Timeless Wisdom: Why Liberalism Has Become a Dirty Word
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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.
As promised, today is about thoughts on the elections.
Unlike other classes, this is the most personal by definition.
And I trust you will appreciate that fact and will not take offense at some of the views that will be expressed.
I would hope to do so as objectively as possible, but it is even more than religion.
It is not possible to discuss politics and be perceived by everyone as being objective.
I would like to be, because this is a course, not a lecture series, but I appreciate the fact that some will simply find some of these views quite wrong.
That is why I will leave more time than usual only in this particular session for other thoughts.
But I am asked to, it is one of the subjects that was listed and many of you have asked for, is to offer some analysis of the presidential election that will take place next week.
And I was thinking, what should I do?
Because you hear analyses all the time.
What can I offer to you that you would not normally get tuning in radio or reading a columnist?
And I thought that I would like to deal most specifically with the question of the L word.
I think that I could do the best for you, whether you consider yourself liberal, conservative, or as I consider myself centrist, you could most profit by an analysis of someone who does think it's become a dirty word about why it has become.
That, I think, is the most honest thing.
Rather than claiming some absolute neutrality in the middle, I will tell you why this person, who was raised liberal, as virtually every Jew in America was,
who was raised to perceive voting Republican as an act of apostasy, a Jew for Republican is somewhat on the level of Jew for Jesus in the world that I grew up and in much of the Jewish world to this day.
And I must tell you, when I first, the first time I voted Republican, it was very, very hard.
I felt that I was going to have to answer to God on Yom Kippur.
That, you know, I'll chait there will be one Shebakhati Republican.
There is, I'm saying this with some levity, but it is absolutely true that it was semi-traumatic, deep sense of guilt.
While I have voted Republican the last two times, it is not even, it is a little easier, but I'm still a Democrat.
In other words, it's very hard to get the Democrat and liberal out of the Jew who was raised with Adelaide Stevenson and all the beliefs about conservatives and Republicans that I and probably most of you were raised with.
So I am a good example of someone who can honestly, maybe incorrectly in your view, but at least honestly tell you why something so venerated as the word liberal and liberalism has become such a dirty word that until yesterday, the 30th of October of an election year, the liberal candidate refused to say he was.
I mean, in other words, that's not debatable.
It's not debatable that it's become a dirty word.
What's debatable is it should it have become, why it has become, but that it has become is not debatable.
Conservative is not a dirty word.
Mr. Bush walks around all day long saying I'm conservative, and it's not a problem.
20 years ago, 30 years ago, that was a dirty word.
My thesis to you, therefore, is that it is deserved.
In other words, conservative deserved to be a dirty word in the 50s.
Conservative was linked with racism, with social retardation, holding back legislation that was moral.
Who opposed civil rights legislation?
Liberal?
Liberals or conservatives?
Conservatives, obviously.
Conservatives were retrograde.
The conservative view was perceived as being what's good for General Motors is good for America.
Not what's good for General Motors workers, not what's good for Americans, what's good for big business.
Conservative had a dirty name.
A bad name, a bad reputation.
It was deserved, I believe.
Liberal today has a bad name and a bad reputation.
I think it's deserved.
The argument that is being made that look at what liberals did traditionally and how beautiful it was is not an argument.
The question is, is that liberal that was beautiful the same thing as the liberal today?
I argue it isn't.
That the reason liberal has become a bad name, a bad word in America, is not because Americans have all of a sudden become an extremely selfish people, which is a typical argument given to me by liberals.
Americans vote their pocketbook, you become a little wealthy, and all of a sudden you are selfish.
We liberals are beautiful and compassionate, and you conservatives are selfish.
That is truly how most liberals perceive America.
That they are compassionate and kind, and that conservatives are stingy, cheap, and selfish.
That there are selfish conservatives goes without saying.
Likewise, it goes without saying that there are selfish liberals.
I don't know if that is a dividing line, and I will prove to you why I don't think that there is such a dividing line.
But that is the way liberals perceive it, that Americans have become selfish, not that liberalism has changed.
I argue liberalism has changed.
Americans have become not selfish.
Americans, I think, correctly have the reputation of being among the most unselfish nations as a nation in the world, given how much America does when there is need for help, when there is starvation, etc.
It is America that is called on, and America that responds first and most generously.
So too, when people need to go somewhere with refugee status, it is America.
America has this massive immigration problem because it's wonderful.
People flee to a country that they want to live in.
It's not because America is richer, incidentally, that people still want to come to America first.
Switzerland is richer than the United States.
They are not lining up at Swiss embassies around the world like they do at American embassies.
And the reason is people are smart.
They are not stupid.
They know that there are more opportunities in every area in America than anywhere else.
Not just economic, but social and religious.
You see, you are not out of it in America if you are a minority, as everybody else is too.
But you are out of it if you're a minority in Switzerland.
Here, you're another minority.
We live in a city of minorities.
I work in Hollywood once a week.
I drive through Seoul, Korea.
I have been to Seoul, Korea twice.
Western Avenue might as well be Seoul, Hong Chung-wong Avenue.
It is like the Lower East Side when my Zeta lived.
Everything was in Yiddish.
You might as well have been in Jerusalem.
Here, it is Seoul transported.
But there is also Little Japan.
There is also Chinatown.
There is also a huge Filipino area.
And one goes on, and what about all the Hebrew you hear in the valley?
Right?
I mean, there are parts of the valley where if you don't know Hebrew, you have to study.
You should start studying it.
Only in America can that be said at this time.
It's a wonderful place in many ways, and people know it.
So I don't believe Americans have become selfish and rejected liberalism.
I think liberals have rejected liberalism.
My proof being, if you would listen to the speeches of John F. Kennedy, my friend Bill Pearl, who does the Saturday night show on KABC prior to my show, is a terrific talk show host.
You should truly listen to his show.
I admire him as a colleague.
I mean, it's not common that one admires a colleague.
It's easy to admire people in another field, but in your own, I'm telling you he has a beautiful show.
The amount of homework he does is remarkable.
And I speak about the homework because two weeks ago, he compiled a huge assortment of John F. Kennedy speeches.
And what he did was he began the show by saying, ladies and gentlemen, tonight my guest is John F. Kennedy.
And he would ask questions and then play tapes of Kennedy's speeches as if he was answering in the studio.
That took a lot of work.
If you would have heard those speeches, and you would not have known it was Kennedy's voice, had it been just a reader reading them, you would have said this is a conservative speaking.
For example, constant reference by John Kennedy to the fact that the world is half free and half enslaved.
And the half that's enslaved is communist.
No Democrat says that today.
No liberal says that the communist world is enslaved.
That's Cold War rhetoric to a liberal.
It's not allowable.
I have said often, and I do believe this, a liberal who would say that would be elected.
You see, people don't vote for their House of Representatives congressman or their senator on foreign affairs.
They only vote for their president on foreign policy.
That's a major part of the reason Republicans keep winning.
The country keeps electing, after all, Democrats, as mayors, as congressmen, as senators.
What happens?
All of a sudden, they get selfish when it comes to voting for president?
Again, the selfish argument just fails.
If Americans are selfish and to vote, liberal is unselfish, how come there are so many liberals in Congress?
In governors' mansions.
Because on foreign affairs, liberals are not trusted.
For good reason, in my opinion.
And I'm talking to someone who voted for Mayor Bradley.
I've been a supporter of Mayor Bradley.
So I identify with that trend.
This is coming from someone who's not talking above it.
I am part of that trend.
And the reason that Republicans or conservatives, if you will, are more trusted is because of the issue of perceptions of communism and perceptions of force.
So I will begin my analysis of why the L word has become the L word with an analysis of foreign affairs.
George McGovern was asked to point the central democratic liberal.
Was asked when he ran for president, it was 1972, in Playboy magazine, where it seemed for a while it was imperative that Democratic presidential candidates appear.
Mr. Carter was next, and that's when he spoke about lusting, which apparently drew great evoked great trauma among many Christians and massive yawns among many Jews.
Which goes to that issue of one of the big differences between Christians and Jews about the place of thoughts and the place of actions and so on.
That's another subject for the other class.
At any rate, he was asked about communism, and he said more or less as follows.
I have the direct quote, but trust me that this is just about what he said.
He said, I personally don't like communism.
However, who am I to tell the Russian people what sort of government they should have?
If they want communism, that's their business.
That was essentially his response.
That is the response, incidentally, that you would get from most liberal professors at UCLA.
That is the classic liberal response post-Vietnam, not John Kennedy pre-Vietnam, to the question of communism.
Hey, listen, I don't like it, which is true.
You never find a liberal who likes communism.
A liberal likes communism.
He's communist.
And they're not communists.
So obviously they don't like communism.
But they're not prepared to say it's slavery.
Point blank, like John Kennedy said, which was essential to liberalism.
Communism is the inheritor from Nazism of the enslaving of peoples.
And of issue, which is what I believe communism is.
But you can't drag that out of a liberal.
I asked Arthur Schlesinger Jr., personally in public.
Some of you may have been there at the Brandeis-Bradeen Forums that I used to do.
I asked Arthur Schlesinger Jr., probably the leading liberal professor from the Kennedy era.
Extremely well known, as you know.
I said to him, would you say that the United States is morally superior as a society to the Soviet Union?
He said, no.
And I said, I'd like to repeat the question.
You are not willing to say that as a society the United States is morally superior to the communist society of the Soviet Union?
He said, no, that would be self-righteous.
Liberals cannot say the United States is morally superior to communism if that has been perceived by the American public as eliminating them from dealing with those who most Americans, thank God, still perceive as vile.
Mr. Reagan said the Soviet Union was an evil empire, a statement that should have elicited yawns.
If the Soviet Union is not an evil empire, there is no such thing as an evil empire.
Then none ever existed.
It's certainly an empire.
It's the only remaining empire in the world.
What else would one call owning Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Azerbaijan, the Ukraine, Moldavia, not to mention Afghanistan?
And how is it greeted that statement by the president?
As if the man had knocked down Shirley Temple.
I mean, had said she exposes herself to children.
He had said something that the liberal press, the liberal politician, found utterly offensive.
Now, there is an argument that the president of the United States, having to deal with the Soviets, ought not to politically call them in their face evil.
That's a valid argument of tactics.
But it wasn't the tactic that was attacked.
It was the statement.
Who are we to say they're evil?
After all, don't we have homeless?
Don't we have, and then you go through the litany of all the terrible things of America.
That's what is perceived as the liberal reaction to the question of communism.
That's why they won't win.
There's a proof to what I'm saying.
The proof is this.
It was argued for the last eight years, the last two presidential elections, that Mr. Reagan was winning because of the force of his dynamic personality.
He was called by liberals, not by others, by liberals, the great communicator.
Man with extraordinary charisma and with a Teflon coating.
Nothing sticks.
So why did he win almost every state?
Because he has a Teflon coating and he's a great communicator.
And that was the liberal wisdom.
Well, the liberals today are running against a man who has no charisma, who has no ability to communicate, who is basically a very nice nothing, who appointed a very nice sub-nothing.
Liberals are losing and may lose 45 states to a nothing and a sub-nothing.
The sub-nothing can't communicate to anybody.
Do you know where he was the last two months?
He showed up for the debate, was wound up appropriately, and has been yanked off the national faith.
You can't find him.
He is not to be seen.
He's almost as hidden as Jesse Jackson has been for very similar reasons.
Not that Jackson can't communicate.
He communicates all too well, and we'll come to Jackson in a moment.
Now, if you lose against George Bush and Dan Quayle, you can no longer argue it is because of great communicative abilities, powerful charisma, and Teflon coding.
There must be a reason.
What is the latest reason?
They do better TV commercials than Dukakis.
Read that is every columnist repeats that.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, that is ridiculous.
It is ridiculous.
It has nothing or little to do with the reason.
The reason is precisely given in the most famous line of Mr. Dukakis' acceptance speech in Atlanta.
This is this campaign, this election, is not about ideology, but competence.
Now, why did he say that?
Because he is so competent?
No, because he knows if it's about ideology, he will lose 50 states.
That was the giveaway.
They know it.
He is a smart man, Mr. Dukakis.
Probably considerably smarter than Mr. Bush in pure brain matter.
And if you want to choose a man's wisdom on the basis of whom he chooses as a running mate, the only decision we could judge either of them by, it's a genius versus a jerk.
Now, Mr. Dukakis understood.
If we debate ideology, we don't have a chance.
This country has rejected what we stand for, fellow Democrats.
Let's not use our ideals to win because we don't have a snowball's chance in hell to win on that.
Let's debate competence.
That was the giveaway.
But you can then lapse back to the old refrain, Americans are selfish because they're doing well, and when they do well, they don't care about the poor guy.
If you believe that, I can't convince you otherwise.
It's a depressing thing, I would imagine, though, to believe that all of a sudden, in the last eight years, Americans, who have been such believers in government helping people, in caring for the poor, have all of a sudden become so selfish.
I feel for liberals.
They must walk around much more depressed than I do.
And I think they do, incidentally.
I think they do.
It's a depressing thing to think the rest of your civilization has metamorphosized into a selfish mass.
Now, why has this happened is the subject of my session.
Why has liberal become associated in most Americans' mind with someone unworthy of the White House?
I began with foreign affairs.
Conservatives are prepared to say the following.
Communism is evil.
The Soviet Union is evil.
We are prepared to fight that evil or at least help those who are fighting that evil fight it.
Liberals say, who are we to call it evil?
We have our own bad things going on in our own society.
We should only use force when we are threatened personally and let others choose their own systems even if it is communist.
Those are very different views of the world and they both can't be right.
One is right and one is wrong or they're both wrong.
But they certainly can't both be right.
That's why the Contras is a perfect example.
It's a very good litmus test.
Conservatives, whole, or, if you will, old-time liberals, which is what I think of me as.
People in Nicaragua wish to overthrow their communist regime that has robbed their revolution from them.
I support them and will give them aid as long as I can.
What did I learn from Vietnam, speaking personally, and in the name of many of those who want to support the Contras?
I will not send American Americans to die there, but I will help Nicaraguans fight there.
Does that mean they will die?
Yes, it's not possible to fight with machine guns and not die.
I am prepared to help people die and kill.
Yes, that sounds cruel.
That's because you've turned liberal.
It is not cruel.
Why is that any more cruel than helping Frenchmen kill when they were occupied by the Vichy regime?
The Vichy's regime was a local fascist regime in World War II.
Why should we have invaded France?
Why should we have given aid to Frenchmen who were going to shoot other Frenchmen to overthrow the despicable Vichy regime?
Because it's okay to fight fascism, but not okay to fight communism.
Why?
Communism is more moral.
On what gradation of morality is communism more moral than fascism?
Other than its rhetoric, that's true.
On rhetorical terms, communism is much better than fascism.
When Nazis killed you, they said, you are subhuman scum, and we are exterminating you.
When communists murder you, they do it in the name of progress, freedom, and do it for your sake.
That is correct.
Liberals buy rhetoric.
Communist rhetoric is noble.
Fascist rhetoric isn't.
Trouble is, in the world today, I much rather live under a right-wing regime than a communist regime.
For a very simple reason.
Many simple reasons, but one that's the simplest and clearest.
If I live under a right-wing dictator, I have a chance in my own lifetime of living in a free country.
If I live under a communist dictator, I have no such chance.
That's the difference.
Chile, vote, a chilly general, junta, neo-fascist man just got himself voted out of power.
Think Fidel Castro will do that?
I'm an ongoing debate with one of my radio listeners on this very issue.
He told me, it's much better in Cuba than in Chile.
He said, by no criterion of human rights and values that I can think of, is that correct?
That is absolutely false.
I would infinitely prefer to live in Chile than in Cuba.
And I would infinitely prefer to live here than in either.
But if those were my choices, there is no question.
He called up the following week and said, you know, I think you're right.
To his credit, Cuba is worse.
But it goes down the line, Cuba is worse.
South Korea, we speak of the riots and rigged elections and so on.
South Korea is paradise compared to North Korea.
West Germany is paradise compared to East Germany.
Wherever there's a communist half and another half, the other half is better.
Even if it's not fully democratic.
Everything I have said, John F. Kennedy would have sat in this audience and played tic-tac-toe with himself while I spoke, because I would be speaking such banal truths.
This was the given of the Democrats and the liberals up to Vietnam.
Vietnam burned them.
They got very badly burned fighting communism.
So all of a sudden, instead of saying we fought it in the wrong way, they said we shouldn't fight it.
And when a person decides not to fight something, he has to start believing it's not worth fighting.
You see, it is very hard to say something is evil, but I refuse to fight it.
Because then you have to confront your conscience.
So what the Democrat liberal has done is said, it's not worth fighting communism.
Look at what happened in Vietnam.
And once deciding that it's not worth fighting communism, the next thing was, it's really not so bad communism.
Which is why the reaction to Mr. Reagan saying it's an evil empire.
I speak at colleges.
If I describe communism as evil, professors will get up and they will that they have viscerally angry reactions, passion, passionately angry.
I spoke at a human rights conference.
I was sneaked in as a speaker.
That's really what it amounted to.
It was a human rights conference developed by psychoanalysts whom I have great respect for.
And it was a very major conference here at some hotel in Los Angeles.
Speaker after speaker at a conference on world human rights spoke about abuses in Chile, abuses in South Africa, abuses in Argentina, which was then run by the generals, and all correct.
I agree with every one of those.
There were terrible abuses and are, still in the case of South Africa, and should be noted.
Now one speaker spoke, however, about abuses under communism.
So I was sneaked in by a friend of mine who was a psychoanalyst and who was on the steering committee.
He will also speak on human rights in communist countries.
I was hissed.
I was booed.
The reactions were remarkable to the extent that when I said that Stalin killed more people than Hitler, which is a fact of life, and I say it as a Jew obsessed with the Holocaust, I was yelled at to the point where it was denied.
I was called a liar for saying that there was genocide in the Ukraine.
And I simply looked at them, most of them being Jewish, and I will analyze perhaps tonight or another night why Jews tend to flock towards liberalism.
And I said, you are morally to me identical to those anti-Semites who deny the Holocaust.
Anyone who denies what the Soviets did in the Ukraine in the 30s is morally equivalent to the anti-Semite who denies what the Nazis did to the Jews.
It was the saddest of sad experiences.
That's the issue, my friends.
If liberals could say these things about communism, it would no longer be a dirty word, or it would, 50% at least, would have been cured.
Along with that, of course, comes the issue of the use of force.
Mr. Reagan used force on Libya.
He bombed Libya.
He was called Rambo for bombing Libya.
Sometimes the Rambo response works.
I have no one better to quote than an archetypical liberal, Woody Allen, who in one of his films is standing in Manhattan with two Jewish liberal friends, and they are debating about what to do about neo-Nazis in America.
One of the liberal Jewish friends says to Woody Allen, we should take out an ad in the New York Times, to which Woody Allen responded that he suspects that most Nazis don't read the New York Times and that baseball bats are far more persuasive and effective.
Now, is Woody Allen a Rambo for saying that?
No, because Jewish liberals are at peace with bashing Nazi heads in.
They're not at peace with bashing communist heads in.
I don't understand quite why.
I never meet Jewish pacifists when it comes to Nazism.
But all of a sudden, when it comes to communism, they embrace Gandhi and every other pacifist.
That, to me, is selfish.
Those who want to destroy us should be killed.
But those who wish to destroy other nations, like the Ukrainians, they should live and be well.
That's how I read liberal non-selfishness on foreign affairs.
So, when it comes to force, Mr. Dukakis thought that it was wrong to invade Grenada.
There is a very large group of people, as we discussed last week, that disagrees with Mr. Dukakis' appraisal.
Grenadians.
They found the invasion terrific.
They celebrate it as a national holiday.
It's victory over Communism Day, like there was victory over Nazism Day in Europe.
But that's Rambo to the liberal.
When do you use force?
Only when American interests are threatened.
Why that's considered noble and unselfish, I have never quite understood.
Strikes me as the quintessence of selfishness.
Only when you bother me will I ever use force.
Do whatever you want to the world.
Rape them all you like.
Only if you touch me will I use my weapons.
I don't share that view.
So those are two parts of foreign affairs, the use of force and the view of communism, why we have an L-word.
Now domestic.
Here you would think that liberalism should have a much better name.
It should.
It should have retained it.
But it is associated by many Americans with the following.
For one thing, it is associated with the 60s.
Liberalism is associated with the 60s, and for most Americans, except for those my age who nostalgically look back at the 60s, I am not among them.
I didn't like the 60s during the 60s.
I certainly don't like the 60s in the 80s.
But there is a number of Americans that look back at the 60s as a wonderful time.
Do your own thing, make love not war, etc., etc.
Most Americans see that period, which had one spectacular liberal greatness attached to it, civil rights legislation, which is absolutely correct and which is absolutely due to liberals and absolutely due to their credit.
That's just not a question.
Conservatives did not open up southern schools to blacks.
Liberals did.
That's not a question.
You can't, however, on one issue, continue to live forever to maintain your credibility.
You get the credit where you deserve it, and then you move on.
What do you have to say to America in 1988?
We know what you had to say to the South in 1968.
What do you have to say now?
The 60s are perceived by most Americans as an age as a time of anarchy and tremendous permissiveness, breakdown of institutions educationally, religiously, and politically.
And by the way, I generally share that assessment.
I think we are still recuperating from the 60s.
It was a great time for an orgy.
It was a great time for fun.
It wasn't necessarily a great time for building the institutions that keep a society going.
The sexual revolution has at least as many victims as it has people it has helped.
I have no answer to the bottom line on the sexual revolution.
It's a very tough issue.
Are women my age?
Because I'm quintessential 60s.
I was at college 66 to 70.
I was right smack in the heart of the 60s.
Are women happier as a result?
Not that they can go to work, which by and large is a good thing.
Women should be free.
If they want to be surgeons, they should be surgeons.
There is obviously good things that came out of feminism.
But what about the part that it was considered ridiculous to ever hold back sexually?
You had a hang-up.
Remember the term?
What, are you hung up?
On a first date.
They just had a bagel, and he wants to be in bed.
She doesn't want to go to bed.
She has a hang-up.
Are you sick?
What's wrong with you?
Did women benefit from this?
By and large, men benefited from it.
I'll be very honest.
I remember vividly I was the happiest man in the world that women were walking around saying, we're just like men.
We too can have sex without commitment.
I knew it was the biggest lie since pre-Copernican views of the universe.
I knew it.
Men for all of recorded history from ancient Mesopotamia had been trying to convince women to have sex without commitment.
All of a sudden, this little window of opportunity opened for men in the late 60s during my greatest period of bachelorhood.
I knew God was on my side.
Women agreed.
Oh, we can also have non-meaningful sex.
I said, of course, of course.
Who said no?
And it was just incredible.
It was the time to be a single man.
Or at least that's what a lot of married men thought.
And many men decided to become single men then and found that, you know, in the final analysis, there was more fun than happiness involved, which is another subject that you have become aware of.
So it's a very mixed bag even on the good stuff.
And there were good things to come from feminism, but there were also not good things.
I remember some of you were at Brende's Bardeen when I was director, and I remember weekends so vividly.
We would open up weekends at the Institute, and it was almost always for couples.
And the way it worked was the couple, both the husband and wife, would stand and introduce themselves.
This was in the 70s, which is philosophically the 60s.
It's chronologically the 70s.
I remember so well, it made such an impact on me.
I was a bachelor.
I was thinking, bottle of bee, when I'm married, and I was watching couples interact.
And I remember couple after couple that would be like this.
He would say, you know, I am a whatever.
And she would very sheepishly admit, embarrassedly, that she was a wife and mother.
It was said as if, I'm sorry, I have nothing else to claim for myself.
It was sad to see this.
The trip, to use the term from the 60s, put on women if they weren't a doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, or selling at May Company.
It was more prestigious to say, I sell at May Company than to say I make a home.
Because you made six bucks an hour and you didn't make a living.
You weren't paid for being mother and wife.
That too was part of it.
Sure, there are good things.
Let women do what they want and be free too.
Absolutely.
I'm totally for it.
But a lot of bad stuff came with it.
That is also part of it.
It's worthy of another talk and we'll have it.
Outside of feminism and civil rights, though, there are a lot of things that are associated with the 60s that simply are regarded by Americans, as a rule, as not good.
For example, kids demanding that they make their own curriculum at college.
Most Americans, including this one, believe that the deterioration in American education began in the 60s.
And the major reason for it is standards declined in the 60s.
Standards were considered bourgeois, reactionary, neo-fascistic.
It was the age of progress.
Progressive thought, first of all, the most progressive was don't have grades.
Right?
Don't have grades and no required courses.
So it is now possible to graduate Princeton having taken movies.
And I'll prove it to you.
What is the name of that?
Brooke Shields.
Brooke Shields went to Princeton.
When she graduated about a year ago, there was an article describing the courses she took, because she's famous and people wanted to know.
A writer for the New York Times wrote an opinion piece saying, Mrs. Shields should demand, the mother, as if the mother paid, I don't know, Brooke Shields should demand her money back.
She got no, and then he would list what she never studied to get a BA from Princeton University.
Half her courses were on film.
That's an education.
That's preparing.
We're going to compete in the world, say the liberals.
We have to compete in the world.
And the conservatives yell the same thing.
How you compete if kids are studying movies in college?
What are we going to compete in?
Movies?
We won.
In movies, we dominate the world.
Unfortunately, they're played on Japanese projectors.
See?
Sense of decline of standards.
I remember at Columbia, where I attended graduate school, kids demanded to make the curriculum.
Age of 22, what the hell are these people called educators for if they don't know what's better for us to study?
I am not putting words in a 22-year-old's mind now at 40.
I wrote it.
I said it then.
I had such contempt for educators.
It has never left me.
Not teachers, educators.
Professional educators, I still think, are the dumbest people in America unless proven innocent.
In other words, if I meet one who is an official in education, I think they're dumb until I speak to them and then they can reverse it.
These are the people who said 22-year-old pitchers like me would say, we don't want to study X, Y, and Z.
We want to study relevant.
Remember, relevant?
The key word is relevant courses.
Who needs history?
I want relevant courses.
So they said, you're right.
A 55-year-old man who got a PhD in education, who has spent 30 years in education, says to a 22-year-old, you're right?
It means he was wrong.
They can't both be right.
He has spent 30 years wrong.
And you expect kids to have respect?
I wrote an article when I was writing my column for the Herald Examiner.
You want to know where the contempt for old age began?
In the 60s.
Because the elderly said, we have nothing to teach you, kids.
The elderly caused the age gap, not the young.
As soon as the older generation says to the next generation, you're right, we're wrong, we don't know better than you, why will they not wreak contempt for them?
Clearly, age brings nothing but wrinkles.
It used to bring wrinkles and wisdom.
What was said in the 60s was, it only brings wrinkles.
No wonder you couldn't trust anyone over 30.
They had all lived a lie.
I trusted people over 30.
I came from a religious world where they said to me, we do know better.
We've lived 40 years more than you, Dennis.
And as brilliant as you might think you are, you don't know nothing.
4,000 years of Judaism knows a lot more than you do.
Religious kids in religious environments respected their elders more.
For a good reason, the elders were worthy of respect.
They said to us, we know better.
The worst thing I could tell my child is, I don't know.
What do you think?
What do you think?
That's what a five-year-old or a ten-year-old or a 15-year-old wants to know, right?
I don't know.
Of course, if I don't know, I'll say I don't know.
I'm not a fool.
My child asks me, you know, why does God do X or I don't know.
When I don't know, I don't know.
But there are things I do know.
How many parents would say to me, my kid came home from college and I don't know how to answer them.
They're learning things that we didn't learn.
What's the difference?
What's the difference?
Our 12-year-old daughter is learning things in math.
She came, she showed me her math book.
I would flunk.
I'd get a zero.
She's in seventh grade.
If I took her exam, I'd get a zero.
I never heard of sets.
I know sets from tennis.
It's the only set I know.
Okay, she's studying sets.
I don't know what a set is.
I could not answer her questions.
That's technical knowledge.
I'm not embarrassed not to know that.
But I'm supposed to have wisdom, answers about life.
So much crumbled.
What else is the 60s and liberalism associated with?
Anti-religion.
And how could it not be?
It is.
You've got to be very, very disingenuous to say the ACLU is not opposed to religion.
It is.
It wants religion removed from every single public sphere.
It was the backbone of the democracy.
That without it, the democracy was threatened.
That's not believed by liberals.
Liberals believe you can have a secular society and thrive.
Most Americans don't believe that.
I'm one of them.
That's a very big deal.
Yes, the homeless is a big deal.
But so is whether or not religion remains the bonding of America, the backbone of the civilization.
That's a big deal.
That is why it is not right to say that Bush has run just a negative campaign.
It's certainly been no more negative than the way the Democrats opened their campaign.
Ann Richards was dirtier than anybody has been in this campaign in her descriptions of George Bush at the Democratic Convention.
That's always forgotten.
That's what started the campaign.
The conventions begin the campaign.
They've both been dirty.
And by the way, I don't think it's been particularly dirty.
I think that this has been a very bizarre issue.
Why was it so dirty?
They attacked the other guy.
What are they supposed to say?
He's a wonderful man.
I think he'd make a fine president, but I'm nicer.
Nixon and Kennedy.
You know what Kennedy said?
When I think that the only thing between Richard Nixon and the White House is me, I get a heart attack.
That's clean.
And by the way, so did we.
It was something that we liberals shared with him, that view.
It was the only thing between Nixon and the White House.
I don't understand exactly what's so dirty about it.
They attack each other.
What are they supposed to do?
They do come out with position papers, incidentally.
The press doesn't report it.
The media is at least as responsible as anyone over the impression that this is a dirty campaign, because in 10 seconds on TV, they'll give you the dirtiest line the man came out with.
That's why.
That's why I beg people not to watch TV news.
I don't watch TV news.
I don't think it's a dirty campaign.
I read what they say in articles, long articles.
You watch TV, you'll think it's dirty.
TV is dirty, not the campaign.
At any rate, that is what a lot of Americans perceive when they perceive these issues about what liberal means.
What is the Pledge of Allegiance issue?
Is Dukakis technically right?
He very well might be.
But Americans perceive that liberals don't have a high regard for patriotism.
That is the perception, that someone who really does love the flag and want to salute it is really a crypto-fascist.
That's how they're depicted.
That's how they're depicted by a liberal Hollywood movies.
You don't imagine a liberal crying at the sight of a flag.
You don't.
You imagine a conservative crying at the sight of a flag.
That's the issue with this Pledge of Allegiance, not the technical legal details which liberals are so fond of quoting.
And the same with Horton.
I didn't know Horton was black, incidentally, until it was mentioned, because I only read the papers.
It was amazing to me when I first heard that it was a racist issue.
I said, oh, he must be black.
I swear to you, I give you my word, I did not know the man was black, because I read newspapers and don't watch TV.
So I never saw a picture of him.
I didn't have any image he was black.
And incidentally, I am convinced as the day is long, if Horton were white, they would have made just as big a deal about it.
Because you remember that guy who hacked off the girl's arms here in L.A.?
He was white.
The guy couldn't move anywhere in California.
Most Americans care if the hacker is white or black.
I mean, that's racist.
The charges are more racist than the Horton issue was.
If Horton were white, Bush wouldn't have made a deal.
It's demeaning to the American people to make that argument.
I said it's permissiveness that's associated with liberalism.
Take abortion.
Apparently, according to polling, most Americans are pro-choice.
I'm pro-choice.
But I have very little in common with the liberal position on abortion.
That's the irony.
Now, how could that be?
I'm pro-choice.
Conservatives are anti-choice.
And I feel closer to conservatives on abortion.
How is that possible?
That will help you understand why L has become a dirty word.
It's the rhetoric, it's the thinking, it's the philosophy.
Most Americans feel very bad about abortion.
They perceive that liberals don't.
The perception is, I got a letter today from Ira Glasser, not personally, a form letter, that I should send money to the ACLU.
They obviously don't check their lists very carefully.
And in the letter, what does he say?
He said, well, you must support the ACLU because we don't want a Bush administration to undo women's reproductive rights.
Women, the second you say women's reproductive rights, I feel like marching with fundamentalist Christians whom I don't share the view of abortion as murder at all with.
It's not women's reproductive rights.
It is the taking of a life.
If liberals would at least admit that and cry over the decision, they would get American support.
What is perceived is they don't give a good goddamn about that thing in a woman's womb.
And they don't.
I perceive that.
I don't think they give a goddamn about it.
I screwed, I got pregnant, I kill.
That's the motto of most abortions.
It is not the poor who are the result of incest or rape.
That's phony.
The vast majority of abortions are done by people who didn't use birth control and want to undo their mistake.
Period.
I interviewed a gynecologist, the gynecologist, obstetrician who delivered my son, a Beverly Hills gynecologist.
Okay?
His clientele are not Watts girls.
I said to him, just out of curiosity, doctor, how many of the women, what percentage of the women who come in here and are pregnant wish an abortion?
He said, about 50%.
Beverly Hills obstetrician.
Immediately, by the way, just think of the sadness.
The man who spent his whole life learning how to deliver babies spends half of his time destroying them.
Okay?
You don't like the word baby?
Fetuses.
Doesn't make you feel better?
Spent his life learning how to deliver babies, spends half of his patients want the babies undelivered.
Of those 50%, I said, how many are married?
He said, 50%.
So I said, in other words, one out of every four women who walks into your office pregnant wants an abortion, is married and wealthy.
Correct.
Okay.
Why would a married, wealthy woman want an abortion?
He says, well, I'll tell you.
Mr. Krager, to give you an example, just last week, a woman came in, and she explained to me that she and her husband had been planning a trip to Europe for quite some time, and this was a very inconvenient time to get pregnant.
It's a liberal position, isn't it?
Take a good liberal position, no judgment.
Most Americans do take a judgment on that.
There's something very hideously wrong about aborting in such a circumstance.
I'll let her do it.
I am legally pro-choice, but I think the act is despicable.
And he gave other examples just like that.
Others have just started a new job, a new home, and so on.
Bad time to get pregnant.
That's what's perceived as liberal.
And when you talk about reproductive rights, that's exactly what it is.
It is removing any concept of moral vacillation, of moral ambivalence over what is being done.
It's like removing a decayed tooth.
Gay rights.
I think discriminating against gays is wrong.
I think gay bashing is despicable.
On the other hand, I do not have a liberal position that whether you're gay or whether you're straight, it doesn't matter.
Everybody should do what he wants, and it's all a happy-go-lucky civilization.
I don't.
Legally, I'm pro-gay rights.
Morally, socially, theologically, I think it is sad, to say the least, that we are not creating a civilization to teach that heterosexual marriage is the preferred state.
And most Americans feel that way.
Maybe Beverly Hills Jews don't, but most Americans, thank God, do.
It's pretty tragic that Jews don't, since Jews gave the heterosexual religious ideal to the world through their Bible.
And finally, two final things, taxes.
Here is the classic case of why liberals think conservatives are selfish.
See, they're against any rise in taxes to protect the rich.
As if it's the rich who pay taxes.
I mean, there is something so bizarre here.
When taxes are raised, it's the middle class that gets screwed.
Not the wealthy who find 9,000 tax loopholes.
And even if they didn't, do you think they really care?
The wealthy don't care.
The wealthy are not walking around frightened of tax hikes.
Where do liberals live?
They live in a cocoon.
Who do they think they're convincing?
Nobody.
The middle class is frightened by tax hikes, and the middle class votes for Reagan.
It's rich Jews who vote liberal.
The middle class hates taxes.
The upper class either avoids them or couldn't care less.
The Forbes 400, they're quaking over a tax rise.
Oh, I'll be in a 39% bracket.
A veg.
I will have to get rid of one of my planes.
There was something disconnected to reality here.
There isn't an American I know outside of radical libertarians who wouldn't be willing to pay more taxes if he believed it would help.
Nobody believes it'll help.
They think it'll cause more inflation, more recession, and more spending on things that don't work.
That's the real reason people are opposed.
Otherwise, how do you explain the fact that this is the most charitable society on earth?
The amount Americans give to charity is enormous.
If they're so cheap, how come?
That's the issue with taxes, not selfishness.
People don't believe it works.
I don't believe it works.
I give charity that extra thing.
What does it go for?
I'll give more charity, or I pay my taxes honestly.
If I had another percent, I would be shattered.
That's why I have left liberals because of taxes.
I spend my life talking about ethics, about paying taxes honestly.
It's nonsense.
If you want to believe it, believe it.
But it's not true.
And believing it's true costs the Democrats the White House every four years.
America's selfish.
Americans don't believe taxation will work.
Where people are not taxed greatly, they produce more.
Why shouldn't they?
If you get more of your money to keep, you'll try to produce more.
I am, by the way, I said this last session, I am for taxing the rich, personally.
I suspect the great majority of Americans are.
The question is, how do you do it?
An income tax clearly doesn't work.
It ends up on everybody.
What about a consumption tax?
A gentleman said there are problems with that.
There are problems with everything.
But at least you know the man who buys a Mercedes has to pay more tax than the man who buys a, I don't know, a Hyundai.
Hyundai, certainly a Hyundai, right.
That's for certain, right.
Korean camel.
Finally, finally, in this election, there is the unspoken but passionately felt issue of Jesse Jackson.
Who, as a rule, is loathed by most Americans.
He is not loathed because he's black.
If Jesse Jackson were Irving Bernstein, he would be just as loath.
Many blacks don't wish to believe that.
Many liberal whites insist that it is not true.
They can believe that till the cows come home.
The man is hated because of what he stands for.
I personally, I've written this, I've said this on the radio, and I swear to it, if two equally wealthy candidates ran for an office and one were black, I would vote for the blacks solely on that basis.
I deeply, deeply, for the most selfish and altruistic reasons, want blacks to thrive in America.
What the hell do I have to gain by a whole racial group feeling out of it?
Even if I were a bigot, I wouldn't be a stupid bigot.
You have to not only be bigoted not to want blacks to thrive in America, you have to be a stupid bigot.
And there aren't that many stupid and bigoted people in America.
Not that many.
We in Los Angeles who have a black mayor can certainly attest to that.
And he almost became governor.
Now it is said that the difference was, in fact, a handful of white racists.
It may very well be, but it gives you an idea of how many people aren't racist.
And I wouldn't be surprised had he been Republican, he would have won.
Blacks who run for Republican seats would probably have magnificent chances in general.
Jesse Jackson, I believe, to be the most dangerous public person in the United States of America.
Now, if that's the case that I believe this, and I am not out of it, then apparently a lot of Americans also believe this.
I say it.
Most people don't say it because to say it is to be greeted by calls of racist.
To which I will just add the following and then take your comments.
I say all these things on the radio about Jackson.
To the extent, incidentally, where I had a very cute experience with Marie Callendar's half a year ago.
I eat in only the classiest places.
Well, they have the best pie in the world.
The decor is not exactly.
At any rate, I was seated one day, and I was reading my paper, and there were two elderly women, I suspect were Jewish, at the table next to me.
and I overheard one saying to the other, do you know what I heard last night on the radio?
Dennis Preger, he called Jesse Jackson a bum.
She couldn't get over it, that somebody on the radio called Jesse Jackson a bum.
Incidentally, black callers will call me, and on occasion say I'm a racist on the air if I say that.
By the way, I just want you to know, again a lot of black callers, 50% agree with me.
I'm obviously not part of the majority, but I just want you to understand that there is almost a relief on their part, at least those blacks who don't like Jesse Jackson, that somebody could actually say it on the radio and come back next week.
But there are those who say you're racist.
And to which I answer, I'm not racist.
And to which they say, why aren't you racist?
Now we have a discussion.
Am I racist or not?
Most of the time they leave thinking I'm wrong and not a racist.
It's so patronizing of blacks not to say what you think about Jesse Jackson.
So you'll get called a racist and then the issue ends.
My father taught me that it was a great thing.
He used to have a thing, the issue wasn't racism.
He said, so what do I do?
Come on, Pischer.
And I've established that in my life.
So they'll call me a name.
What happens the next minute?
You have said what you believe to be true.
People know where you stand, and you have much more credibility than on the next issue.
I said last fall, the Democrat who takes on Jesse Jackson in the primaries can run for emperor of the United States and win.
But none did.
And that made a deep impact on Americans.
Deep impact.
That too was considered liberal.
Not to confront the Jesse Jackson.
Liberal, as liberal see conservative as conservative slash Rambo, conservatives, and that is mainstream America, I should say, not conservatives, mainstream America, sees liberal as liberal slash rope.
That's what's happened.
Okay.
I'll take your comments and other thoughts.
Yes, please.
The one Democrat who did speak up during the campaign was Ed Koch.
And look what happened to the one who told the truth.
And look what happened to him if we finally have to back up our theory of the work in New York.
Yes, being pointed out, look what happened for one Democrat to take on Jesse Jackson, and that was Mayor Koch of New York.
And, well, right, there is some truth to that.
As the lady points out, that he made it a Jewish issue.
He should have made it an American issue.
Which is true.
However, one has to say, why can blacks have black issues, but Jews can't have Jewish issues?
See, if a Jew speaks about Jewish concerns, he's provincial.
If a Hispanic speaks about Hispanic concerns, that's beautiful.
He's rooted in his community.
In other words, he has a perfect right, Koch, to do what he did.
Well, wait.
Hold on.
It is an American issue, but it's also a Jewish issue.
It's both.
I agree it's primarily an American issue.
I agree with that.
And my theory, which I wrote in the very first issue in my newsletter, Jesse Jackson and the meaning of anti-Semitism, is that demagogues first start up with the Jews.
And when non-Jews don't recognize this, they will suffer, but the Jews suffer first.
It starts out that way.
It's almost like a divine role that the flak falls first on the Jews.
It is for somebody to say he's a naked emperor.
Nobody does, and it's a dangerous thing, but it is certainly part of the reason that they will not get to the White House.
Now, Ed Koch was a sacrificial lamp.
By the way, you should all know that black leaders did not support Jackson in 84.
Coretta Scott King, who has the most credibility of black leaders, being the widow of Martin Luther King, did not embrace him till recently, till a few months ago.
And she had good reason not to, given what he had done in portraying himself as the man in whose arms Martin Luther King died and was with him as his loyal follower till the end and so on.
But listen, how could a black leader be less black than the white liberal press?
In other words, it became untenable.
Same thing with the mayor of Atlanta.
What's his name?
Andrew Young didn't support him.
A lot of black leaders didn't.
But it became impossible.
If the white press says Jesse Jackson is the leader of the blacks, how could a black leader disagree?
He was created by white liberals much more than by black support.
That is the irony of it.
Yes?
We did it because an example that most people around the world want to come to the United States, not to Switzerland.
Are you from Switzerland?
And not to Switzerland.
I say, are you from Switzerland?
Oh, okay, yeah.
You know, I'm not that.
But Switzerland wouldn't let people come.
How do you know if they had the same other policy that people wouldn't have flocked with Switzerland as a very good question?
What if Switzerland had as open a policy as the United States?
Maybe they would flock the Swiss embassies as much.
I still don't think they would.
But my point about how moral America is simply reinforced by the fact that we do let them in far more than anybody else.
In other words, even if what you say were true, it would just further reinforce my claim to the singular moral role America plays in the world.
Vietnamese boat people were taken in by the United States.
Japan, which is at that sea, took in none.
What do you think that the country cover-up of white Dukakis campaigned in taxes?
The Dukakis campaign has tried to use the Dukakis cover-up, the Dukakis cover-up, has tried to use the Iran-Contra fair the entire time.
It's not selling on Main Street.
It's because there's no reason it should sell on Main Street.
The issue, it was an attempt by Democrats, which almost succeeded, to undo the Reagan and Republican control of the White House.
It didn't work.
It didn't work, ironically.
Part of the reason, there were two reasons.
One, there was no reason it should work.
It wasn't a big enough scandal to unseat the president.
Number two, it didn't work because of a man named Oliver North.
The irony there being that the Democrats wanted the hearings televised, which was a demagogic thing to do, because it was pandering to the public.
Should have been closed, and then yelled that North stole the show because it was televised.
But North undid it.
People suspected that it was more political than a very deep sense of revulsion at what had happened.
Democrats can't stand the countries.
So any funding of the countries, whether or not there had been a link-up with Iran, would have been detested.
But Americans didn't proceed.
This is not a Watergate.
This was idealistic.
It was not selfish.
See, it was ideals, it was not, Watergate was selfish.
I have a bunch of corrupt guys to rob from Watergate headquarters to win an election.
That's despicable.
Here it was ideal.
That the motive was not selfish?
No, I said the motive of the government was not of those involved, of an Oliver North, of anyone.
You think that the funding of the Conservatives was for profits?
Okay, fine.
Thank God you're in the minority.
The vast majority of Americans believe that an Oliver North is an idealistic man who didn't want to pocket a penny.
Oliver North was more, that there were little guys involved in the middle with chicanery.
Everybody knows that.
That's not the issue.
That's not what created the scandal.
The scandal's purpose was to get hostages for arms, a stupid idea, but one intended for good ends.
to fund and then to use that later, they were not connected originally, to use that later to fund contras, which Americans are ambivalent over.
But neither ideal, even if you think they're both awful, is self-serving.
That's my point.
Watergate was entirely self-serving.
This is how we use corruption to get elected.
That's why there is no comparable thing.
Any more than if there had been a Democratic president who had used funds to fund the African National Congress, let's say, to overthrow the South African regime.
Would have been illegal, but even conservatives would have admitted the issue was not selfish.
It was wrong ideals, they would have said, but it was still idealism.
That's why it's not a Watergate.
Yes?
If you were Michael Kakis and it was many months ago, and you got the intestinal board of your benefits and Jesse, can I give you a little take on the Watergate?
Well, I thank you, because I hope to have that opportunity one day.
If I were Michael Dukakis, how would I have taken Jesse Jackson apart months ago if I had the intestinal fortitude?
Well, for one thing, I would have said, I would have taken on a lot of the terminology he used, which was demagogic, and not adopted it.
The second he used economic violence in his acceptance speech, I said Jesse Jackson won the convention.
See, insidious rhetoric starts seeping in when it's used enough.
You've got to be aware of that.
I remember the first time I heard that Israel was fascistic.
I went crazy.
But enough time hearing Israel, Zionism is racism, Israel is fascistic, you start to lose anger.
You have to cultivate anger on certain things.
I hate this term, America commits economic violence against its people.
It does not commit economic, first of all, I don't know what the term means.
It's a loaded term.
It's a despicable term.
America may commit economic errors vis-a-vis its people.
Economic violence means America sets out to hurt its own people.
Anyone who believes that should not be running for the president of a country that's so despicable.
That's what I would have said to Jesse Jackson.
If you truly believe that, said, I don't agree with the Reagan policies.
I think they're hurting our farmers.
I think they're hurting our inner cities.
I think they're hurting us in trade, and I think the federal deficit is catastrophic.
But Jesse, I would never use such a term.
I think the guy would have been heralded as a savior of the American people.
And then he would have said, and furthermore, I must tell you, while we Democrats certainly would never salute Mr. Bota of South Africa, and we want to call his nation an outlaw nation, I don't quite see the moral difference between Mr. Bota and Mr. Castro, Jesse.
And your going down there and going viva fidel bothers me and other Democrats a great deal.
I think you should apologize, Jesse.
That's what I would have done.
Yeah.
I think I understand why Bush did not select Kemp as a running mate for in trying to figure out why he was selecting COIL.
It occurred to me that it was strictly political, that he felt there was an advantage in selecting COIL, And I mistrust them in that respect, even though we're trying to vote for them over the time.
Could you elaborate on the naivete, stupidity, or just illustrate that baby right there?
The question that you just asked was naivete, stupidity, or whatever that prompted Mr. Bush to choose Mr. Quayle is a question I have asked some of Mr. Bush's aides.
It is a great riddle to me.
And I hope it is neither stupidity nor naivete, just political miscalculation based on erroneous data.
I mean, I want to believe, since he will probably be the next president, that it is not as bad as it looks.
I would even think that Democratic liberals here, for the sake of the country, would hope that that's the case.
It is remarkable to have done that.
I think in that regard, there ought to be something different in the selection of a vice presidential candidate.
There may be time to either have a separate election or just abolish the office.
I think that this really should cause that sort of thinking.
Yeah.
There's no question tonight, no argument, just a point of information on this as well.
In Bradley's first practical governorship, a post-election study of the precincts of the state showed that the black community did not turn out as great a number to vote for Bradley, that Bradley M. is campaign manager's birthday, and that was considered the reason why Bradley wasn't that close to us in 82.
That's interesting.
I have not heard that.
Okay.
Let me go to this side.
They always feel I am prejudiced against the right-wing.
Thanks, sir.
Yeah, I am not forgetting that at all.
It's also unrelated to my claim.
They are anti-religious, and they have defended people who otherwise would have no defenders.
They're both true.
They're anti-religious, and they have defended indefensible people.
By and large, yeah.
The ACLU is a political organization.
It has as much to do with civil rights today as Hadassah does.
Okay?
That is the view of many.
Alan Dershowitz, who is quite a liberal professor, as you know, and a brilliant man, has written that it has become a political organization.
It has a left-wing agenda.
If you read the letter sent to me today to solicit funds, the entire agenda is against Reagan.
It hides behind the cloak of civil liberties, but if it loves civil liberties so much, explain to me why it defended the rights of deporting a child back to the Ukraine after he wanted to stay here.
You remember that?
The Polovchik story?
They are left-wing.
They are not civil liberties.
That is what has become their agenda.
The reason for that, by the way, I think, is partially this.
The ACLU confronts what I call the March of Dimes syndrome.
The March of Dimes existed in order to raise funds to cure polio.
Polio was cured.
Did the March of Dimes go out of existence?
Of course not.
Nobody goes out of existence.
Then you have to work for a living.
What you then do, that the ACLU is in existence to protect civil liberties.
Civil liberties in the United States are more advanced than on any place on the planet of Earth.
And since I don't believe there's life elsewhere, they're more advanced here than in the universe.
Did they go out of business?
No.
They invent new civil libertarian issues.
That's the point.
Civil liberties here are staggeringly assured.
A criminal has more rights in the United States, excuse me, an accused criminal has more rights in the United States than anywhere in the world, including Britain, from which we learned the democracy.
But they still argue for more things.
It came the Miranda thing.
So that you undo a rapist sentence if you somehow got the evidence, or excuse me, did not read to the man his rights.
Is Britain an authoritarian country?
They don't have such a law.
Is France, Scandinavia, the enlightened Scandinavians?
You think Norwegian police say, excuse me, I'd like to read you Norwegian law prior to arresting you.
Only here, and it's considered a civil right.
They should be out of business, the ACLU.
But the groups don't like to go out of business.
I don't blame them.
Yes?
One aspect of it.
Let me think this.
Why do I think American Jews have become so liberal with three minutes to go is impossible?
It will probably be a lecture.
It will probably be one of the classes.
However, I will give you a hint, since I never like to throw out a question.
The American Jews who are that liberal, 99% of the time, are not religious.
Jews are a very religious people.
And if they don't use Judaism as their religion, they will have something else as their religion.
In this case, it is liberalism.
Jews don't do well without causes to change the world.
So if it's not going to be Judaism, it's going to be something else.
That's why they developed Christianity, Marxism, liberalism, ethical humanism.
Jews make isms like Japanese make transistors.
That is the way it is.
And this is the passion that Jews have.
That is why secular Jews are liberal.
They don't have a religion.
This is their religion.
They perfect the world, not under the rule of God, but under the rule of government.
With that, I promise next time, only questions, first 20 minutes.