Dennis Prager Show - Timeless Wisdom - Why Is the Left Obsessed with Equality?

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Nov. 20, 2025 - Dennis Prager Show

01:38:42

Timeless Wisdom - Why Is the Left Obsessed with Equality?

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	Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
	Hear thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs.
	And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com.
	I got feedback.
	It's always painful because there are so many things I love to talk about, as you know, and I think all of life is interconnected.
	But apparently a lot of you, or at least the more outspoken, because you never really know.
	Because some people are more outspoken, and then you think that they represent everybody, but they may not.
	But the feedback I got was that you wanted more contemporary issues.
	Is that fair?
	I mean, is that rather than okay, I was going to talk to you about medieval Hungarian poetry, but Bev said it's not going to go over it.
	And all right.
	Jack something?
	Yes.
	Oh, you want to know that?
	You do, huh?
	All right.
	It's worth telling.
	The Estrons and my wife have heard this a number of times, and it's still funny.
	What can I tell you?
	I'll try to make it briefer.
	The time that I most enjoyed telling it, I have to say, was to 3,000 people in Denver.
	Were any of you there from Denver?
	That was, I have to say, in a lifetime of telling the story, that was my most fun.
	Because having 3,000 people laugh is a kick.
	I mean, that's a lot of laughter.
	This is entirely true.
	I took an oath to, I really did.
	I took an oath early in my public life never to exaggerate because you get caught.
	And if you lose credibility, it's over.
	My whole strength lies on credibility.
	So even in telling a funny story, I've made sure not to emblemish in any way.
	This is exactly how I recall it.
	So it's apropos of really nothing except a particularly humbling, if not humiliating, moment in my life.
	I went to a Jewish high school in New York, a parochial Jewish high school.
	At 6'4, already at the age of 14, I towered over the other kids.
	I am the tallest Jew on earth.
	And that's exaggeration, that part, obviously.
	But I was the tallest Jew at school.
	And that, it was a problem in only one way.
	And that was that it meant that I would be on the basketball team if I wasn't crippled.
	There was no talent necessary.
	The hide alone pretty much ensured I would make the basketball team.
	But it came with a big problem, two big problems.
	One, I don't like basketball.
	I just, I mean, I like sports.
	I don't like basketball.
	Second, I'm not good at basketball.
	So those are two very large caveats that you must entertain here.
	However, my father really wanted me to be on the team.
	And, No, he held sway in the house in that way.
	So I tried out.
	I did my best not to make the team, but I made it anyway.
	And on the last cut of the year, the coach, who was somewhat of a despicable human being, looked at the team and said, boys, Flatbush, we were the yeshiva Flatbush.
	Flatbush is going to do very poorly this year, and I'll tell you why.
	Prager made the team.
	We've really, really scraped the bottom of the barrel.
	Now, I've got to tell you, I have always been self-aware, and I remember my reaction.
	So help me, God, this was my reaction.
	This guy is really a despicable human being, and he's entirely right.
	I lived with that mutual, if you will, mutually exclusive, but they're not mutually exclusive.
	He was wrong in saying it, but what he said was entirely right.
	Even at that age, I was able to hear unpleasant truths.
	So anyway, what happened was, in the very beginning of the season, we had a game at Madison Square Garden because the Yeshiva Flatbush and one other team in the whole Jewish, there was a whole Jewish league.
	There were so many Jewish schools in New York.
	There was a whole Jewish league.
	And so the two top teams of the previous year, every year, had a game before a Knicks game.
	But of course, as it happens, in our case, the whole Flatbush team that was good graduated.
	So we were a lousy team playing at Madison Square Garden, thanks to the good team that had graduated.
	Now, happily, I knew I wasn't going to play because they really wanted to show the best that they had.
	And I was a sophomore anyway.
	But with 58 seconds left, there was no mathematical chance we could even tie the game.
	And the coach says, Prager, you're going in.
	Now, the entire time on the bench, I had been cracking jokes.
	That is all I did.
	I was like a commentator on the game, talking to my friend Isaac Nakbar, known as Snack Bar.
	And I was telling Snack Bar all these funny lines.
	My purpose on the team was to make Snack Bar laugh.
	That's how I really saw it.
	I had no chance of getting in.
	So I wasn't following the play.
	I was just commenting on funny things or on cheerleaders.
	I don't know what I was doing.
	Anyway, with 58 seconds to go, I get this horrible note, I'm going in.
	So I immediately look at Snack Bar, and I give you my word this is true.
	when I go, snack bar, where are we shooting?
	Snack bar, maybe he has done penitence and maybe not.
	Snackbar did not tell me the answer.
	And he's going to hell as far as I'm concerned.
	That was very, very mean on Snack Bar's part, who really laughed himself silly.
	Talk about making Snack Bar laugh.
	So I take off my, I don't know, my jersey or the coat, whatever it is, the jacket.
	And everything was bad.
	First of all, as a joke, I took number 13.
	And here I hear over the entire Madison Square Garden system coming in for Flatbush, number 13, Stanley Prager.
	Now, where the hell did Stanley Prager come from?
	So I knew it was an inauspicious beginning.
	Although it didn't bother me that much because maybe they thought it was my cousin or something.
	Anyway, we go in and there's a jump ball.
	And I don't know what I did.
	I did not know which side we were shooting.
	I'm not joking.
	I don't like basketball.
	You understand?
	I'm not interested in this sport.
	So there's a jump ball, and I ran to the wrong side.
	I didn't have the ball.
	There's a myth here that I shot to the wrong basket.
	I never touched the ball.
	But I did run to the wrong side, and I will never forget the referee looking at me and saying, Hey, kid, are you some sort of schmuck?
	I will never forget that as long as I live.
	And again, I had to say, I really, there was a part of me that wanted to say, yeah.
	The truth is, basketball-wise, I am some sort of schmuck.
	So what I remember then is somewhat of a blur, because the only thing that went on in my mind was move, but don't touch the ball.
	And so I just kept going like this.
	You know, we were on offense, and I was acting like we were on defense.
	All I knew was, don't have anyone pass me the ball, nothing.
	And that was it.
	That was the longest 58 seconds of my life.
	I heard my mother cheering.
	Yeah, Dennis, Dennis, Dennis.
	She had no idea I did nothing right, none whatsoever, because she knew less about basketball than I.
	And it finally ended.
	It was a terrible 58 seconds.
	It was very humiliating.
	I don't know if anybody except Snackbar appreciated how bad it really was.
	And I remember as well walking off, and you know who I bumped into?
	Almost literally, I didn't physically bump in, but walked right past Will Chamberlain.
	And I was at a little above his belt buckle at 6'4.
	Do you know how eerie that is?
	And that's what I recall.
	That's the famous story of my being humbled at the garden.
	And people do enjoy it.
	And it is an enjoyable story many years later.
	I didn't enjoy it at the moment.
	And it's gotten back to thank you.
	Snackbar claims total ignorance of the whole story.
	It's gotten back, but I told you the truth, and he would be in denial.
	And that was it.
	I wish we had other teams, but like a checkers team.
	That's what I would enjoy.
	Checkers, you know, you sit down, it's quiet, you don't run around too much, you can't get hurt.
	That's what I like.
	What are you going to do?
	All right, let me talk to you about a couple of items and then take some questions and show you another Prager University video that you may not have seen.
	I want to read to you the beginning of my column that came out.
	It's coming out today.
	It's out now on the internet.
	I'm on the internet at Town Hall and at National Review and many other places.
	Here's from National Review because it's the one I got on fastest.
	As reported by the Washington Post, quote: President Obama's proposed budget would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.
	Now, I always quote liberal sources, so nobody should think that I've somehow taken it from a biased source to make my point.
	Again, the proposed budget would add more than, round it off, would add $10 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.
	$10 trillion is $10,000 billion.
	The British do not have the word trillion.
	They have $1,000 billion.
	I wish we didn't have trillion because you lose perspective as to how much money that is.
	CNN adds, of that amount, an estimated $5.6 trillion will be in interest alone.
	So you'll be getting nothing for it.
	It is just paying the debt that is being accumulated, the interest.
	The Washington Post continues: the Congressional Budget Office, which is nonpartisan, and the White House are both predicting a deficit of about $1.5 trillion this year, a post-World War II record at 10.3% of the overall economy.
	They both agree.
	That is the White House as well as the Congressional Budget Office.
	This is a record post-World War II.
	The last time we've had such debt was in a war, a world war.
	But the CBO is considerably less optimistic about future years, predicting that deficits would never fall below 4% of the economy under Obama's policies and would begin to grow rapidly after 2015.
	Deficits, and this is, I'm still reading from the Post, they're quoting the CBO, Congressional Budget Office.
	Deficits of that magnitude would force the Treasury to continue borrowing at prodigious rates, sending the national debt ready, soaring to 90% of the economy by 2020.
	The national debt will be 90% of the economy by 2020.
	CNN notes this particularly chilling prediction from the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office.
	By 2020, debt held by the public would reach $20.3 trillion or 90% of GDP, gross domestic product.
	That's up from 53% of GDP in 2009.
	90%.
	Now, my article is about the question: do most Americans think that this disturbs the president and the Democratic Party leadership?
	And I think that most Americans would say that it does.
	And my theory is that it does not.
	And my take is that it doesn't because it does not trouble the left.
	It troubles liberals.
	But we don't have liberals.
	The people who are liberal are mostly conservative.
	See, let me explain this before I go on.
	When I grew up, there were liberals, and I was a liberal.
	I'm still a liberal, but because I'm still a liberal, I'm called a conservative.
	Whatever liberals believed in, conservatives now believed in.
	I'll give you two examples.
	Liberals believed in growing the economy.
	The left does not believe in growing the economy.
	There's a tremendous difference between liberal and left.
	But the liberals died out.
	They died out at the university.
	There were liberal deans, but they caved into the leftist students in the 60s.
	And so the left took over the university.
	They were liberal, but now they're left.
	The left is in whatever area, taxes.
	John Kennedy lowered taxes.
	He was a liberal.
	He was not a leftist.
	John Kennedy understood that the higher the taxes, the lower the growth of the country.
	So he lowered taxes.
	But there are no liberals, qua liberals, in power.
	There are a handful.
	Joe Lieberman is a liberal, and that's why he's ostracized by his party.
	There are a handful left, and they really have no power in their party.
	It is now a left-wing party.
	Now, of course, they would say, well, it's a right-wing party on the Republican side.
	Fine.
	They're allowed to say that.
	My argument is that liberalism has died, not that conservatism has died.
	And what has happened is the left is not interested in growing an economy.
	From Karl Marx, as I write in my piece today, from Karl Marx to President Obama, the left has never created wealth.
	The left is not interested in creating wealth.
	It is interested in redistributing wealth.
	So you can't blame people for being what they are.
	The left is true to its value system, and that is redistribution.
	The argument that with these debts the American quality of life will deteriorate has no impact on the left except the celebratory one.
	It would like to see all of us give up our cars and our house with three bedrooms and three bathrooms and a picket fence.
	They mock that.
	They want us in apartments and with little cars or really bicycles.
	The model for the leftist is not the suburban home that many of you live in.
	That is a waste, a use of too much carbon, too much energy.
	They don't like your car.
	They don't like your house.
	They want you in a train, in a bus, or on a bicycle.
	So the notion that the American standard of living will contract doesn't trouble people on the left.
	See, as I ended my article, I believed until 10 years ago, and I feel silly that I did.
	I really do.
	But I believed until 10 years ago that left and right in America wanted the same things for America.
	They just differed on how to get there.
	But they don't want the same things for America.
	That's not true.
	They will both say they want a better America, but the better America the left wants and the better America the right wants are very different Americas.
	Again, this is a clarity issue, not an attack.
	Getting Americans out of their much too large homes and much too large cars and much too large dogs and getting them into apartments and bicycles and trains and buses is a beautiful imagery for these people.
	Having the government educate your children, where you play less and less role, and the state plays more and more role in the upbringing and discipline of your children, or non-discipline, as the case may be, these are left-wing goals.
	They are not our goals if you are right of center, or even center, perhaps.
	So the argument that these figures will upset the left, they don't upset the left.
	Paul Krugman of the New York Times, their Nobel Prize-winning economist columnist, writes continually he doesn't care about the debt.
	This should be another so-called stimulus of a trillion dollars.
	Governments, how are they going to get the money?
	Well, they'll tax the rich more.
	Because taxing the rich will impoverish the rich, and that's good.
	Because inequality is bad, not lower standard of living.
	See, that's why I am, you know, my good friend, Mr. Clarity, he's sitting right here.
	You can't see him, but he's my Mr. Snuffalopagus.
	And I can see him.
	Mr. Clarity walks with me.
	And it's a great friend to have.
	We have different visions of what is good and what is bad.
	The notion that with, for example, the notion that America will have less cloud in the world as a result of a weakened economy also doesn't bother the left.
	They want us to have less clout in the world.
	It bothers you and it bothers me that the UN would have more clout, but they love that.
	They think a unipolar world where the United States is the dominant society on earth is not a good thing.
	I think it's a good thing because I trust America's values far more than I trust the United Nations values.
	But they trust the United Nations and the world court much more than they trust the United States.
	So one has to understand the vision for the world is different.
	All of what we think is bad that would come from all of this debt, they don't think is bad.
	A weakened dollar, that's fine.
	Why should the dollar be dominant?
	I tell the story that I told to you that our driver in Casablanca preferred dirhams to dollars.
	I was in Morocco 40 years ago.
	It was inconceivable.
	No, they didn't want to be paid in dirhams.
	They knew I was an American.
	What do you want for it?
	They wanted everything was black market.
	We'll give you whatever number of dirhams for your dollar.
	And now, 40 years later, they prefer to be paid in dirhams, which is not even internationally traded as much.
	This was shocking to me.
	But none of these bad scenarios trouble our fellow dear Americans of the left.
	They welcome any of these results.
	So whenever you hear about, well, what the health care plan will do to the economy or what these budgets will do, it doesn't matter.
	These are not undesirable goals.
	There will be far more people working for the government, which is exactly what the left wants as well.
	In fact, it's already begun.
	It's the only group of people who have been hired in great numbers in the last year, and that is federal workers, federal and state employees.
	And of course, they unionize, and then the unions take their dues and support further Democratic candidates, and everybody's happy, except for us.
	And I don't know if we're a growing group or not.
	But I did want to explain to you what the numbers are about and why the notion that, oh my God, the Democrats will see this and recoil, never think that.
	Democrats won't see this and recoil.
	This does not trouble them.
	The consequences are largely positive.
	A lot of richer Americans will be poorer is a good thing, not a bad thing.
	If we all lived in apartments like the lower middle class of Paris, France lives, they would see that as a very big plus.
	You know, we were yesterday we had a taxi driver.
	It was fascinating.
	And he spoke perfect English, which he learned from the movies.
	By the way, I realized, because I know some foreigners in the United States, it's a great way to learn a foreign language.
	Use subtitles.
	Listen to the original French film, if you will, or whatever it's in, or Spanish film, and use English subtitles.
	I mean, his English was really magnificent, and it was largely, he had learned it in school, but most kids' school English is not great.
	But he got it from movies.
	Anyway, it was fascinating.
	He had a cross hanging from the taxi, you know, the rearview mirror.
	So I asked him, are you Christian?
	He said, yes, I'm a Catholic.
	And are you practicing?
	No.
	Go to church ever on Christmas.
	And then I asked, you have a girlfriend?
	He was 25 years of age.
	Yeah, I have a girlfriend.
	You're going to get married.
	What do we have to get married for?
	It's just to have a big party, a marriage.
	So you wondered, what exactly does his Christian values or his Catholic values, what role do they play in his life?
	I mean, not to get married.
	But he said, you know, there's no reason.
	This is the European way.
	And this is a guy with a cross hanging from his car.
	I mean, that alone is already more than most young Europeans have in the way of any religious identification.
	And so this is what the dream is.
	This is the dream.
	This kid who, you know, a young person who get whatever money he gets for doing what he wants, no ambition to marry somebody ever.
	Why do it?
	It's just a party.
	Can you imagine that?
	That the only difference between marrying and not marrying is a party.
	I mean, it gives you an idea about left cultural values.
	What happens?
	I mean, I did a show when I went to my older son's wedding in Florida, and we had a Miami station then, which has since gone Spanish.
	But I broadcast from there, and I said, you know what?
	I just gave a few examples of the differences between marriage and living together.
	And one of the biggest is that my son's girlfriend was now my daughter-in-law.
	I mean, that's a very big difference between, hi, this is David's girlfriend, and hi, this is my daughter-in-law.
	I mean, that's not because of a big party.
	I don't care about the big party.
	I think a lot of weddings are too big, but that's beside the point.
	But her parents are now my relatives.
	Her sister is my relative.
	Her family is my family.
	My family is hers.
	It's a very big difference from living together.
	The differences are incredible.
	Plus, it's a statement of public affirmation of our bond.
	It's like we believe we're more traditional.
	It is a statement to society that we are bonded, where you advertise it to the world.
	You say commitment is a good thing.
	But these things are, it's the brave new world of Western Europe.
	And that is part of the huge change.
	Anyway, the point on the debt and on the health care is that this is a real moment in American history of change, the biggest since Franklin Roosevelt.
	And that's what the fight is about.
	And the use of reconciliation is not moral.
	It's just not moral.
	Republicans have never used reconciliation for anything but budgetary matters.
	That's what it was invented for.
	Harry Bird of West Virginia announced.
	When we made this up in the 70s, he's saying against his own party.
	He said, we did this in order to have just reconcile some little budgetary difference between the Senate and the House.
	Never to change American history with policy, massive policy change.
	And yet that's what is being done here because it doesn't matter.
	For true believers, you get what you have to get done.
	And the left are true believers, much more than the right are, because most people on the right already have a belief system.
	It's called their religion.
	Politics isn't their religion.
	Also, most people who are committed to bigger government are more passionate about big government than the people who believe in little government are passionate about little government.
	It's always, it's inevitable.
	The human system yearns to control others more.
	It's more significant politics to those who want to control others' lives than politics is to those who don't want to control others' lives.
	It's inevitable.
	It's always like that.
	So we're up against very difficult odds here in making this fight.
	I spoke to nearly all the members of the House who were Republican a month ago.
	You remember when they got together in Baltimore, the President spoke, and then I spoke the next day along with John Fund of the Wall Street Journal and Hugh Hewitt, my Salem radio colleague.
	And I spoke to them and I played my talk on the air.
	I told them how proud I was, really almost for the first time to be a Republican, about their unanimity in fighting against this.
	But it doesn't matter because they'll do whatever they can to get this through, including this reconciliation nuclear bomb.
	Remember when we could have used the nuclear bomb, we being Republicans, and then there were eight Republicans who said, no, it's not good because we don't want to use the nuclear bomb policy or the nuclear policy.
	And I agreed with that.
	I said, look, this is not the way we behave on the right.
	And also, I figured, look, if we don't use it, then they won't use it when they have power.
	And I was wrong.
	And I was wrong.
	I mean, obviously so, in assuming that that would be the case.
	Iran, there's no happy solution here, although the latest news, to the extent that I could pick it up while on the ship, is the fight over whether China will join.
	Apparently, Russia might join in a call for sanctions.
	We don't know if China will.
	China is a China has there is no morality to the Chinese government.
	The notion of is it right, which we think about in the United States constantly, is it right, have a foreign policy, whether we are 100% consistent or not, but always asking the question, is it the right thing to do?
	Whether it's helping in Haiti right after the earthquake or anything else in the world, or intervening in Bosnia or wherever it might be, or defending Taiwan, we're always asking what is the right thing to do.
	And maybe we come to wrong decisions on occasion, but that's what animates us.
	The left, of course, never admits that.
	We went to Vietnam because we're imperialistic.
	I never understood what did we want from Vietnam, rubber trees?
	I mean, I always wonder or Korea.
	Why did we intervene in Korea, if not to help people that would be subsumed under this frightening, monstrous North Korean communist regime?
	Our interventions are overwhelmingly done for moral reasons.
	We want to protect people's liberty.
	And honest people have honestly different opinions here.
	You're not bad for having opposed going into Iraq, and you're not good for having said yes.
	But at least we should all be honest enough to admit that they were moral impulses.
	A tyrant was overthrown.
	And yesterday, 62% of the Iraqi people, though, knowing that some of them will be blown up or paralyzed or blinded or maimed and brain damaged and murdered and have their kids slaughtered for going to the polls, 62% of the people voted in the Iraqi election.
	That's quite something to bring freedom to a country.
	But why would it be mocked?
	The idea that we went in for oil?
	No, France was there for oil without a war.
	Russia was there for oil without a war.
	We could have gotten Iraqi oil and had tremendous contracts without any of these, without any American dime.
	We do things for moral reasons, whether they work out always or not, of course you don't know.
	Why did we liberate Kuwait?
	I mean, again, if you always say oil, why did we go into Vietnam?
	Why did we go into Korea?
	What's Korea's natural resource?
	Kim Chi?
	Did you ever have kimchi?
	You probably still taste it.
	I had kimchi 35 years ago.
	I wake up with it in my mouth every day.
	Garlic cabbage.
	Try it one time.
	All you need is one.
	I mean, it's some sort of a joke.
	We went into Korea for what?
	This is a good country.
	It's an essentially good country.
	It's composed of flawed people, but the sum is better than even its individual members.
	And so these interventions that we make won't be made anymore if we get weaker financially, which is exactly what the left would like.
	They don't want American intervention.
	Who made us the world's policemen?
	We did.
	That's correct.
	We did.
	Because we're good people.
	The world needs a policeman, and if it's not going to be the United States, then who will it be?
	The United Nations?
	Tell it to the people of Rwanda, where the UN forces did nothing watching them being macheted to death.
	It's really, it's depressing.
	Iran is a terrible dilemma.
	And Iran has to be understood as that.
	The idea of Iran having nuclear weapons means that Iran would have hegemony over every anti-American state and have a tremendous clout in the Middle East.
	By the way, the Arabs are as undesirous of Iran having nuclear weapons as we are.
	They can't say it because it's a fellow Muslim state and they have to show Muslim solidarity and Iran hates Israel and they hate Israel and therefore the enemy of my enemy must be my friend.
	But the truth is it's a tremendous hatred and fear of Iran having this weapon.
	On the bright side of current events is Pakistan has awakened and has begun to fight the Taliban.
	And every day and almost or every week there seems to be another major Taliban figure captured where?
	Karachi.
	It gives you an idea what a safe haven Pakistan has been for Taliban murderers that they catch all these people in Karachi, the former capital.
	Now it's Islamabad, which means city of Islam.
	This is a new capital in the last 20 years, but it was always Karachi.
	And the capturing of the Taliban is a result of Taliban behavior in Pakistan of blowing Pakistanis up.
	So let me tell you a very simple rule in life.
	That when people do evil and you back them, you will eventually have the evil done to you.
	Let me speak about this for a moment because it's true in micro and it's true in macro.
	If you have a friend, Joseph Talushkin, my dear friend, is a very prominent Jewish writer, has made this point because he has been on a national campaign to try to stop the amount of gossip and slander that people engage in.
	It's a very big area of Jewish law, not to gossip about people behind their backs.
	And he makes the very important point that if you have a friend or an acquaintance who regularly tells you terrible things about other people, you're making a very big mistake of keeping this person in your life because they're going to do the same about you to other people.
	So when you back bad people, when you end up with their lives, you will be hurt eventually.
	The theory was in the Islamic world that human beings strapping bombs to themselves and blowing up fully innocent people only happened to Jews.
	So that's fine.
	Nobody protested in the Islamic world.
	They're blowing up Israelis, buses, cafes, pizzerias, weddings, bar mitzvahs.
	What do we care?
	They're just Jews getting it.
	Then it wasn't just Jews getting it.
	The same thing with Hitler, by the way.
	I always think of the Jews as the world's minor's canary, by the way.
	I do believe that.
	That's a role the Jews have, not a very happy one, but one that is there.
	That Jews get killed first, but never last.
	And so you might as well be aware: if Jews are starting to get slaughtered, you're next if you're a good person.
	Anyway, then the Americans, of course, we got it.
	And there was a great awakening as to, woo, this isn't just the Jews' problem.
	And now the Muslim world is starting to become aware.
	Gee, it's not only the infidels' problem.
	It's our problem too.
	And Pakistan is awakening to this realization and is starting to now capture Taliban figures.
	This is one of the bright spots in a world of a lot of gloomy news.
	This is one of the bright spots that I thought I would share with you.
	Coming back to American policies, one of the things that I remember from the State of the Union address that, for whatever reason, has not been focused on much but ought to be, were the president's plans to make it much easier not to repay student loans.
	That in effect the government will now subsidize you to go to college, and all it does is raise college tuition.
	Because colleges now know they could keep charging these astronomical prices.
	I had the big university professor of Columbia on my show a few weeks ago.
	He's written a magnificent opus in defense of the American university.
	And I said, sir, I'm just curious.
	When I went to Columbia, it was $3,000 a year, 1970, 71, 72.
	And I said, why is it now $40,000 a year?
	What are they getting that I didn't get?
	He said, oh, Dennis, Dennis, when you were there, you didn't have state-of-the-art gyms and dorm rooms.
	And I mean, there's so much more now.
	And I thought, well, so what?
	So what?
	The purpose of college isn't to have a state-of-the-art gym or dorm room.
	It's to get a good teacher to teach you, and that's the end of it.
	I didn't feel that I was cheated by Colombia at $3,000 a year.
	Now, of course, there's been inflation, but not that amount of inflation.
	The prices are just ridiculous.
	And they shouldn't be paid, in my opinion.
	And my view is: I tell people all the time: don't send your kid to a college you can't afford.
	I know there's tremendous pressure on parents to do it, pressure from the children, pressure from peers, but I beg people not to do it.
	And I make the case all the time, by the way, you probably heard me, I wonder if you, or you might have heard me say it on the radio, that nobody gives it.
	It's somewhat of a self-fooling that takes place here on the importance of what college you go to.
	And I ask people, I assume many of you or all of you have a favorite doctor or doctors.
	Raise your hand if you know what college your doctor went to.
	Okay?
	Not medical school, what college?
	Okay?
	So you're one couple, two, three, four out of 180.
	Okay.
	How many of you have a lawyer in your life?
	How many of you know what college your lawyer went to?
	Not law school, college.
	Of the same couple.
	What is with you?
	You watch your son?
	Okay, fine.
	Very good.
	It's cheating, but it's a funny answer.
	Okay, none of you.
	Okay, none of you.
	Okay.
	Here's one.
	How many of you chose your closest friends in life in any way related to what college they went to?
	One.
	He was your what?
	Sweet man?
	Sweetmate.
	Sweetmate.
	Oh, okay.
	All right.
	So it was a college boyfriend.
	All right.
	Or the friend.
	Yeah, all right.
	So again, no, but in other words, the most important people in your life, professionally and personally, there's no bearing on what college they went to, very rarely even on what graduate school they went to.
	I always make the point, I have been broadcasting 28 years.
	People have asked me privately and on the air everything about my life, everything.
	No one has ever asked me what college I went to.
	And I'll bet you none of you ever wondered it.
	I am either worthy of your attention or unworthy of your attention.
	If I went to Harvard or I went to squee dunk you or dropped out of college, it doesn't matter.
	Either I earn your attention by my daily speaking or I don't.
	Either your doctor helps you or he or she doesn't.
	That's what matters in life.
	So we are, aside from the money issue, I believe that we are selling our kids a bill of goods by telling them that it's that important what college they go to.
	When we as adults, well past college age, know nothing has been shaped by it.
	That's the irony.
	And it's true for everyone that I know.
	Yes, do you have it easier to, theoretically, if you graduate Harvard rather than Northridge, our state college that we have in LA?
	Do you have it easier to get a job immediately in some areas?
	I'm sure you do.
	And you know what?
	Within 10 years, it's total equalization.
	I'm sure the very year you graduate, there's an advantage to seeing Harvard.
	I've had interns, and Alan could vouch for this.
	We've had interns from Harvard, and we've had interns from Northridge.
	And by the way, the Harvard interns are wonderful.
	But the Northridge interns were wonderful.
	They were just as wonderful.
	There was no advantage to the Harvard interns.
	If the kid was honest and worked hard, they were terrific wherever they were from.
	Traits get you through life, not a degree.
	Traits.
	That's what kids need to be told.
	Are you self-disciplined?
	Do you have a good, energetic personality?
	Are you ambitious?
	Are you honest?
	Do you work hard?
	Do you have common sense, which is, as Mark Twain said, extremely uncommon?
	Those are the things that matter in whether you get ahead in life.
	And so, but now this is a new thing.
	The government will essentially subsidize college education.
	And by the way, there's a self-interest there too, because the more people who go to college, the more, again, they are taught from one perspective on the spectrum.
	Let me give you an example that I often make about that.
	What's the difference between going through regular schools through graduate school or going through Christian schools, let's say, through graduate school?
	Here's the difference.
	Well, of course, the obvious difference values, of course, but here's what I mean to say.
	Anyone would admit, including Christians or Jews in the case of Jewish schools.
	If you went from a, let's say, an evangelical school to the extent that they exist, or a fundamentalist Christian education from kindergarten through graduate school, and a secularist came over to you and say, you know what, your kid has been religiously brainwashed.
	They would have an argument to make.
	The kid had learned no other side to the story, been immersed in that.
	Fine.
	But at least the Christian school is honest.
	It says, yes, we want to produce religious Christians.
	That's correct.
	That's why we have this school.
	But if your kid goes from kindergarten to graduate school in a secular education, they never admit that he's been secularly brainwashed.
	That's the difference.
	The Christian school admits we have an agenda.
	The secular schools don't admit they have an agenda.
	But the brainwash is equal, if not greater, on the secular side.
	Because every religious kid knows there's a secular side, but not all secular kids know there's even a religious side.
	You know, when I've debated these things, and I've debated some of the best, I've debated most of the atheists who've written these books on atheism and so on, and they're good debaters.
	And I debated the head of atheists, American atheists, who and I went, I'll never forget, it was Easter Sunday about two years ago, I was invited to Minneapolis where they had a national convention of American atheists.
	I was invited to debate the head of American atheists.
	So I got up and I said, you know, only in America is a Jew invited on Easter to debate atheists.
	And, you know, anyway, it was a funny, it was a funny thing.
	But I usually win these debates, and I don't think it's because I'm a great debater.
	I'm a good debater.
	I admit it.
	But the reason that I usually win those debates is not because I'm a great debater.
	It's because I know all their arguments and they never know mine.
	See, every conservative is steeped in liberal arguments.
	You turn on the TV, you hear liberalism.
	You go to school, you hear liberalism.
	You watch a movie, you hear liberalism.
	You listen to the news, you read your local newspaper.
	You would have to live in a cave to avoid liberal arguments.
	But you don't have to live in a cave to avoid conservative and religious arguments.
	You have to seek them out because they're not there.
	And so there really is a secular brainwash that does take place.
	I told you, my life is, well, I don't know if I told you, but my life is divided almost chronologically, yeah, I would say almost in half.
	The first half of my life, I was immersed in Jewish life, and then I was immersed in the rest of the world afterwards.
	And in that first half, I was the director of a major Jewish retreat center.
	And we would have bright kids, 19 to 25, for July, and another hundred of them in August, and we would teach them Judaism.
	They were mostly secular kids who knew nothing about it.
	Many of them went to top universities.
	And I remember realizing the first year, all of this is brand new.
	They never heard the argument that if there is no God, for example, very basic, if there is no God, ethics are subjective.
	They never heard it in their lives.
	They never heard the argument about ethics.
	Are ethics subjective?
	Is morality objective or subjective?
	In other words, is something good because you say so, or is good objectively exist?
	They had never, it didn't matter if they went to Stanford or Harvard, they had never encountered the issue.
	They did not know the difference between religious ethics and secular ethics.
	All of everything they heard that month was brand new to them.
	So this is what we have in going from kindergarten through Graduate school in the secular education world, and which is being subsidized more and more by the government.
	Let me see if I have, oh, yes, finally, I want to talk to you about taxes and the issue of the largest tax raised by rescinding the Bush tax cuts.
	When I heard as a kid, I mean, I was raised a liberal.
	And I remember hearing as a kid, you know, the idea that taxation is a form of theft.
	And I remember thinking, man, you've got to be a right-wing kook to believe something like that.
	And the older I've gotten, the harder I have a time in responding to that argument.
	Why is it not a form of theft at a certain level?
	Just because others have voted that it be taken from me?
	Half of the American people do not pay federal taxes, but they vote how much I should pay.
	Why is that moral?
	What if we had that in this room right now?
	Where half of us who earn less than half the other half will tell you how much to chip in to the Beverly Foundation, right, to Beverly's new website.
	I mean, why?
	And if you don't, we will come with police and arrest you.
	Or the Prager Cruz.
	Yes, even better.
	Sorry, Bev.
	That's right.
	Wherever we go.
	I mean, why is that any different?
	It's a remarkable thing to think that it's just this given that if people vote to take your money away by coercion, it's only by coercion, that it's inherently moral.
	And I just don't understand how we have allowed that to become the norm, as well as, of course, it doesn't work at a given point.
	I mean, the statistics are so powerful that why do Americans produce more?
	Because they work more.
	Americans, they work more because they're taxed less.
	Europeans don't work more because there's no reason to work harder.
	The notion of work is not valued in Europe.
	That's why the stores all close at a certain time.
	In Germany, you have to close by 6 o'clock or 5 o'clock.
	You can't, well, if you say, but I own this store, I want to make more sales.
	I want to stay open until 8.
	You're not allowed.
	The government will not allow you to keep that store open longer.
	There is a notion on the left that work is ignobile.
	Vacation time is noble because you'll have more time to read poetry or listen to symphony orchestras or write a book or whatever.
	It sounds beautiful on paper, but it's not real.
	Work is ennobling.
	There is something good about that.
	We have a very big clash of values, and these values need to be clarified.
	And that's why I wanted to run down the list of these issues that we're confronting now.
	But again, we need two things.
	We need the immediate argument and the large, broader argument about the values conflict that we have here.
	When it's made clear to people, I think that they can relate to it.
	But the average American has not been exposed to these things.
	That's the reason they like to close down talk radio if they can.
	We do have a large audience, and we were a major factor in helping stall the health care takeover.
	I don't know whether it will prevail now.
	Alan was telling me of a website that he's discovered where people bet on, what is it, they bet on positions, on political things, and they've been very accurate and so on.
	And on whether they will have the votes in the House or not for this particular bill, the Obamacare bill, is 50-50.
	That's how close it is.
	And it probably is.
	It's probably within a vote or two.
	And the pressure being placed on Democrats, I truly do believe that there have been Democratic representatives told, we will sully your name in some way.
	We know X or Y about you if you vote against the health care bill.
	Because this is the one opportunity in their lives to take over this much more of the government.
	And that's why a lot of people on our side are very angry.
	We don't want that.
	You know, when I tell college kids, look, let me just ask you one question.
	Which party do you have reason to fear more?
	The party that wants less power over you or the party that wants more power over you?
	If you knew nothing else about those parties, which party would you fear more?
	But our side, we want definitionally less power.
	We want to get into power to cut our power so that you, the people, have more power over your life, over what you earn, over how you raise your children, over how you educate your children.
	I told you the first day that in much of Europe, you're not allowed to homeschool your kids.
	It's an astonishing thing, isn't that an astonishing thing?
	You don't have the right to educate your own children.
	And of course, in much of Europe, you don't have a right to spank a child.
	And this sounds just wonderful to most people.
	And I didn't spank my kids, but I have come 180 degrees on that issue, as I told you.
	I don't think that better people are made because they were never given a whack by a parent.
	Now, can a child be abused?
	Of course a child will be abused.
	This is horrific.
	It's the worst crime on earth, child abuse.
	But to define spanking as child abuse, that's a terrible stretch.
	It's like the definition Ms. Magazine now gives of rape.
	Any sex that a woman regrets having had the night before.
	Did you know that?
	That is now the definition of rape on the feminist side.
	If a woman regrets having had it the night before.
	Not was she coerced.
	In retrospect, does she regret having had it?
	And that's now all of these things have been cheapened, like the word torture has been cheapened as well by the left.
	Waterboarding is not pleasant.
	Three people had it done to them, but it is not the same as torture.
	And one who has been immersed in the Holocaust and a member of the United States Holocaust Museum Board, I have been immersed my whole life and honored at being given that position.
	I can tell you torture.
	And let me tell you, all it does, calling the waterboarding of these three terrorists, calling that torture, has cheapened what people who have Really been tortured, have gone through.
	It's terrifying, but it isn't torture.
	And yes, it is done to American naval personnel to get them ready for such experiences.
	None of them have their fingernails torn out or burned alive by boiling coals.
	And I won't go further on tortures that I'm unfortunately too well aware of.
	It's a cheapening of all of these terms that has taken place.
	So we have a big fight, my friends.
	That's why I will just say to you very honestly and openly, that's why I feel in the years given to me, I hope many, many to go.
	I have good genes and I'm very healthy aside from the sciatica, which doesn't kill you anyway.
	It just makes life painful.
	And I hope many more years to do it, but none of us knows how many years we have at any age.
	And I feel that the radio and the writing and this Prager University thing, this is the thing that I most want to work at.
	Because if we can expand this and it goes viral, and hundreds of thousands and then millions and millions of Americans, especially young ones, can get the idea about the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen, and all these other ideas, like you saw the missing tile, and understand what to complain about and not to complain about in life.
	We could change a country.
	So, you know, we would love your help.
	I'm very open about this.
	It's a 501c3.
	It's a tax-deductible donation.
	And if you can help us, we want to raise $5 million and get the finest minds on earth to look into that camera and in five minutes spill their guts out on every single issue of life.
	And that people will eventually say, wow, you really want to know our position?
	Hey, here, my dear niece, watch this five-minute video of this economist on that very issue you were just talking about.
	Then you'll have a resource to immediately and seductively, because it's done by the best.
	I'm not the only one, I've started because I know me and get me in front of the camera.
	But we're going to do this with the greatest thinkers who can give a five-minute synopsis of what they have to say, and it will be unique in the world.
	And so if you want to join us, we would love to have you.
	Maybe Al will say a few words about this as well.
	Are we going to show up?
	Okay, we're going to show you which one?
	About it's not the thought, but the action?
	Okay, watch this one.
	I'd like to tell you about one of the most important calls I ever got on my radio show.
	It was a man of about 40 years of age, and he called me and said, Dennis, you've got to help me out.
	I'm a really bad son.
	So I said, you're a really bad son?
	Why?
	He said, let me tell you why.
	My mother is very sick.
	She's been sick for about 10 years, and I am her sole financial support, her sole psychological support, and her sole emotional support.
	And to tell you the truth, sometimes I wish her illness would take her away.
	That's how hard it is on me.
	And I said to him, Sir, I'd like to tell you that I believe that you are one of the most beautiful and wonderful sons that I have ever had the honor of speaking to.
	The guy thought I was kidding.
	He thought I was nuts.
	He didn't even think I was serious.
	Dennis, did you not hear me say that there were times I wish my mother would die?
	I said, yeah.
	But look at your actions.
	You treat her so well, you are an exemplary son.
	What matters is how you treat your mother, not how you sometimes feel about her.
	Your negative feelings are not what matter here.
	Your kind and selfless actions are all that matter.
	That is what I want to talk to you about: that in assessing good and bad, actions matter, not thoughts, and almost never even intentions.
	Good intentions don't matter when bad comes, and bad thoughts don't matter if good is done.
	Of course, you're going to have bad feelings and bad thoughts.
	Who doesn't?
	What matters is what we do.
	I'm going to give you example after example.
	Imagine, oh, you have two surgeons that you have to choose from for your cancer.
	One has the reputation for being in it for the money, but he happens to be the best surgeon around.
	Another surgeon is not as great, but he's a big idealist who's in it not for the money, but to help people.
	Which surgeon would you choose?
	I know which one I choose.
	The one who's in it for the money has the reputation for being the best surgeon.
	I don't care if he's in it for the money.
	It's between him and his conscience.
	It means nothing to me.
	I care about what kind of surgery he performs.
	I'll give you another example.
	People say, oh, look, that guy wants his name on a building.
	That's the only reason he gave money to that hospital or school.
	But hey, I'm very happy that buildings named after people who give.
	If I'm being treated in a great hospital named after some donor, believe me, I bless that donor.
	I don't think less of him for having his name on the building.
	And in the other direction of good intentions and bad results, well, every bad ism has had people who meant well.
	Nazism, communism, fascism.
	Most of those people didn't get up in the morning and say, hey, how can I hurt innocent people today?
	I love genocide.
	They thought they were doing it for the nation or for the working class or for humanity.
	Very many of them had very idealistic intentions, but that hardly mattered, did it?
	We judge actions by what people do, not what people intended.
	I've spoken, for example, to any experts on Africa.
	Every single one, liberal or conservative, has said that the vast majority of Western government aid to Africa has actually hurt Africans.
	That all it has done is to prop up corrupt governments.
	Or take parental love.
	Many parents shower their kids with love and spoil them.
	Of course, parental love is beautiful.
	But if that's all you give, no matter how much you mean well, you'll still hurt your kids.
	So what's the answer?
	Well, there are two conclusions.
	First, goodness must be judged by results.
	And second, you have to use your head more than your heart to figure out how to do good.
	Those are the two things that we have to understand.
	Goodness is what happens, and we have to figure out what is right or wrong based on our head, not our heart.
	Then we'll make a much better world.
	Sincerity is not what matters.
	Actions are what matter.
	And finally, don't feel guilty over bad thoughts.
	But yes, you should feel guilty over bad actions.
	And that, of course, applies to the whole left-right divide where, you know, you feel compassion and that automatically makes the policy a great policy.
	But obviously, it doesn't.
	Or again, with the way we raise our children, you shower them with love.
	You know, I told you about the living rooms that have been turned into playpens, and the parents have no space for themselves.
	It's all done with good intentions because we want to give our children all these things.
	So intentions are often, often misleading.
	So, okay, it's time to open up questions, comments, brief ultimate speeches.
	And are you getting microphones or just going to shout or what?
	Okay, you want to start there?
	You got one here?
	All right, we'll start here.
	Go ahead.
	Richard Wells, Los Angeles, does.
	Right.
	The man who shares your 1-8 criteria phone number on weekends is Warren Eckstein, the animal show.
	Oh, really?
	And he's obviously an animal lover.
	Right.
	He tells the story of sitting next to you at the KRLA Christmas party one year and turning your question to high school kids back on you.
	He said, Suppose your dog were drowning, and the man drowning was Osama bin Laden.
	Which one would you save?
	Well, he didn't tell us your answer, so I'm asking.
	Oh, I've been asked that often because the question that I pose to a lot of people, I posed this now for about 30 years to high school seniors.
	And when I used to pose it, people thought I was nuts.
	It turns out that I was onto something about the human-animal egalitarian movement.
	And I would ask high school seniors, or even sometimes younger kids, say, raise your hand if you have a pet.
	Keep your hand up if you love your pet.
	Okay, let's imagine your pet is a dog or a cat.
	They're drowning.
	You walk them by a river.
	All of a sudden you see they're drowning.
	And 100 feet away, you see a person you don't know, a stranger, is also drowning.
	I know you would like to save them both, but you can't.
	You have to save one first.
	Which would you save first?
	And in virtually every instance, one-third say their pet, one-third the stranger, and one-third doesn't know.
	It's too tough.
	And my story is that, of course, you have to save the stranger first.
	Because whether love cannot be is a perfect example of the intention issue.
	Of course, I love my dog more than I love any stranger.
	Of course, I know that.
	It's a given.
	But I promise you that if I were walking with my dog and you were drowning, and if I didn't even know who you were, I would save you first.
	It would be painful, but it's no question because I'm animated by values, not by feelings.
	And so many people, not just Warren Eckstein, but many say, oh, yeah, well, what if the stranger is Hitler?
	What if the stranger is bin Laden?
	What if the stranger is Jeffrey Dahmer?
	You know, they always add the worst person they could think.
	So the answer is if it's Osama bin Laden, then the issue is irrelevant.
	Then the dog is irrelevant.
	If Osama bin Laden is drowning alone, I help him drown.
	I mean, the question is pointless.
	I would save a leaf before I would save Osama bin Laden.
	If a leaf were drowning, I want Osama bin Laden to drown.
	He's not a stranger.
	Because if he drowns, people live.
	So there's no issue.
	Of course, I would save the dog, but as they say, it would save a pebble first.
	It doesn't matter.
	So the question has never been a tough one.
	Okay, does that answer it?
	All right, good.
	Next.
	Hello, this is Jeff Riceboard from Tucker, California.
	One of the chief differences, I believe, in healthcare between the left and the right is whether healthcare is a right or not.
	And the way I look at it, I can't think of any other right where one person has to perform a service for another person.
	Because you're always going to have a case where there's a fixed number of doctors.
	And if you give all these people a right, as they need more and more services, where the service is going to come from?
	Are you going to require doctors to work a certain number of hours so they can perform all those services for all those people in need?
	But I've never heard this case of why it should be a right or not, because we just don't have the doctors to perform this type of service.
	Well, the whole point about the rights issue is a very valid one.
	Why isn't everything that is good for us a right?
	And once they are rights, then the rights have to be equal.
	So that's part of the problem with rights.
	I think that we have obligations to help our fellow human beings because I'm a religious person and I'm an idealist and a whole host of reasons.
	But the notion that you have, what does it mean you have a right?
	Do you have a right to the exact same care as anyone else?
	Do we have a right to the same auto as another person?
	Do we have a right to the same house as another?
	The rich will always have better things for them.
	That is part of life.
	And the American system has tried to make everybody capable, if with hard work, of attaining that.
	Not to mention that for the vast majority of Americans, first of all, for everybody, health care is already a given.
	That's why there's a big sabotaging of words again here, because every American does get health care.
	Not everyone has health insurance.
	But no one is denied health care in the United States, not even illegal immigrants.
	You go into an emergency room, you're taken care of.
	And you will have a surgery if you need it, and so on.
	We already live by this dictum.
	What they mean is not just a right, but a right to the same exact care that I, a member of Congress, have.
	You can't have a top doctor.
	No, well, that's right.
	It's impossible.
	That's exactly right.
	The only way it is possible is to do what you have in Canada, where the Canadian, the Premier of Newfoundland, comes to Florida because he has two choices: either he has to wait so long he may die, because he's an equal to everybody else, or he has to come here.
	Or he would have to jump to the head of the line because he is the governor or, as they say, premier of one of their provinces.
	But if he did that, of course, he would be yelled at for jumping to the head of the line.
	So instead, he came to the United States.
	Exactly.
	Yes.
	Hey, Dennis, it's Bruce Salon from Los Angeles.
	Last night at dinner, I raised a question which, in essence, you exemplified today in your speech, which is: sometimes when I listen to you, and I acknowledge that you deliver the bad news in a very upbeat way most of the time, but when I hear the list of problems in the world, it just depresses me.
	And I actually have found that as much as I love listening to you, occasionally I'll take a break just because I get depressed.
	I tend to agree with you.
	I tend to try to look at the half-full side of things.
	So the Pakistani example you brought is the most positive thing you said today.
	And I'm curious, in that regard, if you have any opinion on the recent news that I've only heard a little bit about about this Democrat, Edwin Nassau, who's being forced out and may be another one of these votes that will derail health care.
	I'm trying to look at that as this little beacon of light of hope, but when I hear the reconciliation option being brought forth, it just is ultimately depressing.
	Well, you have really asked a $64,000 question.
	And I'll be very open with you here.
	This is actually something that Alan periodically actually reminds me.
	You have to, Dennis, don't sound downbeat on these matters because it can, in fact, turn some people off.
	And I fully agree with him.
	And obviously, sometimes it does that to you.
	It's a very, very difficult line for me to walk on a daily basis because I am so worried about this country.
	And at the same time, I don't want you to shoot yourself after the show.
	So I want to inspire you to fight as I am inspired to fight rather than just give up.
	So I have to watch it, and it's one of the reasons that I have retained the dedicated hours so that I'm forced not to talk about these things and talk about like the male-female hour, the ultimate issues hour, the open lines hour, which does sometimes obviously go into a political thing, and of course the happiness hour.
	And it is not infrequent that people will say, you know, the first thing they'll say to me is, God, I love your happiness hour.
	And if there's any time the happiness hour is needed, it's now.
	And, you know, I need it too.
	By the way, it affects me.
	And so I plead guilty to a certain extent.
	I try to avoid it, and I try to say, look, folks, we can prevail.
	The trick now is, do you get depressed or do you fight?
	And I've decided to fight.
	But I can tell you that I remember when, during the Reagan years, I felt happier.
	I remember it.
	I couldn't believe it.
	I never thought my own happiness was in any way related to who was president.
	You always think your happiness is related to your own immediate world.
	But I remember when he was elected, I was jubilant.
	I mean, I just remember being happy over that.
	I felt, oh my God, now I don't have to worry about my country.
	Now I could just worry about myself, you know, worry about my own life.
	The country's in good hands.
	Now you have to worry about the country.
	That's a big thing to worry about.
	Because I think it is the last best hope for mankind.
	So that is where you have to make the fight.
	And I will try to do better in conveying exactly what I'm saying to you now.
	But I plead a little guilty to that.
	And sometimes you can hear in my voice that I am down.
	I mean, I said when Bush was re-elected, I got on and said, folks, I cried this morning out of relief.
	I was that open.
	I really did.
	I cried from relief.
	Had Kerry won, the disaster that would have ensued is too frightening, in my opinion.
	And I'm sorry?
	Here we are.
	Here we are.
	Well, no, no, even I still believe that I think the loss of moving from Iraq would have emboldened a worldwide attack of suicide bombers.
	I think that Iraq's falling at that time, which it would have, would have led to a conflagration and massive death, the likes of which we have not seen in a long time.
	So that was a bigger relief than the Obama win was depressing.
	And the Obama win would be for naught if they had not won such a big majority as well in the two houses.
	And it is a one-time fluke.
	And if we can survive the Obamacare thing, then that'll be time to cry again from relief.
	Yes?
	In emphasizing the left-right divide, why do you put an emphasis?
	Well, I don't think you're correct there in terms of ideas of egality and compassion.
	The way I see the left is they lie, they cheat.
	If Obama had compassion for the American people, they don't want their health care destroyed.
	I'm from Canada and contested it's a disaster.
	So I don't see that I see it as a power grab in its most naked force.
	And I really don't understand how such a wonderful country like America can vote in a guy who's a follower of Saul Alinsky.
	These are leftist tactics to the end degree.
	Why do we need to impute lovely motives to them?
	I don't even think they happen.
	Yeah, I do think that.
	No, I know a lot of you feel that way.
	I don't agree.
	We do differ.
	Think that they really do believe that they have beautiful motives.
	And egalitarianism is one of their beauty.
	I think egalitarianism is terrible, but they don't.
	And let me tell you another reason that I don't think that way, because it doesn't help in debating them.
	I am effective in debating them, and it is because I honor their motives.
	And it's disorienting to them when I say that in the debate, or especially when I say it to the public.
	That's one of the reasons that I think I can't change people's minds.
	If the moment I say your motives stink, I'm saying you're really a piece of junk.
	And then anybody who shares that, but anyone who shares that value is turned off immediately.
	But if I say, look, I think you do mean well, but let me tell you why meaning well isn't sufficient here, then they're prepared to hear what I have to say.
	And so tactically, aside from everything else, I do think it is more effective.
	Now, yes, I think they love power.
	I understand that.
	But there are areas where people on the right love power, where we would love to have prayer in school.
	That's our power, they could say.
	We have good motives.
	They think we have terrible motives for that.
	So, you know, that sort of battle just couldn't go on forever.
	And so I have found that is one I do stick with.
	Anyway, I have found that in life, it's too hard to know motives.
	Because, you know, that's what people go to shrinks for, is to figure out their motives.
	You know, why do I, you know, the proverbial woman who, a single woman who keeps dating, I got it, who keeps dating guys who were terrible for her.
	And she can't figure out what's inside of me.
	We don't even know ourselves.
	So purity of motive has never been my biggest thing, even though you and I obviously would agree on much of this.
	Okay, who's next?
	I'll say name and place.
	Stanch for Spalzberg's television.
	One thing I'm very confused about is how irrevocable is the Obama health plan?
	If it passes, can it be unpassed in two years?
	I've never been able to figure this out.
	In theory, I always think that it can be, even though there was a clause, I don't know if it's still there that this can't be revoked by a future Congress, but I can't imagine that that holds.
	It's a little absurd.
	But in practice, growth is never taken back.
	You know, in practice, we could have repealed a lot of the great society measures, a lot of Franklin and Roosevelt's measures.
	But once you start giving people things, it's very hard to take it away.
	They get used to being given things.
	Even if they're inferior, they're used to not paying for it.
	So that's the problem.
	The problem is in real life, do you know how many, what is it, 217 new agencies or something would be founded by this bill, aside from all of the other changes that would be made?
	And so it would be rough.
	It would be very rough.
	I mean, that would be the hope, something to that effect.
	But look, Ronald Reagan couldn't get rid of the Department of Education.
	After listening to you before, it was the first time I've been to Press, like this gentleman.
	However, I am more and more enthused about Prager University because it appears to me after listening for the last eight days or so, the only thing we hope that I hope for is that the left can be educated somehow.
	And the only way I see being educated is some new stimulative way of doing it.
	So I think the five-minute clips were fantastic.
	Well, thank you for saying that.
	That's what we believe.
	I give Alan credit for it because he came up with the idea.
	And it's that does give us a lot of hope.
	And look, I feel I really always find that transparency is a strength.
	I'll be very honest.
	The last thing I want to do is have you come on a cruise that asks you for money.
	It's almost kutzpa.
	It never occurred to me.
	But the truth is, meeting you privately, I realized, I mean, the brains and in some cases the substance as well, material substance available to you and your expertise is, I mean, you are my biggest allies.
	You're the natural people to go to with this.
	There's no pressure or anything, but you're my biggest allies.
	I mean, you know, you leave your homes, you get to sail with me to, you know, Galucas, Makucas, or, you know, whatever.
	I mean, I go to the craziest places on earth.
	So I'm very touched that you come.
	But yes, you're the natural people to ask this of.
	And we've gotten some wonderful responses in the past.
	But yes, I don't think we're going to change leftist minds, but I do think that we would change every non-leftist mind.
	And there are very few leftists in America.
	They're 20% by every poll.
	20% of Americans think they're on the left.
	The problem is that much of the other 80% doesn't know what's wrong with the left.
	They don't know that it's a different vision of life.
	They don't know all of these matters.
	And when brought to them, it's all so clear.
	You watch this, you go, well, yeah, that's right.
	Either the government is big or I'm big.
	I mean, it's clear.
	It's as simple as that.
	Either the government gives you rights or God gives you rights.
	There's no other possible source of rights.
	There is none.
	Molecules don't give you rights.
	DNA doesn't give you rights.
	Your own conscience doesn't give you rights.
	Either the government or God.
	That's why in God We Trust is part of the American Trinity.
	That's the one that we want the most people to see, because people forgot what America stands for.
	You want to add something?
	Go right ahead.
	I think after.
	All right, well, if you remember, then tell us afterwards.
	Sometimes I answer so long, people do forget.
	Okay, who's next?
	Name.
	Serial.
	ER-1776.
	No, no, no.
	Did I say cereal?
	Oh, well.
	Elliot and my wife, Marla, from Minneapolis, on the Middle East.
	Yep.
	Putting their no-happy solution to the side in Iran for just a moment.
	First, what should the United States and/or Israel, in retrospect, should have done, maybe could have done?
	Secondly, if Dennis Frager, if you were to be president, our president, what would you do?
	Secondly, in terms of Israel, off of Iran.
	Israel, in a word or two, if possible, in a word or two.
	The West Bank, Hamas, Elot, Shalit, Hezbollah, and have you heard about the possibility of another fight war in the spring, summer with Hezbollah?
	Okay, was that a three-part question?
	What was the first one?
	Iran.
	Well, what would I do if I were president on Iran?
	Well, that was the second part.
	Yeah, what was the first part?
	What should or couldn't the United States and Israel have done?
	Right.
	And you, as president, what would you do?
	I am a believer that moral clarity and confrontation are better than sitting down with people who are bad.
	See, I believe in sitting down with people with whom you share some sort of values, or have some, even don't share values with, but have a common interest.
	We have no common interest with Iran, and we have no shared values with that regime.
	The first thing that I would do as president is to back the democratic opposition in Iran.
	That's free, that carries no military risk, and that we're not even doing.
	We act as if they are essentially non-existent.
	The world should be backing the greatest force right now for good is the democratic Iranian opposition that exists.
	We should be broadcasting, we should be leafleting.
	This is the American way.
	And you make them scared of their own people.
	That we have truly failed at.
	Then you privately make allies and others aware: yes, you think that we're cowboys, by golly, we are.
	That is right.
	And if you wish to be non-cowboys and have us bail your buttocks out again, well, then so be it.
	But we will learn the lessons about what NATO has become or what have you.
	But where you what the Bush problem, by the way, and I said this during his administration, but not often enough, and it's still, if I could ask George W. Bush one question is why did you not sell your policies better and more often?
	You see, this is where I would be a different president.
	I would carry a big stick, but I would not talk softly.
	I would talk eloquently.
	I would explain, as much as Obama explains what I think is wrong, I would explain what is right.
	And why we didn't do it more often is, especially when the moral clarity is on your side, is a puzzle to me.
	So that would be a big factor.
	As regards another Middle Eastern war, look, it is always possible, and that is why Israel has the needs the military edge that it has.
	I am in the minority of observers who believe Israel did win the war against Hezbollah.
	Most people think that Israel lost it.
	I do not believe that.
	And by the way, my biggest single source for that is the opinion editor of the Daily Star in Beirut, Lebanon.
	What is it, Michael Watt?
	Young, Michael Young, whom I have on periodically.
	He is an editor of the English language paper in Lebanon, very, very acute observer of the Middle East.
	And I bounced off, I said to him, I don't know why everybody's saying Israel lost.
	The Lebanese people now know that by Hezbollah attacking Israel in some way, they suffer.
	How did Israel exactly lose?
	And he said, you're right.
	That is exactly what Lebanese now know.
	They do not want Hezbollah to fight Israel because then all of Lebanon suffers.
	In that sense, Hezbollah, now, Hezbollah has a built-in advantage in having Shiites, Shiite Lebanese, follow it, and the fact that Christians keep leaving Lebanon because of how Christians are treated in every Muslim country.
	So those are built-in advantages to Hezbollah there.
	But I'm not sure that they want another war.
	You know, Israel is prepared to be excoriated by the United Nations.
	This does not exactly ruin the average Israeli day.
	I'll never forget 1967.
	I was 19 years old.
	My first, I was 18.
	I wasn't even 19 yet.
	I went right after the six-day war for the first time I went to Israel.
	And I spoke Hebrew fluently then, from all my Jewish studies.
	And I got into a taxi going from, and I was there right after the Six-Day War.
	But I had not followed the news for days.
	So I got into the car and taxi, and I said to the driver, Makhoreba Um, what's happening in the UN?
	Um in Hebrew is UN.
	And I'll never forget the guy looked at me and he goes, Um shmum.
	And I thought, yeah, he's right.
	Um shmum.
	And that was it.
	That was, this is 1967.
	This is 33 years ago.
	Or 43 years ago.
	Wow, 43 years ago.
	Yeah.
	Oh, my God.
	43 years ago.
	And it's how I've been looking at it ever since.
	Gee, what's happening at the UN is of importance to the ambassadors to the UN.
	They think it's important.
	And it is important when we have a John Bolton there to make the side for our values.
	But I'm not pessimistic about another war in the Middle East in that way.
	Les Schwartz, Thousand Os, California.
	Two quick anecdotes.
	I heard Hubert Humphrey about five years ago, one of his speeches back in the 60s.
	I would have sworn he was an ultra-conservative when I listened to him.
	So I can understand you leading liberalism because it was.
	Well, it left me.
	I know.
	I do not believe that true numbers.
	I'm a retired veterinarian.
	In the 33 years I had my clinic, never once was I ever asked where I graduated from.
	Never.
	Right.
	So no one ever did.
	No one cared.
	You either saved their dog or you didn't.
	I did the job.
	Yes, exactly.
	Of course.
	Now, the question I want to ask is.
	By the way, he never went to college.
	This was the amazing thing.
	This is really a great veterinarian.
	The question I had was, he almost stole what I was going to ask, but forget the United States, forget everybody else.
	Benjamin Netanyahu, in my opinion, there's no way on this earth he's going to allow Iran to go nuclear.
	Do you agree or do you not?
	I have generally been of the opinion that Israel would do something.
	That has generally been my opinion, or at least make Iran think that it might do something.
	Yeah.
	That's right.
	I agree with that.
	As Golden Meir said, one thing we learned from the Holocaust is when they say they want to kill Jews, take them seriously.
	I just have to go to the same question.
	I have the same question about Iran.
	I feel, he said, hey, Ron, Obama is going to throw Israel under the bus, just like he did with Wright and with everyone else that wasn't on his agenda.
	So I'm just curious, what do you think about that?
	I don't know if he would.
	I don't know if he would, frankly.
	And here is some happy news.
	Look, the man did send in tens of thousands of troops to Afghanistan against his own party's will.
	You have to give him credit on that.
	You have to give him credit on the drones that he's using against them as well.
	Ironically, in foreign affairs, he's been much better than one might have expected.
	I think that there have been naive things about I'm going to talk to the Muslim world and they're all going to swoon for America.
	I mean, this is part of the belief, the left belief, it's important to be loved.
	I don't share that belief.
	It's important to be respected, not loved.
	And so, but aside from that, I don't believe that for a whole host of reasons he would throw Israel under the bus in that instance.
	Dennis?
	Yep.
	Where is that?
	Where are you?
	Over here.
	Okay, just raise your hand.
	There you go.
	Okay.
	Matile Johnson from Playo-Del Rey.
	In regard to health care being a right, we got rid of slavery in 1865 with the 13th Amendment.
	Most of health care is a service.
	That's my opinion.
	Okay, that's fair.
	And that was pretty much, yeah.
	Can you please review what the latest is on the health care deal?
	How can that reconciliation, which is supposed to be just about budgetary matters have such a large effect?
	I thought that they couldn't do that.
	Well, that's like, was it Stalin said, how many troops does the Pope have?
	You know, they have more troops.
	That's the advantage of winning landslides.
	What am I going to say?
	I don't think it's right either.
	Dennis?
	Yes.
	Where are you, whoever?
	Yes.
	Party chain from Philadelphia.
	The comment, I'm hearing some interesting words from the audience here, a little depression, a little depressive thoughts on some words that you may have said or you indicated.
	Yet, what's interesting is the takeaway I have from the days that you've been here, eight days perhaps, is the Prager University, a very, very positive step.
	And going a step further on that, Bill O'Reilly, who probably many of us listened to, and let me interject something I forgot.
	When you mentioned this 20% of the population, maybe liberals, having you on the Bill O'Reilly show, whether he would give you some time would be fantastic exposure to talk about and run a five-minute or abbreviated clip of what you're talking about would just be tremendous.
	Thank you.
	I agree with you.
	You'll find this interesting.
	I'm going on Hannity next Wednesday, as I told you, as an example.
	If I lived in New York, I would be on these shows.
	I might even have my own show.
	The out of sight, out of mind to the networks.
	If you are west of the Hudson River, they pretty much don't have you on.
	Everybody lives in the New York, Boston, Washington area who has a show or who goes on regularly.
	The one example, the one different one is Larry King, who lives in LA, but he is so big that he could do a show from, where were we yesterday?
	Madeira.
	He could do a show from Madera if he wanted while sipping on Madeira wine.
	But otherwise, it's all in that area.
	For family and friends' reasons, I did not want to leave L.A.
	But I think I have suffered from that as a result.
	However, I will tell you this.
	If Prager University reaches a certain number, I think that it would happen that TV would start to pick it up.
	That's exactly right.
	So it's really a matter of making this thing grow.
	Because they would look at the numbers and say, wow, this guy brings millions of viewers with him.
	We want to put him on.
	So your point is very well taken.
	John Malin, Shardin, Ohio, center of the maple syrup industry.
	Is that true?
	Yes.
	Yes, it is.
	I thought Vermont was the center of.
	No, they're the east of the.
	Well, they have a different name.
	But we're in the center.
	Okay.
	Fair enough.
	I love maple syrup.
	Good.
	Look, I'll have to send you some.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Don't send Alan Honey.
	Well, he gets all the gifts, you know, and I get to taste it on way a couple of times.
	Go ahead.
	Well, I've got an idea that I think might make people feel a little bit better.
	At this point, this is before the passage of the Obama health care thing.
	Yeah, Art Laffer, who you've had on your program, Dennis, a famous economist, makes a lot of sense to me.
	And I heard him make the statement that at this point, he could sit down over a weekend and map out a plan to balance the budget in a relatively short period of time if given his own design.
	Well, that's exactly the sort of guy I'd like to do exactly that in five minutes and then have it at the Prager University thing.
	That's a perfect example.
	Alan, we should talk to Lapper.
	Is Alan here?
	Write that down.
	Oh, Allie, write that down.
	Did you want to say anything, by the way?
	Did you want to say anything about PragerU or?
	I'll just say one.
	Just the people won't approach you or anything.
	When we say a virtual university, we mean a virtual university.
	But the gag is the courses will be five minutes long, not an hour long or 90 minutes or whatever, because people aren't going to sit still for that.
	But if you can imagine 100 courses, 150 courses, 200 courses, they're going to have something on subjects like religious studies, history, economics, life studies, these psychology.
	There's a tremendous amount we can do.
	And I must say, it's totally unique.
	And I think we're starting something that's going to be embraced by a lot of other people.
	But we're doing it.
	I think we know how to do it now.
	And I can stay on my fear.
	We're going to go, as we say, from strength to strength.
	And that's where we need your help.
	Which one has the one with the monkeys on Hamlet?
	Most important verse, or what would make you believe in God?
	I think it's what would make you believe in God.
	Do we have it readily here?
	Yeah.
	I want to show you one more before we say goodbye.
	Yeah, of course, while he's setting it up.
	And who is it?
	Wait, Margie Oswald from Bowen House.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	You know, I'm listening to all of this, and it sounds fantastic, and it's like preaching to the choir.
	What's the plan to get it to the other side of the get these shots on MSNBC?
	I'm sure we'll never do it.
	All right, let me answer you.
	Right.
	It's a very fair question.
	First of all, the internet isn't the choir.
	The internet is to everybody.
	That's one of the great things about it.
	You're right.
	If it's just MSNBC or Fox News, it's somewhat of the choir.
	But let me answer about the choir for a minute.
	If the conservative choir knew the arguments, we would have no trouble.
	The vast majority of people who call themselves conservatives have forgotten these things.
	To be honest, I didn't know the American Trinity won until about 15 years ago when I saw it on a coin and all of a sudden I would give speeches and speeches on American values and I never isolated in God We Trust Deep Plural Bizune and Liberty until 15 years ago when I was staring at a coin and I realized, oh my God, it's been staring me in the face my entire life since I was a child and I never realized we have our own Trinity.
	Christianity has a Trinity, America has a Trinity.
	And that is the best way to understand what we stand for.
	No other country on the face of the earth has those three values as its symbolic emblem.
	We have had this for eons, as it were, relative to the age of this country.
	So, first of all, I'm very happy to talk to the choir.
	The choir forgot the lyrics.
	Okay?
	The choir forgot how to sing the songs.
	So, if I can get the choir, more Americans think of themselves as conservative than liberal.
	If the choir can start singing correctly, we'll win.
	If I only talked to the choir, we would win.
	But we don't because the choir sends it to cousin Jerry, who has a nephew at CU.
	Hey, why don't you take a look at this?
	And then that kid thinks, my God, I never thought of this in my life.
	Hey, look at this, and chose his roommate.
	And that's the feedback we have.
	And then sends it to his cousin in Sweden, who all of a sudden starts thinking, yeah, we're told what to do here.
	We are in giants in Sweden.
	The government is a giant.
	You don't know what stuff this can set off.
	You just don't know.
	This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

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