some bad ones.
They're not the norm.
Get the book, folks.
Faith, family, and flag up at DennisPrager.com.
Final segment, unfortunately.
I have thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this man.
Major General James Mukoyama.
M-U-K-O-Y-A-M-A. Muk to his superior.
Somehow I find Mukoyama not that hard to say, to be honest.
And his book is Faith, Family, and Flag, Memoirs of an Unlikely American Samurai Crusader, as indeed that is the case.
So I reflect, I always look at the big picture, that my mind always goes to that general.
And I'm sitting here thinking, so here is an American Jew speaking to a Japanese-American Christian.
I might add.
So, and as you said, we're twins, just from different mothers.
That's the beauty of America.
The utter comfort that you and I have with one another is just complete.
Because with all the individual bad people, which every society will inevitably have until the end of days, in America, by and large, The beauty is people didn't care.
That was your message.
In the Army, in the late 60s, here you are, a Japanese American, and the only color they cared about was green.
The Army color.
And that has been the experience of the vast majority of people.
I wrote a piece about, I was the only Jew in the Simi Valley Rotary Club.
When I was very young in the 1970s, nobody cared.
And they all knew I was a Jew.
Because I headed a Jewish institution.
That's how I was in the Rotary Club.
That's America.
So this left-wing painting is so disastrous and such a lie about this country.
Are you worried?
I am concerned.
I see what is happening in terms of the degradation of belief in the exceptionalism of America.
The proof is in the pudding.
You have millions Tens of millions of people throughout the world who want to come to this country versus the minuscule few who say they're going to leave and I'm still waiting for them to buy their airline tickets.
It's clear that we are still the land of opportunity and freedom.
Being eroded.
And that's why we need to stand up.
We need to have more Dennis Prager's.
We need to have more books that talk about...
Well, we need more of you, Major General.
It has been an honor.
The book Faith, Family, and Flag up at DennisPrager.com for Veterans Day.
Dennis Prager here.
Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
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