Dennis Prager Show - Timeless Wisdom - Moral Case for Conservatism

Nov. 22, 2025 - Dennis Prager Show

01:43:16

Timeless Wisdom - Moral Case for Conservatism

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	Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
	Hear thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs.
	And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com.
	His weekly column at townhall.com.
	He's written several books on Judaism, including a most widely used primer on Judaism.
	He lectures and holds dialogue with religious and interfaith groups.
	He's written comedy films, and as if that isn't enough, he takes the time every now and then to conduct professional sympathy orchestras.
	So, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Moral Compass of LA and For My Money America, Dennis Prager.
	Thank you very much.
	Thank you very much.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	I need to tell you, whoops, do you hear me?
	I'm too tall for the, is that better?
	Yeah.
	Okay, hi.
	On those occasions when I get a standing ovation prior to speaking, I need to tell you it's much more intimidating than being booed.
	It is because I feel I can only disappoint you at this point.
	Whereas if, you know, people I'd come in, as I spoke at the University of California, Santa Barbara about a year or two ago, and a student there, was a columnist, wrote that he was opposed to my coming because I'm a bigot.
	And so I invited him on my radio show, and I told him that I thought I knew myself well.
	And I'm not a bigot.
	So what is it about me that he knew that I didn't know?
	And that's how I asked him to back up this really awful charge.
	And of course, there was no backup.
	It was simply that I'm conservative.
	By definition, I am a bigot.
	And he was shocked that I had him on the show and came to the lecture.
	And after the lecture, he wrote another column, and it was titled, I Apologize to Mr. Prager.
	Isn't that sweet?
	It's a very sweet story, actually.
	It's very much to his credit, but it's a perfect opening to talk to you.
	This is the moral case for conservatism.
	And that's a great opening because the assumption is such that moral and conservative are almost oxymoronic, that they cancel one another out.
	The propaganda is so deep, it's so pervasive, that no one would even think of making, no liberal would think of coming to this university and speaking on the moral case for liberalism.
	It's almost like the case for breathing.
	It doesn't need to be made.
	And so liberalism means moral, means good, means kind, means compassionate, means caring.
	And conservative therefore must mean all the opposite.
	And so it's all propaganda.
	There's no truth to it.
	That's the sad, sad part, because I want to be moral.
	That's in fact, I come from a religious Jewish background, and I am a religious Jew, though not Orthodox.
	And what that means, I am speaking on tomorrow night at the synagogue at Sinai, Congregation Sinai.
	And what that means to be religious without being Orthodox is, in fact, my subject for my Friday night lecture.
	So, if any of you are Presbyterian and interested, please do come.
	The only reason I say that, it's somewhat of a joke on myself, because Presbyterians often are more interested in that talk.
	That's only a sad fact of Jewish life, but I'll leave that for tomorrow night, why that's the case.
	But I was raised in a deeply ethically oriented home and in a very profoundly religious/slash moral environment, taught every day, love your neighbor as yourself, as the motto of Judaism, and that this is the most important thing you can do in life.
	I am an ethical monotheist.
	I believe that God's greatest single concern is that we treat our fellow human beings ethically.
	That He is more concerned that we love each other than even love Him, even though I know the great verse, love God and love your neighbor, taken by Jesus from the Torah.
	I know that.
	Nevertheless, if God had to choose, He made it clear through His prophets.
	He cares more about how we treat one another than how we treat Him.
	Which, by the way, I can prove to you on a human level why that's true.
	Any of you who are parents know that if push came to shove, you would rather your children treat each other lovingly and have big troubles with you than have big troubles with each other and treat you lovingly.
	My mother, may she rest in peace, died a month ago at 89, perfectly with it till the last week, literally.
	And it was amazing.
	I have one sibling, always have had one sibling.
	And until I would say the last month, she would always ask, Well, did you call Kenny?
	I mean, that was her biggest concern.
	Did I call my brother?
	That was my mother's concern.
	You know, I'm 61 years old.
	You understand?
	And she's still asking, Did you call your brother, who's 67?
	But it makes perfect sense.
	I have kids.
	When they get along and hug each other, that's the biggest deal for me.
	God cares how his children treat each other.
	So to me, the moral, the ethical, is absolutely paramount.
	That's why I'm conservative.
	It's not I had to figure out how to blend the two.
	It is entirely because I care about how people treat each other that I am not a liberal.
	That's the point here.
	Now, you may differ with me on point A, B, C, D if you are on the left, and I am so used to people differing with me, I do it for a living.
	Please feel free to challenge me on any point that I make.
	But let's get it clear that it is vile propaganda that conservative isn't preoccupied with the moral.
	Are there bad conservative individuals?
	Sure, there are bad liberal individuals, bad conservative individuals, good liberal individuals, good conservative individuals.
	I'm not talking about the individual.
	There are bad people on each side.
	There are good people on each side.
	I'm talking about the principles.
	Do conservative principles make a kinder, better, more moral society, or do left-of-center principles, however far left you wish to take it.
	That's the question of the evening.
	That's why this is a moral case for conservatism.
	To me, this is redundant.
	Conservatism, its entire raison d'être, is to make a good and decent world.
	Now, that's the problem because we have been raised so profoundly, and especially the university, its entire Weltanschaun, its worldview is predicated on the notion. that what I just said makes no sense.
	Conservative means selfish.
	I'll give you my favorite line.
	It's one that I know by heart because I play it on my radio show every week and have for a couple of years since he said it.
	Howard Dean, the former chairman of the Democratic Party, said, and this is absolutely emblematic of the way in which most, not all, most Democrats, most liberals, most left-wingers think.
	And he said, in contradistinction, we Democrats, in contradistinction to Republicans, care whether kids go to bed hungry at night.
	Now, here I am, a conservative, a Republican, and I thought I did care if kids go to bed hungry at night.
	But again, like that boy at University of California, Santa Barbara, he knows me better.
	By being a Republican, I don't care, by definition, whether kids go to bed hungry at night.
	That is the liberal and left-wing.
	Sometimes liberal and left are different.
	They are increasingly not.
	But that is how they view conservatives and Republicans.
	That we really don't care if kids go to bed hungry at night.
	Now, there is something unbelievably wonderful about having that view of your opponents.
	You don't have to think.
	If your opponent is evil, then you don't have to think.
	You just have to exist, and you're better than they.
	You're not like bad people, then you're a good person.
	You don't need an argument.
	Do you have an argument against a Ku Klux Klanner or a Nazi?
	Of course not.
	It's so self-evident that they're bad, you don't bother arguing with them.
	And that's the case that the average liberal and Democrat feels about Republicans and conservatives.
	They're so bad, they don't merit argument.
	They merit only dismissal and being vanquished.
	Now, you'll say, well, isn't it the other way around as well?
	No.
	The average conservative thinks that the average liberal is a fool, but not a bad man.
	And that's a big difference.
	We do think, I am convinced that if you are wise, you're not on the left.
	I am convinced of it.
	And I can prove it to you.
	The vast majority of people get more conservative as they get older.
	Every single human I have ever interviewed thinks that they are wiser at 50 than they were at 40, wiser at 40 than they were at 30, wiser at 30 than they were at 20, wiser at 60 than they were at 50, etc.
	So everyone, liberal and conservative, believes that they're wiser as they get older.
	Well, then how do you account for the fact that people get more conservative as they get older?
	Well, the usual answer I get, because this really does put liberals on the defensive, if wisdom and conservatism go hand in hand, how does one explain this fact?
	And one is a liberal and yet older.
	How is that possible?
	So the answer given is, well, as you get older, you get more selfish.
	But we all know that that's not true.
	Older people are not more selfish.
	It is young people who cause most of the problems on earth, not old people.
	If a 70-year-old robs a bank, it makes the news.
	If a 20-year-old robs a bank, it doesn't make the news.
	If a 20-year-old tortures and rapes, it doesn't make the news.
	If a 70-year-old tortures and rapes, it does make the news.
	Most of the time, we think people get better as well as wiser as they get older and more conservative.
	Because the more you realize about life, the more you realize that liberalism is usually predicated on youthful fantasies, not mature reflection.
	This is not an insult.
	It's not meant to be an insult.
	That's the last thing I want to engage in.
	But I want to turn the tables around in such a way that people can honestly at least approach this issue.
	Why is the university so liberal?
	Because it's a kindergarten.
	Because you don't grow up at the university.
	It is a place for children of all ages.
	It is.
	I mean it utterly sincere.
	I taught college.
	I went to graduate school at Columbia University.
	I taught college, City University of New York.
	I have, not only do I respect the term professor, I virtually venerate it.
	To this day, despite all of the horrible ideas that come out of universities, if I hear someone as a professor of history, for example, I admit it, I have, I get, it sounds silly, it almost sounds childlike, I get a little chilled.
	It's almost like when I meet a conductor.
	You heard I conduct orchestras.
	I'm very much into music.
	I'm into the life of the intellect.
	Professor of history, despite everything I know about the university, I have immediate respect.
	So they actually have to work to lose it.
	They usually do, but it takes effort to get to that point.
	But that is the reason the university is liberal in large measure because it is a place for children.
	After all, the students meet only people their age, except for professors who are older.
	So unless you meet old people and interact, you're likely to have more childish thoughts.
	It makes perfect sense.
	You think like your peers.
	So for the student, it's somewhat of a childlike cocoon, especially universities that are removed from normal life.
	I went to two types, one removed from normal life and one in the midst of normal life, and they were very different.
	Brooklyn College was a commuter college.
	Kids didn't live on campus and only interact with kids.
	They lived at home and interacted with adults.
	They were far less liberal than the students at Columbia, where I went to graduate school.
	They were removed.
	They lived in dorms.
	There were no dorms at Brooklyn College.
	Schools that have dorms are probably far more liberal than schools that don't have dorms because they live with one another, children with children.
	So who are they going to get wisdom from?
	A fellow 18-year-old?
	There's nobody there to impart wisdom.
	As for professors, if they live also the life of the university, if you go from kindergarten to graduate school to PhD, you have never left the world of children.
	You have never entered the real world.
	How can you grow up?
	Some do, but it's an obstacle course.
	It's an obstacle course to wisdom because you have gone from kindergarten through a PhD and then teaching without necessarily touching the real world.
	How can you be wise if you haven't been in the world?
	Now, professors who have gone to the real world and then start to teach, they usually are more conservative than people who went straight through graduate school from kindergarten.
	So there's a very real problem that we have with the university, and that's one of the reasons for its liberalism.
	Another one is it's a theoretical universe, and it's the only place in the Western world where bad ideas have no consequences.
	You see, if I, for example, I'm an inventor and I decide to invent the concrete life preserver, I then market it, people use it and drown.
	And so I probably won't sell many, except among those who wish to drown.
	But among those who wish to live and be saved, I have to close down my operation.
	But if you come up with the idea of a concrete life preserver, it's equivalent in the liberal arts at a university, you get tenure.
	You not only don't lose your job, you stay there.
	That is why it's at the university that I learned that men and women are basically the same, the equivalent of a concrete life preserver.
	Professors actually said that to me.
	That the only reason that women have feminine quote-unquote traits, an idea that they, in any event, reject, is that they were raised with tea sets and Barbie dolls, but not with what boys are raised with.
	And so a whole generation of people who were taught this, many of them my generation, unfortunately, the least intellectually sophisticated or wise, I should say, in American history, the baby boomer generation, of which I'm a member, raised their kids in a non-sexist upbringing.
	In fact, the former president of Harvard told a story that he bought that.
	Larry Summers, now and a major liberal figure, former president of Harvard, told the story about raising his girls with trucks, or at least his girl, I don't know, girls.
	And one day he knocked on the door of his little girl, and it was totally quiet in the room.
	He got a little concerned, knocked again.
	She came to the door, said, shh, daddy, shh.
	I'm putting the trucks to sleep.
	She had put them to bed.
	She had given them names.
	Now, was she taught that?
	No, it was a non-sexist home.
	But everybody knows, everybody except academics knew that boys and girls are inherently different.
	You had to go to a university to learn otherwise.
	And as I did, I never bought it.
	It was as apparent to me as the day is long that there are inherent differences.
	But there's no other place in America where you could get away with believing men and women are basically the same and make a living because it doesn't comport with reality.
	All right, so these are some of the inherent challenges that the liberal mindset faces, that you get wiser as you get older, that you have to be in a cloistered world to believe certain things.
	And there are others as well.
	But I say this because it's so important to turn the tables around because you are told at the university that liberalism is the intellectual's choice, that that is what an intellectual, you can't be an intellectual and conservative, and you can't be good, compassionate, kind, caring, moral if you're conservative.
	But we're not here to debate the issue of intellectualism, but rather the issue of decent.
	There is a list of seven items that conservatives are called, which enables the liberal, again, to avoid intellectual debate.
	And the bad part is that the liberal usually believes these terms, and they are racist, sexist.
	This is what conservatives are dismissed.
	Racist, sexist, And bigoted and intolerant and homophobic and xenophobic.
	And what is the, what is there?
	There is one other phobia, I believe.
	Xenophobia, homophobia.
	Islamophobia.
	I'm sorry?
	Islamophobia.
	Oh, Islamophobia, yes, thank you.
	That's right.
	It's the latest one, and I haven't incorporated into my memory as quiet as the others.
	But those are the seven things you are called.
	Now, let me give you an example of what renders you one of those things.
	For example, sexist.
	You are a sexist if you believe if you affirm that men, males, and females, are inherently different.
	That would render you sexist.
	That is the reason that Larry Summers lost his job as president of Harvard.
	He offered as a possible idea.
	Remember, the man's a liberal.
	But he offered as a possible idea because they couldn't figure out at Harvard why were fewer women constantly going into engineering and mathematics.
	And so he said, is one possibility that the female brain and the male brain are different?
	And an MIT female professor got up, said she got nauseous, she was about to throw up.
	It's a profoundly intellectual reaction when you think about it.
	As soon as he said it, he was declared a sexist, and the faculty at Harvard had him removed.
	That was the final straw for the faculty at Harvard that he suggested that men, male brain.
	Now, everybody who studies this knows that the male brain and female brain are different.
	Anybody who's raised boys and girls knows they're different.
	Anybody who lives with the opposite sex knows that they are profoundly different.
	But you can say that in the world, what we call politically correct really means liberal stranglehold on free thought, on honest thought.
	And so you're a sexist if you believe that.
	You're a racist if, for example, you believe that it is not good for the African American to have affirmative action based on race, which is my belief.
	I totally agree with liberals that blacks deserve affirmative action.
	Given slavery and given Jim Crow, collectively, America owes blacks a good turn.
	It's not even a question.
	Of course.
	But now the question is not what feels good and what is owed, but what is good.
	I thought moral means what's good.
	So is it good or is it bad for blacks to have affirmative action at universities, for example, or in hiring?
	Is it good for blacks and is it good for black-white relations?
	You know, I am, like most of the males at least here, I suspect, a sports fan.
	And, you know, I watch, especially in baseball, I watch the playoffs.
	And I have to believe I'm not alone in loving how Hispanics, blacks, and whites, which is the primary, and now, of course, Japanese players, Korean players, how they hug each other and with the deepest love and sincerity when they win.
	Right?
	When they win a game, and certainly if they win a playoff series.
	Why is that?
	Why is there so little racism in sports?
	These people, after all, did not go to graduate school and learn how not to be a racist.
	So how is it that there's so little racism among baseball players, as an example?
	And I know the answer.
	I'm not speculating.
	I'm certain of this answer.
	Because there is no affirmative action in sports.
	That's why.
	That's why black players are not angry.
	Affirmative action makes recipients of affirmative action angry, as it should.
	I'll explain why in a moment.
	And it makes the non-recipients question the capability of the members of the group, of whom some do receive favored admissions.
	But there are no favored admissions.
	You either play first base well or you're out.
	Nobody is in sports thanks to affirmative action.
	And therefore, no one cares about racial imbalance.
	The NBA has only been able to charge more and more and more and more for a seat at an NBA game, even when nearly all the players turned out to be African American.
	The white fan, 99% of the fan seemed to be white, didn't give a damn because they saw excellence.
	All they cared about was excellence.
	And people pay in Los Angeles where we have the Lakers and Clippers, but nobody knows that.
	There is really Lakers.
	And the front row at a Lakers game, four-fifths of whose starters are nearly always black, and often five-fifths are, they're all white sitting around paying $1,000 or $1,500 per seat to be in the front row, and they couldn't care less.
	They don't know blacks.
	They know Kobe.
	The fact that they are all black is of no significance to the fan.
	They're all excellent.
	Excellence is the enemy of racism.
	Affirmative action is the handmaiden of racism because it announces that you don't get in by merit.
	You don't get in by excellence.
	You get in by color.
	And this is considered to be anti-racist.
	Only foolish people can think that way.
	Well-meaning.
	I believe most liberals are well-meaning.
	But that doesn't mean a thing because the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
	Intentions mean nothing to me.
	The older I get, the less I care about intentions.
	Results are what make something moral.
	Results.
	By the way, the second you say that results are more important than intentions, you become a conservative.
	You have already crossed the line and left liberalism the moment you do not value intentions.
	Because affirmative action is entirely based on we mean well.
	Does it do well?
	Well, it doesn't do well.
	It just fosters deep anger among many blacks, and I'll tell you why.
	Because blacks walk around on a campus, not all, but enough, understandably angry because their excellence is, they think, impugned and suspect.
	People call my radio show, they have for years and say, well, Dennis, what about the children of alumni or big givers?
	They got in through affirmative action, to which my response has always been, you're entirely right.
	And if every student at a university who got in on affirmative action, thanks to daddy being a big giver or mommy being an alumna, wore a big sign, son or daughter of a big giver, they would also be resentful.
	But blacks do wear a big sign, they're color.
	And that's the issue.
	If it were known that there is no affirmative action, no black on any campus would have the slightest reason to assume that anybody impugned his or her excellence.
	Just as no one impugns the excellence of a black football, basketball, or baseball player, or even the handful of now hockey players, as my Los Angeles Kings last year had a black player.
	I don't know if he's still on the team this year.
	I don't have my season tickets.
	But that is the reason.
	Affirmative action has been a disaster.
	On human grounds, it has been a disaster.
	It has hurt blacks terribly.
	It has hurt whites terribly.
	It has hurt society terribly.
	But none of that matters to the liberal.
	The liberal doesn't ask, does it work?
	That's a conservative question.
	The liberal asks, does it feel right?
	It's a feelings-based world, the left-wing world.
	It's all feelings.
	And so you feel it's right because blacks were hurt and blacks were hurt.
	There's no question.
	If I thought affirmative action worked, I'd be for it, because I do believe blacks deserve it.
	But it's disastrous.
	The moment you undermine standards, you have terrible problems.
	So you're called, but you're called racist if you're against affirmative action.
	And let's see, you're called homophobic if you merely think that marriage ought to be between a man and a woman.
	You're not wrong or old-fashioned or religious.
	You're homophobic.
	I had a wonderful experience in this regard.
	I have a lot of gay listeners, as it happens, and as I should.
	There's no reason I don't have a homophobic bone in my body.
	I not only have relatives who were gay, it is as obvious as anything was ever taught to me.
	The gay human is created in God's image every bit as much as the heterosexual human.
	It's such a given that I don't even think about it.
	It's just a given.
	Well, anyway, but I am very adamant about marriage being between a man and a woman.
	And I testified, I was the one who testified for the Defense of Marriage Act in Congress, and so I've been publicly associated with that position as well as on my radio show.
	On Larry King, I debated this issue.
	And so I'm called homophobic by leaders of gay activism and also by liberal heterosexuals.
	I was at a dinner party a couple of weeks ago.
	A friend of mine is a major publicist in Los Angeles invited me to meet friends and colleagues of his.
	Well, I was seated next to a major Hollywood producer.
	And I'll make the story very short.
	It turned out, we talked, I always talk to men or women.
	I talk a lot about personal issues.
	I am as interested, if you know my show at all, I am as interested in micro-subjects as macro subjects.
	That's the feminine side of me.
	I think it's a strong side.
	My friends laugh at me that it's not a strong side, but I think it is.
	But in any event, I care about these subjects very deeply.
	And I talk to guys whom I meet.
	You know, are you married?
	So anyway, this guy was next to me.
	He's a middle-aged guy and major Hollywood producer.
	He says, no, he's never been married.
	Where do you live?
	West Hollywood.
	Well, it doesn't take a genius to at least infer the possibility that the gentleman is gay.
	Turns out, of course, he was.
	And at the end of the evening, he drilled me.
	He's a very bright guy, very bright guy.
	He drilled me on my views on homosexuality, etc.
	And at the end of the evening, he said, look, I need to tell you something.
	I came out of curiosity to this dinner, but I was certain you were homophobe.
	And you're not.
	And I said, no, I know I'm not.
	But I was very touched that he said it, but I said, I know I'm not.
	But just because I simply want marriage to be male-female, I am declared that.
	So you think men and women are basically different, you're sexist, you're against affirmative action based on race, you're racist.
	You think marriage ought to between a man and a woman, and you are homophobic.
	If you merely assert, suggest that there is more terror coming out of the Islamic world than other places at this time, except for Tamils in Sri Lanka, that's you're Islamophobic.
	And so that's what is done by the left.
	It just shuts you down.
	You don't dialogue.
	You assert the evil of that person.
	Hence the need, tragically, for this lecture.
	It's a tragedy that this lecture needs to be made.
	See, I could understand the case for conservatism, but the moral case for conservatism, it's because it has been so maligned as all of these things are asserted about anyone who holds any of these positions.
	So that's why we have the problem and why it is difficult for people at a university or at a reform synagogue to assert that, or a liberal church to assert that they are conservative, where it's not at all difficult the other way around.
	Liberals are never, tell me, it would be fascinating, if you are liberal, only because I don't want interruptions during the talk, but if you can give me anything approximating the list I just gave you, tell me a one-word dismissal of liberals that is nearly as common and effective as racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, bigoted, ignorant.
	I don't know of any.
	There aren't.
	Liberals, well, when I asked this on the radio, liberals will call up and say, oh, unpatriotic.
	I said, really?
	Can you name a mainstream conservative who has ever said that liberals are unpatriotic?
	And they don't have a single example.
	Never have I been given an example.
	It's just a big lie that conservatives call liberals unpatriotic.
	No, we call this what when we use adjectives, which is less frequently than the other side, but when we do, it's naive, wrong.
	I think pretty much those.
	They're wrong, they're naive, even foolish.
	But that's a far cry from being bad.
	Here's a bet that I'm dying to see somebody take up.
	Next election, get seven automobiles, identical autos, get 14 actually.
	Seven, put on a bumper sticker for whoever are the Democratic presidential and vice presidential nominees.
	And the other seven, the Republican presidential and vice presidential nominees, park all of them in the other side's neighborhoods.
	So put the seven, if let's say we would have done it in the last election.
	Get seven cars with a McCain-Palin bumper sticker.
	You park them in San Francisco, in Manhattan, on the west side, on the west side of Los Angeles, In Madison, etc.
	Okay?
	And you take seven Obama-Biden bumper stickered cars and you put them in the seven most conservative districts you can find in the United States.
	I don't know.
	In Mississippi, Alabama, I don't know, Orange County, California, wherever they may be located.
	And let's make a bet.
	I would, I'd bet a serious sum of money that the cars in the liberal areas will be vandalized far more quickly than the other cars.
	And yet, and yet, the New York Times on, the whole liberal edifice claims that the hate comes from the right.
	But on, if we could ever bet on any actual manifestation of hate, we'll win.
	Callers tell me all the time they won't put on a Republican bumper sticker.
	They won't.
	They know their car will be keyed in Los Angeles or whatever other city they're calling from that has a large liberal constituency.
	But nobody has ever been afraid that I know of to put up a Democratic or liberal bumper sticker.
	Even you could put up war is not the answer, perhaps the single dumbest phrase ever to combine English words and form a sentence.
	You could put that on a bumper sticker and park it in front of Camp Pendleton and nothing will happen to it.
	And then we're told that we are the intolerant.
	It's all Orwellian.
	It's all Orwellian.
	It is all upside down.
	And it's very problematic.
	Very problematic.
	Conservative values produce a kinder, finer, more decent world than left-wing values do.
	I wouldn't say then liberal values because liberal is a complex question.
	Liberal doesn't exist anymore.
	Liberal is now me.
	I grew up liberal, Jewish, intellectual Columbia, Manhattan, and Brooklyn.
	I mean, when I was a little child, Adelaide Stevenson ran against Dwight Eisenhower.
	And I remember thinking I was eight years old, or actually the first election, let's see, would have been six years old.
	And I remember even then thinking, how could anybody vote for the Republicans?
	It's just so selfish.
	The good guy is Stevenson.
	That's how I was raised.
	That's what I believed.
	And I was a liberal.
	In fact, I voted for Jimmy Carter first term.
	I was a registered Democrat.
	But I realized that the liberalism I believed in was now being held by Republicans.
	For example, I was taught to be raceblind.
	Raceblind became Republican, and left liberal, liberal meant honor race.
	Honor race is a fascistic idea.
	The moment race is honored, you are entering the realm of racial fascism.
	Race is of no consequence, is the liberal idea.
	The only people who hold that idea now are conservatives.
	Here's the proof that what was liberal in the 60s is now conservative.
	I wish someone would do this here.
	This is a perfect place for me to make this suggestion on a college campus.
	What you guys ought to do, somebody ought to do, it's very simple, it won't be expensive at all.
	I want you to copy, print up John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, 1960.
	And unless there's a line or two that's a giveaway, remove one or two giveaway lines.
	I don't think there are any that denote exactly what party or exactly what year.
	Just give this to 20 students passing through a hallway and say, just we're doing a survey.
	Please give us five minutes and read this.
	It's not too long.
	Was this given by a Republican or a conservative or a Democratic president?
	And again, I'm willing to bet, and I am not a betting man.
	I have no gambling instinct.
	So I only bet when I'm certain I'll win.
	And I would bet, again, a serious sum of money.
	The vast majority would say that it was given by a Republican.
	John F. Kennedy's values are now mainstream Republican.
	That America should fight for liberty around the world is now entirely Republican.
	President Obama can't even get his own party to support an increase of troops against what the Democrats themselves kept saying was the right war, the one in Afghanistan.
	And they can't get Democratic and liberal support.
	To fight really, bad people who, if they take over, will throw acid in every girl's face who attends school.
	And the feminists can't even support the war in Afghanistan.
	And there's a reason for that.
	I wrote this 20 years ago.
	The feminist movement is not pro-women.
	It is angry at men.
	Just as, by the way, the civil rights movement is not pro-black, it is angry at whites.
	Anger animates the left.
	It's charged as animating the right, but it's not true.
	There are other reasons, but I don't want to get sidetracked.
	So when I say that conservative values are more likely to produce a good society than liberal values, please understand that most liberal values are today conservative.
	So it's really more right-wing or left-wing, but we'll call it conservative versus liberal only for the sake of rhetoric.
	But in fact, liberal is the new conservative.
	Again, remember that the question to be asked is not, does it feel good?
	Does it do good?
	That's the only question that matters.
	Does it do good?
	Does affirmative action do good?
	Or has it increased anger, as I believe it has among many blacks and among many non-blacks?
	That's the question to be asked.
	Not, does it feel good?
	Does it do good?
	And when you ask that, for example, here is a classic difference between right and left, indeed between liberals and leftists.
	Liberalism always sought to create wealth.
	Not now.
	The left is not interested in creating wealth and never has.
	It is interested in redistributing wealth.
	It is interested in equality much more than wealth creation.
	Liberals were known, that's why Kennedy was against a tax increase.
	He was for a tax decrease, in fact.
	Because he wanted to create wealth.
	Tax decreases create wealth.
	Tax increases create equality.
	If you take all rich people's money away from them, then they are as poor as everybody else.
	And this brings a smile to a person who is on the left.
	In Canada, they openly say, many people openly say, we prefer less medical care and less effective medical care so long as everybody has it equally.
	It was just an article, I believe, was in the New York Times.
	These things are not made up.
	I mean, I always have good sources for these things.
	I mean, this is the attitude.
	Better that everybody be in a mediocre state than some in a mediocre and others in a superb state.
	Inequality hurts the left-wing mind.
	It does not hurt the right-wing mind.
	I have no interest in equality of result.
	I have interest in equality of opportunity, but not in equality of result.
	Equality of result is a left-wing idea that the French Revolution believed in.
	Equality, fraternity, liberty.
	The American Revolution did not assert equality.
	It did assert liberty.
	Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
	Those were our mottos.
	But not equality.
	Of course, all people are created equal.
	That's a given because there is a God who created us.
	But not equality of result.
	Which is more likely to produce a good society, a society that wants to create wealth or a society that wants to insist on equality?
	In my opinion, the society that wishes to create wealth because the vast majority of people will share in it, including what we call poor.
	Let me tell you a story about poverty.
	By the way, you should look up Robert Rector at the American Heritage Foundation, or the Don American Heritage Foundation, has a terrific listing of what the average person living in poverty has materially in the United States.
	It's very sobering when we talk about poverty in America.
	And thank God for that.
	I thank God that the average person living in poverty, quote unquote, in America, has as much as he or she has when you count food stamps and when you count all of the material things that are taken for granted.
	I'm not saying it's great to be in poverty.
	I'm saying that the word has been somewhat misused.
	Let me tell you a story that proves my point.
	When I was 21 years old, I was a representative to the only time the United Nations ever had a World Youth Assembly.
	They had five delegates from every single nation and delegates from all the NGOs, non-governmental organizations.
	I was there, as it happens, I was representing B'nai Brith International.
	So I represented the World Jewish Youth because that was the non-governmental agency.
	So I was there and I saw this and I participated very actively in what happened.
	We took over the UN.
	We were in the Security Council.
	We had simultaneous translation.
	I mean, it was a hoot.
	It was really something incredible.
	Well, one day, the third world anti-American and the pro-Soviet anti-American delegates, of whom there were a lot, said, we want to charter buses and have them take us to Harlem and see how the oppressed, impoverished, black American lives.
	So they did.
	They chartered buses and they went to see how the oppressed, black, impoverished American lives.
	The results were astonishing.
	They came back and they called a press conference and said they were deceived, that they were taken to a wealthy black neighborhood and were tricked and told it was really Harlem.
	Because compared to what they were used to, they couldn't believe the homes.
	They couldn't believe the number of cars.
	They couldn't believe when they walked in the color television sets.
	And this was not an age where it was as ubiquitous as it is today.
	And They actually thought that they had been deceived by being taken to a middle class instead of poor area, as they were taught, of course, all over the world that the Harlem is where the oppressed and the impoverished live.
	So what produces a better society, democratic capitalism or a powerful state?
	Okay?
	I think the moral case for democratic capitalism and a freer economy is better.
	Well, you say free economy.
	Look at Wall Street, those thugs.
	There are plenty of thugs on Wall Street, I agree.
	And some of the things that were done drive me nuts.
	I couldn't agree more.
	Human greed, however, doesn't somehow end when you enter government.
	I always find that to be a remarkable note, that somehow greed, if we have a government take over trillions of dollars of American economy, then greed will end.
	I don't know exactly why that is.
	Greed is a matter of personal values, not merely a matter of whether or not we have a capitalist or a state-run system.
	But in any event, that's a question to be asked.
	Another question.
	The problem of compassion.
	Liberals say that they are more compassionate than conservatives.
	So here's the question.
	Do liberal policies produce more compassion, or do conservative policies produce more compassion?
	There's a very big problem with compassion in making policy.
	This is the conservative response.
	Compassion can never be equitably distributed.
	By definition, you can't be compassionate to everybody.
	Compassionate must be selective.
	It has to be.
	So here's an example of compassion.
	There are three students in a high school of a thousand kids who are allergic to peanuts.
	Do you ban peanuts and peanut butter?
	For many kids, peanut butter is a major source of protein, because that's a protein they like.
	I liked it.
	Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were, I believe, served in heaven.
	Should one go to the afterlife?
	One is greeted with a peanut butter and strawberry preserves sandwich.
	So I know I loved it, but it is now dirigur.
	You ban it.
	Compassion for the three is not compassionate for the 997.
	Now, by the way, good people could differ which is the right policy to follow.
	But all I want you to understand is that compassion for X means not compassion for Y. That's all I ask people to ask, to realize.
	We act as if if you have compassionate policies, nobody suffers.
	I'll give you my classic airplane one.
	One person on the plane calls over the flight attendant and says, it's usually a woman, women are usually colder than men, says to the flight attendant, I am too cold.
	The flight attendant goes to the pilot and the pilot raises the temperature of the airplane.
	Then most people are too hot.
	By being compassionate to that little old lady, if that's who asked for it, you are not compassionate to all those who are now too hot.
	You can't have a compassionate temperature in an airplane.
	There's no such thing.
	Because your compassionate temperature, is my too cold or too hot?
	There's no such thing as a compat.
	Let's have compassion.
	You can have a fair temperature in the middle, take a vote.
	I mean, there are any number of possibilities, but you can't determine the temperature by compassion because somebody will be the recipient of less compassion.
	That is why government cannot dispense compassion.
	You and I can, and we should in our daily lives.
	But the government cannot.
	That is why there is a biblical law, and yes, I cite the Bible because that is the backbone of my values, and it's one thing that is more often to be found among conservatives, not only, but more often, where it says, if there is a poor, you may not favor a poor man in court.
	That is a biblical law in the book of Exodus.
	If a poor man and a rich man come before you, you are not permitted by God himself to favor the poor man.
	Nobody quotes that one.
	You never hear that one quoted.
	You never hear the prophet Joel quoted, and you shall beat your plowshares into swords.
	You only hear Isaiah beat your swords into plowshares.
	But Joel, who was just as much a prophet of God as Isaiah is, is never quoted.
	Liberals choose a handful of quotes, and ta-da, the Bible has been transformed into the New York Times editorial page.
	But no, that is what happens.
	In fact, to be more accurate, the New York Times editorial page is the Bible for, and I mean it sincerely, for vast numbers of people on the left.
	They are consonant with that.
	But these things are not quoted.
	How about peace?
	The left-wing commitment to peace has produced more death than the right-wing commitment to a strong military.
	To his great credit, a liberal columnist just wrote this, Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, who is profound on international events and liberal on domestic affairs, and therefore not profound.
	But on international affairs, the man is worth reading.
	On national affairs, you might as well just read any other left-wing columnist.
	It's the same stuff.
	Because he has not devoted the thought to domestic affairs that he has to international affairs, and it shows.
	On international affairs, he must be read.
	And the New York Times, Foreign Affairs columnist.
	And you know what his column was after President Obama was given the surprise peace prize?
	He wrote, this is what President Obama should say in Stockholm when he receives the prize.
	And the entire speech, the entire speech, was the case that the United States military should get the Nobel Peace Prize.
	The United States military has brought more peace to mankind than any other person or group on earth.
	You're not applauding me, you're applauding that fact and applauding the military.
	And I know that, and that is appropriate to do.
	If the United States military tomorrow disbanded, the amount of cruelty on earth would exponentially increase to the point where good chunks of earth would become like concentration camps.
	The notion that peace institutes will increase peace, war institutes in democracies increase peace.
	That's the truth.
	And liberals don't say that.
	They're building more and more peace institutes.
	Let's solve these issues by talking.
	I'd like to know with what evil humans talking has worked.
	No, no, if it has, sign me on.
	I'd much rather talk than fight.
	Of course.
	But I'd like to know when it has worked.
	With Neville Chamberlain, did it work?
	With whom did it work?
	The reason that the U.S. and the Soviets didn't clash face to face was because they both had nuclear weapons, not because they talked.
	In fact, who was it who just, oh, a Time magazine, Time magazine writer wrote, we should give the Nobel Peace Prize to nukes.
	Nuclear weapons have kept the peace more than anything else.
	Then that's true.
	This notion that the liberal has of a nuclear weapon-free world, I can't tell you how bizarre that is.
	This is what I mean by foolish thought of the liberal and the left.
	No nuclear weapons?
	First of all, you realize if all those holding nuclear weapons destroyed them tomorrow, would the knowledge be destroyed?
	Would we know for sure they're destroyed?
	All one terrorist needs then is one nuclear weapon, and he runs the world.
	Thank God America has nuclear weapons.
	That's a conservative position.
	But the liberal somehow believes that it is not bad people who cause bad, it's bad weapons that cause bad.
	We conservatives think bad people cause bad, which goes to the heart of a liberal conservative divergence, and that is their view of people.
	We blame people for evil, and the liberal blames socioeconomic circumstances or weapons.
	It's a different worldview.
	It is.
	The tragedy, as I remember when I spoke at Stanford a couple of years ago, and to the credit of Stanford, this student newspaper covered my speech, put it on the front page of the Stanford Daily with a picture.
	I mean, they gave it very prominent attention.
	I was pleased with that, and I want to give them credit for it.
	And they quoted a student at the end who said, I'm a senior here.
	I've been here four years.
	I never heard any of the ideas I heard tonight.
	Not one of them.
	And he was a political science major.
	That's what's sad.
	I want you to have liberal professors, those of you who are students here.
	But I also want you to have conservative professors.
	But you almost never do.
	They studied the University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado University Boulder professors.
	What did they study?
	I mean, 40 professors in either history or political science, and 39 were registered Democrats.
	I don't even think the 40th was a Republican.
	I don't remember what he was.
	But I mean, it's just, if I founded a university, I wouldn't want only conservatives teaching.
	I mean, it's all upside down.
	And with this, I want to conclude because I really want to have time for Q ⁇ A and challenges.
	If I said something you don't agree with, please.
	But the notion of who is more open-minded, this is the one that is as backwards as all the other things that are upside down.
	The average conservative subjects him or herself infinitely more, not far more, I would say virtually infinitely more, to liberal thought and opinion than vice versa.
	The average conservative sends their kid to a university like the University of Wisconsin.
	Many conservatives, every conservative I know sends their kids to college.
	They may homeschool them and still send their kids to college.
	They may homeschool them in high school and elementary school, but not college.
	The moment you go to college, you are subjected intensely to liberal ideas, or at least liberal feelings, as I would more accurately portray them.
	Wherever does the liberal get subjected in any way, shape, or form to anything conservative nearly as much as the average conservative does to liberal ideas.
	Kid watches MTV, liberal.
	Kid goes to the movies, liberal.
	Kid reads a newspaper, liberal.
	Kid turns on the news except for Fox News, liberal.
	Goes to elementary school, high school.
	How many high schools showed Al Gore's propaganda piece, which looks increasingly ridiculous.
	The Daily Mail today said it looks like global warming is not in fact taking place.
	The earth is in fact getting colder and has been for eight years.
	Yesterday was the earliest snow in Austrian history.
	Alberta had the coldest climate yesterday in, and this is October.
	The coldest climate in the history of record keeping in Alberta.
	This is consistent.
	The earth is getting colder.
	That's a fact.
	One of the authors of the IPCC, I think those are the correct initials of the international group that made the climate change thing for the UN, has acknowledged the earth is getting colder, but he said in 2030 it will get warmer.
	They can't predict the weather in Milwaukee a day in advance correctly, but he knows in 2030 what the weather will be.
	It is funny, but it would be funny if they didn't try to subvert the Western world's economy on the basis of nonsense.
	Anyway, how many high schools have ever shown a rebuttal to Al Gore as opposed to those showing the Al Gore film?
	The answer, to my knowledge, is close to zero.
	So the left-wing immersion is from elementary school on.
	But the kid who is left never gets a conservative immersion.
	Never.
	They're never subjected to our outlook.
	This is all new, like that kid said at Stanford.
	I never heard one word, one of the ideas of Mr. Prager in four years as a poli sci major here at Stanford.
	And then they say, we are not open.
	Liberal means.
	Dennis, look it up in the dictionary.
	Liberal means open.
	I know.
	Liberal means open.
	They're not liberal.
	They're left.
	I wish they were liberal.
	There would be a better country and a better world if the left had been a far extreme group and liberals stayed liberal.
	But that's not what happened.
	The moral case for conservatism is summed up in a sentence is, you can't make a better world on wishful thinking.
	You can't make a better world on feelings.
	You can't make a better world on intentions.
	You need wisdom and you need good policies.
	And conservatism has a near monopoly on both at this time in American history.
	Thank you very much. Thank you.
	Thank you very much.
	Thank you.
	Thanks a lot.
	Okay, time for questions, comments, and brief alternate speeches.
	I am one of those speakers.
	I never say only questions.
	I say only brief.
	But if you have a statement, that's fine.
	I am not an answer machine.
	But it's got to be brief or I will stop you.
	Okay.
	Question.
	You say that military will make peace.
	What do you say about the Israel-Palestinian question with negotiations?
	There will be a day when Palestinians and Israelis will negotiate a peace.
	Until that day, if Israel did not have a strong military, they would not be in Israel.
	And this is not a pro-Israel statement.
	I happen to be pro-Israel, but it's not a pro-Israel statement.
	Its enemies wish it to be destroyed.
	They have so declared.
	They have seen no room for a Jewish state.
	So if Israel were not strong, it would be destroyed.
	Israel being destroyed would be essentially another Holocaust.
	So that's pretty violent.
	So the Israeli armed forces have prevented Holocaustian massacres.
	According to the United Nations, 737 non-combatant Gazans were killed by the Israelis in the invasion of Gaza.
	Everyone is a tragedy.
	Every human is created in God's image, including Gazans.
	I take that as a given.
	But 737 is not genocide.
	It is the byproduct of fighting people who only stay among civilians.
	At least that's how I would see it, unless you believe that Israel targeted all 737, to which the question would arise: why only 737?
	If Israel really wished to decimate the Gazan population, it could.
	Why did it stop at 737?
	I would love to see peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
	And by the way, let me just tell you my position, which may satisfy no one here, but I've been utterly consistent in this.
	I support Israel's right to exist, and therefore I support whatever Israeli government is in power at the time, whether it is left-wing or right-wing.
	I do not respect American Jews telling Israel what to do, whether they are on the right or on the left.
	If you want to tell Israel what to do, and you are an American Jew, make Aliyah, and then tell Israel what to do.
	In the meantime, you live in the security of the United States 7,000 miles away.
	Have the humility to let the Israelis decide how they will comport themselves.
	And so, if it's a labor leader, I support Israel.
	If it's a Likud leader, I support Israel.
	Right-wing, left-wing, I support Israel.
	Does that mean I support it?
	If Israel became a monstrous communist or fascist state, no, there would be a level of immorality.
	If it ever crossed that, yes, I would have to have a different position.
	It has not come close to that.
	And when Israel has done anything wrong, as in allowing, it didn't engage in, but allowing the Sabra and Shatila massacre, Israel had the biggest demonstration in its history against its own government.
	By the way, I'll tell you the day there will be peace in the Middle East.
	The day Palestinians demonstrate against its evils as much as Jews in Israel demonstrate against Israel's evils.
	You will have peace the next day.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Dennis, first of all, thanks for coming to walk.
	It's great to see you again.
	Thank you.
	How do you talk to or explain or to be diplomatic about explaining conservatism to a far-left-wing, politically correct liberal without getting them angry?
	Because a lot of them, that's their religion, basically.
	And like you said, they're taught everywhere from public schools to everything.
	And how do you get that?
	You mean like a relative?
	No, no, I'm serious.
	Do you mean it like, I mean, because I have a different rule for relatives and others.
	For both relatives and also regular people, you just mean it's.
	Well, there's different.
	Regular people you just meet.
	Okay, first, let me tell you about the relatives issue.
	If you are a conservative and you have liberal relatives, all you should do is hug them.
	And I'm not sarcastic.
	I mean that.
	I take Judaism taught me, shalom by it, is so big an ideal.
	Peace in the house is such a religious value that you just suck it up.
	And what you do is, I have a lot of liberal relatives, and pretty much we just don't discuss it.
	And I really love them.
	I mean, it doesn't take an effort for me to love those relatives.
	They're wonderful people whom I think are wrong.
	And they think I'm a wonderful relative who is also wrong.
	And that's fine.
	But there's no reason to get goaded into a fight.
	If you do get goaded in, what I find to be the most effective policy, even with non-relatives, is the motto of my program.
	I prefer clarity to agreement.
	What I do with people that I differ with is, and it's not a gimmick.
	It's a tactic, but it's not a gimmick.
	And it's a sincere tactic.
	I say, look, let's not fight.
	Let's do something even better.
	Let's clarify for each of us where we differ.
	Okay, let's take capital punishment.
	Let's say I have a relative or friend or a person on the street, a person I'm stuck with on the airplane.
	This actually happened once.
	It was the last thing I wanted is to get into, I'd like to do this publicly and on the radio.
	I don't like to do this privately.
	I don't think cardiologists like to talk cardiology on the airplane next to somebody who has a heart disease.
	So have pity on me.
	But I got suckered into one with somebody.
	It's very rare.
	I live on airplanes, so my batting average is excellent.
	It's $9.99 not to get suckered into debates.
	But anyway, what I did was, I said, look, I did this exactly.
	I said, let's just clarify where we differ.
	I don't think that it is fair that if I take your life deliberately, I'm allowed to keep my own.
	You think it is fair.
	Okay, now you explain to me where you would like to clarify where we differ.
	Okay?
	You don't think the state should be allowed to take a life.
	In other words, so then we have a list.
	So this is where I stand.
	This is where you stand.
	And then it's a lot more peaceful than I'm bad or you're bad.
	I'm good.
	You're not good.
	Where do we really differ?
	It not only is good in that way, it's, by the way, it's good for couples.
	A lot of couples have told me that it is that instead of fighting, they have now adopted the tactic of, let's just clarify, honey, where is it we differ here?
	And I know it sounds patronizing, but it's not patronizing.
	And, you know, let's really understand each other.
	And half the time, you're not that far apart.
	Or you're talking on different wavelengths.
	And then that becomes clear.
	So it's a very important thing to clarify where you differ.
	But the last thing I would do is start the argument.
	I mean, if it's Thanksgiving and the family gets together, enjoy the turkey.
	Right?
	I mean, I mean it sincerely.
	The purpose of family is to learn to relate to people you can't stand.
	That is the purpose of family.
	People have it all backwards.
	It's friends you like, it's family you tolerate.
	And by the way, this is no, I love family, but it's inevitable because you didn't choose family.
	You didn't choose your cousins and your uncles and your nephews and I'm even leaving aside siblings, parents, and children.
	You didn't choose any of them.
	So how could you like all of them?
	It makes no sense.
	You like your friends because you chose them.
	I've asked audiences of a thousand how many of you would choose a relative if you had to choose someone to spend a month on an island with and other than a spouse.
	Almost no hands go up.
	Everybody would choose a friend.
	Right?
	I asked my brother, who would you spend?
	My brother, because I was, in Judaism, you sit, Shiva, you sit seven days in mourning.
	It's a profound experience for an immediate relative who died.
	This just happened, and so I was both in New York and LA for my seven days, the first half in New York, New Jersey, actually, with my brother and my father, and then with my and the rest of my family, they're all in New Jersey, and then went back to be with friends for the other days back home in Los Angeles.
	And I asked my brother, I tell you, I haven't spoken to my brother this much since we were children living together in my parents' home.
	And I said, so, you know, who would you spend if you had to spend a month with a guy?
	Because you never ask a guy just a month with someone because you know what they'll answer, you know, miss October or something like that.
	So you just have to specify a male.
	And so you say, so I said, Kenny, who would you spend?
	And I knew it wasn't me, and I will not hurt.
	It didn't occur to him it would be me.
	And we love each other.
	But he has friends.
	We don't see each other like he will see his friends in New Jersey.
	It's not a bad thing that I said about family.
	But having said all of that, it still is family, and it should be valued as such.
	And what you want more than anything else is peace, I think, in the family.
	You just don't raise the issue that rub people the wrong way.
	I'm giving long answers to short questions.
	Forgive me.
	I'll try to be briefer.
	Okay, next, please.
	Yes.
	This is a loading question, but another thing that's thrown out against conservatism is that they all believe in conspiracies.
	And the internet is just full of them now.
	So, like, one of the ones that is really out there is this thing about the oligarchy and the fact that President Obama is a puppet president.
	And what do you think about that?
	Wait, President Obama is a puppet president, and that's an attack on conservatives?
	No, that conservatives believe in conspiracy.
	Oh, conservative conspiracy believers conspiracy that the world is being run by an oligarch.
	Okay, okay.
	The liberal president is there as a puppet president.
	So just go with it.
	All right.
	At the risk of offending the remaining few who haven't been offended by something I've said, God gives out different minds.
	And I don't know, there is a line before you're born.
	I have this vision.
	Before we're born, we go in different lines, like financial ability.
	I was not in that line.
	But, you know, verbal ability, I went in that line twice.
	I mean, it's just, you know, there are different lines that people get into.
	Whatever reason, there's a conspiratorial theory line.
	And some people go into that line, and that's how they're born.
	Have a desire to believe in conspiracies.
	In my life, which is now enough decades to say in my life and have substance behind it, I've never heard of one conspiracy that turned out accurate.
	From more than one shooter of John F. Kennedy to whatever else people may believe.
	Some of them are, you know, that one's unfortunate.
	Some are really dangerous, like the belief the government was behind 9-11.
	That's a very, very bad thing.
	I met some young people who believed that, and it was very troubling to me.
	Very, very troubling.
	To grow up that cynical, not to mention incapable of discerning the difference between truth and fantasy, is very troubling.
	But it exists on the right, it exists on the left, and I have the same thing to say to both, get a life.
	I don't know what it is in you that compels you to believe in conspiracies.
	With the internet, listen, you can believe that the earth rests on the back of a tortoise and find 17 like-minded people.
	That's what the internet is, one of the bad sides.
	It's generally a great thing, but it has that.
	I have nothing more intelligent to say.
	It's a very sad thing when people do it.
	You can't talk them out of it because the reason people believe in conspiracies is because they want to.
	Never because the evidence is compelling.
	And you can't dissuade people from believing what they want to believe.
	Next, please.
	With regard to the man-made global warming leading to catastrophe, I know you've had a lot of scientists and different people on your show over the years.
	And the latest paper by Dr. Lindsay pretty much ends the science.
	Yeah, he's the great climatologist at MIT.
	Yes, his latest paper just really puts the final nail from a scientific standpoint in.
	By the way, this is a perfect example.
	The people who do believe that man is causing global warming and global warming will cause earthwide catastrophe.
	It is always believed because we people want to believe it.
	That is a classic example of want to believe because it comports with one's environmentalist views, one's views against using oil.
	I mean, it's too convenient.
	It's the opposite.
	It's a convenient non-truth.
	It's not an inconvenient truth.
	Well, my question was, they're still going ahead with this Copenhagen thing, and they're basically going to set up an international dictatorship, essentially, an unelected committee that's going to be able to tell everybody what to do and have enforcement mechanisms.
	Well, I don't know if they will.
	That I will say.
	Well, they wanted to do that with the UN, too, you know, and the international court.
	I mean, there is a great desire to destroy nationalism.
	Well, at what point, though, do you go that instead of just being wrong to be bad or evil?
	I mean, what?
	Oh, no, that is bad.
	That would be bad.
	Yes, I think, I don't want to.
	U.S. exceptionalism is a great force for goodness on earth, just like the U.S. military.
	And I don't want to give up that in the name.
	By the way, this is one of the great conservative left-wing battles, is over nationalism.
	You are taught, I am certain, that kids here are taught to be citizens of the world, that that is the ideal primary identity, as opposed to citizens of the United States.
	Of curiosity, any students or faculty here know, is there an American flag on this campus?
	Right behind the campaign.
	No, this is one.
	Is it always in this room?
	Is it up for tonight?
	I mean, is there a flag outdoors on the campus?
	I don't mean in some classroom.
	There are?
	Okay, there are campuses.
	I didn't ask saying that there wasn't, but I know that there are campuses where they're banned.
	And in California.
	And the reason they give is they don't want to make foreign students uncomfortable or it's chauvinistic.
	Oh, it's there is a very deep sense that once is to be a citizen of the world and that nationalism is the dark road to chauvinism and ultimately fascism.
	So that, in that sense, I am very troubled by what you just raised.
	Yes.
	Next, please.
	I'm sorry.
	The gentleman up here, in case you come up to this time zone, yes.
	I guess I have more of a personal question for you.
	I found that really interesting that you were more liberal at first.
	I'm still liberal, but I'm called conservative.
	I'm not joking.
	I'm still liberal, in my view.
	Right.
	Okay, but go on.
	Yes.
	I was just kind of wondering how and when you realize that being this young, I feel like my friends are kind of influenced by the media, as you said, and it's kind of all backed by their parents' views as well.
	So how do I kind of get them to open up and kind of realize the changes in the views?
	I don't know how you get them to open up.
	It's very tough.
	It depends on how open-minded the friend is.
	But I will tell you the answer to the first part.
	What awakened me to a flawed movement of liberalism away from its original values was the war, the Cold War.
	When liberals blew up at Ronald Reagan for saying that the Soviet Union was an evil empire was the last straw.
	If you can't recognize evil, that's to me the ultimate failing of your position.
	Because evil is fighting evil is the most animating.
	You asked me personally, I'll answer you personally.
	Fighting evil, and by evil I mean people who in great numbers enslave, torture, murder, remove all liberty.
	If you can't call those people evil and you therefore won't fight them, because why would you fight someone you don't think is evil, then you have abandoned the most important thing humans can do.
	The left fights secondhand smoke and carbon dioxide and the right fights evil.
	And that's your choice, and that's what you can tell your friends.
	I've enjoyed your program.
	My question is, what is your opinion of Saul Olinski and his teachings?
	Negative.
	Well, what is there to say?
	I mean, he was a genius who grew up in a very radical environment, became a radical or stayed a radical, and gave people tools on how to very, very ingenious, almost Machiavellian tools on how to gain power.
	And I think you're not really asking what I think of Sololinsky, but whether he has had an influence on anybody who is near Pennsylvania Avenue.
	And there I will plead the fifth.
	Well, it's a pleasure to be here tonight.
	You're an intellectual hero of mine.
	Thank you.
	Thank you very much.
	It was gratifying to learn of your speech.
	My question apropos of the setting concerns the arts and the university.
	I get the sense that you are deeply troubled by the debasement of the university.
	And of the arts.
	And of the arts.
	I understand your affinity for them.
	And there's an issue I've struggled with for some time.
	Why is it that liberalism now dominates the arts?
	I've heard two arguments, neither of which I find compelling, one being from empathy and the other being from intellect.
	That is, liberals are more empathetic, and therefore, because empathy is requisite to being artistic, liberals are more artistic.
	Well, that may be accurate.
	Here is my, are you done?
	I mean, I want to interrupt.
	Yeah, okay, thank you.
	I'll tell you the conjunction of where liberalism and the arts meet.
	Paul Johnson makes the brilliant point in the birth of the modern that the great failing of European thought and secular thought in general in the 20th century was to conflate Einsteinian relativism with moral relativism.
	Einstein's telling us that everything in the physical universe is relative was transferred over to all other areas.
	Humanity in the West believed, for example, there were moral absolutes.
	There was good and there was evil.
	It wasn't relative.
	That certain acts were wrong for everybody.
	And certain acts were right for everybody.
	The circumstances may determine when the right and wrong take place.
	That does not make morality relative.
	If you lie to a rapist about where his victim is hiding, you have done the right thing.
	People who defend moral absolutes often don't know how to defend them.
	Moral absolutes doesn't mean any act is always wrong.
	A moral absolute means anybody doing that specific act under those circumstances wrong.
	Most defenders of moral absolutes have it wrong.
	But anyway, that's what they did, and this has now been applied everywhere.
	Therefore, not only is there no right and wrong in morality, there is no right and wrong, there is no good and bad, there is no excellent and poor in the arts.
	If you like Batman and I like Dostoevsky, then Batman is as good for you as Dostoevsky is for me.
	The arts were never taught that way in Western history.
	There was a firm belief that Shakespeare was, in fact, better than Superman.
	It wasn't a matter of what you enjoyed.
	We don't care what you enjoy.
	That's between you and your endorphins.
	What matters is, for culture, what is superior and what is inferior.
	Shakespeare is superior.
	Bach is superior to heavy metal.
	Not because I like Bach more, but because by every criterion that art is made, it is superior.
	But everything has been reduced in the liberal universe to feeling.
	So if I like a painting that is all black with a yellow box in the middle, or for that matter, a crucifix in urine, then that's as good as Rembrandt.
	Who are you to say Rembrandt is better?
	And that ends the argument.
	And that's why you have scatological art, which should be an oxymoron.
	Art made out of menstrual blood, fecal matter, urine, but it is now common.
	The Tate Gallery in London has such exhibits.
	Because that's how they feel when they made it.
	I don't care how the artist felt.
	I care if the artist is great.
	Greatness is dead.
	Moral greatness, artistic greatness, intellectual greatness, they're all dead.
	It's all how you feel about it.
	That's to me where liberalism and art meet.
	Yes, you make a point to say that wishing good is not the same as doing good.
	Do people on the left, in your experience, ever acknowledge that the great society ruined the black family by driving the fathers out of the home?
	I mean, do they ever see the difference between wishing good and doing good?
	I have not noticed it, although you have to give credit where it is due.
	President Clinton is the one who did reform welfare, acknowledging that it was ruining a lot of families.
	If you can marry the government, why marry a man?
	That's in a nutshell what was happening.
	Men are rendered unnecessary by big government.
	As I have often said, the Democratic Party, I'm not saying Democrats all want this, but the Democratic Party has a vested interest, for example, in women not marrying.
	Because they are one of its largest voting blocks.
	As soon as a woman votes, she is more likely to become Republican.
	As soon as a woman marries, she is more likely to become a Republican.
	And as soon as a woman marries and has children, she does become a Republican.
	Therefore, you have to be a very, very altruistic, self-sacrificing Democrat to make policies that push women into marriage and motherhood.
	Because you will lose all the elections.
	If all the women in America were married and with children, it would be very difficult for Republicans, for Democrats to win elections.
	Yep.
	My question is kind of referring to the point you made about equality and opportunity.
	Kind of what matters is that there's the same opportunity, not the end result that everyone's equality or equal in a mediocre fashion.
	And specifically you talked about affirmative action.
	And I might actually agree with you that it's not as successful as most people would like to make it seem.
	However, I guess since the topic of this is conservative, you know, as the moral compass, I guess I'm looking to see, you know, if we throw out affirmative action, what is the conservative plan, or perhaps what is the conservative approach to equality of opportunity, which I can say personally is not there yet.
	I've done teaching or internships in the schools in Milwaukee's inner city, where it's most definitely not equal by any standard to the schools I went to, where I could always take a book home, and these kids rarely ever take a book home.
	It's kind of hard to study when you can only study when you're at school.
	So I guess my question just we can criticize the things that need to be thrown out, but I guess the thing I've I'm always looking for is then what should we replace it with?
	What is the, you know, what's the solution?
	Black kids who come from an intact home do as well as white kids who come from an intact home.
	The issue is not the schools.
	The issue you yourself said, they can only study at school, because if they go back home, I think I heard you say that, and if I didn't, please correct me.
	I don't even need the last word.
	I have it on radio, I don't need it here.
	But the home in that regard, the values, values are the conservative answer.
	Social institutions is a liberal answer.
	Now, I know there's a role for social institutions, I'm not naive, but overwhelmingly, values are the answer.
	Kids who sat in unheeded classrooms 100 years ago on hard benches and shared notebooks did great.
	The average Confederate and Union soldier who didn't finish elementary school wrote prose that is Shakespearean in comparison to the average high school graduate from a good high school today.
	It's our values that have led us to the morass we're in, not just the schools.
	Secondly, if it is the schools, why don't we allow that inner-city black to do what suburban blacks do, and that is have a choice about where to send their child.
	Most blacks do want school vouchers.
	It's teachers' unions who are far more dominant in the Democratic Party than the average black is.
	He's just good for a vote.
	But they're good for money.
	And so they oppose school vouchers.
	But giving the kids a chance like that might help.
	Please go right ahead.
	I guess well the point I was making about inequality of opportunity was kind of based on the fact that, yeah, I mean, yes, I do agree wholeheartedly that probably the most important thing is home and an environment at home where a child can learn.
	But there also is the reality that there isn't an equality of opportunity.
	If one kid has more, has books they can take home and study at home, whether or not their home environment is good or not, is kind of still in question.
	And then also as far as vouchers, you can't just send all the inner city kids to suburban white schools because that's just not logistical.
	So how is there inequality?
	Well, you build a new school, there would be money to build new schools with that voucher money.
	That's the supposition.
	But again, look, Kansas City, this is the, I hope that this is a better answer, or at least another answer, additional answer.
	Kansas City was ordered by its courts about 15 years ago to spend hundreds of millions of dollars, I believe it was, on first-rate public schools in inner cities.
	And they did.
	They had Olympic swimming pools.
	They had the finest computer labs.
	They went to terrible financial straits to do this, but it was ordered by judges.
	The grades did not improve one iota with the spectacular, brand new, highest quality schools being built.
	A kid with coming from a value system that motivates the child can study in the worst circumstances and will, and a kid who doesn't have it can be put in the most idyllic circumstances and won't.
	So we have to figure out a way to reconstitute the family, and I will even say the word that's really taboo in much of liberal life, religion.
	I think that one of the great answers for the inner city is to be active in churches.
	Not just black churches, just churches, non-politicized churches.
	The liberal has forgotten how profoundly animating religion can be in positive arenas in a person's life.
	Not all of them.
	Not all of them.
	That is entirely accurate.
	I agree with you.
	And not all conservatives have the other views, and I know.
	But generally speaking, the notion that religion is a major answer, positive answer to social ills is more of a conservative belief than a liberal belief, unfortunately.
	I'm afraid this ought to be the last question.
	Okay, before the last question, if I may just tell you, you're invited to go to my website, dennisprager.com.
	I have my column up each week.
	There are 250.
	I'm speaking tomorrow night and on Saturday and Saturday evening at the Sinai congregation.
	Where is that?
	It's on Port Washington World in Fox Point.
	And everyone's welcome.
	It's not just people.
	Everyone is welcome.
	Even Jews.
	Absolutely.
	Yes.
	The Prager Listeners Group is, do you mean that we're meeting tomorrow?
	No, That there is a Prager Listeners Group.
	Oh, there is a Prague.
	Oh, you should know that, right?
	So maybe you could meet Jim, Jim, who has made my visit, he and his colleagues who made my visit possible.
	Jim, thank you very much.
	Jim Beer deserves a tremendous honor.
	There is a Prager Listeners Group.
	I'm unfortunately not on in Milwaukee, and it's almost as disturbing as what happened in Chicago, but we'll work on that.
	That's still, I'm on most of the cities of the country, but this is an area where the internet is a blessing.
	In the meantime, but there's also something new I've started called Prager University.
	And it's particularly relevant at a university.
	Our motto is, you give us five minutes, we'll give you a semester.
	Because it's our view that, not in all cases, but in many cases in the liberal arts, you get a semester, but you only get five minutes' worth.
	And so we give you five minutes and you get a semester.
	I have put up five videos.
	They're professionally done.
	They're with me, but they're also with professional visuals.
	Everything from the American Trinity, my belief about what the greatest value system ever devised is the American one, E pluribus Unum, Liberty and God We Trust.
	That's up there.
	The latest to be put up is the power of the visual in male sexual nature.
	Every man will want his wife to see that and then say, now I understand you, honey, you really are not a pervert like I thought.
	And so this is almost mandatory viewing and for your daughters to know that what they wear, the impact of what they wear is, because girls don't know this naturally.
	How could they?
	They're not boys.
	So anyway, we're trying to do a lot at Prager University, and that's at my website or just go straight to Prager University.
	And now finally, please.
	I guess clarity is good even when you have agreement.
	One of the things that you've talked about is that conservative value will produce more material wealth.
	Those stumping for redistributive justice seem willing to trade down some wealth for redistribution.
	So it would be good to clarify the moral case against that.
	Oh, I see.
	Well, the moral case against that is that it doesn't work.
	If somehow or other, well, there are two moral problems.
	One, it doesn't work, and that's the ultimate moral question is, does it work?
	Okay?
	Please, let's just always understand that.
	That's the ultimate moral question.
	If moral means do good, then if something doesn't do good, it isn't good.
	It doesn't matter how well intended it was.
	Does it do good is the only moral question.
	But by the way, so that's one.
	It doesn't work.
	Because people are animated by reward.
	That's why people find many of the medicines that have kept some of you alive and certainly some of your relatives and friends.
	Reward.
	Reward is the way God made us.
	I haven't invoked God once.
	But certainly if you believe in evolution, certainly the way evolution made us.
	But even God has made us that way.
	There is nothing wrong in wanting reward.
	People don't bust their chops for the common good.
	They bust their chops for their family, for their friends, for themselves.
	And that's fine.
	The greatest rabbi of the Talmud summarized everything with, in anili mili, if I am not for myself, who will be for me?
	But if I am only for myself, what am I?
	But first you must be for yourself.
	It is a Talmudic law that if you have only enough water for one person, the owner of the water must drink it, taking away the moral choice of who should have it.
	It's your water, your blood is not thinner than your neighbors.
	Now, whether you live by it or not is your business, but there was a very real realization, at least in my religion, that you must take care of yourself and that we are programmed to take care of ourselves and that we should do so.
	So I have no problem, and neither do you.
	Do you care if a cure for pancreatic cancer is found by a doctor who cares about the common good or a doctor who wants the Nobel Prize for Medicine?
	Do you give a hoot?
	Do I give a hoot?
	Of course not.
	And what do you think is more likely to spur somebody finding a cure for that cancer?
	Sheer altruism or reward?
	Reward, which is fine, and it should be that way.
	I wanted rewarded.
	I work very hard.
	I want rewards.
	I want to do good and I want to do well.
	It's very American, it's very human, and it's very good, and it's very unleftist.
	That's the truth, because it's so selfish sounding.
	You should only want to do good, not do well.
	The other argument is, what is the moral, what is our moral right to take away honestly earned money from people?
	It's like it's off the moral questioning scale, the taxation issue.
	50% of the American people do not pay a penny in federal income tax, but they vote on how much the other half will pay.
	What is moral about that?
	Talk about moral.
	Would any club allow that?
	Do you think any club, a coin club, a photography club, a knitting club?
	Okay, members, all of you who pay nothing will vote on how much the other half will pay.
	It would exactly every member of the club would laugh.
	Even the people who don't pay would think it's a joke.
	But for society, somehow that's considered moral.
	That's how deeply ingrained leftism is in our psyche that we don't even question the morality of taxation.
	Of course, some taxation is necessary.
	If the U.S. military is the greatest force for good in the world, it has to be funded.
	But can anybody point to me a reason why we now pay almost 50% in taxes?
	50%?
	Why is that moral?
	Because people vote to take it away.
	It's all done by threat of violence.
	If you don't give it to us, we will come with ammunition and take you away.
	That's what taxation is.
	That's moral.
	And I didn't even raise that as the issue, but that's a very fair one to raise.
	Thank you for coming, everybody.
	Thank you very, very much.
	Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
	This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

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