Dennis Prager Show - Timeless Wisdom - Dennis and Robert George: Are America's Founding Principles Still Relevant?

Oct. 20, 2025 - Dennis Prager Show

01:52:50

Timeless Wisdom - Dennis and Robert George: Are America's Founding Principles Still Relevant?

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Dennis Prager: Philadelphia Legend 00:04:29
	Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
	Here are thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs.
	And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com.
	Good evening and welcome.
	I'm Robert George.
	I have the honor to be the director of the James Madison Program of American Ideals and Institutions here at Princeton.
	And I'm delighted to have you here with us this evening for my conversation with Dennis Prager.
	Mr. Prager is a nationally syndicated radio host.
	He's been broadcasting in Los Angeles since 1982.
	His popular show became nationally syndicated in 1999 and airs live Monday through Friday, 9 to noon, from his home station, which is KRLA.
	I know we can pick him up on the Philadelphia radio.
	Is it 970 or 990?
	990, yeah, good.
	Dennis co-founded Prager University, an institution of higher learning on the internet with a unique difference.
	All of the courses are five minutes in length.
	My students would love that.
	I don't want them to find out about this.
	That would be hard to compete with.
	Of course, what faculty are required to do is to distill the very best ideas of the best minds in the world down to that five minutes.
	And the topics cover everything from economics to history to philosophy to psychology.
	Dennis is the author of a number of books, including Still the Best Hope, subtitled Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph, which was published by HarperCollins in 2012.
	A book that's very relevant to our conversation this evening, Why the Jews?
	No question mark at the end.
	Why the Jews?
	With Joseph Talushkin, which was published by Simon and Schuster in 2003.
	Happiness is a Serious Problem, published by HarperCollins in 1998.
	I'm sure many of you have, in addition to hearing Dennis on the radio, have read his books and also his columns in the newspapers around the country.
	He is with Creators Syndicate.
	His writings have also appeared in the major newspapers and opinion magazines, commentary, the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal.
	He's appeared on various television shows as well.
	He was educated at Brooklyn College as an undergraduate and then at the Columbia University.
	He's taught Russian and Jewish history at Brooklyn College and Hebrew Bible verse by verse at American Jewish University.
	He was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the U.S. delegation to the Vienna Conference, Vienna Review Conference on the Helsinki Accords, and he holds an honorary degree from Pepperdine University.
	Please join me in welcoming to Princeton and the Madison program Dennis Perger.
	I should hold up.
	Still the best hope.
	As you can see, it's available in an inexpensive paperback.
	Not here this evening, but you know where to go to find them.
	Dennis, welcome.
	It's such a delight to have you here.
	Well, you're a legend here, sir.
	You're a legend around the country.
	Drop here.
	I want to make that clear.
	You are a legend and deservedly so, so it's a joy.
	May I say something about my Philadelphia station?
	Because you mentioned it and you're wondering why would I mention it?
	You'll like this.
	So in Philadelphia about five years ago, there were a very large audience.
	And I began by saying I just want to thank WNTP, my local affiliate here in Philadelphia, AM980.
	And then, like now, many yelled out, but then there were about a thousand people, 990.
	And I said, I'm Jewish.
	I can get it for you for 980.
	So every time I hear the Philadelphia station, that's what I remember.
	Well, our discussion this evening is entitled A Jewish Christian Dialogue, and you've already given away which of us is Jewish.
Why We're Chosen People 00:15:22
	So now the audience knows.
	Although I recently learned, because my parents had the genetic testing done, that I'm actually 6% Jewish.
	Now, don't think that you're entitled to have me pay 6% temple fees at the synagogue, but like our president here at Princeton, who recently found out about his own Jewish ancestry, I found out about mine.
	I'm 6% Presbyterian.
	I thought I'd mention that.
	You should fit in.
	I'm proud, verse 10.
	You should fit in at Princeton very well.
	Very well.
	Well, since you brought up the subject, why don't we begin by having you share with the audience your thoughts about what it means to be Jewish?
	What does it mean to you to be Jewish?
	What role does being Jewish play in your life and in your thinking?
	That's one of those questions that's very briefly asked.
	It's very hard to briefly answer, but I will know.
	That's very kind, but I want your reactions, and that's as important to me as anything I have to say.
	To me, it is clear.
	To be a Jew is to be a member of the chosen people, not because we ever asked to be chosen.
	In fact, I agree with Tevya in the Fiddler on the Roof who prays to God.
	Maybe you'll choose somebody else for a change.
	I have to say, being chosen has not benefited us, if by benefit it means to be able to lead normal lives without being gassed and burned and the like throughout history.
	There is a prayer in the Haggadah, the Jewish prayer book for the Passover Seder, that says, obviously translating from the Hebrew, in every generation somebody arises to annihilate us, not oppress us, annihilate us.
	The Hebrew is literally to put an end to us.
	As a child, I remember thinking that the rabbis were wrong.
	After the Holocaust, that's not going to happen again.
	It's not true every generation.
	That's exaggeration.
	And now there's Iran, who announces we wish to annihilate the Jewish state.
	Israel is in the world what the Jew was in Europe, the individual to be exterminated.
	This is the nation to be exterminated.
	Anyway, so what does it mean to me?
	I'm a member of the chosen people.
	I didn't choose it.
	A very quick anecdote.
	My first radio show, I was the moderator of a very popular program on ABC Radio in Los Angeles.
	And we had a priest, minister, rabbi each week, not as a joke, a very real priest, minister, and rabbi, different ones each week.
	One night, the question arose from a listener.
	A listener, people called in.
	And so the caller gave the rabbi a very hard time on Jewish chosenness.
	It's chauvinistic and racist.
	The rabbi was of a liberal bent, and it was clear to me that he agreed with the caller.
	But to his credit, he couldn't agree with him because he knew he represented Jewry and Judaism, not just his own views.
	So he was hemming and hawning.
	Finally, the Catholic priest, you will be proud to know, says, Dennis, may I answer?
	I go, please.
	He goes, caller, this is Father Michael Moseda, the Roman Catholic priest.
	God chose the Jews.
	Get a life.
	It has always resonated with me because that's basically it.
	I don't know why he chose the Jews as his business.
	But it's clear.
	There's no other way to explain Jewish history.
	However, this is the point that is most important.
	Why were the Jews chosen?
	And the answer is to touch humanity by bringing the God of Sinai, the God of the Ten Commandments.
	My most recent book out three weeks ago explains the Ten Commandments, the God of the Ten Commandments to the world.
	And that's what we're here to do.
	But Jews aren't doing it, and Jews haven't been doing it for 2,000 years.
	I always mention it's Christians who brought the Torah to the world, much more than Jews did.
	That's why I often say to Jewish audiences, I say, if you only kept the Torah, if you believed in the Torah as much as Christians did, the Mashiach would come.
	That's the Messiah in Hebrew.
	And for us, it would be a first.
	For Christians, a second, but it doesn't matter.
	It would still hasten the Messianic age if Jews believed in the Torah as much as Christians did.
	So that's our task.
	And I will end by saying, because I do want to cut it to the chase, the tragedy of Jewish life is that the Jews who talk to the world don't live Judaism, and the Jews who live Judaism don't talk to the world.
	And who are the Jews who talk to the world?
	You know, Betty Friedan in feminism, Noam Chomsky and radicalism, half the ACLU, all the Jews on the left, the Jews at the New York Times, the Jews on campuses.
	These are the Jews who talk to the world, but they're not bringing the world to Sinai.
	They crap on Sinai.
	They think it's drivel.
	Ten commandments?
	What are you primitive?
	You believe in that stuff?
	You believe that there's a divine book?
	I can't believe you speak English properly.
	That's so foolish.
	That's what most Jews believe.
	There are prominent rabbis who think that, who advocate, and one of them is a dear friend whom I deeply respect.
	One of the most prominent rabbis in America tells Jews that the Exodus is a fable.
	And yet he knows, because he knows Judaism.
	Judaism is built, Christianity is built on the crucifixion and resurrection.
	Judaism is built on two events as well: creation and Exodus.
	No Exodus.
	I don't want to be part of a fable.
	So this is the crisis that we're in.
	And I have devoted my life to telling Jews we are a messenger who forgot his message.
	And that's our message.
	So what do you say to the idea that Judaism is, or being Jewish, is fundamentally a cultural and ethnic identity, perhaps one with links to love for the state of Israel, but not, or needn't at least be, a religious identity.
	What about the Jew who just doesn't believe in God?
	Can he be Jewish?
	Yeah, well, my first book, written when I was 25, I had a debate.
	You will get a kick out of this.
	I had a debate at 25.
	I was just finishing graduate school at, may I say, another school's name?
	Whisper.
	Columbia.
	And so the question was, would I write my thesis or would I write this book on Judaism?
	And then I realized nobody will read my thesis.
	But a book on Judaism explaining it might be read.
	And it turned out my co-author and I, Joseph Talushkin, wrote a book which became the best-selling English introduction to Judaism for decades.
	The nine questions people ask about Judaism.
	The first question is, do you have to believe in God to be a good Jew?
	And the answer is, no, you do not have to believe in God.
	That is correct.
	You have to live a Jewish life, but you do not have to believe.
	Judaism does not disqualify you.
	If you don't believe in Christ, you're not a Christian definitionally.
	But if you don't believe in God, it doesn't mean you're not a Jew.
	In fact, that would rule out many Jews, unfortunately.
	By the way, what I do tell Jews who are atheists or agnostics, you are commanded to struggle to believe.
	The word Israel means struggle with God.
	And everybody thinks it means believers have to struggle with God, which is true.
	We do.
	But non-believers have to struggle also with God.
	So the answer is: no, you don't have to believe in God to be a good Jew and to be, excuse me, to be a Jew.
	You could be a Jew and be a horrible human being.
	Just like an American.
	Does an American have to believe in America to be an American?
	No.
	Can America hate it?
	An American hate America and be an American?
	Yes.
	So now to the, because we're a people and a religion, unlike Christianity, which is only a religion.
	Now, as to the other part, whenever a Jew says, well, what about cultural Judaism?
	So, like a good Jew, I answer the question with a question.
	What do you mean?
	What is cultural Judaism?
	Have you seen a play in Yiddish recently?
	No, I don't know Yiddish.
	Okay.
	So what are you talking about?
	There is no such thing, unless it's so trivial as to mean bagels, cream, cheese, and locks.
	Let me take a shot at it.
	What would you say to the person who says, look, the essence for me of being Jewish is to live a moral life.
	And I don't think you need belief in God to sustain the basic moral teachings of Judaism.
	Now, of course, the person might say, I don't mean, oh, you know, the so-called primitive stuff.
	I mean being nice to people, doing unto others as you'd have them do unto you, that kind of thing.
	Just being an honest person, being a decent person, looking to caring about other people, not just oneself, that's the essence of being Jewish.
	By the way, so do the prophets say that.
	One of my favorite verses in the Bible is Micah 6.8.
	Yeah, 6-8.
	I only know four by heart, so don't get impressed.
	But this one really is important to me.
	That in Genesis 1-1.
	Anyway, oh man, oh man, not just, oh, Jew.
	Man, has God not told you all he wants to pursue justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.
	But they forget to walk humbly with your God.
	Judaism does not believe that being good without God is possible.
	Sorry.
	You can't be good without belief in God is possible.
	No, you can be good without belief in God, but goodness, a good society will not be created without God.
	There are people who were good who believed in Zeus, people who were good who believed in Osiris, people who were good who believe in voodoo.
	There are good voodooists.
	There are ethical people of every stripe and ethical atheists.
	But Judaism is not atheism.
	Judaism has a trinity just almost just like, almost, Christianity, and that is God Torah Israel.
	And if you get rid of God, you will get rid of the ethics in the final analysis.
	That's what happens in real life.
	So would you say then to the person who proposes cultural Judaism as the ethical teaching without the theology that they are living on a depleting base of capital?
	Yes.
	What was called, I wish by me, but I popularized cut flower ethics.
	You can take flowers from their soil, you cut them, and someone who knows nothing about plants will say, look, these plants are flourishing.
	They don't need their soil, but they will wither and die.
	The soil of Judaism is religious soil.
	The soil of Western civilization is religious soil.
	The soil of America is religious soil.
	And we see what is happening.
	The New York Times published a piece, I don't know if you happened to catch it, two months ago, by a professor of philosophy who's obviously secular.
	And I actually read it twice to make sure that the Times knew what they were publishing.
	He wrote, to his shock, there's an entire generation of Americans who don't believe in moral truth.
	That's his term.
	They don't believe, and I have been yelling this for my lifetime.
	I meet Jewish students who say the following: I think the Nazis were wrong, but the Nazis thought they were right.
	So who's to know?
	And they're right.
	All morality is a matter of opinion.
	So that is the consequence that we are living with the death of this soil that nurtured Judaism and nurtures ethics.
	Let me ask you about being Jewish in America, being Jewish and American.
	One of the very first things I ever heard the man who would become my father-in-law say when I was just a boyfriend at a Seder table, when asked by another guest whether he had ever considered making Aliyah, ever considered moving permanently to Israel, my father-in-law said, who was a World War II veteran captured at the bulge, very patriotic American, said, Why should I move to Israel?
	The United States of America is the promised land.
	Well, it's not the promised land.
	It's just the greatest country ever developed.
	But it's not the promised land.
	That's true.
	So what he said was hyperbole.
	Jews, however, have regarded it as, listen, the greatest rabbi of the 20th century was an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, the Labavacha rabbi.
	No, no, no, no, the Labavacha Rebbe, the Rebbe, the Chabad Rebbe.
	And he said, this is a golden Medina.
	This is a golden country.
	I mean, he said it would, no, no, excuse me.
	He said better.
	He said, Medinashel Chesed.
	This is a country of kindness, of goodness.
	Chesed is the highest appellation in many ways in Judaism.
	And that's what he said about America.
	That's why he told his ultra-Orthodox followers, you have to observe Thanksgiving.
	The secular holiday Thanksgiving.
	Yes.
	Well, or even as a religious holiday.
	You're thanking God for this country.
	And this is an ultra-Orthodox.
	I say that because I grew up Orthodox, and a lot of the Orthodox didn't celebrate Thanksgiving.
	That was for the Goyim.
	Goyim is, by the way, not pejorative.
	It just means the nations.
	Israel is called a Goy when God says, be a Goy Kadosh, be a holy nation in Leviticus 19.
	But he was wrong on the promised land, your future father-in-law.
Judeo-Christian Paradox 00:05:41
	But he was right about how great this is for everybody, including us Jews.
	He says that it's the safest and happiest place Jews have ever lived, including in Israel.
	It's the only, well, I don't know if it's the happiest, I don't know if America's happier for a Jew than Israel.
	I don't know.
	That's a tough call.
	I always find the happiness measurements index, you know, Danes are the happiest people.
	That's the latest that's come out of this.
	Have you been to Denmark?
	I've been to 112 countries.
	Denmark was the most boring that I ever.
	I have nothing against Danes, nothing whatsoever.
	But it's not exciting.
	Oh, look, an exciting Dane.
	If you meet an exciting Dane, it's because he's become an American.
	Just so you'll know that, okay?
	I always love that.
	For the left, if you have no passion, you're happy.
	Americans have passions, and it's a good thing.
	Obviously, I love being American.
	But I wouldn't say Americans, Jews are happier than Israeli Jews.
	It's a difficult thing to judge.
	Safety is a very tough issue given the fact that Israel is as big as New Jersey, as this state, and there are people who wish to annihilate it.
	That's a very serious matter, obviously.
	How do you account, Dennis, for the generally overwhelmingly positive attitude of non-Jewish, mostly Christian Americans toward Jews, and indeed toward Israel, by comparison with the situation in many European countries, which, unlike America, are highly secularized?
	How does that make sense?
	Wasn't secularization supposed to be an advantage to the Jewish populations because it would make it safer for the Jews?
	You know, my next speech to a Jewish group, I'm giving you.
	You should give the speech.
	Hang it on.
	We truly are, at least thus far, we are truly, and I know you, and I know you're writing.
	We have very similar views on virtually everything.
	First of all, I tell Jews all the time, you're so in love with secularism, then why is secular Europe so bad for Jews?
	I say that to Jews all the time.
	But the bigger answer to your question is: why is America different?
	Because America's Christians are different.
	And most Jews don't know this, and most Christians don't know this.
	That's the sad part.
	America's Christians have been different since before 1776.
	But the biggest difference between America's Christians, and this is a very interesting thing, especially, well, not especially.
	I was going to say especially for Catholics, but it's really just as much for Protestants.
	But the great difference is that America's Christians were Judeo-Christians.
	Self-consciously, Judeo-Christian.
	Nobody, yes, Margaret Thatcher said Judeo-Christian civilization, because she really believed in it, but she was an outlier in Europe.
	Nobody said that Germany was Judeo-Christian.
	And I'm talking before the Holocaust.
	Nobody said France was Judeo-Christian.
	America is Judeo-Christian because the Christians who founded it were the most Judeo-based Christians who ever existed.
	This was to be the second chosen people, Americans, not the first.
	The first are the Jews.
	We're second.
	This was the opposite of replacement theology, which is powerful in Protestantism and was powerful in Catholicism, where you read Israel as the church.
	They didn't read Israel as the church, the American Christians.
	They read Israel as Israel.
	And the only verse on the Liberty Bell is from the Torah.
	Jews don't know that, and Christians don't know that.
	But the Christians who founded America, you couldn't get a BA in almost any American university till 1800 if you didn't study Hebrew.
	This is a Judeo-Christian country because these were Judeo-Christian founders.
	In fact, James Madison remained at Princeton.
	He became our first graduate student.
	He remained at Princeton even after completing his undergraduate degree to do what?
	To study Hebrew with John Witherspoon, the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence.
	Lincoln, of course, who venerated the founders, referred to the United States as an almost chosen people.
	And how's this for depression-inducing?
	American Jews are trying to secularize the one Judeo-Christian country because I am a member of a largely stupid people.
	Chosen, but stupid.
	I'm sorry, I could cry saying this.
	There's no joy.
	God gave Jews brains.
	There's no question Jews have brains.
	You can't deny it.
	It's absurd to deny it.
	But it doesn't mean Jews have any wisdom.
	The difference between brilliant and wise is like the difference between night and day.
	They have nothing to do with one another.
	Taxi drivers have more wisdom than most professors.
	Not all, obviously.
	Someone who has become my very dear friend over the past several years, someone with whom I've worked and collaborated, is a Jew who both lives his Judaism and who speaks to the world.
Orthodox Judaism's Paradox 00:10:18
	It's Chief Rabbi Emeritus Jonathan Sachs of Britain.
	Have you?
	Yes, we were both scholars in residence for Chabad in Canada.
	Two or three Passovers ago, my wife and son were there.
	We had a great time, and we obviously enjoyed each other's presence.
	I'm a bit more outspoken in my feeling that leftism is the most dynamic religion in the world of the last hundred years and needs to be fought and crushed or we are doomed.
	He wouldn't say that.
	He probably believes it, but I don't think he would say it.
	Is his brand of Orthodox Judaism idiosyncratic, or is this what we can expect from modern Orthodox Judaism today?
	Well, he observes, like other modern Orthodox Jews, there's nothing idiosyncratic about his Americans have a big health care problem.
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	Talk about his willingness to engage the larger.
	Yes, that is that that is more idiosyncratic.
	I grew up Orthodox.
	I went to yeshiva till I was 18.
	I stopped being Orthodox shortly after my bar mitzvah, but I remained religious.
	I am one of the four or five Jews on earth who was not Orthodox and believes the Torah is from God.
	I'm idiosyncratic, not Rabbi Sachs, but he is idiosyncratic in engaging the world.
	By and large, Orthodoxy has been cloistered.
	That cloistered element was what troubled me the most.
	So you don't perceive it changing in the younger generation.
	During Q, is there going to be QA?
	Yeah.
	I will ask, actually, if I may, and put him on the spot, my son, who is, unlike me, he is Orthodox and he's here.
	I'll ask him to comment if his generation is.
	I know he is profoundly engaged and utterly comfortable with the non-Jewish larger world.
	He'll have to answer for his peers.
	I think they're more comfortable whether engaged and think that we have something to say to them.
	I don't know if that's changed much.
	I think in that regard, I do think Rabbi Sachs is idiosyncratic.
	There is so much wisdom in the tradition that someone like Rabbi Sachs can bring to bear, not just for his fellow Jews, but for the broader community, Christians and others, that it would be a shame if he's simply idiosyncratic and doesn't represent an opening of Orthodox Judaism to the Of course.
	Yes, you're right.
	It is a shame.
	Listen, when I don't know how many of you know about Chabad, but it is this ultra-Orthodox group.
	They open houses all over America in the world.
	There's one here, a wonderful one here on the campus.
	I had the privilege of speaking to some of the Jewish students at the Chabad house here last night.
	They are regarded with great suspicion by other ultra-Orthodox Jews for moving to places where there's no real religious Jewish community.
	What's wrong with you?
	You're going to go to a place like Juneau, Alaska, and you're going to open up a religious house there when you can't even barely find a quorum for a Sabbath minion, a Sabbath service.
	So they don't think that way.
	The ultra-Orthodox who work in the diamond industry charter a bus to go home back to Burrough Park or to Muncie or Square Town so that they don't have to engage the larger world and they could study the Psalms in the bus and not have to sit near women.
	So it's a cloistered world.
	I have a lot of respect for a lot of these people.
	They are keeping the religion alive in many ways, but I don't think that argument that group X keeps something alive doesn't persuade me as much as it does others.
	The Orthodox, by the way, who are the most open-minded of the Jews.
	Reform Jews would never have me at their convention speak on why I am not liberal.
	But Orthodox Jews have me at their convention speak on why I'm not Orthodox, which is astonishing.
	Why are you not Orthodox?
	My son could explain to you, even to his great chagrin, why am I not in a nutshell?
	I believe that the oral law, Judaism consists of written law, the Torah law, and oral law, which you'll find in the Mishnah, which is part of the Talmud.
	I believe that the reason it was kept oral was so that it changes.
	I can give you 20 examples of laws that you would say I can't believe people still observe.
	I have great respect for people who observe it.
	They're my ideological allies as it happens.
	That's where they are.
	They understand the dangers of secularism.
	But the practices, I'm too rational.
	It's a blessing and a curse to be rational.
	So you don't believe those particular laws are binding?
	Right, that's exactly right.
	I don't believe they're binding.
	I'll give you one example that none of you, if you're Christian or if you're not Jewish, know of.
	The Torah says that you shall observe the Passover for seven days.
	Seven days you shall eat matzah and not eat any leavened food.
	I observe that.
	I observe most Torah laws.
	The Torah laws I don't observe.
	It's because I'm lazy, not because I don't believe they should be observed.
	I'm a sinner, but I believe they should be observed.
	But I observe, of course, I observe that.
	By the way, I don't, and it says on the first and last day you shall do no work.
	And indeed, I take off from work.
	I don't broadcast.
	I don't do anything.
	I vegetate and have a great time with friends, family, or just my wife.
	And it's a wonderful thing.
	But what did the Orthodox do?
	The Orthodox have added a day, an eighth day, outside of Israel.
	In Israel, the Orthodox observe seven days, as the Torah says.
	Outside of Israel, they've added a day.
	Why did they add a day?
	Because they argued in the beginning, we really don't know which day is the holiday, so we'll add a day.
	But I can give you 20 reasons why that doesn't make any sense.
	And why do you keep it now that we do know exactly when it is?
	And there's no double day for Yom Kippur.
	So how did they know they were fasting on the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur?
	All I'm saying is this should have changed.
	It doesn't make sense today.
	And I'm told by Orthodox Jews that I raise this too, because this is my favorite one to raise when Orthodox Jews who really like me, because I'm one of the only voices out there in the public fighting for the Torah.
	So they know, you know, Prager, he's our idiosyncratic, half-crazed, but good guy.
	They know I'm a good guy, but Dennis, why aren't you from, why aren't you Orthodox?
	Like, so you want to, I'll give you a, I'll give you a two-word answer.
	Yom Tosheni.
	Adding an extra day on the holidays.
	See, here's the killer.
	God wants us to observe seven days for Passover because Passover is a recreation of the world.
	Seven is important.
	When they add an eighth day, it kills the Torah's meaning.
	So it's not that I'm lazy and don't want to do an eighth day.
	It's that I think they're wrong.
	It's not comfort, it's ideological opposition.
	And by the way, a very prominent Orthodox Jews, very young, and I won't say his name because I don't think that he'd want this known, but I'll ask him if I can.
	He said, Dennis, and he's very strict in observance.
	We went out for lunch and all he had was salad he wouldn't eat off in a hot food off a non-kosher dish.
Christianity Infiltration 00:08:11
	And I said, Dennis, I agree with you in everything you say about Orthodoxy.
	I'm Orthodox because I think it's the only way we're going to keep Judaism alive.
	Let's turn to my side of the street and talk about Christianity a little bit.
	A very large percentage of your audience is Christian, not just in the kind of cultural sense, but devout Protestants, Catholics, others.
	What is your read now, your impression of the state, the impression of a sympathetic outsider of the state of Christianity today, beginning in the United States and then perhaps more broadly?
	How do you perceive the situation for Christianity right now in our culture?
	I'm worried about it, actually.
	I don't say this on the air.
	I will.
	It's not something I wouldn't.
	I just haven't yet.
	I'm worried about the saving grace in America, and I know that there are terrific Catholics.
	I mean, you're one of them.
	I mean, I know that.
	I work with them.
	I adore them.
	But the real, as a movement, evangelical Christians in America are going to either save the United States or if they weaken, I don't know, may Ainya Vo Ezri, where our salvation will come from.
	And I don't mean salvation in the eschatological sense.
	I mean it right now.
	How are we going to be saved?
	It's either evangelical Christians or, I think, redoomed.
	And I see that I said something, and I don't know.
	I don't want to be too political, but this isn't even meant politically.
	It's meant morally and in every other way.
	The dominant religion of the world, the most dynamic religion of the world of the last hundred years is leftism.
	Not Christianity, not Islam, and obviously not Judaism.
	So this is infiltrating, to the best of my knowledge, it's infiltrating Catholicism.
	It's already infiltrated that.
	I mean, on social, outside of gay marriage or same-sex marriage, as it should properly be called, and abortion and contraception, the bishops are overwhelmingly liberal in their economic views, for example.
	There's a hostility to capitalism that goes from Rome to Baltimore.
	The current Pope is a man of Latin America.
	Latin America is, you know, its theology is Christian, but its ideology is leftism.
	He's going to put out an encyclical on global warming.
	Christian communities are being annihilated, and the great issue for the Pope this year, the Pope, is global warming, is climate change.
	People understand the gravity of that decision.
	It breaks my heart.
	And then the same thing, or it's happening more slowly, but it's happening among evangelicals.
	Replacement theology, and the Jews are always the litmus test.
	It just works out that way.
	Watch how a group looks at the Jews or Israel, and you could pretty well know where, when, or whether their moral compass is broken.
	And a replacement theology or displacement theology is having its resurrection, if you will.
	I hate to use the term, among evangelicals.
	Once environmentalism becomes...
	Well, good evening and welcome...
	Thank you.
	I know we have lost it.
	Frankly, on my list of worries for humanity, that the world will be deluged in 50 years is so low on my list.
	We can handle global warming, okay, if it happens.
	I'm not denying it's happening.
	It doesn't bother me.
	Bothers me is evil now.
	I am infinitely more worried about Israel having nuclear weapons dropped on it than I am about oceans rising 50 years from now at seacoats.
	As I have said often, you have a choice on your tombstone.
	Here lies so-and-so, he fought evil.
	Here lies so-and-so, he fought carbon emissions.
	You choose which tombstone you would like to have.
	I want the former.
	Now, it has to be said, though, that those Christian churches, Protestant or Catholic, that are growing and flourishing are the more conservative and morally demanding ones.
	Those that have gone the more liberal route, perhaps in order to be more inclusive, have found fewer people want to actually be included, fewer people want to come.
	Do you not take that as a good sign?
	While at the same time recognizing that secularism has made its significant inroads into both Catholic and Protestant traditions, it is a good sign, and it makes sense.
	Why?
	If my primary concerns are same-sex marriage, global warming, increasing the size of government, a single-payer system for health care, why do I need to go to church or shul?
	What's what Jews call synagogue?
	I can go to the local Democratic Party, and that's where I'll do it.
	I don't need Judaism or Christianity, but if you want to believe that God spoke, and by the way, I am convinced that is the defining issue.
	It's not whether people believe in God or not.
	It's whether people believe in a divine text or not.
	That's the division in America.
	A lot of people who are ideologically opposed to believe in God.
	It means nothing to me.
	I want to know where, what, did God ever speak?
	And if so, where is it written?
	And the people who believe in a divine text, Jew or Christian, they have different views on almost everything than the people who believe that it's all man-made.
	So that's the reason that those churches are growing.
	What do you get if you go to, with all respect, there are wonderful people in the Presbyterian Church USA, which passed its resolution against Israel.
	And which, by the way, all the Presbyterians who call my show are disgusted with.
	And many of them are leaving the Presbyterian Church, which already has so many people leaving.
	I think I'll tell you, it's funny for an outsider to say, but in America, we're so familiar and comfortable with each other, we can talk like this.
	And so I'll tell you, the day that it won't happen, but not in my lifetime.
	But if a large movement of cardinals started supporting ordaining women as priests, I think you could pretty much count that time as the beginning of the demise of the Catholic Church.
	You have to stand for something and not ask, what will the New York Times editorial page think of me?
Curveball to Christians 00:15:21
	Here's a rule for all politicians that I, on my side, if the New York Times editorial page writes positively about you, it is a very bad sign.
	I think it was actually my colleague here at Princeton in our sociology department, Robert Lethnow, who first pointed out, at least in my hearing, that there does seem to be a rather dramatic change in American culture and politics pertaining to religion in the past 50 years.
	And that is that divisions between the different faiths, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, used to have at least sometimes some political salience that people identified in a politically salient way with their tradition and with people within the tradition.
	But today, and really for the past 40 or 50 years, there seems to be a division across the traditions where the more traditional Catholics, more traditional Protestants, more traditional Jews feel a kinship with each other and are politically allied with each other.
	And of course, the more liberal Protestants, more liberal Catholics, more liberal Jews feel a kinship with each other and a kind of animosity toward the people on the other side of the spectrum.
	That's a major change, if he's right.
	Huge, huge.
	It's a major change in history.
	You do not have a Jewish-Christian divide.
	You have a conservative-liberal divide.
	To use just parlance, that will work.
	But absolutely.
	I remember this was the great revelation to me being the moderator of this show.
	This was the greatest gift from God.
	I got to do this for 10 years, talk to representatives of every faith on earth except Jehovah's Witness.
	They were the only ones who didn't come.
	I had everybody.
	I had Jews for Jesus.
	I had Buddhists.
	I had Muslims.
	I had everybody.
	And I really learned.
	And I realized by about year four, and I was in my 30s, this was all revelatory to me.
	I went to yeshiva.
	I thought Jews and Christians were very different.
	And I realized, hey, wait a minute, I keep siding with the Christian who is traditional and against the rabbi who isn't.
	And so it became so personal.
	I realized I have much more in common with this priest or this minister than I do with this rabbi.
	Sometimes, of course, I have more in common with the rabbi, but it all depended on that.
	That is the division today, as you just enunciated it.
	Ready for a curveball?
	I love curveballs.
	There's a curveball.
	Christians have to have a theology of Judaism.
	There's no way around it.
	Christians need some account of the Jewish faith.
	Now, one account historically, as you pointed out, that has been powerful in both the Protestant and Catholic traditions, although now formally and officially and decisively repudiated by Catholicism, is the idea of replacement theology.
	Protestants are still fighting about it, but it's been repudiated by Catholicism, and most recently that repudiation was reaffirmed by Pope Francis in his encyclical on the joy of the gospel.
	Now, by replacement theology, we mean the idea that once Christ comes, the covenant between God and the Jewish people is of no significance any longer.
	It's over.
	The church completely replaces Judaism.
	It's the new Israel in a sense that renders Judaism itself as sort of no longer relevant.
	The anti-replacement theological position, the position of Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and now again Pope Francis, is that the covenant between God and the Jewish people is unbroken and indeed unbreakable.
	All right, so there's that.
	But Christians have to have a theology of Judaism.
	Whether it's replacement theology or something else, there's no way around it.
	Do Jews have to have a theology of Christianity, a theological understanding of Christianity?
	And whether they have to or not, do you have one?
	How do you theologically, if you think about it at all, account for the Christian witness that has, as you pointed out, brought the Torah to the world?
	How should a Jew think of Christianity theologically?
	Right.
	I think about this a lot.
	I thought I was going to catch you by surprise.
	No, this was actually a high fastball.
	The truth is, though, I'm not saying this in the slightest as to make me look good.
	Most Jews wouldn't have an answer because to answer part one, they don't need to have an answer.
	Judaism exists, and it pre-exists Christianity, and it continues to exist, and the covenant continues to exist.
	So a Jew doesn't need for his theology, he doesn't need a theology of Christianity.
	But if you care about, if you believe we have a mission to bring the world to the God of the Ten Commandments, the God of the Torah, then you better damn well have a theology of Christianity.
	And I do.
	My theology of Christianity is that it is, or best can be, because sometimes it hasn't been.
	It can be and often is a divine way of bringing humanity to the God of the Torah.
	That's how I, as a Jew, regard Christianity.
	I get calls, and some of you may have heard this who listened to my show.
	I will get a call.
	That is, you know, is really funny, but I just want you to know, and I want to thank you for this for a long time.
	I finally got through.
	I'm back at my Catholic church, or I'm back at my Baptist church because of you.
	Listening to you make the case for God and religion here.
	You convinced me, man.
	But, you know, my friends will say to me, hey, Harry, how come you're back at church?
	And I tell them, well, a Jew sent me.
	And he cracks himself up when he says it.
	You know, and I don't crack up, but I'm the happiest guy in the world.
	And then Christians ask me, How could you be happy?
	Because they know I'm not faking it.
	For a Christian, this is the curveball to Christians.
	And I know why it's a curveball.
	Dennis, you sound genuinely happy when somebody goes back to church.
	Don't you believe in religious truth?
	This is really the bottom line for Christians in their Christians have liked me a lot, or at least conservative Christians.
	And I love them.
	I adore them.
	Okay, so it's a mutual love that we have.
	But there are still puzzles.
	This is one of them.
	If a Christian were responsible for sending somebody to a synagogue, I don't know if they would be as happy.
	They wouldn't cry, but they wouldn't be as happy as I am that this guy went back to his church.
	Because for us Jews, of course I believe Judaism is true.
	But that doesn't mean that everything you believe isn't.
	Judaism doesn't judge others by theology.
	It judges others by behavior.
	If you produce God-fearing, and I mean by God, the God of Genesis, the God of the Exodus, the God of the Ten Commandments, the God of the Torah, if you produce Torah God-fearing citizens, you're true.
	That's it.
	That's for me.
	That's true.
	And where Jews fail to produce that, that's false.
	And that's pretty good Jewish stuff.
	There's no rabbi who's ever, no ultra-Orthodox rabbi, and they know me pretty well, who's ever said they disagree with me on my objections to Orthodoxy, but they don't disagree with me on my joy that a Christian went back to church.
	I can tell you from my own experience, and I've had many Jewish students from secular backgrounds tell me that they've rediscovered their Jewish faith.
	We're nodding our heads as a result of working with me, and I feel the same joy.
	I feel the same joy.
	So I'll throw you a curveball.
	Don't you believe in the truth of Christianity?
	Oh, I do.
	Yeah.
	So why wouldn't you be happier if he went to church?
	Because God's covenant with the Jewish people is unbroken and unbreakable.
	Now, if he decides to go to church, that too, I believe there's even a fuller realization of truth in that.
	And that's implicit in, of course, the Christian declaration.
	And I can live with that.
	Jews ask me all the time, Dennis, the Jews on the left go crazy from me.
	They go crazy.
	That's the reason I write for the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles because it's edited and read by liberal Jews.
	So the joy I get publishing in that journal, I'm going to live till 120 just on that joy.
	I don't know if I should be smiling because I'm supposed to be opposed to torture.
	It's a benign torture.
	I happen to think it should be pleasurable.
	It's self-inflicted torture.
	But I just want to tell you, they say to me, Dennis, how could you love these Christians so much?
	You're being, what's wrong with you?
	They think you're going to hell.
	They think all Christians think I'm going to hell.
	By the way, many do.
	Many of the people who most love me really worry for my soul.
	And by the way, not by the way, and so let me respond what I feel and how I regard that.
	I say to these Jews, I say, which, by the way, I have found in 33 years of radio is about as potent a response as one can have.
	I will then say, so what?
	And then my favorite moments as a radio talk show host is when there is silence on the line because it is the most pregnant silence you could have.
	And they don't have an answer.
	So yes, okay, so they think that if I don't accept Christ, I cannot be saved.
	So what?
	And then while they're silence, I say, so let me explain.
	I don't judge people by their theology.
	And Judaism taught me not to judge people by their theology, but God judges people by their behavior.
	That's why we believe that you do use works to get into heaven.
	So I assume that as a Jew, you believe works are what God cares about, not theology.
	So why are you angry at these people?
	These are the Jews' best friends in the world today.
	At the very final sentence, as I recall, of Pope John Paul's encyclical Veritatis Splendor on the splendor of truth is that it is on the path of the moral life that salvation is available even to those who have not received the gospel.
	It's a very similar view.
	Whose was this?
	John Paul II, Veritatus Splendor, the splendor of truth.
	Well, it would have been, look, I'm thrilled, but between us, I'm not saying, I'm not complaining.
	Well, I am.
	I wish a similar bull or encyclical had been issued in the 1500s or 1300s.
	Yeah, we all do.
	Yeah, we all do.
	What do you think the key differences were that were made by Judaism's gift, if I can call it that, of monotheism to the world, of ethical monotheism to the world?
	What difference did it make that ethical monotheism was introduced to the world, ethically and politically?
	Well, for one thing, it said there is one God for everyone.
	Judaism introduced religious intolerance.
	Just want to make that clear.
	Pagans were far more religiously tolerant than the Jews.
	You had your gods for your city.
	That's right.
	You have your gods.
	We have our gods.
	The New York Times would have flourished.
	They would have loved that.
	That's great.
	The Mesopotamians have theirs.
	The Egyptians have theirs.
	They don't bug us.
	We don't bug them.
	They did bug each other.
	Well, but not by, yes, not in theologically.
	But then the Jews come and say, Excuse me, all your gods are false.
	Hello.
	Everything you worship is drivel.
	And then we wonder why we're hated.
	Jews did not write how to win friends and influence people.
	Well, we did write how to influence people, but not how to win friends.
	So that's the first thing.
	There's a God for everyone.
	Therefore, there's one morality.
	One God is one morality.
	That's ethical monotheism.
	And all of humanity will be judged by the same standard.
	Mesopotamians and Jews and Mesoamericans, you're all going to be judged by this.
	This was the Great Revolution.
	And then the Ten Commandments, I mean, there are many great revolutions to it.
	Judaism introduced the idea of progress in history.
	History isn't a cycle, that you just return to doing what you did, like the American Indian, basically repeated what was done before, and what was done before, and what was done before.
	Life is not a circle, life is a forward line.
	So this was Henry Bamford Parks taught me this in his book on the medieval world.
	You're not supposed to say it.
	It's politically incorrect to say it.
	But it seems to me that a very important contribution of Jewish ethical monotheism was to introduce a rigorous and high and demanding standard of sexual morality and the concept of the integrity and Americans have a big health care problem.
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Marital Bond Reconsidered 00:01:42
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	...of the marital bond and to apply it to men as well as to women.
	Do you agree with that?
	Oh, I would agree with that.
	That's why do not commit adulteries in the Ten Commandments, although to be intellectually honest, it originally was understood, as it became understood more fully.
	It was originally only with regard to married women.
	So a single man could commit adultery, whereas a single woman couldn't.
	But similarly, a married man with a single woman was not necessary because they believed that because polygamy was possible.
	But essentially, that is exactly right.
	Having said that, I will say that one of the handful of differences, because I always talk about Judeo-Christian values because they exist.
	That's what they are.
Lust and Laughter 00:03:43
	But are there any areas, even within the values, forgetting theology, that there is a Jewish-Christian difference?
	And I could really find only really two.
	You'll find this interesting.
	Divorce, I'm assuming, isn't it?
	Correct.
	Divorce is one.
	What's the other?
	Lust.
	Lust?
	Yes.
	Who's for it and who's against it?
	Take a guess.
	I got it.
	I got it.
	So my all-time favorite anecdote from 10 years of being the moderator of that show, I picked the subject every week for the rabbi, priest, and minister.
	As I said, they were different ones each week.
	One week, I decide, I said, okay, I'm going to, clergy, I would meet them five minutes before the show.
	Clergy, tonight's topic is what is your religion's attitude towards lust?
	Okay, now, as it happens, it was not common, but the rabbi that night was an ultra-Orthodox, bearded East European rabbi, classic stereotypical East European rabbi with a black hat or at least black yamulka and a Yiddish accent, East European accent.
	Now, every night I would begin, because of demography, I'd begin the Protestant to the Catholic to the Jew, and that's what I did that night.
	So, okay, your attitude.
	So, of course, they all spoke beautifully.
	The Protestant spoke, quoting Matthew, of course, whoever lusts for another woman has committed adultery in his heart, and how important it is to have pure thoughts and so on.
	The Catholic said essentially the same thing in other beautiful words.
	And then it was turned for the rabbi.
	And I had no idea what he would say, given he was ultra-Orthodox.
	And I go, Rabbi, what is your and Judaism's position on lust?
	It's a little silence.
	And then he goes, Dennis, lost, shmust.
	All right.
	laughter laughter Thank you.
	I was never so proud to be a Jew.
	Now, which is the missionary religion?
	It sounds like you've got a message that would sell better than this.
	The truth is, Judaism is preoccupied with the inviolability of marriage, just as you described, and introduced it, in fact.
	And indeed, introduced on the most difficult of issues of our time, introduced the idea that men should confine their sexual behavior to women.
	Because in all societies in the Middle East and around the world, men had women for babies and men for sex.
	This is unknown today.
	We think it's only Greece.
	It was everywhere, everywhere.
	Judaism, the Torah introduced marital sexual joy.
	Your wife is not just to make a baby.
	Your wife is for sexual intercourse as a joy, as a part of life.
	Forget boys.
	No more boys, Jewish men, no more.
	That was big.
	That was big.
	It's Genesis 2, for the man shall leave his mother and home and cleave unto his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.
	Yes.
	By the way, the part of leaving your parents' home, that's really revolutionary today.
The Coming Apocalypse 00:03:34
	Forget cleaving to his wife.
	Just get him the hell out of his house is hard.
	You never know the relevance of a biblical passage.
	You and I have both over many years, although neither of us is a Protestant, have worked very closely and developed strong, powerful friendships with many evangelical Protestants and worked with them on cultural and political issues.
	Never, I must say, in my time in working with and being friends with evangelicals, have I ever had an evangelical tell me that his strong support for the state of Israel, for the right of Israel to exist or for the Jewish people, is because he supposes that the flourishing of Israel is necessary to hasten the coming of the Messiah.
	And yet, when I talk to my liberal colleagues, their explanation of strong evangelical Christian support for Israel in this country is that these evangelicals allegedly believe that, well, that's necessary in their theology for the coming of the Messiah.
	What do you hear from your evangelical friends about this?
	What you just said is so important.
	And so let me say what I am about to say: do not hold the Madison Society responsible.
	Do not hold Professor George responsible.
	It won't work, Dennis.
	I'm going to get it anyway.
	So go ahead.
	I'm used to it.
	The world of the left is built on falsehoods, which are repeated so often that they actually believe what they say.
	There is no better example than that.
	They say, Jews and non-Jews on the left, the only reason evangelicals support Israel is because they believe that the Jews have to gather in Israel.
	This will bring the second coming and the apocalypse.
	And that's what they're rooting for.
	I've never met an evangelical like you.
	We are both, you as a Catholic, I as a Jew have worked with that.
	We've never met one.
	If you wake them up at 3 a.m., they will not say that.
	If you inject them with truth serum, they will not say that.
	And people like Pastor John Hagee, the head of the largest Christian group in America, Christians United for Israel, has said over and over and over, there's nothing a Christian can do to hasten the second coming.
	So it's over.
	Don't think that way.
	And you get lies and lies built on lies.
	Do you know what I do when a Jew, a Jew tells me, you know, Dennis, please.
	And they write it in newspapers like it's truths, but I hear it on the air or speeches that I give.
	Come on, Dennis.
	You know that Christian theology is that Jews have to go to Israel, then the apocalypse, and this.
	So I said, boy, you really sound like you know your Christian theology.
	Just out of curiosity, can you name the four gospels?
	Never.
	Never.
	But this they know.
	All of a sudden, they're real mavens on Christian theology.
Wisdom Disaster 00:04:28
	They can't tell you the four gospels.
	It's a force.
	So what you have hit on is as important about the left as it is about evangelicals.
	Let me ask you, Dennis, about education.
	It's a subject that you've talked about a lot on your radio show.
	Can you give us your assessment of the state of education, both at the K-12 level and in the universities, especially as it pertains to our civic life?
	You really want me to?
	I do, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, I'll be very, I'll be understated.
	It's a disaster.
	It's a moral disaster, and it's a wisdom disaster.
	There's no wisdom taught.
	And let me tell you the wisdom one.
	I think you'll really like this story.
	When I was at Columbia doing my graduate work, I was going crazy.
	I really was.
	I felt that I was in the twilight zone.
	It was not a happy period for me.
	It was a happy period outside of that, but that was a big part of my life.
	I shared nothing with my professors or my fellow students overwhelmingly.
	And I was taught what I understood to be nonsense.
	Men and women are basically the same.
	You give boys teacups and you give girls trucks and then they'll be happy.
	I mean, I knew this is nonsense.
	Of course, male and female are intrinsically different.
	I was taught that the United States was, this was my field.
	I was at the Russian Institute under Brzezinski.
	And I was taught that the U.S. and the Soviet Union were equally responsible for the Cold War.
	The mass murdering Stalin and Harry Truman were equally responsible for the Cold War.
	I'm in a sick place.
	So I kept asking, why am I learning nonsense?
	Why do they believe, why does this professor, he was a good guy, by the way, believe in Marxism.
	The guy believes that?
	He believes in these things.
	And so one day I was walking around Columbia, and on 116th and Broadway, they have statues on the top of the buildings there, you know, of great thinkers, I think it is.
	I was looking there, and that's irrelevant to the point.
	I'm just telling you the situation.
	And all of a sudden, a verse from yeshiva from kindergarten in first grade and second grade came to my mind in the morning prayers, which were all done in Hebrew.
	And of course, it was all wrote then.
	It didn't have any meaning.
	But one of them was, we would say, Reishid Chochma, Yirat Adonai.
	And then I realized, oh my God, that's the answer.
	Wisdom begins with fear of God.
	There's no God at Columbia.
	There's no wisdom at Columbia.
	That was one of the great revelatory moments of my life.
	No God, no wisdom.
	There are ethical people with no God, but there's no wisdom in the secular world.
	None.
	There are individually wise, secular people who could give you great advice on child rearing.
	And I have no doubt I would go to a secular therapist who is brilliant.
	I understand that.
	But there's no wisdom in the secular world.
	How could there be wisdom in a world that doesn't believe there's purpose to it?
	That doesn't believe there's any transcendent source or meaning.
	They have knowledge but no wisdom.
	So all of education today is knowledge without wisdom.
	And increasingly it's not even knowledge.
	Now we have gone, that was part A, now part B. It's indoctrination, not education.
	I wrote an essay.
	I want to make it into a little book.
	It's 27 things your child will learn at university.
	Like America, you know, America is essentially the history of a country of slavery and bigotry and imperialism.
	Are they going to learn that thanks to American troops, all the good, you know who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize on earth?
	The American military.
	The American military has been the greatest force for peace on the planet.
Why Goldwater Was Right 00:05:09
	Who hears that at a university?
	Who hears that at high school now?
	Who hears that in elementary school now?
	So when parents tell me I want to take my kid out and give them, what is it called again?
	Homeschooling, you're right.
	That's why I founded Prager University.
	We give wisdom.
	You're going to be one of the wisdom givers.
	We're honored to know that.
	I'm honored to announce that.
	You get five minutes of my wisdom.
	Yes, you're damn right.
	Five minutes from you beats 50 hours from the average guy.
	What's your critique of the modern conservative movement?
	When we look back, we see that the conservative movement as a movement wasn't always on the right side of everything.
	Barry Goldwater opposed the mid-1960s Civil Rights Acts.
	Now, not because he was a racist.
	I don't think anybody believes that Barry Goldwater was a family.
	Barry Goldwater founded the NAACP in Arizona.
	He did, and his family's department store integrated itself without the coercive force of law.
	And yet, the conservative movement as a movement did not distinguish itself.
	Liberals distinguish themselves on civil rights.
	People like Hubert Humphrey distinguish themselves on civil rights.
	Now, how things have gone from there, I'll grant you, has not been so rosy.
	And many of the people who were civil rights liberals ended up in the conservative movement.
	Richard John Newhouse, Mary Ann Glendon, Leon and Amy Cass, lots of contemporary conservative leaders and intellectuals were liberal civil rights activists.
	And they believe that the liberal movement then went down the wrong direction.
	They don't repudiate what they stood for in civil rights, but they think that that is now what conservatism stands for, no longer what liberalism stands for.
	But what's your own critique, if you have one, of the conservative movement?
	Where are we as conservatives going wrong?
	Well, let me first react to that first part, because I've learned a lot more since in the last few years.
	Just for the record, considerably more Republicans voted for civil rights legislation than Democrats.
	Oh, yes, no question.
	But that wasn't liberal versus conservative.
	The Republican record was better than the Democrats.
	I don't believe that 5% of those getting a BA in American history at this university know that.
	I'm sure you're right.
	Okay, it's an important little sidebar.
	Secondly, I have come to realize that Goldwater was probably right.
	And I never thought that.
	This is brand new in my life.
	It's hard to say because it makes me sound like I'm a bigot because that's the way the left dismisses all alternative views on these matters.
	The road that legislation for civil rights has taken is so totalitarian.
	The road from that legislation to saying that you will go to jail or be fined out of business unless you are a photographer at a same-sex wedding, irrespective of your religious views, is a direct line.
	Goldwater predicted it.
	Goldwater was pro-black.
	He founded the NAACP, as I noted, and you know, in Arizona.
	That's pretty pro-integration and pro-black.
	We would have been in the same space today.
	It would have taken a little longer, but we would have been in the same place because Americans were having contempt for racism.
	Ultimately, the American people properly and correctly had contempt for this evil and idiotic doctrine that race determines anything.
	The price we have paid for passing that legislation and opening this Pandora's box of depriving people of liberty, I have said on the air, and I will say tonight, I am a Jew, and I will fight for your liberty not to allow me into your club because you're an anti-Semitic bastard.
	I want liberty for anti-Semitic bastards in America because I treasure liberty more than I treasure my right to be in your country club.
	The reason I don't agree with you about the Civil Rights Act is that the argument reminds me very much, and it's parallel to the argument that some traditionalist conservatives of a kind of old Europe thrown and altar cast of mind make,
	that say the seeds of 1968 were planted in 1776, that you can't give people basic freedoms, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of association, without so eroding the foundations of moral order that you end up with the sex and drug revolution of the 1960s.
Logic of 1965 00:06:39
	And that just seems to me to be wrong.
	I think our error was not in 1776, and I don't think it was in 1965.
	It was in permitting 1965 to be so badly abused, not defending or not defending well the principles of 1965, that enabled people who wanted a genuine revolution and not simply a reform, a reform to make good on the promise of the Declaration for black Americans.
	It enabled them to achieve a cultural revolution that they were not entitled to and was certainly not in the logic of 1965 any more than 1968 was in the logic of 1776.
	I have another parallel from the Catholic world.
	Lots of people think that opting for the principles of the Second Vatican Council, again, coincidentally in 1965, opened the door for all the chaos and abuse that has happened within the Catholic Church since then, you know, all the way to liturgical abuses like clown masses.
	If you don't know about clown masses, you're lucky and I won't tell you.
	This is the priest dressing up like a clown, craziness like that, the belief that you can throw over the whole tradition of moral teaching of the Catholic Church because, gee, anything's up for grabs.
	If we can change the mass from Latin to the vernacular, that means we can change moral teaching from no fornication to fornication.
	I think, again, if you go back and if you look at the documents, you see the failure not in the logic of the documents themselves, which are fine and good and excellent and needed, but it's in the failure to defend the authentic meaning and logic of the documents against those who would seize the documents as a pretext for advancing an agenda that's entirely alien to Catholicism.
	Over to you.
	Well, I just have to ask you, so now that you know what anti-discrimination legislation has led to, entirely with 2020 hindsight, do you think we are better off for all the anti-discrimination legislation?
	Is America a more moral, just say moral, is it A, freer, and B, is it more moral?
	I don't think that that's a legitimate question because history is not determined.
	It's contingent.
	The choices and actions of ourselves, the deliberations, judgments, choices and actions of ourselves as human beings shape it.
	It was not necessary.
	It was not in the cards.
	It was not in the logic of 1965 that you would get the abuses that I grant you are all over the place today.
	We could have done something very different with the principles of the 1964 and 65 Acts.
	And I fault those on our side, frankly, for failing to stand up for those true principles and letting them be abused and used as pretext for what we've been factoring.
	That may well be, but it's very hard, frankly, it is very hard to make the case.
	Oh, wait a minute.
	You're against bigotry when it comes to blacks, but not against bigotry when it comes to women.
	So you answer that.
	You are on the stand.
	Yeah, and that's the question.
	You're okay with bigotry against women, but not blacks.
	Is that correct?
	That is not correct.
	Of course, the whole question is.
	Oh, so you are for legislation.
	What constitutes bigotry?
	That's the whole question.
	Does having men's and women's restrooms separate but equal constitute bigotry like the separate but allegedly equal black and white bathrooms?
	I'm prepared to defend the difference between racial and sexual differences, which mean a lot.
	I'm 100% with you on that.
	But I will ask, so let me ask you: so can an employer say, you know, ma'am, you're really qualified and stuff, but frankly, I really want a guy because I feel better with guys working here.
	Or my wife is jealous if I have a cute secretary and I really want a man.
	Are you okay with him doing that?
	Well, usually not okay with them doing it.
	There may be special circumstances in which that's reasonable.
	Wait, so then you would like legislation to protect women from bigotry?
	We have legislation.
	I know that.
	So, all right.
	So, wait, so now, okay, that's separate, but there are times when there is bigotry.
	You acknowledge that.
	Restrooms are not one of them.
	Fine.
	Yeah, sure.
	So now, so you're okay with laws of anti-discrimination against blacks, laws of anti-discrimination against women, presumably Jews.
	What about gays?
	Sure.
	It depends on what you mean by gays.
	Do you mean an orientation in the sense of inward desires, or do you mean the practice of forms of sexuality that are condemned by the great traditions of morality?
	Well, no, you won't even know what the internal is.
	So obviously, some external.
	I'm closing up my hotel because there's a gay pride parade here, and my rooms are going to be filled with gays, and I don't want to want them in the rooms.
	By the way, I think that person is wrong.
	I want to make that clear.
	I am against discrimination against gays.
	I am for protecting people's liberty, however.
	So, look, you admit, as I do, there's a liberty, there is a conflict of goods, if you will.
	I now believe that liberty has lost so bad that I am prepared to allow the bad of discrimination because the bad of deprivation of liberty is now so much greater.
	I am not prepared to let the left dictate the meaning of bigotry such that all the distinctions and norms of the great traditions, secular and religious, East and West, can be characterized and redescribed as bigotry by a sheer semantic act.
	That's what I'm against.
	Right.
	So I love that.
	I'm all on board, and I think it's utopian.
	You can't say some bigotry against women is okay because it's really not bigotry, but other bigotry against women is not okay.
Opening The Floor For Questions 00:02:56
	But the real issue, Dennis, is whether it's bigotry.
	It's not a question of redefining something.
	It is bigotry.
	But you are now, your desire is a very important thing.
	You want to have the debate over what is liberty.
	I want to have the debate over what is bigotry.
	I understand.
	Okay, fair.
	Okay, look, as I always say, I prefer clarity to agreement.
	We should now open the floor.
	Dennis and I have been dominating the conversation, but we only have him here for the evening, so I want you to get a chance to raise some questions.
	By the way, I'm on Pacific time, so I could stay long, but I don't know.
	Now, our custom in the Madison program, Dennis, is to begin with student questions if we have students.
	So I think there are actually some high school students, and you count as students as well, college students, graduate students, would any students like to open us up?
	And because we're recording this, we have microphones that we will hand anybody who wants to ask a question.
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	There we go.
	Hi, thank you for taking my question.
	You mentioned earlier that you thought one of the things that functions as a litmus test for the viability of a religion going forward is its treatment of Jews.
The Problem With Radicalism 00:10:44
	Not just religion.
	I think that Jews form a litmus test for the viability of the moral compass.
	That might alter the form of the question.
	I was going to ask how you reconcile that with the recent Pew Research Center's results that by 2050, Islam will be the fastest growing religion and the major religion in a number of European countries as well as continuing to take upward trajectory in the United States.
	I think it's a problem.
	You're not allowed to say that Islam today is a problem, but I say it because I am protected because I broadcast.
	I have much more freedom of speech than anybody else at my radio station outside of my studio.
	I can say anything I like because I'm protected on the radio, but they will go to human resources if they said half of what I say.
	But the president of Egypt, who is a Muslim, has spoken about we have to really rethink a lot of what we have in our religion.
	And by the way, morality is almost always determined by whether or not you can critique your own group.
	I mean, properly, we have now a critique of America that's improper.
	It's just absurd.
	But it's good to critique your own group.
	Anyway, yes, I am worried, and I think, look, the terror that we are observing in the world now that is produced by believing Muslims, not all believing Muslims, but that's somewhat of an absurdity since virtually all the terror is committed by believing Muslims.
	Of course, not all believing Muslims commit terror.
	Almost no Germans were Nazi mass murderers.
	But it doesn't mean that there was not a German problem between 1933 and 1945.
	A moral problem.
	There's a moral problem in Islam today.
	And so where did it begin?
	Well, it began a long time ago, but the modern terror started with the Palestinian bombers in Israel.
	Pizza places and dance halls and bar mitzvahs and universities.
	And the world did nothing, said nothing and did nothing.
	Then the world started getting attacked.
	The Jews are the world's miners' canary.
	I don't like the role.
	I can't stand it.
	But it's true.
	And your attitude toward Jews and the Jewish state is a litmus test of the functional viability of your moral compass.
	And so does it say anything about the Islamic world today?
	Does it say anything about the United Nations today?
	Does it say anything about the left today?
	I think it does.
	But as you yourself say, there are a great many Muslims, undoubtedly the majority of Muslims, certainly the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the United States, who are opposed to terrorism, who are opposed to the imposition of their religion by political means, and with whom we should be, it seems to me, allied.
	And yet there is a barrier between us and them.
	I'm not talking about radical jihadist Islamists, a barrier so often between Christians and Jews on the one side and Muslims on the other side that seems to prevent our working together even if we're on the same side, even if we're on the same side in attacking radicalism.
	Well, I can only tell you that among conservatives, people like Zudi Jasser, who is a believing Ramadan fasting, a five times a day praying Muslim who's a physician in Phoenix.
	My colleague on the U.S. Commission on International Religious.
	So, do we not embrace that man?
	You know who doesn't embrace that man?
	NBC, CBS, ABC.
	When they want Muslim spokesmen, they bring in care.
	But we should be bringing in.
	We do.
	We do bring in Zudi Jackson.
	It's not just Zudi.
	It's not just Zudi.
	There are professors, and I do have hope that these people can prevail.
	And if they do prevail, it will be American Muslims.
	That's right.
	America is the healthiest place on earth.
	And it will be American Muslims who will lead the reform.
	Do you notice a common feature there?
	And that is, if you look at assimilation, the United States yet again is showing itself with respect to our Muslim fellow citizens to be just overwhelmingly more adept at assimilating people than Europe is.
	If you go to European nation after European nation, including Britain, which in so many ways is like us, you find Muslim communities really self-segregating.
	And so many Muslims, people who are not radical, refusing or not feeling as though they're welcome in the mainstream of society.
	Our Muslim population stands out as distinguished for its assimilation now.
	That's America.
	That's e pluribus unum.
	American Trinity, e pluribus unim in God we trust and liberty.
	That's unique because we're an idea.
	We're not an ethnicity.
	It's the left that wants to make us ethnic.
	What are you?
	One, you know, 116th Cherokee because you have high cheekbones?
	I mean, who are you?
	Are you talking about Elizabeth Warren now?
	Yes, I'm talking about Elizabeth Warren now.
	Oh, it's 132nd.
	But that was her.
	Student questions.
	Any other students have questions?
	Okay.
	Oh, yes, we've got one right over here.
	Yes, sir.
	Thanks, Chanel.
	We are now engaging in ageism.
	Just very quickly, a clarification: as we were just talking about the idea of the Muslim religion in the world and Islam, you had said you were concerned, or with the issue of Islam, as we were just pointing from Professor George the kind of difference in extremism versus a general religious belief.
	Just for a clarification: do you think it's a fundamental problem to Islam as an entire system or religion, or as we were just pointing at the extremism?
	Dennis and I might have a difference on this.
	I do not think the problem is with Islam.
	I think the problem is with radicalism.
	And I've even written an essay in which I say I think that the fundamental problem is not that radical jihadists are trying to go back to the 8th century.
	The problem is they're adopting ideologies that are distinctively 20th century, the same ideologies that gave us Bolshevism and Nazism and every other horrible thing.
	Yeah, we do differ.
	And I wish I agreed.
	I do wish I'd have more hope.
	Just to give you an example, in my book on Islamism, Americanism, and leftism, it's all documented.
	That's the book there's still the best hope.
	Ibn Khaldun is considered the greatest Muslim thinker who ever lived.
	Toynbee said he wrote the greatest masterpiece ever written, the Muqaddimah, the Introduction to History.
	It was in the Middle Ages.
	And he wrote, Why are we greater than all religions?
	Why are we greater than Christians or Jews or the other monotheists?
	Why?
	Because unlike them, we have jihad.
	We are prepared to kill people to take our religion.
	Christians and Jews are not.
	And this is verbatim from the Muqaddimah.
	The majority of Muslims in many Muslim countries, Pakistan and Egypt, for example, believe that if you do convert from Islam, you should be executed.
	They didn't make this up.
	That is traditional Islamic belief.
	I get no joy saying this.
	I wish I could think, you know what, there's this extraterrestrial being that descended on earth in the 20th century called the radical Muslim.
	Do you know how many Hindus were killed over the thousand-year rule of the Muslims in India?
	Approximately 80 million.
	In their story of history, Arielle and Will Durant wrote, This was the greatest mass murder in the history of the world.
	You can't teach this in India because they're afraid that Hindus will be angry at Muslims and cause civil unrest.
	Even though the head of the India Historical Association in the 1930s was the one who finally revealed this.
	You know what Hindu Kush means?
	Hindu Kush is that mountain range in Iran going to Afghanistan.
	It means slaughtered Hindus.
	How many people know that?
	One.
	There you go.
	In row four.
	So unfortunately, we do differ on this one.
	I do agree.
	I don't doubt that the polling data shows this, that in fact, the majority of people in Pakistan and Egypt, Muslims in Pakistan and Egypt, do believe that the punishment for apostasy should be death.
	One of the things that we're doing on our commission is trying to fight against exactly those kinds of beliefs.
	But you would find a very different kind of belief among American Muslims.
	Now, American Muslims don't like apostasy any more than American Christians like apostasy.
	But whether civil authorities should be able to penalize it and indeed penalize it with death, American Muslims would tend to be much more closely in line with American Christians and American Jews.
	Let me just say, on behalf of Christians, if I may, because I'm a big Christian, American Christian.
	America is the great place.
	American Muslims are better.
	American Christians are better.
	American Jews are a problem.
Religion's Mixed Record 00:15:44
	But I just want to give you one example.
	My wife was raised an evangelical Christian.
	She's converted to Judaism.
	When we are at evangelical conferences, I've never said this to you.
	I have watched, like a hawk, I watch the Christians when you tell them when they ask, and they say, you converted.
	Unless I am really dense, and I don't think I am, I see nothing but acceptance.
	That's all I see in them, let alone wanting her executed.
	Forget that they don't want her executed.
	They just continue to talk to her and love her as they did prior to learning of that.
	That's a big deal.
	You might enjoy that.
	I have a colleague who is Jewish, not especially devout, but not unbelieving, who had a beloved student, graduate student, who was herself Jewish, is Jewish, but who converted to Catholicism and indeed became a nun.
	Now, my colleague's wife is Jewish, but entirely secular, no belief whatsoever.
	She is the one upset that the Jewish girl converted to Catholicism and became a nun.
	And I'm saying, huh?
	There's an old Jewish joke that a number of Jewish husbands thinks they're married to a nun.
	Okay, now we'll open it up more generally.
	I saw Tom Pyle's hand.
	It's only a joke, okay?
	I just want to say it's a joke.
	Glad my wife's not here.
	Well, I'm sure I speak for many of us to say, it's such a joy to see the two wonderful titans of right thinking inspiring us here in Princeton for those of us who are battling behind enemy lines, as I sometimes like to say.
	So it's really such a joy to see you both together.
	You raised, I think, both of you, this interesting idea that a Jew should have some theology for Christianity, and likewise Christians should have some theology for Judaism.
	I wonder if you might coach Then, how should we Christians or Jews construct a theology for Islam and be able to then better adapt and understand how Islam is working and moving through the world?
	Why don't you answer that?
	What's your theology as a Christian of Islam?
	Well, it's interesting.
	My theology of Islam is provided by the Second Vatican Council.
	I'm a Catholic, right?
	So that's an ecumenical council, and I'm supposed to believe what it says.
	And actually, the teaching of the Second Vatican Council with respect to Islam is quite a positive teaching.
	It's one that quite explicitly recognizes the terrible history of conflict between Muslims and Christians, and it pleads for Muslims and Christians alike to, as it says, the translation is put aside past quarrels and work together for our common values of piety,
	justice, morality, and these ends that are common to our own, to both our faiths and to the Jewish tradition.
	The document praises Islamic monotheism, its practices of frequent prayer and almsgiving.
	The document says something that a lot of Catholics can't quite buy, but it's their church teaching them that Muslims worship the God, they worship the true God, that Allah is God.
	A lot of Christians, a lot of Catholics and other Christians, that's tough to swallow.
	These think Allah refers to some other being, not the God of the Jewish revelation that Christians worship.
	Now, it was a little less difficult for me to get hold of that because my father is Syrian, and I grew up in a family on my father's side of Arabic speakers, and they were Eastern Orthodox Christians, but they referred to God as Allah all the time.
	So it wasn't shocking for me to hear God called Allah.
	But what the church is teaching us there is that there's a common bond in the worship of God.
	Now, is there a different understanding of God in important respects?
	Yes, yes, absolutely.
	But the church is teaching us in the document Nostra Etate of the Second Vatican Council, which is famous as the document that repudiated Christian anti-Semitism, the allegation of deicide against the Jews, the replacement theology, and so forth.
	It's in the document Nostra Etata, it's teaching us that just as Catholics cannot regard the mother faith of Judaism as simply false, they've got to regard Judaism as true as far as it goes.
	It's teaching us that we cannot regard Islam as simply false, and we must honor, and I quote, all that is true and holy in these other faiths, including Islam.
	Now, if a religion is just purely false, like Satanism, or to name another religion, Bolshevism, or Nazism, which I think are more religions than anything else, if they're simply false, then there's nothing true and holy to be honored in them.
	But Islam isn't treated by the Catholic Church as being in that category.
	Now, other Christians who are not Catholics quite likely going to see this very differently.
	Dennis?
	I have a slightly more radical view.
	I never ask which religion is true because there are Jews in my religion whose practices are so foreign to me that while they are clearly members of the Jewish people, just like they're Americans who have practices foreign to me, or they're Americans, but in terms of Judaism, there are some things.
	Look, there are, it's a small group, I want to make this clear, but there are ultra-Orthodox Jews who went to Iran to celebrate Ahmadinejad.
	Anti-Zionists.
	Yes, anti-Zionist, not leftist, but anti-Zionist, super-religious Jews.
	Is their religion my religion?
	I don't have, my religion has nothing in common with their religion.
	So, so whereas your religion has far more in common with my religion, though you're Catholic and I'm Jewish.
	So my question is: does your religion, theologically, theological and a moral question, theologically, does your religion bring you to the God of the Torah?
	That's my question, or the God of Israel, if you will.
	Ask that to a Muslim, ask that to a Christian.
	Christians will say, of course.
	If the Muslim says, of course, great.
	Theologically, You have kinship.
	The second one is: what is the fruit of your religion?
	That's what matters.
	Are you producing God-fearing good people?
	That's the question.
	Just last night, this question arose.
	We had that snack where I ate more than anyone last night with what religion is he?
	Is he Catholic?
	It was a Catholic we had dinner with.
	So it was an interesting question that I posed.
	I'd like to pose it to you.
	It'll put you on the spot.
	What's the snack?
	What was the snack?
	Pork rinds or whatever?
	No, no, no.
	There were no pork rinds.
	He would have been snacking on pork rinds and he wasn't having anything.
	By the way, I just have to say that, what is it?
	It's, oh, yeah, I tell my Mormon friends that it's a hell of a lot easier to abstain from pork than coffee.
	So, you know.
	Amen, brother.
	So let me tell you, I can look pork smork, as the rabbi said about something else, but a good cigar and a good coffee.
	That's the essence of life.
	Here's the question: You are about to form a business, and you need a business partner to do so.
	And the key is that you trust that he will be honest.
	It's key, or you will lose your money.
	All you know, and we'll say it's a man, all you know, it could be a woman, it's irrelevant.
	All you know about this man is that the person is a Jew, a Protestant, a Catholic, or a Mormon.
	Who would you choose?
	Unless it's Harry Reid, the Mormon.
	Okay, that is a great answer.
	And by the way, I never thought I'm going to add the Harry Ripart.
	I'll quote you on that.
	It's perfect.
	That he is in good standing is a big problem for me.
	But okay.
	That's right.
	Everyone I ask says the Mormon.
	So I know that Protestants, I don't know how Catholics view LDS, but I know Protestants have a very hard time.
	They're not Christians.
	Yes, they view them.
	And I'm not, I'm not a horse in the race.
	Not only no horse in the race, it's not for me to judge.
	Although I did say to, I'm very close to a lot of Mormons, and I said, I don't know why you have to even fight this battle.
	You know, you keep insisting.
	I think there's some intellectual legitimacy that Christianity doesn't only mean, do you worship Christ?
	It means that you have the Trinity as declared it in Isaiah.
	So anyway, it doesn't matter.
	But everybody picks the Mormon.
	Now, if these people are producing God-fearing, honest, decent people, I am going to say their religion is false?
	Oh, you'd pick them because they produce honest, decent, hardworking people.
	I was just picking them because they're giving me an honorary degree at BYU next week.
	No, no, no, no.
	I don't believe that.
	No one else does.
	We all know why.
	I picked them.
	I know, no, that's not what.
	As I would love to be your guest.
	But no, no, no.
	You pick them because everybody that I've asked the question to every Jew I asked, every Catholic and every Protestant said the Mormon.
	That's an unbelievable reputation to have.
	That's staggering.
	So why?
	So is it false in some theological sense?
	That's your business to judge.
	It doesn't bother me.
	It's not my issue.
	These are Bible-believing, God-fearing, honest people, by and large, producing wonderful families and wonderful Americans.
	And I'm going to call that false.
	So that's why if the Muslim is producing God-fearing God of the Torah, God of the Ten Commandments, Muslims, he's my man.
	And if he's producing other things, he's not my man.
	But of course, and I agree with that completely.
	I just add, not that you would deny it, that the record of all the religions is pretty mixed on that.
	I mean, and by mixed, I mean mixed, not just bad, not just bad.
	It wouldn't promote the Richard Dawkins view.
	I mean, there have been tremendous good done in the name of all these religions.
	That's right.
	And when they say, you know what, well, look at what the Catholic Church was doing in the 10th century, which, as I mentioned earlier, we both knew, but very few people were.
	Well, why don't we try it out on our audience?
	Why don't we just try it out?
	How many people were killed over 300 years in the Crusades?
	I tried this.
	The Spanish Inquisition.
	In the Spanish Inquisition.
	You're right.
	What am I thinking?
	The Inquisition.
	How many people were killed over 300 years?
	I tried this out on my pal Cornell Westler co-teaching, and at our seminar the other evening, I asked him the question.
	The question came up, and he didn't get it right.
	And I'm wondering if you would get it right.
	So somebody shout out an answer.
	600 million.
	A million?
	A million?
	Anybody more than a million?
	Do I hear?
	Well, a million going one way to do it.
	Two million.
	A lot of these people are my listeners.
	Oh, they're listening.
	So listener to Dennis, now give us the right answer.
	It doesn't matter.
	Well, I've ever said that.
	It's a few thousand.
	Right.
	It's about six, seven thousand.
	Six, seven thousand over 300 years, yeah.
	And compare that with exactly.
	Or the Armenian.
	You know, we've talked about the Armenian genocide.
	Who committed that?
	This is, yes, this is the Ottoman Empire.
	The point isn't to hate Muslims.
	If you hate Muslims, you're a fool.
	You're a bigot.
	That is to be bigoted.
	But it is a liar to lie about the moral problem of Islam historically.
	It's not been a religion of peace.
	I don't get any joy in saying it.
	It hasn't been.
	George Bush, that's the only real lie he told.
	But it's record.
	It's mixed.
	It's record.
	It's not mixed, but every, it's like saying your record is mixed, and so is Charles Manson's record mixed.
	No, no, but I'm not.
	No, no, no.
	And I am not comparing Islam to Charles Manson.
	I'm comparing mixed to mixed.
	Mixed doesn't tell me anything unless they're mixed equally.
	Are they mixed equally?
	No, they're not mixed equal.
	Okay, and by the way, let me say.
	Some of my colleagues would like that.
	They would like that.
	Let me just say on behalf, okay, I'm going to say something good about the Jews.
	It's not such a mixed record.
	We didn't persecute people, generally speaking, because there was no theological reason to do so.
	Because we never believed the most fanatical Jew doesn't believe you have to be a Jew to be saved.
	It has never even entered the Jewish lexicon.
	So there would be no reason to have theological persecution from Jews.
	I have big problems, obviously, with Jewish leftists and anti-Zionists and pro-BDSs and all that stuff.
	But I don't think the Jewish record is mixed.
	Now, you might say, well, Jews had no power for 2,000 years.
	It's a completely legitimate thing to say.
	I agree.
	But nobody, you know what?
	Jackie Mason is right.
	Who fears going into a Jewish neighborhood?
	Wow.
	You know, as he put, oh, you know, that I'm going to get mugged by an accountant.
	Okay, let's be honest, all right?
	With all their faults, you're not afraid.
	You know, the Jewish rape crowd is not very large.
	Our dear Chanel, she who must be obeyed, is signaling me that we have gone over.
	But Chanel, I'm going to take one more question, okay?
	So the lady right up here, yeah, thank you, right up here in the middle.
	You can close us out for the evening.
	I hate to see this come to an end, Dennis.
	My goodness, it's been so long.
	Yeah, I've loved it.
	Thank you.
	Hi, very simple question.
	You mentioned that your main fear or concern is the evil in the world.
Jewish Contribution to Evil 00:01:55
	Did I understand well?
	Yes.
	Have Jews contributed to the evil of the world?
	Have Jews contributed to the evil of the world at all?
	If you can mention one or two names.
	Do you know that the most pro-communist press in the Western world was the Yiddish press in the 1930s?
	This is from a professor of Jewish history at Brandeis University.
	Jewish leftists have been horrific.
	Horrific.
	Trotsky was a Jew.
	Three of the five possible successors, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Trotsky, were all Jews.
	The only non-Jews were Bukharin and Stalin, Jukashvili.
	And outside the Polish.
	And outside, three of the five members of the Polish Politburo were Jews.
	The biggest Stalinist in Hungary was Anna Pauka, who was a Jew.
	Jews don't like, but none of them were Jewish Jews.
	They were born, they were racial Jews.
	They hated Judaism.
	But you are right.
	Jews, if you pick as a purely ethnic group, have contributed to evil.
	There is no question about it.
	But again, like everybody else of every other.
	Well, there's a big difference.
	If you hate your religion and do evil, then if you love your religion and do evil, there is a big difference.
	You can't say that there is a moral equivalence of mixed baggedness to your religion.
	How many Jews did this stuff in the name of Judaism?
	Very, very few.
	Please join me in thanking Dennis Prager.
	Thank you.
	Robbie, you're great.
	This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

Chapters

00:00:00 Dennis Prager: Philadelphia Legend
00:04:15 Why We're Chosen People
00:19:22 Judeo-Christian Paradox
00:25:04 Orthodox Judaism's Paradox
00:35:08 Christianity Infiltration
00:43:04 Curveball to Christians
00:58:11 Marital Bond Reconsidered
00:59:39 Lust and Laughter
01:03:07 The Coming Apocalypse
01:06:27 Wisdom Disaster
01:10:40 Why Goldwater Was Right
01:15:49 Logic of 1965
01:22:14 Opening The Floor For Questions
01:24:55 The Problem With Radicalism
01:35:25 Religion's Mixed Record
01:50:55 Jewish Contribution to Evil