Dennis Prager Show - Timeless Wisdom: Feelings: Key to the Liberal Mind

Dec. 12, 2025 - Dennis Prager Show

01:45:26

Timeless Wisdom: Feelings: Key to the Liberal Mind

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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.
	I'm David in a moment, but I want to tell you, it is a bigger challenge to talk to people who like you this much than it is to people who can't stand you.
	I feel I can only disappoint you after the enthusiasm you have shown me.
	So hopefully I won't.
	I want to say about David that there is a beautiful Hebrew saying that there are only two relationships where there is no envy or jealousy, and that is a father to a child or a parent to a child and a teacher to a student.
	And to the extent that I've been a teacher to that student, his blossoming and his great accomplishments, obviously I've had no role in his theatrical accomplishments, but in his ideological accomplishments, is a great source of joy to me.
	He is a wonderful human being and a force for good in your community.
	it.
	Thank you very much.
	The video, which I do hope you'll see, it's actually, I'm very proud of it, for goodness sake.
	It's very funny and very powerful ethical points.
	It actually makes goodness fun.
	It's not goody-goody.
	In fact, one of the scenes is against goody-goody.
	So it makes clear that goodness is strong.
	Goody-goody is weak.
	Goodness is strong.
	But that had a very powerful impact in my life in another way because thanks to that, one of the writers of it, thanks to Rich Markey, whom you heard of, was Alan Estrin.
	He is my producer and dear friend, and he's here tonight, and I think you should meet Alan.
	Alan's brainstormed to start Prager University, which I'll tell you a little about afterwards.
	I would also...
	I'm really married to two people, Alan and my wife, and I'd like you to meet my wife soon.
	And Gary, this is an immense accomplishment.
	It's gutsy, it's powerful, it's happy.
	We are the underdogs.
	And if anybody is an underdog, it's a conservative in Hollywood, and yet you are so much happier than any equivalent liberal group in Hollywood.
	That, by the way, is a very, very important point.
	I am a specialist in the subject of happiness.
	Many of you told me you listened to the happiness hour, which will be on tomorrow at 10 o'clock.
	And I'm very proud of that hour, and it appears to touch people's lives.
	It's what it's meant to do.
	I have very strong beliefs about happiness.
	Why is it that every poll shows that liberals are less happy than conservatives?
	It should be the opposite, certainly now.
	I mean, what are you not getting?
	You are getting your dream of transforming this miserable country.
	And by the way, you have to admit it's miserable.
	If one were to say, I wrote a column on this, The very use of the word transform is indicative of what a liberal or person of the left thinks of America.
	And I'm not here to say that they don't love America or anything like that, but they can't admire it.
	You don't transform what you admire.
	If somebody were to tell you, a woman can go, you know, I would love to transform my husband, do you think that she thinks well of him?
	We never, we don't want to transform America.
	We want to conserve America.
	We would like to include it.
	The very use of that term gives you a profound insight into the way they view America.
	You don't transform what you think is worthwhile.
	You transform what you consider to be essentially bad.
	And use the term with any other thing in your life.
	I'd like to transform my husband.
	I'd like to transform my wife.
	I'd like to transform my boss, my work.
	It means the way it is now is unworthy.
	That is a huge statement.
	And the president made it constantly when he was running.
	Well, people who live in the greatest country in the world and think that it is so awful as to need transformation can't be happy.
	But it isn't liberalism that makes liberals unhappy.
	It is that unhappy people are more likely to gravitate toward liberalism.
	And here is my theory as to why.
	Everyone has a difficult life.
	Everyone.
	If you don't know the difficulties of another person's life, it is only because you don't know them well.
	As the mother of my dear friend from high school, co-author of my two books on Judaism, Helen Talushkin, said when we were in high school, we were talking about, Joseph and I were talking age 15 in her kitchen in Brooklyn, New York, about kids in class that we thought were happy or not.
	And she closed the refrigerator door and said, boys, let me tell you something.
	The only happy people I know are people I don't know well.
	It was a brilliant insight.
	And the point is, everybody has it, everyone has it hard.
	Some people have had it harder than others, but there is no relationship between having it hard and happiness.
	There are people who've had it much harder than anyone in this room who walk around with a perfectly delightful disposition.
	There are people who've had a relatively easy life and walk around in constant complaining.
	So you have a choice in life with regard to life's difficulties and challenges.
	You say this is the way life is.
	Life, like Dostoevsky wrote, to live is to suffer.
	It might be a little too much for us.
	That's Russian pathos.
	But nevertheless, there's a lot of truth to that.
	There is a lot of suffering in life.
	To live is to suffer.
	You accept that fact in an ecclesiastes sort of way, and you make the best of your life.
	Or you have another choice.
	You say, that's not fair, and I am going to change the whole world so that my life is no longer one that has any pain in it.
	That is the definition of a person of the left.
	And that is the way.
	We do accept the fact that life is painful.
	We do.
	Because, among other things, we have more wisdom.
	Now, I will never say liberals are bad.
	I think they do bad, but I don't think they mean to do bad.
	They think we mean to do bad.
	So what I want to do tonight, and I really debated this because I could really just revel you with great stories from radio.
	And in fact, I will revel you with one in a moment.
	But I thought, you know, I take you so seriously.
	actually not only wrote out I don't have a written speech but wrote out notes of a considerable nature usually I speak from the notes on a business card and I mean it quite sincerely I have a business card worth of notes I have two sides of a big regular eight and a half by eleven page I so want to convey to you as much as I can in the time that we have and so and so I have very serious thoughts to share with you.
	I'm recording the talk so that if you'll want it, it'll be available to you.
	It's important because I have a lot of points I want to make.
	But I will revel you with one radio story.
	I'm often asked, have I had embarrassing moments on the air?
	And frankly, not that many, but the ones that I have do remain etched.
	And this is my favorite of all of them, which KRLA, my LA affiliate, around across the country, but KRLA is my home base.
	They played it over and over as a way of endearing themselves to me.
	And this happened a few years ago.
	A guy called up from Arizona.
	And I said, hey, Dennis, I love your show.
	I'm a trucker here on the road in Arizona.
	And I love to know about my callers.
	So I just happened to say, I'm just curious.
	Tell me, what are you hauling?
	And he said, huh, two tons of celery.
	And I said, really?
	Two tons of celery?
	My God, what does that smell like?
	And the guy was in a quandary.
	It was clear because he really respected me and liked me, so he didn't really want to insult me.
	So in a hesitating way, he said, well, like celery.
	You don't understand, it takes a lot to render me speechless.
	It really does.
	What am I going to say after that?
	What is it supposed to smell like, right?
	I mean, you know, tulips?
	I mean, that's what two tons of celery will smell like.
	It was a stupid question.
	But that is the essence of live radio, that you can't take back anything.
	But there were a lot of great moments like that, and it's one of the reasons I really do love what I do.
	I think it comes through to people.
	I love, somebody came over to me and said, you know, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
	And I said, you know, the truth is I love talking to people.
	And she said, well, you know what?
	I could tell that you do.
	And then I said, look, the truth is, I love people and I can't stand humanity.
	The opposite of a liberal.
	And who love humanity and are often not so nice to people.
	I saw that at Columbia University where I was at graduate school.
	In the name of humanity, they would bust teachers' notes.
	They would ruin classes.
	They would tear up the university, but they loved humanity.
	They treated the individuals in their lives awfully, but they loved humanity.
	I don't love humanity.
	I have deep contempt for the sum total of humanity.
	World opinion, humanity, the world has done nothing for anyone who ever suffered.
	Ask the Ukrainians, ask the Armenians, ask the Jews, ask the Rwandans, ask the Cambodians, ask the Chinese, ask the Russians, what did the world ever do for you?
	And the answer is nothing.
	What did any world body ever do for you?
	The answer is nothing.
	Anyone who ever does good does good either on an individual basis or because they happen to have the American flag behind them.
	Those are the two things.
	This is the interesting thing, though, is that the liberal is not interested primarily in goodness.
	I will explain that.
	It took me, what I will tell you tonight has taken me a lifetime to figure out.
	And the only reason I could figure it out is because I do begin with the belief that most people who are left of center mean well.
	They don't get up in the morning and think, how can I make the world worse?
	They do by evening make the world worse.
	But no, but it's important to know, and they do, the left has always made the world worse.
	Since Karl Marx, the sum total of the left is a handful of good things and a massive amount of destruction.
	Massive.
	Their earned run average is 92.4.
	All right?
	That's how bad it is for those of you who could think in baseball terms.
	And so, but they don't start out that way.
	So, but that's the only way to understand the ideology, the genesis of why people do what is wrong.
	You can't start with the belief they mean to do bad.
	That's why they don't understand us.
	They think we mean to do bad.
	They really do think we're racist and homophobic and sexist and selfish and greedy.
	Then they can't debate us.
	A debate with them is a phenomenon.
	It's a phenomenon.
	I have had the best among the, I probably had, I don't know, 50% of the leading thinkers of the left on my radio show.
	It has been dispiriting to me how superficial their insights are.
	If there's even such a thing as a superficial insight.
	It may be a somewhat of an oxymoron, but it is a phenomenon.
	But I do believe that I have an analysis.
	I want to do an anatomy of the left for you.
	And it took me so long to realize the following.
	One of the best ways to understand virtually all of liberalism and leftism, and there is no distinction anymore.
	When I grew up, there was a distinction.
	Liberals were not leftists.
	Liberals were anti-left and anti-right.
	That stopped after the Vietnam War.
	Liberalism died, and the left took over liberalism, and so they became synonymous.
	Proof, the Nation magazine, the only thing left of Nation magazine might be the Leninist Review.
	And it is called a liberal magazine by the New York Times.
	If the nation is not leftist, then there's nothing leftist.
	Then there's nothing left that's left.
	And so it's collapsed.
	To understand the left or the contemporary liberal took me a very long time.
	And then I realized this is the key.
	It is feelings-based.
	It is not thought-based.
	When you understand that, you will understand why your liberal friends and relatives are much angrier at you than you are at them.
	That is the reason.
	Because it is feelings-based.
	So that they are personally offended by your views.
	You're not offended by their views.
	I've never been offended by a liberal in my life.
	I don't even know what that word means.
	The key, by the way, is this little phrase.
	I began lecturing at the age of 21.
	It's a very odd life.
	I have always been in public life.
	It's a strange life.
	I started lecturing at 21 because at 20 I was sent by Israel to the Soviet Union because I speak Russian and Hebrew and I was sent to see what the situation of Soviet Jews was like and I brought in items for them, religious items and I brought out names of people who wanted to leave.
	And I was there for almost a month and it was life-changing in many ways.
	But I began lecturing about the Soviet Union as soon as I got out of there.
	Not many people had been there.
	who learned as much as I had learned.
	Anyway, I remember, now in the very beginning, I didn't lecture on anything politically, but as soon as I began lecturing politically, I'd say by the age of 30, I remember hearing people would get up after my talk, and to be honest, usually women, but not always, and would say, I'm offended by your statement that, or I'm offended by your views on, and I remember thinking,
	why is she offended?
	I totally understand why she differs, but why is she offended?
	You will never, you can scour the country for a conservative reacting in a lecture to a liberal getting up and saying, I'm offended.
	We're never offended.
	We differ.
	We think you're dead wrong.
	But we don't think we're not offended because our feelings aren't hurt.
	A conservative position hurts a liberal's feelings.
	This cannot be overstated.
	It is all feelings.
	That's why there is no debate.
	You can't debate same-sex marriage because you're bad if you think marriage should be between a man and a woman, no matter how pro-gay you are personally.
	I know that in my own life because I have actually introduced gay male friends to other men.
	And I've said on the radio, and there are many religious listeners who can't believe Dennis Brager, perhaps the most outspoken advocate of male-female marriage, and he will introduce a gay man to a gay man.
	I believe deeply in compassion in my personal life.
	And I don't believe a homosexual male can change.
	Women, sexuality is far more complex.
	I'm putting that aside from, I'm not saying, no, it is.
	It just is.
	You're all laughing because you all live with women.
	But no, it is.
	It's far more complex.
	That's why you have, you don't have any of these guys who become a homosexual for five years and then go back to women.
	But you have it with a lot of these stars who, you know, become lesbian for five years, then they're straight for five years, then they're lesbian for five years.
	Now, I'm not saying all lesbians can change either.
	I'm not making that claim because not all can.
	I'm only saying, though, that I do care deeply about the plight of the homosexual who has been a beleaguered and hurt and persecuted minority for almost all their history in the Western world.
	That's true.
	And undeservedly so.
	Absolutely.
	But one has nothing to do with saying that marriage ought to be between a man and a woman.
	But you can't hold that.
	You are homophobic.
	You can't hold against affirmative action.
	You're a racist.
	Why do they call us these names?
	We don't have any, do we have any comparable names?
	No.
	I've asked on the radio, give me anything comparable to intolerant, bigoted, xenophobic, homophobic, racist, sexist.
	Give me any conservative equivalent.
	There isn't.
	We answer their arguments with arguments.
	They answer their arguments with epithets.
	Our arguments with epithets.
	You are a this end of issue.
	And by the way, if you are a bigot, you are a racist, you don't deserve an argument.
	I wouldn't argue with a Ku Klux Planner.
	What is there to say?
	So I think you're wrong.
	I actually think race doesn't mean a thing.
	Oh, wow, I never thought of that, Mr. Player.
	I'm going to take my sheet off.
	So, obviously, you don't debate a real racist, and we are real racist to them because we don't believe that colleges ought to change rules or fire departments or change rules based on race.
	Okay?
	So, that's why they call you names.
	That's why they're offended because it isn't thought out.
	Want proof that it's not thought out?
	Look at liberal bumper stickers.
	They're awesome.
	I mean, the intelligence is overwhelming.
	My favorite, my all-time favorite, war is not the answer.
	Well, that's true.
	If the question is what is the square root of 11, we may not realize what they are saying.
	But if they're saying it's not the answer to evil, really?
	That's awesome.
	I thought as a Jew that the Holocaust was ended by soldiers shooting people.
	I'm wrong.
	It must have been ended by peace activists, right?
	By people with such bumper stickers.
	It's a moronic bumper sticker.
	Moronic.
	There is no, but the reason for the bumper sticker, like the other one, there's another very famous one, Coexist.
	Do you see that one?
	It's got, it's the C is an Islamic crescent, and I don't know, the X is like a Jewish star, and the T is a cross, and it's got other symbols of other religions.
	In the country where religions coexist best in the history of humanity, the need for that bumper sticker is as much as breathe.
	They are of equal importance.
	But, you see, the trick to having that bumper sticker is to drive that car with that bumper sticker in Syria.
	That's where, you know, then their car would be keyed.
	They would have their throat slit, and the car would be key.
	So it's useless, pointless, and gutless to put that bumper sticker on the country where everybody does coexist.
	What religion is persecuted in this country?
	Can you imagine if 3,000 Christians in the name of Christ, excuse me, if 19 Christians in the name of Christ had slaughtered 3,000 Muslims in a Muslim country, can you imagine the repercussions to Christians in those countries?
	Were there any repercussions to Muslims?
	Even care, which will dig out anything possible.
	I mean, they came, you know, somebody, I think there was, and it was horrible.
	I think there was somebody, a Sikh, it turns out, ironically, and tragically, it would have been tragedy if it was a Muslim.
	But essentially, the freest country for Muslims on earth is America.
	That's why they move here.
	There is no great movement of Christians to Muslim countries, of which I am aware.
	You must understand it is all feelings-based.
	Hence, I am offended.
	That's why you get the reactions of relatives that you get if you should even say something that is of a conservative bet.
	Second, on feelings.
	It is very important, therefore, to feel good about oneself.
	That is why they came up with the self-esteem movement.
	I remember when it was developed in California, needless to say.
	It was the self-esteem movement, a quarter of a million dollars, which is nothing in the Sacramento budget, but still it was symbolic, to the self-esteem movement started by John Vasconcelos.
	I had him on my show.
	He said, look, I went through therapy, and a lot of us have.
	That's fine.
	And he said, and I learned how important self-esteem was.
	So he applied the therapeutic model to society.
	Not a very brilliant thing to do.
	And what we now have is a massive part of liberalism is, since it's feelings, it's feel good about yourself.
	Nobody feels better about themselves than liberals because they mean well.
	That's very important.
	So immediately, being a liberal means you feel good about yourself.
	If you simply place garbage in the appropriate garbage bins, you feel really good about yourself.
	You have made a dent on the environment and you just feel good about it.
	It's very oriented toward feeling good about oneself and self-esteem without earning it.
	Which is, of course, a tragedy, and almost one of the ingredients of psychopathology is to feel great about yourself, though you haven't earned the right to.
	And I saw this at play when my older child, my older son, was playing baseball at the age of 10 in his little league-like team in the true Prager fashion.
	He was a, well, you're my son, so I will say he was a mediocre athlete.
	The Prager tradition is, well, actually, David's not bad.
	He's good in basketball.
	But in baseball, none of us were good.
	And not to mention that any team we join loses.
	It's just stands.
	My high school coach predicted it in my basketball team.
	We have Prager, we scraped the bottom of the barrel.
	We're going to have the worst year ever.
	He was entirely accurate in everything he said.
	And so I tell you the story, because he was given a trophy at the end of the season.
	I'm not sure he ever got a hit.
	His team came in last, and they got trophies.
	And they got trophies just like the winners got trophies.
	In fact, they got the same trophy.
	And I couldn't believe it.
	And I looked at him.
	I love the guy, you know, obviously so much, but I go, David, what did you get a trophy for?
	And I don't remember his answer, because I'm not sure there was one.
	Because even he, well, he couldn't say winning.
	He couldn't say playing well.
	Maybe it was playing.
	They get trophies for playing.
	But even if you don't play, you get a trophy.
	You get a trophy, in effect, for breathing.
	That is how you now get a trophy.
	It's all self-esteem that is not earned.
	And it is a very real problem.
	Now, there's another thing about how this is all feelings-based.
	I have a very, very deep belief that a good human being does not act on his feelings.
	Since the 60s, the opposite has been taught to us.
	You only act in concert with your feelings or you are inauthentic.
	One of the ideas ushered in by the baby boomers, of which I am a member, the dumbest generation in recorded history.
	So please know there is a qualification, recorded history.
	In pre-recorded history, there may have been a dumber generation.
	I need to be precise.
	One of the idiocies of my generation was, if you don't act in consonance with your feelings, you are inauthentic and hypocritical.
	But of course, acting in consonance with your feelings is what a baby does.
	A very big part of liberalism is not to leave childhood.
	It is a childlike disposition where tantrums substitute for rational thought.
	That's what they do to you in Hollywood.
	They have tantrums against you.
	That's what your liberal relatives probably do.
	They have a tantrum.
	The tantrum is the residue of the childlike disposition of many who are on the left because of this notion that you do act in accordance with your feelings.
	So that, for example, when I wrote at the end of December, I court, apparently I just court controversy.
	And I wrote a two-part column at every December at the end of the year, I leave the great macro issues and I write something micro.
	And I wrote it two columns in a row, part one, part two, when a woman is not in the mood.
	And I offered the notion that if you love your husband and he is a really good man, and since men know in many ways most that they are loved by your offering of intimacy, physical intimacy with them, even if you're not in the mood, I'm not talking about a migraine or very sad or any host of real issues.
	But in general, if he's a good man, have sex.
	So now, I want to say that that guy's even part of the group and he's applauding.
	Just want you to know, guys love me.
	Really, I am a guys guy, I must say.
	But anyway, anyway, whether you agree or not isn't the point.
	That was what I wrote.
	Why am I bringing this to you?
	Because I'm saying that don't act on your feelings.
	Because for many women, I mean, this is the truth.
	It's not an insult.
	It's a statement of reality.
	The sexes are different, and certainly at a certain age, for many women, if they were just to wait till they were overwhelmed with sexual desire, might take more than a week.
	Or a month.
	Or six months.
	Or whatever it would take.
	Now, there are other women who crave it regularly, and God bless them, and we want your name.
	You should put that notion in e-harmony.
	One of the 38 areas of compatibility.
	But that's the way it is in real life.
	And so I was accused on the biggest of the, I think Daily Co's is the biggest left-wing website.
	Sure enough, Dennis Prager advocates marital rape.
	It was so despicable, so despicable.
	And I'm used to despicable things said about any conservative.
	It doesn't matter.
	I'm one of them.
	And that another blogger of a major writer on Daily Coast said, I can't stand Dennis Prager, but we've really gone too far.
	I read his columns.
	He didn't advocate marital rape.
	To the guy's great credit, by the way.
	There was an intellectual honesty there.
	But why would they write that?
	Because what I did was I violated a left-wing taboo.
	I said, don't act on your feelings.
	This is not about sex.
	This is all about feelings.
	Feelings are everything to the left.
	I feel, therefore I'm offended.
	I feel, therefore, I'm right.
	I feel, I feel.
	I can't act against my feelings.
	I am an adult who doesn't want to talk to my mother because I'm angry.
	I won't talk.
	And I tell them that unless your mother put you in a refrigerator and attempted to kill you, you should talk to your mother if you are an adult.
	That the pain that you cause a parent you don't talk to.
	And it's one of my essays in my book on my favorite of my four books, Think a Second Time.
	There's 44 essays.
	One of them is when an adult child doesn't speak to a parent.
	And again, go against your feelings.
	And you know why I would go against my feelings?
	I'll tell you why.
	I have a period when I was angry at my parents.
	Who doesn't, by and large?
	And I'll tell you why.
	And I am convinced this is a major factor no one takes into account on who ignores a parent as an adult and who does not.
	I am religious and I live by the Ten Commandments, one of which says honor your father and mother, and it doesn't have an asterisk only if you feel like it.
	That's why there is a commandment.
	But the very notion of commandment is alien to the left-wing mind because it means that an action should be done even if you don't feel like doing it.
	That's what commandments are.
	I grew up in a religious Jewish world.
	I went to yeshiva until I was 18 years of age, studied it almost as much as a rabbi does.
	And that's the basic element of Judaism.
	It's called the mitzvah.
	Many of you have heard the term, even if you're not Jewish.
	It means commandment.
	It's translated as good deed.
	It really means commandment.
	And that's what it's about, Ten Commandments.
	It doesn't say whether you feel like it or not.
	You do what is right, whether you feel like it or not.
	But for the left-wing world, staying like a child where feelings are everything and coddled and reinforced and enabled, that is what has happened.
	Therefore, good intentions are all that matter because it's a feeling.
	And since liberals know they have good intentions, their opponents must have bad intentions.
	Howard Dean, former chairman of the Democratic Party, in contradistinction to Republicans, Democrats care about kids going to bed hungry at night.
	See?
	We don't care about kids going to bed hungry at night.
	He believes that.
	He wasn't saying what he doesn't believe.
	He truly believes that.
	The vast majority of Democrats believe that.
	That Republicans don't care if children go to bed hungry at night.
	Because if you don't agree with a liberal, you are bad.
	You have bad intentions.
	That's all, it's all feelings.
	Everyone is bad who differs with them.
	You're a skeptic on global warming, excuse me, climate change.
	Then you were paid, any professor who ever writes anything against anything skeptical about global warming, the greatest fraud of my lifetime.
	Anyone who does must be paid by big oil or energy industries.
	Anybody who, oh, John just gave this speech, and I was honored to be among those that he mentioned in the panoply of conservative talk show hosts, etc.
	And of course, the bile that was on the left-wing websites about we really want he and we want the president assassinated.
	I mean, it's beyond despicable.
	It truly is.
	It's like the marital rape thing, but it doesn't matter.
	They'll throw anything out.
	And sure enough, there was a description of me by one of them who said, Oh, Prager is clearly in it for the money.
	I mean, to take conservative positions for the money, it is so unself-aware.
	Oh, why do they want to be rich?
	I will take conservative positions in America today.
	That's the road to wealth.
	Oppose redefining marriage, homophobic, affirmative action, racist, abortion, sexist, and so on.
	Next, because it's all feelings, compassion is the holy grail.
	Compassion determines social policy because it's a feeling, right?
	So, compassion explains a whole host of their positions.
	Compassion for gays, which I have and prove to you, and could ask any gay who knows me and who's in my life, from my own niece to dear friends of mine who just had a surrogate, two men, but a surrogate have a baby for them.
	I was invited to the baby naming, but I just was out of town, I couldn't make it.
	And I'm very close to this gay couple.
	But because you have compassion for gays, you should be for redefining marriage, the central institution of all human history.
	You are to redefine it for the first time in history because of compassion for gays.
	Because of compassion for Africa, you give a trillion dollars in aid to Africa.
	I have had Africans on my show, African economists from Ghana, from Zambia, on my show, plus whites who have been liberals from Harvard, who have been in U.S. aid their whole life.
	It is unanimous.
	The aid given to Africa has helped destroy that continent.
	But it doesn't matter to a liberal.
	It doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter at all.
	All that matters is you have compassion for Africans, you give them money.
	But of course, Africans don't get the money.
	Despicable corrupt regimes get the money.
	But it doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter.
	They don't care about Africans.
	They care about feeling compassionate.
	The proof they don't care about Africans is found somewhere else.
	It's called DDT.
	It's easy to be a liberal because you walk around thinking well of yourself because of your intentions.
	You're compassionate, you're kind, you're tolerant, you are open, and all the wonderful things.
	But in reality, what you actually achieve is destructive.
	The ban on DDT has caused millions of deaths in Africa because of malaria.
	All for the narcissistic, rich, white liberal who didn't want, God forbid, any of his beloved flowers or fruits to be touched by a pesticide.
	That's the reason.
	For some utopian view of fruit, they have killed millions of Africans.
	And it's a jacuzz that I'm giving here.
	This is a direct accusation to the environmentalists.
	You have more blood on your hands than all the conservatives on earth put together.
	Compassion for blacks.
	Who?
	Who in his right mind does not have compassion for the African-American experience, brought over in chains from their homeland, brought over in the most torturous, barbaric ships, and on the verge of being caught, would tie them all together and throw them over to drown collectively or be eaten by sharks, whichever came first.
	It is a hideous institution.
	Is there anybody who doesn't have compassion for the black experience in America?
	And then after the Civil War, followed by Jim Crow laws and the horrible sight, forget lynchings.
	That was relatively rare, though.
	There were thousands of them.
	But the just separate fountains?
	Is that disgusting?
	Or you had to get up if you are a black for a white person on a bus?
	I mean, this is so, it's so demeaning.
	The whole thing is disgusting.
	But we all know it's disgusting.
	So what does that translate into?
	What do you do?
	Ah, so here, for the liberal, it's a no-brainer, literally.
	And that is, hey, I have compassion for blacks.
	Therefore, I will change the rules of admission into fire departments, police departments, and colleges.
	Does that help blacks?
	Of course not.
	Of course not.
	They ask why so many blacks walk around angry on campuses.
	I'll tell you why.
	Because whereas when I was a child, when there really was racism, if I met and did meet a black doctor, the assumption was the guy must be a genius.
	Given all the bigotry in America, to become a black doctor, you must be something awesome.
	But now on a campus, knowing that rules are changed to admit blacks, every black is under this despicable liberal cloud of achievement.
	And then I get calls.
	They think they're really sharp.
	They're going to get me.
	Well, Dennis, there's affirmative action for the children of big donors and alumni.
	Why don't they walk around with this cloud?
	To which the response is, if all of them walked around with a big sign, son of a donor, they would have a big cloud on their admission into Dartmouth.
	Of course they would.
	But blacks have a sign and the big donors' kids don't have a sign.
	That's the difference.
	But this is already so complex for the mind that only feels that it is, it is, I have already lost them.
	I lost them when I started speaking.
	That is why I want to say something to you.
	A lot of you came over to me and this means the world to me and told me that I, Dennis, have changed your political social thinking.
	And I said to one of you, one of you, I said, I said to the husband who introduced me to his wife, whom I have changed, and he owes me big time, and I told him that.
	But I said, and I mean this, I don't patronize anybody.
	I mean this.
	It is to the person, the person that I or anyone has changed gets 50% of the credit.
	I say the same thing to you and to the person who doesn't change.
	Why did you change?
	Clearly, you had an open mind to challenge yourself that the others don't.
	So you get half the credit for all the change that you have in Balkan.
	Compassion explains another thing, opposition to capital punishment.
	I know there's all these argument, well, it might be an innocent and so on.
	I could spend the evening just on capital punishment, but a big part of it is they feel bad for the guy who's going to be executed.
	I was on Larry King many times.
	One of the times I was on was with this very deep thinker, Mike Farrell.
	And he was standing vigil for Tukey, what was his name?
	Williams, yeah, a murderer who was about to be executed the next day and yelled at me that the following: Praetor, I see you salivating at the thought of death.
	And that's what he believed.
	I salivated the thought of death.
	That's right.
	That's why I have Gladiator as the theme to my song.
	You know, I just, that's all I think of.
	Whoa, more death.
	I love it.
	That's what he thinks.
	Now, I asked the question, of course, which he never answered.
	I said, have you ever stood vigil at the home of the murdered?
	See, I have compassion too.
	It is a very bizarre form of compassion that the liberal has.
	It's because it's never evinced with regard to the murdered.
	It's only with regard to murderers.
	I don't see any vigils at the homes of the murdered.
	Only at the home, only at the prison where the murderer will be executed.
	So compassion, good intentions, feeling good about yourself, all feelings-based.
	Next, they're not thought through like the bumper stickers.
	The childlike element is critical.
	And I will give you a whole host of examples, and I'll go much faster.
	And let me put that down so it doesn't keep competing with me.
	Number one, stage one thinking.
	This is Tom Soule, the brilliant black thinker.
	He's a brilliant thinker who happens to be black.
	And Tom Soule speaks about stage one thinking.
	That's what children have.
	Children do something.
	A kid, as you know, you've had kids, most of you, they don't think about the consequences of an action.
	They just don't.
	That's the way it is.
	As my father said in a little thing, he said, you know, I'm not going to tell you to turn out the lights anymore because it won't help.
	You're only going to turn off the lights when you have your own house and pay the electric bills.
	And I was right, because then I'd realize the consequences of not turning, is it turning off or turning out?
	Turning off.
	A New Yorker was turning out.
	Okay.
	And so that was just a simple example.
	This is constant in liberal life of taking a position, but then you don't ask the consequence of it.
	I mean, the whole budget now is like that.
	We'll just go into massive debt.
	What are the consequences?
	That's not our, let the next generation worry about that.
	Right now, we want to do what we want to do and bring America to the verge of bankruptcy.
	That's later.
	Right now, we'll get done what we can get done.
	Number two is a celebration of youth.
	The left is intoxicated with youth.
	And it started with the baby boomer generation, the dumbest in history, which had a motto, never trust anyone over 30.
	A statement of colossal idiocy.
	I was raised as a religious Jew, and if anything, never trust anyone under 30.
	That was, if I had to really teach what I was taught, it was that I knew, and I'll tell you how I know that I knew this.
	Because I had a religious education which taught me about the wisdom of the ages and not my wisdom, as a result of that, I realized, and I remember telling my girlfriend of the time, it happened just around when I was in college, they lowered the voting age to 18.
	And I remember saying to her, I said, why are they doing this?
	I don't know anything.
	I'll never forget, I thought it was stupid to give me the vote.
	I didn't know what I was voting on.
	And I really followed the news.
	I was atypical.
	But I knew I knew nothing.
	Why are you giving me the vote?
	Why are you letting me determine what curricula at my college?
	I thought if you're 50 and you are a professor, shouldn't you know better?
	If I know better what I should learn than you do, what the hell did you learn in 30 years?
	It amazed me that kids could determine their curriculum.
	Celebration of youth.
	Remember the high school girl at the Democratic Convention?
	Do you know that the Democrats in Sacramento would like to change the voting age, lower the voting age in California to 15 and a half?
	Yes.
	Well, you're not a talk show host.
	You don't follow these things as much as we do.
	Remember that, Alan?
	That's right.
	That's what they wanted to do.
	Why not?
	How about 11?
	Do I hear six?
	Six, another childlike aspect is wishing that life would be a certain way.
	We all do.
	But then asserting that it is what you wish it to be.
	This is what children do.
	I believe in angels.
	There are angels.
	Or I don't know whatever it is.
	Voodoo, whatever it is.
	I believe my stuffed animal can talk so it can talk.
	This is what they do.
	The best example is we want to believe that men and women are basically the same, so we will assert that men and women are basically the same.
	There is no truth to it, none whatsoever.
	That is how I knew.
	By the way, that and the Marxist orientation of my professor started me on the road toward the values that I have when I realized how much nonsense the left believed in.
	Marxism or its permutations at Columbia where I studied in international relations, and the belief that men and women were basically the same.
	Or everybody at heart is really the same.
	Right?
	I remember that.
	People would go to the Soviet Union, come back.
	You know, I met people.
	They love their children just like Americans love their children.
	There's a deep insight.
	That is a deep insight.
	So therefore, communism and democracy are not that different because Soviet mothers love their children as much as American mothers love their children.
	I'll never forget that.
	Or the notion that, oh, people, everybody wants liberty.
	That's not true.
	By the way, President Bush fell into that trap.
	Just to be fair.
	That's not true.
	I think more people want security than want liberty.
	More people want a whole host of things than they want liberty.
	People wouldn't have cried at Stalin's funeral en masse if they wanted liberty.
	People wouldn't have followed Hitler en masse if they wanted liberty.
	But that's what we would like to believe, therefore we assert it is true.
	No one is bad.
	I always hear that.
	There are no bad people.
	You can't judge.
	They judge all the time.
	We're horrible.
	But there are no bad people.
	By the way, next time you hear there are no bad people, just ask the person, then I assume you believe there are no good people.
	Because it's not possible, is it?
	That there are good people, but there are no bad people.
	But nobody has ever said there are no good people.
	So if there are good people, there have to be by definition bad people.
	Or if you prefer, less good.
	The childlike vision of a perfect world that has no problems of an Eden.
	That's why they want to transform America.
	That's why all utopianism has been on the left.
	I don't even know what right-wing utopianism is because I don't know where it has ever existed.
	It is all left-wing, all utopianism.
	No price paid.
	No price paid.
	It's a childlike thing.
	Remember, we talked about that?
	Stage one thinking?
	You know, if you sue pharmaceutical companies enough, what happens is you don't get drugs that save your parents' lives.
	Of all of their anti-company dogma and its dogma since Marx, the most destructive, the most, that I think you could explain to a high school kid is the anti-pharmaceutical companies.
	Are they greedy?
	Yes, they are.
	But that's okay.
	Because their greed produces life-saving drugs.
	Do you know how many new drugs come from American pharmaceutical companies?
	50% would be remarkable, right?
	90.
	90% of the new drugs on earth come from American pharmaceutical companies, and they are a béte noir of the left.
	It is almost mind-boggling to think what they are fighting.
	The people, half the people I know, I mean, I made a list of this once.
	Half the people I know of my closest friends and relatives would all be dead if it weren't for pharmaceutical companies based in America.
	So when they attack them, they're giving a death warrant to people.
	That's what they're doing.
	And this ruling that even with FDA approval, they could still be sued, then what's the use of the FDA?
	If the FDA also felt that it was properly done, what is its use?
	And I'll give you one more example of the childlike element of much, not all, but much of the left, is the public cursing.
	It's a phenomenon to me.
	I have always defended judicious use of four-letter words in private.
	As I've always said, even to my religious audiences, if a piano falls on your toe and you say, gosh darn, you're a little too controlled for me.
	I just have to say, gosh darn it, my toe broke.
	A judicious use of a good, that's what they're there for, to be used judiciously in private.
	A good, dirty joke is a funny joke.
	I'm all for it.
	But I wrote an article.
	Do you know of all the articles I ever wrote, and I've written about a thousand, and I invite you to read my weekly column.
	It's at PragerRadio.com.
	It's just on the internet.
	It's easy to find.
	Anyway, and the one that took me the longest was an article on the, what was it, the 20th anniversary of Rolling Stone magazine?
	The 20th anniversary of Rolling Stone Magazine, a magazine I had never read, but a friend of mine pointed out to me, they interviewed some of the greatest celebrities and thinkers of the day.
	Almost everyone repeatedly used the F word, the S word.
	Now, I'm talking about public interviews, not anger at an expletive judiciously used at a moment or in private.
	Can you imagine, you know, the 50 best conservative thinkers saying, you know, I'll tell you that.
	The f ⁇ ing president.
	I mean, it's just, it's, right, It's inconceivable, correct?
	Imagine Bill Buckley or George Will.
	That's what we did as kids, and they're still kids.
	They're still kids.
	Next, and I'm almost done, believe it or not.
	Next is, still, it's all, I'm only doing the theme of the feelings-based.
	People who are feelings-based are much more afraid. of things than people who are reason-based.
	That's why all the hysterias about things not to fear come from the left.
	Just to give you a few, just in my, I guess, purview in my time as a talk show host, overpopulation, that was the beginning one.
	Drilling in Anwar, going to spoil the planet.
	Even the caribou like the oil wells.
	Did you know that?
	You know that they mate better when there are the oil pipelines because they get a little warmth.
	The caribou want drilling.
	I'm not kidding.
	I mean, I'm not kidding.
	They have more sex when there are pipelines.
	No, that's a fact.
	That's not a joke.
	That is a fact.
	And on the assumption that caribou like, or at least male caribou like it, as much as humans or male humans, then global warming, they're scared.
	They really believe the earth will come to an end.
	I remember as a kid, I grew up in New York, and I was in Manhattan in high school almost every day.
	Well, I lived in Brooklyn when I went to Manhattan.
	And you'd see guys walking around, you know, the world will end.
	And, you know, I'd go over and I say, when?
	And they would tell me, you know, in 10 years or 12 years or whatever they would.
	But they really believed it.
	They are no different than the left.
	No different.
	The world will end.
	A calamity will take over.
	The world will be inundated.
	And not to mention polar bear will be extinct.
	By the way, there are more polar bear now than there were since they started counting polar bear, but that doesn't matter.
	It's not in Al Gore's video.
	Ergo, it does not happen.
	And so that is the extent of reality, the Al Gore video.
	And so that's terribly irrational.
	Silicone breast implants causing horrible diseases in women.
	They put very important medical technology out of business with lawsuits.
	And it turns out that, in fact, the FDA acknowledges we could find no scientific basis whatsoever for silicone breast implants causing diseases.
	Does that mean that no woman ever got hurt by it?
	No, but everybody's hurt by anything.
	I'm taking this bee pollen pill.
	There's a big notice on it.
	You may die from this pill.
	Right?
	Did you see that?
	It said, you may die from this pill.
	It was a gutsy thing for me to take that.
	But I'm a conservative.
	Liberals do not take that pill.
	There's no question about it.
	Secondhand smoke.
	This is the ultimate.
	Secondhand smoke.
	I grew up with two smokers.
	My brother grew up with two smokers.
	My mother smoked cigarettes.
	My father, and it affected them terribly, by the way.
	My mother's 90, my father's 91, and he's still smoking.
	I mean, you know, I bought him for his 90th birthday a box of cigars from the Dominican Republic where I just visited.
	And now, I couldn't stand it when he smoked in the car.
	I threw up.
	But I didn't die.
	And I am not headed for a premature death from having experienced that, let alone outdoors.
	Now, I fully appreciate people who aesthetically can't stand cigarette smoke.
	And they have a right.
	I acknowledge that.
	In any enclosed place, they have a right not to be subjected to my cigarette.
	I don't smoke cigarette.
	I smoke cigars, which I think is beautiful.
	But in any event, but okay, I fully, but to say people will die in the tens of thousands, they can't point to one person who did it.
	It's all epidemiological nonsense.
	That's all it is.
	And there are reports, the British Medical Association had a report that it's not true, doesn't matter.
	So they're scared of silicone breast implants, secondhand smoke, global warming, drilling in anwar, overpopulation, dodgeball, the dangers of Dodgeburg.
	I forgot.
	Oh, I almost forgot that.
	It was the first one on my list.
	That's been banned.
	You know that.
	It could hurt a kid's feelings and hurt a kid's body.
	By the way, there were schools that have banned recess because you could get hurt.
	And God forbid my kids should get hurt.
	That's terrible.
	Hell, heterosexual AIDS in America.
	I had a very big battle.
	My first station was ABC in Los Angeles, and I spoke about the myth of heterosexual AIDS in America.
	It's not a myth in Africa, but it was a myth in America.
	Time and Newsweek both had front cover pieces.
	This is the next pandemic in the United States.
	It was all nonsense.
	But it was all to cover up for reality.
	The reality was that it was gay men, not women.
	Gay women were the least likely group in America to actually get the AIDS and intravenous drug users and their partners.
	That's the fact.
	But there were unpalatable facts, so they lied.
	Plus, they get scared.
	They're scared of so many things, except Islamic terror.
	That does not scare them.
	It's a phenomenon.
	The most recent example of fear, and they get away with everything because the press is really one large press secretary for this president.
	And Joe Biden, the vice president of the United States, said when the swine flu news came out, remember what he said?
	On, was it the Today Show?
	Or Good Morning America?
	It doesn't matter.
	One-on-one of them.
	And he said, you know, I have to say, I would not go on an airplane now, and I would advise anyone in my family not to.
	Somebody might sneeze.
	He said that.
	I mean, thank God no one takes him seriously.
	So everybody.
	No, thank God it is a blessing.
	So everybody still flew F-L-E-W.
	And that was that.
	But can you imagine he's afraid to go on an airplane because of three deaths of swine flu?
	Now, why did I instinctively know that this was going to be, I don't have any scientific knowledge that others don't have.
	Why did I instinctively know that this was going to turn out to be nothing?
	Because logic suggested every year hundreds of thousands of people die of a flu.
	But the press doesn't report it because it happens on time.
	The only thing about this flu that was different was his off-season.
	That's all.
	And so that was it.
	But of course, there was the panic.
	And so they are afraid of many things.
	And the thing they're most afraid of is Christians.
	Oh, this is a very frightening group of people in America, especially the right-wing Christian.
	That's the absolute ultimate fear that they have.
	Now, I am a Jew, and I want to tell you something.
	A, I believe that evangelical Christians are the backbone of this society.
	I want to state that as categorically as I can.
	B, as a Jew, there is no group that comes close to supporting the Jewish people in Israel as the evangelical Christians do.
	C, C Disproportionately, they are the nicest people that I ever tend to meet.
	I really like these people.
	And I don't share their theology, obviously, but I love them.
	And I don't love them theologically.
	I just love them.
	There are a lot of wonderful, wonderful people raising good kids who disproportionately will fight for my country.
	And that is a very big deal to me.
	But they are the nemesis of America to the liberal.
	And the ADL announced that the biggest threat to American liberty were evangelical Christians.
	And that's called the Anti-Defamation League.
	Remember the predictions that these people made?
	After the Passion of the Christ, there would be pogroms in America.
	Anti-Semitism would erupt.
	And believe me, they scoured America.
	Do you know what Christians left the movie thinking?
	Believing Christians looked at Christ suffer for two hours, which was an hour, 53 minutes too much for me, frankly.
	But okay, I'm not Christian, so it's not my thing.
	But so what?
	They left thinking, my God, look at how he suffered for me and what a sinner I am.
	let's attack congregation Beth Shalom in Pittsburgh in a world of fear I pity liberals.
	I do.
	They're less happy.
	They're far more afraid.
	They don't enjoy life nearly as much.
	They raise kids to feel like they do.
	The kids are coddled.
	And there is another reason for that.
	And with this, I will end.
	There is one other aspect of the feelings issue.
	Liberals ache, ache to be loved.
	Bill Clinton was the paradigm.
	No, no, no.
	I'm not saying that as a joke.
	Everyone, even liberals acknowledge the man lived to be loved in every way.
	And that's not a joke either.
	I don't mean that as a joke.
	He did.
	He lived to be loved.
	This is a terrible way to live your life.
	You should live to be loved by only, only by your spouse and your friends.
	No one else.
	Not your children, not your students, not your constituents, not your country.
	You will compromise all your values if your primary aim is to be loved by anyone other than your spouse and friends.
	There it should be your primary aim.
	Nowhere else.
	You will ruin your children if you raise them seeking to be loved by them.
	Because you will do the wrong thing so that at no moment will they be angry with you or even, God forbid, hate you.
	But as I said before I ever have children, your children are going to hate you anyway, so you might as well do the right thing.
	Feelings.
	It is not thought-based.
	Just know that.
	It's hidden behind a veneer of intellectuality.
	Professors at universities write in incoherent English to hide the fact that it is meaningless what they have written.
	They hate clarity.
	They consider clarity simplistic rather than simple.
	But in fact, it is all emotion, including the yearning to be loved.
	And so they want America loved.
	And this is a very big deal.
	Hey, as I always say, Sweden is loved.
	So what?
	So what?
	No, no, I mean it though.
	So what?
	Sweden was neutral between Churchill and Hitler.
	Do we aspire to that?
	If you don't fight, you are going to be more loved.
	That's true.
	But the issue in life, my friends, is not were you loved.
	It's did you do good?
	And if you ask that question, you will be a conservative.
	Thank you very much.
	I have one question.
	Sure.
	I grew up in Highland Park, Illinois, the North Shore of Chicago is a very Jewish community.
	And when I was a kid, a lot of my friends were gone during the summer.
	They were working on kibbutz.
	They were, you know, I never saw them on Saturday night.
	They were, you know, I mean, there was all kinds of stuff going on with them.
	I know I am asked this question before, and you've, I've read one of your columns before.
	Why are so many Jews in America liberal?
	Yeah.
	Liberal Democrats.
	I don't understand them because it doesn't seem like the Democrats are looking out for Israel.
	We love it.
	Well, I will give you the brief answer.
	I have spent a lifetime working on that, and if you're really, really interested in it, I have a fine talk recorded.
	You get it at DennisPrager.com.
	A full-length talk I gave for another wonderful Jew, David Horowitz, and his group a couple of years ago.
	And I gave about eight different reasons, all of which were critically important.
	Because it does puzzle me.
	How could Jews, I'll give you one example of where I just don't understand, I just don't understand.
	I mean, well, I do, but it's almost not understandable.
	Why would Jews be against gun ownership after the Holocaust?
	Just that question all on common sense grounds.
	I am, and they are not responsible in any way for my views.
	This is totally independent of them.
	I always have to add that because they shouldn't be saddled with any of my views.
	But I am so preoccupied and have been with the Holocaust and written a book on anti-Semitism, and I'm a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Board of Directors, a presidential appointment.
	I care about this issue a great deal.
	I mean, it seems to me that if every Jewish family had one gun, the Holocaust would have been rendered far less likely to occur in the numbers that it occurred.
	Still, massive numbers of Jews would have been taken, but the handful of revolvers and Molotov cocktails homemade in the Warsaw ghetto took so many Nazis' lives and it necessitated so much.
	I don't know if the German army would have put up with this.
	Hey, we've got to win a war, and it's more important than gathering the Cohen family to a gas chamber.
	Why are Jews against gun ownership?
	After the evil that Jews have sought, why are Jews against why aren't Jews the first to applaud the taking down of tyrants when we have suffered under tyranny so badly?
	There are so many questions to be asked.
	There are many answers.
	First, you have to know: The Jewish mind has been addled by the amount of hatred and evil inflicted on Jews.
	The Jewish people isn't well.
	I say this only with compassion.
	And as a Jew immersed in Jewish life, we are not, I don't mean every single Jew, but as a people, we are not well.
	If the most civilized society on earth gets every single man, woman, and child and baby and throws them into furnaces or into pits and pours lime over them and two out of every three Jews of Europe is incinerated or burned or gassed or shot, you don't leave that normal.
	Jews are not normal in that way.
	We're all children of the Holocaust.
	Every single Jew, the most rich, the most successful, the most secure Jew, is worried that tomorrow something will happen somewhere to him.
	That's the biggest kept secret from non-Jews.
	There is no Jew who doesn't walk around like that.
	I'll give you an example.
	Jews, and I told this, I speak a lot at churches that are very supportive of Israel and the Jewish people, and I tell them, it's a very touching, there's one on, is it on YouTube, my speech in San Antonio?
	Which one of them is my speech to a large, I think it's at Pastor Hagee's Church in San Antonio.
	Anyway, I told them, I said, I just want you to know that often when Jews are with a non-Jew for any period of time, they do in the back of their mind wonder, if there were another Holocaust, would this Gentile save my life?
	That is how rooted, and I'm third generation American.
	My father was a lieutenant commander in the Navy until the Korean War when he went back into just private life.
	But I'm profoundly American.
	I don't only mean in feeling, but even in roots.
	And that is how deeply this stuff has gnawed and does gnaw at Jews.
	Many Jews have the Stockholm syndrome.
	They identify with their persecutors.
	This is or feel if they crap on Jews enough, the non-Jew who hates Jews will love them.
	This is all, it's all psychological because there's no, you're right, Gary.
	I mean, there is no rhyme or reason to many of these positions.
	You're absolutely right.
	So they are psychologically held.
	But the deepest reason is beyond that, because a lot of this predates Jewish flirtation with being on the left predates the Holocaust by a century.
	And this is the deepest reason of all.
	Jews left Judaism in droves when Napoleon knocked down the ghetto walls of Europe.
	Jews all lived in ghettos in Europe by and large.
	Both East and West by and large.
	In Eastern Europe and Western Europe.
	When those walls were knocked down, Judaism, as being practiced, was not prepared to take on the challenge of Mozart and Heine and the great philosophers and the great artists.
	And so Jews left Judaism in vast numbers.
	90% left Judaism.
	Some came back, some, you know, the Orthodox attracted some, reproduced more.
	And so what happened was, Jews, however, stayed deeply religious.
	And their religion was a secular messianism, which was any leftist doctrine of the time.
	Jews are the most religious people on earth, in my opinion, but for the vast majority of them, their religion is not Judaism.
	And the proof of what I'm saying is very simple.
	The more religiously active the Jew, the less likely that Jew is to be a liberal.
	Because if you are immersed in Judaism and believe in Judaism, not just immersed in practices like cultural, like a cultural Christian would be with a Christmas tree or Easter eggs, and for many Jews, they're more cultural than religious.
	But if you believe God gave the Torah, you are overwhelmingly likely to be a conservative.
	I debated Alan Dershowitz a couple of years ago.
	In fact, I'm debating him again on this very subject.
	Why are Jews liberal?
	We're debating in New York in October.
	And in the middle of the debate, I looked at the audience.
	A thousand people were there.
	And I said, ladies and gentlemen, I think I could summarize our difference in a nutshell.
	And it is this.
	When Alan Dershowitz disagrees with the Torah, he says the Torah is wrong and he is right.
	When I disagree with the Torah, I say the Torah is right and I am wrong.
	And Alan Dershowitz looked at the audience and said, for the first time this evening, I agree with Dennis.
	In other words, he acknowledged that that is exactly how he thinks and that is exactly how I think.
	So if you think the Torah is right, you'll be conservative.
	If you think the Torah is wrong, you'll be liberal.
	And so that is essentially, by the way, it's true for Christians.
	The Christians who believe that scripture is from God will be conservative.
	The Christians who believe that it's all man-made and can be undone because men write sexist and racist things all the time will be liberal.
	So it's true for Christians too.
	But when you add the trauma of the anti-Semitism of the ages and the anger that many Jews still hold against the Christians of Europe, unfortunately, deservedly, but they're not the Christians of America and they're not the Christians of Europe today.
	I tell Jews all the time, why do you saddle America's Christians with the sins of Europe's Christians?
	It's just wrong.
	It's just plum wrong.
	But those in a nutshell are some of the reasons.
	That is why it is very hard for me even as a fellow Jew, or maybe especially for me as a fellow Jew, I don't know, to dissuade some Jews because it's getting a Jewish liberal away from liberalism is like getting an evangelical away from Christianity.
	It can be done, but it's quite hard.
	And I'm not saying we should try to do it.
	I already told you what I think of evangelicals.
	So that's in a nutshell what you're up against.
	And so Barbara Streisand thinks that if you are a conservative, you are a crypto-Nazi.
	Because the world is divided into those who want to cremate us and those who want to rescue us.
	And liberals and secularists want to rescue us, and the religious and the right want to put us back in camps.
	It has no bearing on reality, none.
	But it doesn't have to.
	It's a feelings-based world.
	By the way, how many of you would like to know the score of the Penguins-Red Wings game?
	How many of you ever heard of the Penguins and Red Wings?
	You just tell me, I'm fine.
	Tomorrow I only have one hour to prepare for, not three, because it's the happiness hour and then Q ⁇ A. I'm fine yes yeah I was afraid somebody would ask me that Repeat the question.
	Do I think we can turn it around?
	And you started with the infantilizing of America, but the whole larger issue is what I raised.
	Yes, I think we can.
	It reminds me of a great joke of my dear late friend, a great rabbi in Israel, Pinchas Pelley, in the early days in Israel, it took six months or more to get a telephone because it was run by the government.
	And so he told me the story.
	He went to the telephone department or whatever it was, and he said, so he said to the guy, of course it was in Hebrew, but I'll say it in English.
	He said to the guy, so listen, is there any hope that I will get it sooner than six months?
	The guy looked at him and said, and remember, this is a telephone salesman.
	He said, sir, there is always hope.
	There's no chance.
	It's even better in Hebrew, but it works great in English.
	But it's not as bad as that.
	It's not just hope.
	There is also a chance.
	But it means that you have to devote your life.
	You see, they have an advantage.
	Because conservatism is not our religion.
	It's a big problem.
	They want to transform America.
	All we want to do is stop them from hurting it.
	But we have very full lives.
	Remember, we're happier than they.
	We don't get happiness from politics nearly as much as they do.
	This is not my favorite subject.
	My favorite subject is talk about men and women, is talk about God's existence, talk about good and bad, and talk about, you know, happiness.
	I have no choice, though.
	My country is being hurt, being damaged.
	So I'm very involved in this.
	And that's true for all of you.
	We're brought kicking and screaming into this.
	We're happy with our lives, more or less.
	They're not.
	Their lives are filled by fighting Anwar.
	If they can stop drilling in Anwar, they feel really, really good.
	If I get just this drill in Anwar, I don't go to bed happier.
	All I'm is relieved that I stopped them from another moronic policy.
	So they have a big advantage in passion.
	We have passion.
	You have passion for your Christianity or your Judaism or whatever else you're involved in in that way.
	You have passion for your work.
	You have passion for your family.
	You have passion for your friends, for travel.
	You don't get your jollies from politics.
	Some conservatives do, but most don't.
	And so they have a big advantage.
	They have troops whose lives are defined by liberalism triumphant.
	Conservatism triumphant just means we stopped liberalism from being triumphant.
	That's all it means.
	I like the way America's been.
	I mean, of course there are improvements, but I don't want it transformed.
	It's an aberration in human history how good this country is.
	Don't tamper with it too much or it won't be an aberration.
	I don't want to be like Sweden or Denmark or Norway.
	However, now we have no choice.
	Now we have to fight as if the country's fate is hanging in the balance, because it is.
	And so you have no choice.
	That's why you're here on a Thursday night foregoing a Laker playoff game.
	I have no words.
	My admiration cup runneth over for you.
	So, no, no, I mean, this are all, look, you were told not to be told the score because some of you were teeth only.
	Obviously, you know, a lot of you were Laker fans, which is to be expected, and came anyway.
	You know what's at stake.
	That's all I could say is we have to fight.
	By the way, help me also fight.
	I have a role.
	I just have one role: to provide intellectual ammunition.
	That's my role.
	To answer the bumper sticker.
	And so help me.
	And one of the ways is we have started, Alan and I and Rich, we have started Prager University.
	And go to it.
	Because our motto is, give us five minutes, we'll give you a semester.
	There's no charge, though.
	You're free to donate because somebody's got to pay the overhead to make these professional videos.
	The first one is on the American Trinity.
	Nothing to do with the Christian Trinity.
	But America is based on a Trinity, the values on every coin in your pocket.
	I didn't understand this till 50.
	Took me a lifetime to figure out that the distinctive values of America were in my pocket since I'm a child, since I was a child.
	And they are liberty, pluribus, unim, and in God we trust.
	No society in the world has those three values as its basis.
	Everything rests on those three.
	And so please go when you get back home tonight and send it to as many people as you can.
	It's not an ode to conservatism.
	It doesn't use the C word or the L word at any time.
	It's an ode to the distinctiveness of American values.
	And we're going to come out in a week with the next video, which will probably be the moral obligation to be happy.
	So it's a very, very, very, very, we've made six thus far, and we hope to make a hundred, and not just with me, but with clones.
	Yes.
	First and foremost, thank you very, very much for coming and speaking to us tonight.
	Amazing and wonderful.
	Thank you.
	I wanted to know: do you think what happens with the current administration and their policies will change any liberal minds whatsoever?
	Or are they so firm?
	Yes, I do think so.
	I do.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you, but yes, yes, I do believe that.
	Look, the liberal who is liberal, and it is not his religion, is swayable.
	And they'll look at just the deficits and the debt.
	I mean, even Paul Krugman of, or Krugman, I think it is, Krugman of the New York Times got a Nobel Prize in Economics, which.
	Okay, I won't say anything.
	But he got a Nobel Prize in Economics, and he's the big left economist in the country at this time.
	He acknowledges we can't sustain this, so what he proposes is a VAT, value-added tax, meaning a national sales tax.
	He knows that this cannot, of course, all that will do will crush the economy further.
	See, here's, by the way, this is the metamorphosis of liberalism.
	Liberals want to create wealth.
	Leftists want to redistribute wealth.
	John Kennedy was for tax, lowering taxes.
	He wasn't the leftist.
	He was a liberal.
	They are no longer.
	Liberals are now called conservatives.
	I have the same liberal values I grew up with.
	I am called a conservative.
	Indeed, by left-wing blogs, far-right.
	I don't know.
	It's a far-right position to believe that in the Laffer curve, right?
	Either the curve is right or wrong.
	It's not an opinion.
	In other words, either when you lower taxes, you get more revenues, or you don't.
	How much can you milk that human who dastardly makes over $250,000 gross income?
	How much can you milk that person who ends up with just enough to live on in a place like LA?
	I'm not saying that these people are impoverished.
	They're not rich.
	They are not rich.
	I mean, when people who are billionaires say, hey, listen, I'm going to pay my fair share.
	Of course a billionaire could afford it.
	He just writes off his Gulfstream 6.
	But for those of us who are in that category of over $250,000, but not quite, you know, up there, these things hurt a lot.
	And we can't hire more people.
	And that's, but I guess it doesn't matter if the government will hire everybody, but the government can't hire everybody.
	It just can't.
	So yes, I do think that there is hope there.
	But it's a brainwash, a brainwash.
	I cited the other day on my radio show.
	And if you don't get my radio show, because you're busy from 9 to 12, that's not a good excuse.
	But nevertheless, if you can't get it, you can get it podcast commercial-free and great video for $7 a month.
	200 blank faces.
	You know, I expected one person to go.
	Anyway, just, that's right, Pragutopia, thank you.
	Anyway, I cited, listen to this.
	Well, where was it from?
	Virginia.
	I think it was the eight-year-old girl.
	An eight-year-old third grader spoke about global warming with language that you wouldn't expect a college sophomore to use.
	She had been so brainwashed into the language of the global warming community at age eight.
	People are brainwashed.
	Let me just ask you this question.
	If a person goes from kindergarten to graduate school only to an evangelical Christian education, that's all they have from kindergarten to graduate school.
	Wouldn't everybody acknowledge they had been brainwashed?
	Whether you agree with it or not, say Orthodox Jewish, doesn't matter.
	From kindergarten to graduate school, nothing else.
	They were brainwashed.
	So if it's secular left from kindergarten to graduate school, why isn't that a brainwash?
	That's the problem.
	It is a brainwash.
	By the way, though, it can be undone.
	That's why it hurts me terribly that I don't speak at a high school or a college every single week.
	It drives me nuts that somehow all of conservative life could not find the diminiscule funds necessary to send people like me to high schools and colleges.
	It's a puzzle in my life, and I don't know the answer to it.
	Whenever I speak to high school kids or college kids, I change a lot of them.
	I spoke at one of the ritziest high schools in America, in this area of the country.
	I don't have to say what.
	Preparatory school, the kids, you know, if you didn't get into Harvard, you're a failure.
	That sort of preparatory high school.
	Liberal teachers, liberal things, somehow a bunch of activist kids got me in.
	I spoke to the entire school and I spoke on happiness.
	And the Republicans, as kids who invited me, were shocked.
	Dennis, you know, we love you, but why are you picking on happiness?
	Why don't you change their minds on politics?
	I said, tell me afterwards if you think I made a bad decision.
	I spoke on the moral obligation to be happy and that people who act unhappy are assholes.
	Simple as that.
	I don't like people who walk around in bad moods.
	I compare bad moods to bad body odor.
	You shower for others, you should shower your mood for others.
	Why do I choose that?
	Because as soon as I tell people don't act on feelings, they will leave liberalism.
	It is an insidious, brilliant theme that I do.
	The teachers understood this.
	But what could they do?
	One teacher, you were there, one teacher got up with some Scottish accent.
	This was, I tell you, I'm sorry, this will sound a little self-praising.
	I don't care.
	I was so happy at this moment.
	The guy says, Yeah, yeah, Mr. Peggy, whatever the accent was, but it was very official.
	And he said, unhappy people are the people who give us great art.
	What are you talking about?
	What kind of message are you giving?
	Thank God for the unhappy and the moody and so on.
	Where would we get Mahler's symphonies from?
	As soon as I heard Mahler's symphonies, I thought God was on my side.
	I'm a part-time conductor on the side.
	I know classical music even better than this teacher.
	So I said, well, you know, I got to tell you that except for the ninth, which he wrote when he was dying, and of course we have some excerpts from the tenth, but he didn't complete his tenth symphony.
	But the ninth in D major is truly a sad symphony.
	But otherwise, the man wrote very uplifting symphonies.
	For example, the second in C minor is the resurrection symphony.
	I can't tell you the joy.
	It was quasi-orgasmic what I felt at that moment.
	What baloney this ripple.
	We need moody people because Beethoven was moody.
	So if Beethoven weren't moody, we wouldn't have his works.
	That's nonsense.
	And even if it's true, as I said, for every Beethoven, the moods are excused, but I still wouldn't want to be his roommate.
	I just want to hear his music.
	But for those of you who are not Beethoven-esque in your abilities, you may not be moody.
	And so anyway, it was, they told me from that school, they've never had a lecture in their history that was talked about for weeks afterwards because I had gone to the underpinning of liberalism without ever mentioning the L word.
	And that is that your feelings don't amount to a hill of beads.
	It is how you act in life.
	The moment one believes that, one is no longer a liberal.
	I'll tell you how I learned that in yeshiva, fourth grade.
	One of my famous stories.
	Fourth grade, I'm in the yeshiva ramba, Brooklyn, New York, Orthodox School.
	Guy, the rabbi, announces, all right, all right, boys, it's time for mincha.
	Mincha is the afternoon prayer.
	I walked over to the rabbi.
	I'll never forget this, obviously.
	I never have forgotten it.
	I said, Rabbi, and I said it fully respectfully.
	But I've had chutzpah from birth.
	And I said, Rabbi, I'm not in the mood to pray mincha.
	And the guy is from Eastern Europe.
	He had never heard that constellation of words in the city city.
	And he thought and he thought, and then he said, he used my, because in the Hebrew classes, they called her by your Hebrew name, which in my case is Shmoel.
	I go, Shmoel Prager is not in the mood to pray Mincha.
	So what?
	It was life-changing.
	All of a sudden I realized my moods, juxtaposed to 3,000 years of Jewish tradition, don't count.
	Yes.
	I have a question to you.
	Hispanics, blacks, conservative by nature.
	How is it that the left has gotten a hold of us?
	Well, there were different reasons in each case.
	In black life, it is because of the brilliantly conceived mythology of conservatives were for segregation and liberals for integration.
	And that's it, because there's no other area where liberals have helped.
	Affirmative action, to the extent that blacks think that it has helped, fine.
	I think that it hasn't helped, but that's, that's, people can argue, good people can differ on that, on that issue.
	But beyond that, there is, I mean, I say to black callers all the time, just, just, just, why, why doesn't the black community say, wait a minute, you know, we have been governed by Democrats for 50 years in our cities and all crumbled.
	They're corrupt, incompetent, drug-ridden, crime-ridden.
	Why don't we try the alternative for four years?
	Just give it a try.
	I don't understand that.
	I don't, because with blacks, too, it's more passion than it is thought through.
	As with white liberals, Jewish liberals, or anybody else.
	But this mythology has gotten in and it's somehow believed that our friends are on the left, even though you're right.
	Individually, they're conservative on same-sex marriage and a whole host of other issues.
	That is great.
	Correct.
	On the issue of Hispanics, again, the patronizing element, we will fight for you.
	You bring in, you know, you're wretched and you're unhappy and you're, you know, whatever's on the Statue of Liberty.
	I'm citing paraphrasedly.
	And we will take care of you.
	The Republicans don't like you.
	Republicans have handled some of these issues wrong.
	I couldn't agree more.
	When Republican candidates don't go to NAACP meetings, I just don't understand it.
	I just don't understand it.
	I love to speak to people who differ with me.
	I would go to the convention of the gay lesbian anti-whatever alliance meeting.
	I went on gay radio.
	I would go to a all-black meeting in a second to tell them why I think that they should reconsider the way they vote.
	But this is not being done, and it is not, look, I've said now for 30 years, there are two parties in America, the dangerous and the stupid.
	I'm a member of the stupid party.
	And so that is a big part of the problem.
	And how stupid is the party?
	Do you know that it doesn't even, it almost doesn't even know the existence of talk radio, the single biggest factor in articulating conservative values in America?
	I don't think John McCain could have named a single talk show host outside of Rush Limble who he admitted he had never heard.
	And he was running for president.
	It's astonishing.
	It's astonishing.
	When I was going to run for the Senate against Barbara Boxer four years ago, whatever it was, and well, I don't know if I should have.
	I think I touched more people through radio, but that's what I ultimately decided.
	Because as a senator, except there were one advantage.
	If you get to the Senate, then you can get to the presidency.
	But I don't think I'll be president.
	Not this lifetime.
	But in any event, I met with one of the highest-ranking Republicans at his office in Beverly Hills, and he didn't know who I was.
	And I don't take it personally.
	It's impossible to offend me.
	I just want you to know that.
	But I wasn't offended.
	I just thought, how could a man be so high up in the Republican Party?
	I never have heard of one of them, a man who's been on talk radio in his own city for 20 years.
	How is that possible?
	They're so out of it, the Republican Party.
	These are the examples.
	Just so out of it.
	So, you know, we don't have, our troops are not lead well in that regard.
	But I would go to Hispanics.
	I mean, I have so much to say to Hispanics.
	I wish I were fluent in Spanish.
	I really do wish I were.
	But you know what?
	I would give the speech in Spanish.
	I'd have it translated and still give it in Spanish.
	And have a translator work in the Q ⁇ A period.
	But I would say, folks, let me just ask you a question.
	You all left your families, your friends, your culture, your country of generations back.
	Why?
	Because it was corrupt.
	Because it couldn't give you opportunity.
	It couldn't give you a real chance for your children to get a good education and get ahead.
	So you came to a culture that did give you all of this.
	Why would you want this culture to abandon its values and take on the values of the culture that you left?
	Why would you want us to become left-wing like Latin America was?
	You left all of that.
	This country is giving you all of these opportunities because it has different values.
	Why would you want to change them?
	You'll just leave us next and go to Canada.
	But Canada is already lost to those values, so where are you going to go after America?
	This is what it's just not thought through.
	You left everything you love to come here.
	So wouldn't you ask why does this work?
	Yes.
	One more. One more.
	One more.
	Better be good.
	No, just kidding.
	Just kidding.
	Is General Petrovas the most collectible candidate we have to be president of Obama in the next election?
	I have no idea.
	The last general to do this was Dwight Eisenhower.
	He was a national hero from World War II.
	And it's possible.
	I don't know how articulate he is on the issues.
	I don't even know if he's conservative.
	I just know that he ran a very, very brilliant campaign of counter-terror in Iraq.
	Counting on that is counting on a very long shot.
	But it shows you how bad the position we're in, that someone basically you don't know anything about politically might be the answer to our hopes.
	It's a terrible problem.
	It really is.
	Though the truth is, I mean, look, we do need an articulate spokesman, a charismatic articulate spokesman.
	The press, of course, will eat anybody up who does this.
	Look, the truth is, I flirt with running all the time, of throwing my hat in the ring on this because I know I'm articulate and I know how to speak to people.
	I have a lot of practice in this.
	But I know, among other things, what the press would do to me.
	What they would do is they would go talk about a track record.
	They would get all the recordings from 26 years of radio.
	They would isolate 17 different clips to show me to be every evil thing possible.
	And I'm sorry?
	Celery.
	The celery.
	The celery clip alone.
	That would prove I'm not even right.
	Among other.
	Exactly.
	So it's the only one they would have to play.
	That's right.
	What do two tons of celery smell like?
	Sardines.
	So it's this in this regard, it's a problem.
	Look, I don't care about charisma.
	I don't care about any of these things.
	I just want somebody who can articulate America's values.
	But the truth is, we have forgotten that.
	That's why I'm on this campaign to get this video out.
	I'll end with this.
	A teacher in Kentucky sent me an email.
	She showed her eighth grade class.
	I'm amazed that she could even do it.
	And it's not Al Gore.
	And so she showed her eighth grade class.
	It's a five-minute video, so I guess she can get away with it.
	And it's not overtly political.
	The kids loved it, and she sent me their papers.
	She then asked them in a quiz.
	They were all able to articulate how liberty is different from equality in the eighth grade.
	That's how clear the video is on these matters.
	That's what we need.
	Clarity is our biggest hope.
	And so help me do that.
	But of course, what you do in your community, you know, can you imagine if films and TV scripts could be made to show these basic values?
	I mean, is it astonishing to have been fighting the most ruthless barbarians on earth and no movies are made about our war against evil?
	Can you imagine in World War II this happening?
	It's inconceivable.
	And the thing I must say about Hollywood that most rankles me is not its leftism, it's its self-congratulations on being courageous.
	This is when I need an air sickness bag.
	I can handle their politics.
	I can't handle the self-congratulations that are utterly undeserved.
	There is no courage in Hollywood.
	To take on corporations is courage.
	To take on George W. Bush is courage.
	To defend George W. Bush is courage.
	To defend the corporation is courage.
	All right.
	So.
	Thank you for staying as long as you did.
	You give me hope just as I give you.
	Thank you, Gary.
	I'm just, I'll tell you how.
	You want to hear?
	Well, go to send me an email.
	Okay.
	Gary mentions, and I trust I did record it, right?
	I did record it.
	Yes.
	If you want a recording of this, just send me an email through either of my websites, Dennis Prager.
	In fact, Prager University, any of them.
	And I won't tell anybody that it was from FON.
	I won't mention it.
	But do send me an email.
	Stay in touch.
	Thank you, okay.
	This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

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