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Dec. 1, 2025 - Dennis Prager Show
01:29:14
Timeless Wisdom - Open Forum: Thoughts on Politics, Human Nature and Viet Nam
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Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
Here are thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs.
And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com.
Well, I told you the best part is meeting people.
Because the best part of life is people.
That's at least my view.
Not everybody believes that.
I think most people believe that.
Some people, and I don't say this with any judgment.
I say plenty of things with judgment, so it's not like I'm shying away from one.
But without judgment, there are people who would be very happy to, I don't know, let's say paint all day.
Some artist would just want to paint all day, or some entomologist would study insects all day.
But most people get their greatest joy from other people.
That's why solitary confinement is torture.
Even though you're given food and water, but not to relate to humans is torture.
And it drives people crazy.
So anyway, that's just a reflection on the power of people in our lives.
I've always been a people person.
I enjoy people immensely.
It's the biggest single joy I have in travel.
I have a lot of different joys that I get from travel, but the biggest is meeting local people.
I kid around with them as much as I do with Americans.
And if there's language barrier, there's a language barrier.
I mean, if there's no language whatsoever, there's not much communicating you can do.
But if there's even a little, you can do a fair amount.
Anyway, I want to say a few words, and then the last session I thought, given how much I spoke in three sessions, this is the fourth with you, I thought I'd just raise it to, again, questions and comments and my reactions.
But I'd like to talk to you about my reactions to coming to Vietnam.
Vietnam, as the Vietnamese pronounce it.
I did not know how I would react.
It is an emotional destination.
The last time I felt this emotional about visiting a place for very similar reasons was in 1969 when I was 21 and I went to Germany for the first time.
And being a Jew visiting Germany, let's see, that would have been 24 years after Auschwitz was closed.
24 years after the Holocaust.
And in Jewish homes, that's a very huge thing.
And in my home, so too, even though all of my relatives were in America well before the rise of Hitler.
But it was huge.
I lived in a family that, like many Jews, would not buy a Volkswagen or any German good in a sort of protest against what happened, not sort of, in a protest against what happened.
My parents were not thrilled that I visited Germany, very unthrilled that I had a German girlfriend, Which is why I kept visiting Germany after I visited the first time.
And it was very difficult for me because I would look at people of my parents' generation in Germany and think the obvious.
What were you doing 20 years ago or 25 years ago?
I wrote a piece for a Jewish magazine at the time explaining why I felt that it was all right or appropriate for a Jew to visit Germany at that time.
And what I did was I pointed out under Jewish law, you're not responsible for your behavior under the age of 13 years of age.
So by the end of the war, if you were 13, and that's the minimum you would think, so 13, that means they were born in 1932.
So I said, look, by Jewish law, I can't hold any German responsible who was born after 1932.
This was 1969.
That meant 37 years of age.
There was no possible way to blame.
And really 40, because someone 15 at the end of the war who grew up in the Hitler youth, what am I going to say?
So, nor could I say that every German over 40 is guilty.
It's obviously also silly.
And so under those guidelines, I went to Germany and I also went to Poland and all of Eastern Europe.
I visited Auschwitz with a Soviet tourist group.
It was a time when nobody in the West went to Auschwitz because nobody went to communist Poland.
And I speak enough Russian to understand what the Soviets showed at Auschwitz, and it was vile because the word Jew was never mentioned in the entire film that the Russians showed at Auschwitz.
Instead, they spoke of millions, I'll never forget, Žertvi Fascisma, victims of fascism, because it was a political thing.
We communists are great.
The fascists are the ones who were mass murderers.
So, anyway, I've encountered this feeling of going to a place that I have problems in its history before.
And so, coming here, it should be easier because it's so many more years later.
1975, the U.S. left Vietnam, and so 75 from now is 36 years.
So, 36 is a lot more than 24.
But I have an added emotional issue that's personal in coming here, and that is that I didn't serve, that I got out through student deferments, and just was able to, however it worked, I didn't serve.
And it's always sat with me as a problem.
It sat with me as a problem even then, and it caused me to oppose the war, even though I hated communism in college as well.
I knew it is the same as Nazism.
And so when I would attend a rally, now so why would I attend a rally against the war?
Because in my way, I just couldn't live with myself.
I'm not there and I'm supporting the war.
Well, if you support a war and you can fight there, then go and fight there.
It's not important whether I was right or wrong on any of this.
My thinking, my logic, my not being there, my yes being there, it's not, the point is, that's what I felt.
So I therefore went from support to the word opposition, and I also believed that we couldn't win.
In retrospect, I was dead wrong.
We did win.
And we then killed ourselves politically.
It's a terrible story.
And I so I've always felt this, that I should have been there in some way.
What is it, 56,000 of my peers, absolute my generation, died here.
God knows how many others were maimed here, deafened, blinded, brain damaged, paralyzed, loss of limbs, whatever else.
So I come here with a lot of emotion.
I just wanted to add that when I attended those rallies, I was so.
I was always an odd man out in my generation.
I like sleepwalked through the 60s and 70s.
I didn't like drugs.
I didn't like anything going on.
I just felt like I was marching alone.
I was at Columbia, where it seemed everybody was on the left.
And it was actually not a pleasant time.
And I would go to the rallies and they would chant Ho-Ho Ho Chi Minh.
And it drove me crazy.
What are you chanting Ho-Ho-Ho Chi-Min?
The guy's a Stalinist.
He just, he's a megalomaniacal dictator.
He's a tyrant.
He kills people who don't want to get collectivized.
What are you chanting his name for?
Do you know anything about him or communism?
And of course they didn't.
I remember in the early 70s being in, I think, I can't fully locate this debate.
I think it was Japan.
I think I was in Japan, and again, a peer of mine, a contemporary, we got a terrible, I didn't know him from Adam, but somehow we got into talking to Americans in Japan or wherever it was.
And actually it might have been South Korea because it was about North Korea and I expressed how morally repulsed I was at the North Korean regime.
And I'll never forget.
He said, who the hell are you to judge North Korea?
And I said, what do you mean, who the hell am I?
I'm a human.
It's a large concentration camp.
I mean, everybody knew this then.
Anyone who cared to know knew this.
And he had the usual line, you know, who are you to judge?
Who are you to judge?
They're trying to make their own way.
And it's just a very, it's a large, I guess, coalition, if you will, it's a bad word, of feelings and reactions coming here for the reasons that I just told you.
I'll give you my immediate reactions in a moment.
There's a larger issue that Is involved here too.
And that is part of my reaction, a big part of my reaction today.
These people struck me as a very noble people.
A dignity.
They have a lot of dignity.
I mean, I admit these are immediate reactions, but I have to tell you, I'm not a kid.
I've been around.
I've been in a lot of places.
So my immediate reactions come from some degree of knowledge, like a detective who spent his life doing detective work who has a hunch.
A lot of times their hunches are right.
My hunch is, this immediate reaction is that this is a strong and dignified people.
And all I did today was I welled up with anger at what communism caused in this country.
Just as much, to be honest, the deaths, the vast numbers of deaths of Vietnamese as Americans, all because of the megalomaniacal, idiotic idea of communism.
That's what did it.
I don't know if the idea is more evil or more stupid.
It's equally evil and stupid, communism.
That the leading intellectuals of the Western world supported this, supported Ho, supported Mao, supported Stalin, is such an indictment of the West and what happened with the breakdown of Christianity.
That's what it's about.
And I could say it because I'm Jewish.
See, if a Christian says it, well, of course a Christian's saying it because he's Christian.
So that ends Christians being able to say a self-evident truth that when Christianity broke down, stupidity ensued, moral stupidity ensued in the Western world.
I am absolutely convinced that that is the issue.
With all, and I've written a book on anti-Semitism, I know the flaws of the church and Christian history better than almost anyone or anyone in this room.
But nevertheless, and it was predicted by the greatest German poet who ever lived, who was a Jew, a secular Jew, Heinrich Heine, predicted 100 years after Hitler was elected in Germany that the only thing stopping a massive stampede of evil from Germany is the cross.
The guy was a prophet 100 years before Hitler.
Only the cross is preventing the Germans from creating massive evil on earth.
Barbarity will govern the world.
He said it.
I wish I had the quote in front of me.
And only the cross is stopping it.
The guy was not only not a Christian, he was an atheist and a Jew.
And that's how, if you have a better explanation for how Western intellectuals in the comfort of Paris and London and New York could support the butchers of communism, I'd like to hear what it is.
I'd like to know what it is.
These are barbarians of Hitlerian scope.
Mao, it's a question, is it 50 or between 50 and 75 million?
Stalin, it's a question of between 25 and 40 million.
We're going to Cambodia.
One-third to one-fourth of the people killed by the Khmer Rouge.
Well, you know what Khmer Rouge means?
Most people don't know it.
So they don't know it.
It means the Red Cambodians.
Communists.
And what they did here, South Vietnam, yeah, well, you know, Diem, he was corrupt.
Corrupt is awful, but corrupt compared to communism is a saint.
And South Vietnam was worth trying to save, just as South Korea was worth trying to save.
The analogy is perfect.
We tried to save and did save the southern half of the Korean Peninsula from falling under communist totalitarian, butcher, mass murder, mass torture rule.
And we try to do the same thing in Vietnam.
And the left in America prevented it, and the left in Vietnam prevented it.
That's it.
The moral record of the left is despicable.
And I just, I am filled with rage as I visit this place.
Ho, ho, ho Chi Minh.
This beautiful people, this noble, decent people put to as cannon fodder for scummy ideas from Westerners.
All came from the West.
All came.
Paul Putt studied in the Sorbonne, the man who did the communist genocide in Cambodia, studied in the Sorbonne.
All these folks had that Western education, almost all of them had Western education or got influenced by Western stupid ideas developed by a guy sitting in the London Library his whole life and never worked a day in his life and told the proletariat of the world how to live named Karl Marx.
It's telling my wife, my wife asked me when we were talking about this earlier, how would Marx react if he knew what was done?
The staggering amount of slaughter done in the name of Marxism.
So I told her, I have no idea.
I have no idea.
But one can't know.
But I do know the old Soviet joke that Marx is resurrected, sees all the staggering slaughter done by Marxists, is given a microphone to talk on world radio.
It says, workers of the world, forgive me.
That's the joke.
That was the Soviet joke, that Marx is resurrected, and instead of workers of the world, unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains, says, workers of the world, forgive me.
I don't know.
God knows.
Only God knows what Marx would have said.
And I don't care.
It doesn't mean anything.
So you just look at the wasted lives.
And sure enough, 35 years later, what do they have?
Free market, basically capitalism here.
With a bunch of political hacks running the place.
I don't know a word of Vietnamese.
But I'm sure you saw the red signs with hammers and sickles, stupid, stupid signs, probably telling them that the glorious party Congress is meeting next month, like the average Vietnamese gives a damn about these maniacs who run the Vietnamese Communist Party.
They're all whacked out in self-interest.
That's all they are.
It's just glorifying their own power.
They love power.
They ache for it.
Power is to them what sex is to Freud.
It's what animates them.
And it's just amazing.
The waste, the wasted lives because of the stupid, evil idea of communism and the evil, evil people in the West who supported it.
I excuse nobody in the West.
Nobody.
Did they mean well?
I can't tell you what induces nausea in me more than the words, they meant well.
Who doesn't mean well?
I'd like to know who doesn't mean well.
You don't think Hitler meant well?
Hitler was very sincere about his ideas of a resurrected Germany and really believed, really till the day he committed suicide, that the Aryan race and the Jewish race are in the great battle for human history.
He really believed it.
Who doesn't mean well?
I want to know who doesn't mean well.
Do you know anybody who doesn't mean well?
What does it even mean?
It's a meaningless statement.
Do you do well?
A Westerner living in freedom who somehow thought that Vietnamese are unworthy of freedom.
That's what it took to be a pro-communist.
It's what it took to be a leftist to think that Asians are subhuman and don't want the freedom that Westerners do.
That's what it really, really, really was.
It's profoundly racist.
We want freedom in France.
We want freedom in Britain.
We want freedom in America.
But Asians don't.
They want to be collectivized.
That's what well-educated scum crap believed.
And yeah, I'm angry.
I am angry.
The staggering number of lives wasted for the intellectual idea that succeeded Christianity in the West.
You see, folks, people will believe something.
And if they don't believe in Christianity, they'll believe in something else.
There is no such thing as believing in nothing.
It doesn't exist.
Never did.
People will believe that the world is on the back of a turtle, but they'll believe something.
And with the death of the Judeo-Christian value system in America and in the West, something will come in its place.
And many things do come in its place.
Like Mother Earth, Goddess Earth.
So that's what I think when I come here.
And I just fell in love with these people.
I didn't expect to.
And the dignity, as I said, it just really took my breath away.
And to think that communism was good for these people, why would it be good for them?
What kind of mind thinks it would have been good for them?
It's so demeaning.
Even the signs are demeaning.
I took pictures of happy.
Because I'm so used to communist propaganda, I could recite it in my sleep.
So I know exactly which pictures were communist propaganda.
So I took some of these pictures.
They have the happy peasant putting in a ballot.
They're always happy.
They're always happy.
The big smiles.
And when the Soviet Union, when I visited, the only color you ever saw, everything was gray.
Everything except communist posters were red.
So the only color you ever saw was communist color.
The contempt for humanity the communists have in the name of humanity, that's really the ultimate.
It's the upside-down world that the left created.
We love humanity.
They hated people, but they loved humanity.
I saw that at Columbia.
That's when I first awakened to it.
The students who would riot and then burn professors' notes all loved humanity.
They treated people despicably, but they loved humanity.
That's why everybody's favorite verse from the Bible is: love your neighbor as yourself.
Why doesn't it say love humanity as yourself?
Love everyone as yourself.
It's easy to love everyone.
It's tough to love your neighbor.
That's why that's my favorite book.
Not das Capital.
When I wrote, I was at Columbia University at the Russian Institute in studying communist affairs, 1970, 71, 72, I wrote a paper comparing Marxism and Judaism.
My professor, may he rest in peace, Sidney Morgenbesser, was a man of the left, which is redundant when you speak of Columbia's professors, but okay.
And it was amazing when I remember when I turned in the paper, he couldn't believe that somebody would do that.
Compare Marxism and Judaism, somebody still believes in this stuff.
And to his credit, he gave me a B.
I was shocked.
I expected a D minus.
I mean, I knew he wasn't going to give me an F.
It was too good.
It really was good.
I worked very hard on it.
And it's.
There's a desire to say some new ideas are better.
The left is intoxicated by new.
The word new, change, right?
Change.
Hope and change and change and hope and hope and change.
They love change.
And they yell at us conservatives that we're afraid of change.
I am.
I agree.
I am afraid of change.
I plead guilty.
I think that the basic rules of life were set forth in the Ten Commandments and nothing better has superseded it.
I admit it.
I do.
So I'd like to know, I want to know what change you have in mind.
What change is going to be better to have law.
I think that the founders of the United States had a great idea that the smaller the government, the bigger the citizen.
The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.
So I don't want to change that.
I admit I don't want bigger government.
People become smaller when there is bigger government.
They take care of themselves less.
They take care of their families less.
They take care of their communities less.
They riot in France over vacation time.
That's how narcissistic big government makes you.
What's in it for me?
So all of this comes to my mind when I come to a place that resonates with all of you who are American in a very emotional way for very understandable reasons.
I wish I could give this talk in Vietnamese.
That's my dream.
To say your lives, and the lives of your parents and grandparents were wasted by a sick man called Ho Chi Minh who thought that he could use you as fodder for a moronic idea from Berlin.
London, New York, Paris.
I would love to.
I wish I could.
We will, by the way.
We will.
That's why we started Prague University.
We will have this talk in Vietnamese.
Somebody's going to find it here.
It's going to send it to somebody else.
Because they need to know it.
They need to know.
Every American death and every Vietnamese death is the result of a horrible idea that Western intellectuals invented.
Western secular intellectuals invented.
And that's pretty important.
Okay.
I'm happy to take your comments, questions.
Do we have a.
Dennis, I'd like to think positive.
Today, when we visited, we saw myriads of people.
Maybe stay and let everybody see, okay?
Thanks.
We saw many, many young people.
Maybe 70% of the people in Vietnam now are under 25 years old.
And it's so refreshing to see these faces and these new beginnings again.
It was refreshing to me to be in contact with the students that were in college and the desire to make money, you know.
I just enjoyed my day for anything.
I enjoyed my day tremendously.
I also think that this was my 99th country.
Cambodia is number 100.
And I wrote on that very subject, like my latest column on going to that many countries.
And I will tell you, I don't.
I may have seen stores selling indigenous art that were as wonderful, but no more wonderful store than the one that I saw today and paid for as a result.
And the people, as I say, I agree with you.
I have two things to say.
One, they still need to know the truth.
The truth does set you free, and they don't know the truth.
So that remains.
Number two, I was infected by some left-wing ideas.
It's almost impossible not to be if you go to college, if you watch TV, if you read the papers, certainly growing up in my generation.
One of them was the dismissal of people who want to make money.
That there's something ignoble in wanting to make a profit.
The very word profit has a dirty ring to it to the left.
After all, we're told non-profit health care will always do better than profit health care.
Why don't they apply that to cars or everything else?
If non-profit health care will be better for America or any other country, then why will not for-profit cars be better?
Cars are a necessity, just like health care is a necessity.
Why should anything be for-profit?
Why should food be for profit?
That's disgusting.
You mean bread makers try to make a profit?
So I remember thinking, yeah, you know, profit, I don't know, we've got to rise above this.
And then even a lot of religious people second.
That's why I get very angry when people object to all the gift giving on Christmas.
Every year, every year on the radio, I go through the same thing.
Why would America be a better society if people gave no gifts on Christmas?
I'll never forget my favorite dumb call.
No, I don't get many dumb calls.
I don't.
But this was precious.
A grandmother called up and she said, Dennis, I just want you, I don't agree with you.
I don't give my grandchildren any gifts on Christmas.
I give them my poetry.
I write them poems.
And I said, Grandma, if my grandmother gave me poems and I was given the choice between trains and grandma's poems, I'd have opted for trains.
I don't want grandma's poems.
Maybe when I'm 50 and I could appreciate it, fine, so give both.
This you'll appreciate at 50 and trains you'll appreciate now.
Grandma will give you both.
I think it's beautiful that people give gifts.
It's infected the religious world, this idea, profit, making money, materialism.
What is that even, this whole materialism thing is so fascinating to me.
Anyway, I'm just reacting.
Yes, I like that they're working for a living, trying to make a profit, and selling paper umbrellas.
That's exactly right.
Or beautiful works of art.
We bought, my wife and I bought a beautiful embroidered artwork.
It's astonishing.
It overwhelmed me with its beauty.
And that does not happen much with art.
It does happen much more with music.
I was emotionally taken with this.
That's how beautiful it is.
Now, do I need it?
Of course not.
So why, if materialism is wanting material things that you don't need, that's the definition after all, why would I buy this?
Why would anyone make it?
But why would the world be better if people didn't make a beautiful work of art like that?
Why is the world better if people only make what is necessary, a roof, shelter, and food?
Would that be a better world?
Isn't it nice that in Hong Kong people take pride in the tailoring that they can make for you?
Isn't that nice?
Why is that bad?
What is wrong with that?
Should a man really only own two suits?
Now, there's a difference between two suits and Imelda Marcos' 7,800 pairs of shoes.
We all acknowledge that.
Okay?
But there's a very large gap between the two.
You shouldn't live just for the material, but it is a very good thing.
People pursuing profit is a wonderful thing for society.
If they pursue profit, they won't pursue war because they're going to pursue something.
So I'm with you on that, but they don't know the truth, and I want them to know the truth.
When we saw at the same store, you know, in some corner, you know, some nicely done embroidery of Uncle Ho, you know, sitting like a poor man, you know, doing his homework for the masses.
You know, I just don't want them to throw up, frankly.
It's just, it's just, but there weren't many people clamoring to buy it.
Let me just say it was the least busy section of the store.
On a different subject, Dennis, I've enjoyed the cruise by virtue of not any attention to world events, but given what's going on in Egypt, I would really love your take on what we may expect and what you're expecting.
I do have to follow the world of feds.
I can't come back on the radio Monday and say, what?
You're kidding.
Yeah, that no, get out of here.
Tell me more.
And you can't catch up.
You have to watch it in real time to really get an idea.
So I've had to follow every day.
You know, I spent about an hour and a half on the internet getting the information.
I have to.
And it's so fascinating to me.
Frankly, I'm actually happy that I was off these two weeks, these only two weeks of the year I take off.
And I'm actually happy nobody has anything more intelligent than anybody else to say.
We don't have a clue where this will go.
I pray it goes well.
I can just tell you this.
There are a lot of competing ideas here.
First, I will say, because you know I am fair, I try to be fair before anything else.
The president was in a very difficult position.
On the one hand, Mubarak is our ally.
On the other hand, you don't want to get left behind the eight ball with a massive uprising starting in the Arab world with Tunisia, spreading to Egypt, and we're still saying, let's keep the old guard in.
So he is in a difficult position.
Having said that, there is an overriding issue for me, and that is that if you are a friend of the United States, you get rewarded by the United States.
It doesn't mean that we cannot do all sorts of things in favor of all sorts of improvements that could take place in Egypt and elsewhere.
But we have banked on a man who, with all his flaws, and I'm not a big fan of his, has kept Egypt out of war for 30 years.
And I don't know if his successors will.
Some very intelligent people writing on this issue, including an Arab, an Egyptian, who writes for the Wall Street Journal from Egypt, and he can't write because there was no internet, so he dictated it to the Wall Street Journal by phone.
Said he only sees gloom.
He says the people in the streets are not Jeffersons and Madisons.
And I remember watching on television one of the reports and seeing a picture of Mubarak by the protesters engulfed by a big Jewish star, like he is a tool of Zionists, which means that the people who believe that would love to make war against that star and start a war to destroy Israel.
On the other hand, you know, there's a constant on the other hand.
That's why nobody knows.
We just don't know.
I would like him to stay in power till the elections of this fall, that there be reforms, but it's not like there is a Jeffersonian Madisonian generation that is awaiting parliamentary democracy and freedom of other religions.
I mean, Copts, Coptic Christians are killed and beaten routinely in Egypt.
And it doesn't seem to be a huge outcry by the masses of people who are in Tahrir Square against killing Copts.
Don't know any Egyptian demonstrations against killing Christians in Egypt.
And they're 10% of the population, if I'm not mistaken.
So I don't know.
Nobody knows.
The truth is, nobody knows.
It's so corrupt, Egypt.
It is so corrupt.
The most powerful force in Egypt is the army, which not only is powerful because it has all the arms, it's powerful because it has almost all the wealth.
They own large businesses.
They own large hotels.
The military.
To an American, it's unbelievable.
The military?
Imagine that.
Welcome to the Air Force Marion.
We can't imagine such things.
So I don't have any greater insight except that this notion that the people in the square are sincere doesn't do it for me.
Some undoubtedly are.
There are some Jeffersonians there.
But the French Revolution went to the guillotine very, very quickly after people got rid of, was it Louis XVI?
So this guy is Louis XVI in Egypt.
You know, they got rid of the Shah, and it was welcomed by the West.
Oh, the Shah, you know, oh, dictator, the Shah, dictator, the Shah.
The Shah is George Washington compared to Khomeini.
The stuff that follows the breakdown of these guys isn't necessarily good.
We don't, the Arab world does not have a good track record when it comes to freedom, democracy, tolerance, etc.
Then you want another hand?
Here's on the other hand: that the Muslim Brotherhood, the single largest organized party outside of Mubarak's party, has announced that it is not interested in creating an Islamist Egypt like Iran and it doesn't want Iran's support.
Is that true or is that tactical?
I don't know.
But it's hard for me to believe it's true, and I'll tell you why.
Why have an Islamic party if you don't want an Islamic Egypt?
This is not, you know, rocket science.
Yes, we have an Islamist party, but we don't want an Islamist Egypt.
What exactly do you want?
More halal meat?
I mean, what do you want?
So that's my take in a nutshell.
Next, please.
Yes, Dennis.
Please stand.
Please stand, everybody.
Great.
I couldn't agree with you more.
I just got done reading a gang of one about a gentleman who grew up in the Cultural Revolution.
And I was prepared to hate communism.
And I'm coming here from Taiwan to everywhere we've been, Kushong, to here.
It's almost as like this is a.
Are these people?
Did they all change?
Did communism change?
Because to me, this is like the most capitalistic I've seen in a long time.
I've just went with that Europe.
They're totally uncapitalistic there.
And I'm just, can these people change?
Are they changing?
Or is it just because we are tourists and we're getting off a boat for a few hours and they're fooling us?
Because to me, I was just like you.
I was looking optimistic.
Like, wow, these people are really capitalistic.
And I'm hoping that maybe communism is changing.
Or am I wrong?
Okay, let me explain that.
You want to come next?
I do.
Okay, okay.
You're on.
You're on next.
Fine.
First of all, you have to know this.
The only people who ever believed in communism lived in non-communist countries.
That's a generalization.
There were really some people in Vietnam, some people in China, some people in the Soviet Union who believed in communism.
They were a tiny sliver of the population.
The only people who really believed in it never had to suffer its consequences.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Noam Chomsky's types on the left in America, others who would tell us it's not bad at all.
We visited the Soviet Union.
I remember in the Soviet Union, 1969, 21 years old, sitting in a foreigner-only hotel, which might be a giveaway as to this being a totalitarian country that no Soviet citizen could enter.
And a couple from somewhere in America saying, I don't know what is all this anti-communist talk.
We went to the Balshoy Ballet last night.
It was beautiful.
Like, what does that have to do with anything?
Now, so, first of all, nobody believed in it.
So it's not a matter of did these people change.
They didn't believe in it to begin with.
They were forced to fight for a regime.
And they never told to fight for communism.
Just like Stalin.
Stalin never told Soviet soldiers fight for communism.
Fight for Mother Russia.
Nobody dies for communism.
It's a piece of crap.
Everyone knows it's a fraud.
No one dies for communism.
People kill for communism, but nobody dies for communism.
They all died for their country.
So Ho said, just like we fought the French, now we're fighting the Americans.
He nationalized the battle to keep the Communist Party in control of North and South Vietnam.
But nobody believed in it.
If he would have said, it doesn't matter who, we're here to fight for the party, nobody would have picked up an arm unless they were forced to, and a lot were forced to.
So they didn't change.
Number two, this is the natural human inclination.
Natural human inclination is to buy and sell.
That's what people have always done.
I visited, you know, there's the first world, the second world, the third world.
I spent two weeks in the fourth world, New Guinea.
Two bloody weeks.
Because there was no flight out when I needed one.
I was almost about to wear what I call the bushy-tushy, the bush skirts that the guys wore.
And anyway, I'll never forget how do you know who the richest guy in the village is?
This was the most important thing.
The richest guy had the most women, had the most, by the number of pig tusks he wore around his thing.
So his pig tusks were this woman's large ring, right?
It would be, or this guy's great suit, or this guy's great car.
He had pig tusks.
And that's, this is human condition.
You buy, you sell, you buy.
The human being is an economic animal, and that's wonderful.
It's a wonderful thing.
And if allowed, if allowed, with obvious, you have to protect people against botulism in restaurants.
But if allowed to be free, what people do is the others determine how what you will sell.
It's almost built-in altruism.
You want this, then I'll make this.
You don't want this, I don't make this.
And whenever I go into a store in the United States and I meet young people who are there, have a nice day.
May I help you?
I think, God bless capitalism.
It's again a left-wing thing.
Well, it's not sincere.
So what?
So what?
I am very happy to be insincerely treated nicely.
I want that on the record.
Okay, you get a microphone here.
Can we give you a loud voice?
All right, you'll have to use your loud.
What?
She doesn't need one?
No.
But you know her?
Michael King.
Michael, thank you.
Yeah, thank you.
My name is Alex.
And this is, I was here five years ago, the Vietnam also.
And I was really dismayed at the fact the Communist Party is still running the country.
And today I went on our tour and I heard about the Communists owning the rice fields, the Communists owning the land, Communist Party, owning the land, and then they can build their house on it.
The wealthy houses we see are Communist Party houses.
You know, answer me that.
There's nothing to answer.
That's probably true.
It's true.
I went through what you went through because these people were killed.
Our people were killed.
And we're back to the United States.
Right.
They all died to give these frauds nice houses.
That's correct.
That's what I said.
That's why I want them to know the truth.
That's exactly right.
That's communist great achievement is massive death so that the Communist Party leaders can have orgies.
Yes, I'm Mel Has from Newport Beach.
Where are they?
Where are they?
Yeah, hi.
And I wanted to ask you about what you said earlier.
You said that we won the Vietnam War, and then the left destroyed that.
Can you please?
Yes, in a nutshell, we, those who know the exact years here will help me out.
I believe it was 72 that the United States had so prevailed militarily that there were peace accords signed by the North and the South.
And you can get this in a nutshell in Bruce Hershenson's video, which we, is it out yet, Alan?
No.
Okay, Bruce Hershenson wrote a book, what is it, American Amnesia, on this.
And it's a very easy read and a very quick read.
The communists came to the peace accords, not because they wanted peace.
They came to the peace accords because they lost.
And it was agreed that South Vietnam will maintain its own non-communist government and that they will let it be.
However, the North and the Viet Cong continued to attack in the South.
The United States did not because of the Democratic Party opposition to the war to begin with, would not maintain support for the South Vietnamese regime.
And by 1975, just three years later, the last helicopter taking out our supporters left from Saigon.
The left will say, I don't know how the left answers what I just said.
What they'll say is we would have had to bomb Hanoi.
We would have had to obliterate Haiphong.
We would have had to kill millions more to prevail.
And we still wouldn't have done it.
They were going to fight to the last person.
That's their argument.
That was the argument that they gave.
It was unwinnable, but we did win it.
And then we were not allowed to support the South Vietnamese.
And let me tell you another very interesting story.
Many, many years ago, I was contracted to write a book, which I didn't write.
I did the research, but I didn't write the book.
And it was, I wanted to write the moral record of communism.
Because it drove me nuts that everybody knew how evil Nazism was, but communism doesn't have the same name.
People will wear Che Guevara t-shirts.
Nobody wears a Heinrich Himmler t-shirt or an Adolf Eichmann t-shirt.
Or there's a Mao Café in LA.
There's no Hitler Cafe in L.A.
They would be boycotted.
People would march like crazy.
By the way, it's all because of left-wing racism.
That's the irony.
Asians don't matter.
The death of Asians, like the death of Africans, doesn't matter.
Death of Palestinians matter to the left.
The death of blacks matter to the left if killed by a white.
But otherwise, it is just a non-issue.
The massive deaths of Asians got a big yawn.
It didn't even bother them with Vietnam.
The day the draft ended, the demonstrations ended.
It was all about I don't want to serve in Vietnam.
Had there been a volunteer army years before that, it'd be very interesting to know what would have been the history of this war.
But the reason I mention this book is I interviewed refugees from North Korea and refugees from Vietnam.
I interviewed Vietnamese boat people in Asia.
I came to Asia, I came to Taiwan, I came to South Korea and visited with refugees from communist Asian countries.
And I will never forget looking at a Vietnamese with an interpreter, obviously, with a translator.
An interpreter, I think it is.
Translation, I think, is written.
Interpreting is spoken.
So there was a Vietnamese interpreter there, and I looked at this person, a boat person.
Remember the boat people?
Risking their lives, many of them eaten by sharks, never got to freedom, leaving Vietnam when it was liberated, my favorite perverted word of the left-wing vocabulary, that Saigon was liberated when communism took over.
And I looked at this person and I said, so you were pretty surprised, weren't you?
You welcomed the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, didn't you?
Oh, yes, I really did.
I believed that they were liberating us.
And now you're a boat person.
That's right.
So I said, I'm just curious, would you now say that, is it fair to say that this American living on the other side of the world understood your communist Vietnamese better than you, a Vietnamese, did?
He said, that's right.
And I'll never forget that.
That's correct.
I understood Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Cong better than a South Vietnamese, thinking that it wouldn't be so terrible when they took over.
Because I'll tell you why.
I don't know anything about the Vietnamese.
You don't have to.
Communism is communism as communism is communism.
And I remember when I used to say this, and my professors at Columbia would say, oh, come on, Dennis.
Dennis, please.
Communism is not monolithic.
Peking, that's what Beijing was called then.
Peiking and Moscow hate each other.
I said, Yeah, that's true.
So what?
They're both mass murderers.
Different mafiosi hate each other.
Mafia groups hate each other.
But the mafia is the mafia, the mafia.
Communism is the mafia.
Next.
Hi, Dennis.
I'm Isabel Sesqueres from Calabasas.
And we had a wonderful tour guy, the young guy, and he was trying to be so nice.
He gave his sand for us and everything.
But I felt that concern for him because I know what that is like coming from Cuba.
He has a university degree, but he can't get into the party because his father worked for the United States government or the army, like he said.
He wants to be ahead, he wants to make more money, but he can because it has to be a family thing.
And so he's like tight.
He can't do anything.
And he also told us, which I think he felt very strongly about, several times, that the parents have to pay for the children, school, even in kindergarten.
And if the parents don't have money, the kids can go to school, not only in kindergarten, but in elementary, in secondary, and in the university.
He said he was lucky because his father worked for the Americans and he was able to save money to pay for his school.
And we asked him about health care.
He says, you have to pay.
Government doesn't pay for you.
If you don't have money, you go to the hospital.
And he kept saying, yes or no?
Money, no money.
So what is that wonderful thing that people in the United States, the other places, think about communism?
It's the same thing.
They're just being brainwashed, like they've been brainwashed about Cuban health, where people die because there's no medication or no doctors, that's all they have.
And doctors that went to school for five years, and they send them over there to the countryside or to other cities to practice.
So they kill a lot of people.
And here comes, what's his name, Ward, coming up with a wonderful documentary that, you know, rising Cuba for that.
Listen.
People are ignorant.
They are ignorant, and there is a brainwash.
There really is.
And I'll give you an example of it and how pervasive it is.
The United Nations ranks the United States, the United Nations World Health Organization ranks the United States and Cuba as tied in health care.
Wow.
Yep.
Don't you know a lot of world leaders who fly to Havana for open heart surgery?
I just can't believe you didn't know that.
I thought they go to Cleveland to the Cleveland.
I was wrong.
Cleveland, Cuba.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes, the communists get fine health care.
That's the 52% of the population or whatever it is, 5%.
Yep, it's very sad.
It's very sad.
Was there another one?
Did you, or?
Oh, please, yes.
Hi, Dennis.
It's Melinda from Los Angeles.
I have two good questions.
One was that you were going to kind of go over your, how you got started and, you know, after college, what steps you, you know, when you develop your career, I mean, how it, you know, a little timeline, some important events that happened after school, college.
And the other question I had was your perception of the demise of the white race on planet Earth.
I don't have a perception on the demise of the white race because I never think in terms of race.
I care in terms of values.
And if everybody is mulatto and has Judeo-Christian values, I'm a happy camper.
I don't care whether they're a whites.
I care whether they're a good people.
I have adopted my views from Viktor Frankl, who was asked about after the Holocaust, what do you think of the German race?
He said, there are only two races, the decent and the indecent.
So if the decent race prevails and it's mixed racially, I'm fine with it.
If you know more beautiful physical specimens than Vietnamese, as you saw today, I'd like to know who they are.
So race is of no interest to me.
So I'm totally honest with you.
Values are everything.
That's why I don't care about blood.
That's why I tell people, you know, would you rather have a child who shared your values but it was adopted, or a child of yours who was your blood but didn't share your values.
99% of people and the other 1% are not healthy would say that they prefer the one who shares their values.
As regards, the first one is very simple because I know you would heard me say that I began lecturing at 21, which is very bizarre.
I have a bizarre life, I admit it.
At 21, I began lecturing because I had just gone to the Soviet Union for nearly four weeks.
Because of my knowledge of Russian and Hebrew, I was sent by Israel because Israel was sending Jews into the Soviet Union to help Jews get religious items because they were forbidden in the Soviet Union and because many wanted to leave and that's how they got their names out by people who went and met them and brought their names out.
So I started life very actively and began lecturing on Soviet jewelry.
That's where I began lecturing at 21.
By 25, at 24, I called up some places that had me speak and said I'd like to speak on other subjects.
They pretty much all thought I was an idiot savant, that I only knew Soviet jewelry.
And I said, no, no, no, let me speak about something else.
So I'll never forget, because all of the money that I got for lecturing then went to the student struggle for Soviet Jewry.
All I got was taxi fare or a plane fare.
So the first time I asked for a speech fee, my dear friend Joseph Talushkin was in my apartment and I was sweating bullets.
I can't ask for me.
It's just my own way I'm made up.
I can fight for everybody else, but I'm not good for fighting for me.
So I was sweating there and I was going to say $25.
And Joseph kept yelling at me, $35, $35, $35.
So with great hesitation, I said, $35.
You know, totally prepared for them to say, what, are you kidding?
But of course, if they would have, they would have meant it in the other direction.
That cheap?
Who speaks for $35?
So they said, oh, that's fine.
And that was my first speech, $35.
And then I, you know, went on from there, and then I wrote my first book.
Now I charge more than $35.
Yes, please.
Yep.
Marty from Nicole Beach, this is a question I've been puzzling about, and some of my conservative Jewish friends and I wonder, and perhaps you can help us to understand, why are so many Jews liberals?
I have spent my life, really, literally my whole life, working that through.
I have a great, great talk on it listed at dennisprager.com.
And it is a very long and it's a very complex issue, very complex, in a nutshell.
Number one, the more Judaism animates a Jew's life, the less likely that Jew is to be on the left.
What has happened is for most Jews, liberalism and leftist ideologies have supplanted Judaism as Jews' religion.
I often say to Jewish and non-Jewish groups, Jews are the most religious people in the world.
Problem is, Judaism isn't their religion.
For some, obviously, it is, but for many, it isn't.
So the conviction that a Jewish liberal brings to liberalism, it's a form of secular messianism.
They translated Jewish messianism.
Christians here know the power of the messianic idea.
It's even more powerful in Christianity.
But it was taken, obviously, from Jews.
Jews believed it.
Jesus is a Jew.
The apostles are Jews.
And the messianic idea is a very powerful one.
They're not the same exact ideas in Judaism and Christianity, but it doesn't matter.
They're still very powerful.
So Jews believed that God would send the Messiah, and then the world would be better, good, no persecution.
The lion will lie down with the lamb.
And what secular Jews did was take the messianic idea and apply it to leftism so that the lion will lie with the lamb in a utopia that we will make, not God.
God is not necessary, man will make utopia.
But of course, man makes dystopia, the opposite of utopia.
And all attempts to make utopia have ended up with hell on earth.
All.
See, capitalism, conservatism accepts the fact that we will not have utopia.
God may bring it, but we won't.
So we therefore are happy when people aren't slaughtering each other in the streets.
And we look at the United States, the conservative says, greatest country that was ever devised.
The left looks at the country and it sees it like a practologist sees you through the anal cavity.
Because we compare America, the conservative compares America to other societies.
The left compares America to utopia.
Compared to utopia, everybody stinks, everything stinks.
Racist, homophobic, xenophobic, xenophobic, intolerant, bigoted, etc.
So the Jew bought a new utopia.
And why did Jews particularly buy a new utopian idea?
Because they suffered so much.
And so they made a new dream.
The new dream, you know, we've got to get out of this suffering.
Everywhere we go, Jews were terribly treated in Christian Europe.
Jews were terribly treated, obviously, by the Nazis.
And so, without religion and without nationalism, we will have a utopia for Jews.
Because Hitler is the nationalist, the church is the religionist, Orthodoxy held no appeal to them within Judaism.
So they said, ah, our salvation, human salvation, will come from dropping national identities and from dropping God.
Then humans will unite because we are all one and we love Mother Earth.
And so that in a nutshell, that is why it's very hard to dislodge almost anybody on the left, Jews or non-Jews.
Remember, there are plenty, most leftists are not Jewish.
You know, let's be honest.
Michael Moore is not Jewish.
Harry Reid is not Jewish.
Nancy Pelosi is not Jewish.
So, but Jews are disproportionately involved.
But the vast majority who have bought these ideas, which came from Europe in the 19th century, that's how leftism came to America, from German universities through the university system in the 19th century and moved on from there.
Woodrow Wilson, the first great progressive like that, and then on to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was not Jewish either, and from there.
Gradually, inroads are being made in Jewish life.
It's gradual, but it is being made.
The Republican Jewish Coalition is larger and larger each year.
But it is very hard because it's felt with religion.
And also, Jews attend college more than any other group proportionately.
And college is a left-wing factory.
Yep.
Hi, Dan, that's Ernie Jerome from the 91 British Columbia.
Hi.
In his Seattle Union address, President Obama spoke of the need of another Sputnik moment and of the need for renewed emphasis on education in American schools.
But I get the impression that he'll be satisfied with, and the NEA will be satisfied with, just pushing more bodies through grade 12 graduation, regardless of whether they can read or write well when they graduate, and getting more bones and seats in the universities, regardless of whether it's studying technology or women's studies.
So your thoughts on whether you think Obama will whether he really sees where the emphasis needs to be in education.
You want a Sputnik moment in education, you shut down the Department of Education.
You know, it's really, I want you to all, when you get home, I want you to read letters from soldiers in the Civil War back home.
Almost none of them went past eighth grade, virtually none.
They are Shakespearean compared to what a college, I taught at college.
It's astonishing what they knew in eighth grade in the 19th century compared to a college freshman today.
And a new study came out, University of Chicago put out this study.
First two years, they virtually learn nothing.
They basically get drunk, which, by the way, I'm in favor of.
I just want to say I don't drink, but the reason I'm in favor of it is at least if they're drunk, they don't hear what the professors say.
So there is, it's a dark, it's a dark advantage, but it's an advantage nevertheless.
But it is a wasteland.
You can document, it is almost a perfect graph.
Department of Education created by Jimmy Carter, and American education starts to deteriorate.
It's a graph.
Just one goes up and one goes down.
What do we need it for?
Again, change.
This was all belief in change.
We didn't need a change.
Teach them reading, writing, and arithmetic.
It worked.
Why did you need to change it?
I learned to diagram sentences.
The average kid today does not know what an adverb is, let alone can diagram a sentence.
Does not know what an adverb is.
Ask your kids, what's an adverb.
Your kid, if your kid is at a distinguished university, ask your kid what's an adverb.
What needed to change?
I don't understand.
Memorize?
It's a good thing.
Whatever I memorized has come back to be an advantage in my life.
Everything that I memorized has been worth it later in life.
But oh, they're just a bunch of turkeys, you know, or parakeets or parrots.
Yes, that's correct.
What do you expect them to be in eighth grade?
New thinkers?
I don't want new thinkers.
They could be new thinkers once they know something.
But first, you have to know something to be a new thinker.
So, yes, I would know he had a Sputnik moment if he said, I had a Sputnik moment and we're closing down, saving $85 billion a year and improving American education without a Department of Education.
Then I'd know he meant it.
Glenn Murrow from Huntington Beach, and I wanted to talk about communism and actually Egypt at the same time.
You painted a very gloomy picture of Egypt, and I agree with that.
And you stated you didn't have much hope.
Due to the recent happenings in November, I wanted to know if you had more hope for Egypt or California.
That's a toss-up question.
But I have more respect for Egypt.
As I wrote in a column, and then we should, oh, good, you're here.
I made up a riddle.
I don't often do this, but I made up a riddle.
What is the difference between the passengers on the Titanic and the voters in California?
The answer, the passengers on the Titanic did not vote to hit the iceberg.
Yes.
That's why you should listen to the show every day.
You would have heard that the first time.
I'm Chester from Alfred, New Mexico.
I was watching Al Gore on television since we got on the ship.
Really?
And it was a program on it.
And he made a statement that there was no credible scientist in America who did not support global warming.
And I've heard some credible ones who didn't go along with him, but I'd like to comment about that.
Well, what he basically has said is, if you don't agree with my thesis, by definition, you're not credible.
This is somewhat, it's almost totalitarian.
But it's typical of the left.
If you don't agree with me, you're not wrong.
You're scum.
It's a very big difference.
We think they're wrong.
They think we're scum.
That's, by the way, that helps them stay on the left.
Because they don't think it through, they feel it through.
And therefore, opponents have to be lowlives.
So any scientist who actually said, you know, I really am not sure that carbon dioxide emissions are creating this heat that will destroy much of the planet.
I just don't think so.
As one Nobel laureate physicist recently wrote, he said, I don't think the human being can even affect the weather.
It is so enormously complex and so much bigger than us, we really can't do anything.
Richard Lindzen is the leading climatologist in the United States.
He's a professor at MIT.
He was on my show a few times.
He doesn't believe this scenario.
Is Richard Lindzen not a credible scientist?
And the answer is yes.
To the left, he is not.
Not only is he not credible, but if a scientist does differ with Al Gore's thesis, then he's probably getting money from big corporations, but energy corporations who want to keep us using biofuels.
So they're not corrupt because they get billions of government money.
But our guys are corrupt if they get corporate money.
And by the way, Lindsay doesn't get corporate money, but it doesn't matter.
He's not credible.
And that's how they perpetuate their ideas.
This is what is told in school.
Your grandchildren or children in elementary school probably saw Al Gore's inconvenient truth.
But they never saw an opposite view.
Never.
Never.
The brainwash begins very early.
Yes.
Hi, Dennis George Ben Sports from Newport Beach also.
I know you talk about the cruise when you get back on the radio, and I wondered if you were going to speak with the intensity about Vietnam that you did here today.
And secondly, some time ago, I don't know if I've read or heard it, but there was an unwritten agreement between Israel and Egypt that if Egypt attacked Israel, that the Aswan Dam would be history along with most of Egypt.
Okay, I never heard the second part, and I doubt it, frankly.
It's not something I think Israel would do.
But Israel is the only country in the world whose existence is threatened.
And so if it has made draconian threats to Egypt, and they have to, then they have to.
As for the first, yes, I will speak with the same intensity about this subject when I get back on the air.
I am not known for non-intense moments on the air.
I'm known for a lot of fun moments, but I also have intense moments.
This will be one of them.
Yes.
Dennis Brian.
Before I came, I went to the hospital where my wife works in Redlands, California.
I met a doctor there named Dr. Lee.
And I couldn't understand how communism could have such a chokehold on the people.
And he explained to me that in every community there's one household that keeps track of 12 households.
And they know everybody sits there that day.
In North Korea or what is he in Vietnam, in Vietnam.
Oh, he's Chinese, okay.
He's Yemeni's.
He's what?
Vietnamese?
Well, no, but he's a Chinese Vietnamese, because Lee is a Chinese name.
You got me there.
Okay, no, no, it's alright.
I mean, I don't know.
But anyway, so I was just enthralled with the story that he told me.
Yeah, because he tried to get out of Vietnam as a boat person, and of course, he explained that the penalty is three years in prison.
Of course, if you're the organizer, then it's ten years in prison.
He was imprisoned when he was captured trying to leave the country.
He spent the first seven months in a building, in a room maybe this size.
Two windows, one bathroom, 250 men.
He left twice in that seven months, each time when they took him out to interrogate him.
And when he got done, he was supposed to spend the remainder of his three years in a work camp, but his father-in-law paid a bribe, and he was released.
He said that he would never come back.
Well, I don't blame him, and that is exactly how it operates.
In the Soviet Union, there were people who sat on each floor of an apartment building to see what guests came to people's apartments.
When I met with dissidents, I lost 18 pounds in four weeks.
It's the totalitarian diet, if you ever want to try it.
It works because all you do is walk.
Because anytime I met a dissident, they would never allow me to stand and talk with them.
We had to talk while walking.
Because it would elicit attention being seen with a Westerner.
So you'll say, well, how do they know I'm a Westerner?
I look Russian.
I don't look any different from a Russian.
But because of the way I dressed, it was immediately known that I was not Russian.
Sometimes they thought, because I spoke Russian with an accent, they sometimes thought I was a Latvian, which I was very complimented by.
Then it's the Latvian.
Yes.
Hi, Dennis.
My name is Haim from Los Angeles.
I'd like to know, a couple of days ago, we spoke about marriage and divorce.
And what do you think about interfaith marriage between childbearing couples?
So that's a very important additive, obviously, where they will have children.
I have said many, many times on the air and elsewhere, the more that every one of you will agree with this.
This is not anything new or profound or original.
The more that a couple have in common, the better.
I mean, that's just a given.
It has enough challenges, marriage, that the more you share, the better.
So that's one.
Number two, all people in all religions who believe in their religion believe that it is best to marry someone of the same faith because you want to build a home in the religion you care about.
And it's a lot easier to build that home with somebody of the same faith.
Having said that, in a free society, people fall in love very deeply with wonderful people of other religions.
And much of the time, neither is very, very strongly committed to a given religion.
They feel it, or they may feel it culturally, or they may feel it emotionally, but it's not the most animating thing in their lives in general.
So they really think that it can work.
I know a couple wherein she is, Sue, what is, I could say the first name, what is Davy's wife's religion?
Catholic?
Where's Sue?
Sue here?
She's Catholic?
Okay.
So we know a wonderful, wonderful young couple.
He's Jewish.
She is a Catholic.
And I guess Catholicism is a drop more significant to her than Judaism is to him, but it's not completely insignificant to him.
And Catholicism is not completely insignificant to her.
We attended their wedding.
We love this couple.
And I think that they will have to deal with the issue when a child comes.
Do you baptize the child?
Do you bramitzvah the child?
Do you send your child to Hebrew school?
Do you send your child to Catholic school?
Do you send your child to Hebrew school and Catholic school?
Do you have Hanukkah and Christmas?
Do you have Hanukkah one year and Christmas the next year?
Do you have Christmas both?
I mean, there are very, very many difficult issues that have to be worked out.
I have raised this on the air.
I've asked people raised in homes that were interfaith marriages.
And to my surprise, a lot of them said, well, mom was Jewish or dad was Jewish and mom was Christian.
Usually it's that way.
We're not counting Catholic and Protestant as an intermarriage for our sake here.
And they said, and I feel both.
And what am I going to say?
You know, theologically, you can't be, but if you feel it, what am I going to do?
Deny your feelings?
And so they feel committed, and then, I don't know, well, well, they raise their children.
It's like the people who have hyphenated last names, right?
So A hyphenated B marries A hyphenated B. Marries C hyphenated D.
So what did they got?
A hyphenated B hyphenated C hyphenated D?
You know, it becomes like some of those Spanish names, which take you about a minute to say, and then you know who they are.
So I don't know.
As a general rule, it's best that people, I don't give a hoot about interracial marriage, interethnic marriage.
Interreligious marriage is a challenge if you want a religious home.
Having said that, America is the land of innovation and people work things out and kids will.
What I don't want is kids deprived of religion.
That's a terrible deprivation.
That I do feel strongly.
Kids, I don't think adults should be deprived of religion.
Okay.
Let's see, we have a couple of, all right.
So we have more to show and to talk about.
So it's two more good.
Okay.
Venice, my name is Adam O'Barno from Dallas, Texas.
And my comment is being that morality is one of the pillars of successful American experience.
Does that give the United States the right to pursue evil around the world, aggressive?
What's your turn about that?
Well, give me an example of where U.S. pursues evil around the world, and then I could better answer you.
Saddam Hussein.
You mean removing Saddam Hussein was evil?
Okay, so then I don't quite follow the question.
The question is if there is evil somewhere in the world, genocide, do we have the right to interfere?
Oh, okay.
I'm glad I had you clarify it.
Fair enough.
Do we have the right?
If you mean the legal right, I don't know.
If the legality is determined on these matters by the United Nations Security Council, and I'm serious, and it often is, then we don't.
If the issue is moral obligation as opposed to legal right, I don't know.
If you know that there is massive killing going on in a neighborhood near yours, do you have the right to stop it?
I think you have the obligation to if you can.
Does that mean the United States is obliged to stop all evils everywhere on earth?
We can't.
It's not possible.
So you pick and choose, and good people can differ which evil to stop.
But the notion that, well, we topple Saddam, but we let, I don't know, Castro or the Chinese communists stay in power is not an argument.
It's like saying, you know, you're fighting cancer, but there's still Lou Gehrig disease.
Okay, give me a break.
I'm working on cancer right now.
So you do what you can do.
And so the United States, what can be said is, and must be said, the United States is the only country to regularly shed its blood for the liberty of others.
That makes America unique.
That's an astonishing statement.
The left has twisted it.
Oh, it's not for liberty.
It's for oil.
It's for natural resources.
So I always get them with this trick question: okay, why did we fight the Korean War?
37,000 Americans died in Korea.
No oil, no resources, nothing, man.
Nothing.
Huh?
The Hyundai.
That's right.
We die.
That's it.
We die for the Hyundai.
That's exactly right.
So that you know what the answer I always get, including from the editor and editor of The Atlantic Magazine.
Sorry, Dennis, I just don't know that much about the Korean War.
It's on tape, folks.
It's on tape.
What's the final question?
This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
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