Timeless Wisdom: A Talk to High School Students - Explaining America
Dennis Prager explains America's "American Trinity" of liberty, faith, and unity to high school students, arguing that secular ethics inevitably wither without Judeo-Christian foundations. He contends that human nature is self-centered, necessitating moral law to curb instincts toward robbery or rape, while warning that utopian thinking leads to historical horrors like the Holocaust and Mao's genocide. Prager distinguishes marriage as a societal privilege rather than an inherent right, rejects the idea of objective morality without God, and asserts that liberty must sometimes yield to health, concluding that only divine grounding can prevent society from descending into chaos. [Automatically generated summary]
Dennis Prager says your answer reveals everything about how you define right and wrong.
In his new book, If There Is No God, Prager exposes the danger of emotion-based morality and why, without objective truth, society descends into chaos.
This isn't a religious book.
It's a rational case for moral clarity in a confused age.
If There Is No God from Dennis Prager.
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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.
Hi, everybody.
Does anybody know here, or Susan, or anyone, what number this is for me speaking to this group?
17.
The 17th time?
I began in high school, and it's amazing how time flies.
Wow, 17?
That's really something.
Well, hi, everybody.
It's something that means a great deal to me because there's a proof of that.
The proof is that I'm here.
We don't get paid for this.
We come out here because we love this country and believe that you are going to be among its leaders.
And I don't mean you have to be president or senator.
You're a leader, in my opinion, if you raise a good family and you touch your friends' lives and you touch your kids' lives.
The notion that the only way to better society is through the political realm is alien to my thinking and alien to actually the American ideal.
The world is made worse in grand numbers by individuals.
In other words, it's a lot easier to do a lot of evil in your life than a lot of good.
The way we do good in this world is overwhelmingly one by one by one.
I give you a very simple analogy: the freeway.
In order for the freeway to keep running, to keep the traffic flowing, tens of thousands of drivers have to drive properly.
You can stop an entire freeway.
One person can stop the entire freeway through driving a drunk or driving recklessly.
So the ability to keep the freeway moving is one by one by one, but just one person can ruin the whole freeway.
That's the way that life works.
So as important as quote-unquote leaders are, what millions do individually is always infinitely more important.
Anyway, I want to talk to you about, and I've always debated because I am as happy to talk about the differences between men and women as I am about happiness, two subjects I talk about on my national radio show regularly.
But my biggest concern right now is what I just have my book published on, and it's called Still the Best Hope.
And the subtitle is actually Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph.
I believe that the greatest set of values to make a good society, a kind, decent, fair, open society, were developed under what's called American values.
And they are better for the people of Ecuador, the people of Burma, the people of China, the people of Zimbabwe.
I think that these values, I don't think I'm certain that these values are applicable to any country.
And they are what I call American values.
And I'd like to explain them to you because they are almost never clearly explained.
When you hear what I have to say, you can say you differ, but at least you will know what you're differing with.
This is not, I don't appeal to your emotions, I'm appealing to your brain.
And I didn't know these values until about 20 years ago, even though I had majored in history, I had studied American history, and I had studied American life.
And if you'd have said to me, okay, is there such a thing as American values?
I'd have said, sure.
And then you'd have said, okay, what are they?
And I would have rambled on for about 10 minutes.
And as your eyes began to roll, I would realize that I had not made any point because I couldn't make it myself.
Incidentally, just a piece of advice.
You want to think more clearly?
I have a foolproof method.
Write.
If you want to see what your face looks like, what do you do?
You look in a mirror.
What if you want to see the way your mind looks?
Where do you look?
In your writing.
MRI is the brain, not the mind.
And so you want to know what your mind looks like, then write.
And if you don't write clearly, it means you don't think clearly.
It's no knock on you.
That's the human condition.
Most people don't write clearly.
So it's a very good test.
In other words, if you had to write, this is what I believe about.
And I don't care what it is, about my parents, about my siblings, about my religion, about my school, about my teacher, about myself, about the movie I just saw.
I mean, watch a movie and then write a 250-word little essay.
What was the meaning of that movie?
It would be a very interesting, good exercise.
But you've got that, just in case you ever wanted to know how to attain clarity, the answer is largely through writing.
Anyway, I couldn't write on it and I couldn't speak on it.
And then one night, and this is exactly what happened.
It's one of these amazing moments, they're called epiphanies, when the proverbial light bulb goes on in your brain, or if you will, your mind.
And what happened was, getting ready to go to bed, emptied my pants pockets, and sure enough, emptied them of the coins that were in my pocket, and there they were, the American values system.
On every coin for well over 100 years, America has been announcing to every American what our values are, and nobody bothered looking at it.
Every coin and every paper bill has what I call the American Trinity.
And that is liberty in God We Trust and E pluribus Unum.
No other country in the world has those three as its values.
You may like them, you may not like them, but that is the American value system.
And I use the coin as proof that I didn't make them up.
They precede me by 100 years.
I didn't make this up.
This is not novel.
This is not new to me.
All I have done is popularize and publicize and explain what this is about.
Liberty in God we trust, e pluribus unum.
E pluribus unum is Latin for from many one.
And I will explain each of these three, and they are, to put it in a phrase that perhaps Washington and Madison might not have used, mind-blowing.
They are mind-blowing because they work.
They have produced a society that has done more good for humanity than any other.
And I don't say this because I'm American.
I say it because it's either true or not true, and it is true.
If it weren't for the United States, two horrific, horrific, cruel systems of vast mass murder would have prevailed, communism and Nazism.
We weren't the only ones who fought, but we were indispensable to the achievement of victory over them.
The only reason that the southern half of Korea is not a concentration camp, most of North Korea is a concentration camp.
It is a unique nation.
It is one large prison.
And the only reason all of the Korean Peninsula is not a large prison is because 36,000 Americans died to keep at least half of Korea free.
I don't know of another nation in the history of the world that has died in so many numbers for the liberty of people they didn't know.
The average American never met a Korean, didn't even know where Korea was.
They just knew one thing.
Totalitarians want to take over this peninsula.
We Americans prefer liberty to totalitarianism.
We will prepare to die for them, as we have, and we did in a war that you don't learn much about, but you should.
It's the best example of selfless desire to liberate people, perhaps, in world history.
The Korean War.
Everybody talks about World War II.
You hear a lot about Vietnam, which, by the way, was motivated by the same thing.
Save half of Vietnam from communist totalitarianism.
And for reasons that Bruce Hershenson may have spoken to you about, but has certainly written about, we didn't prevail there to the great tragedy of the Vietnamese people.
Okay, here they go.
Liberty in God We Trust, e pluribus unum.
First, liberty.
This country was conceived in the belief that liberty, that the human being, the individual, should be free.
Freedom is dependent, and this is key, on small government.
Because the bigger the government, the less the freedom.
That makes perfect sense.
In New York City right now, there has been a suggestion made by the mayor of New York City that there should be a ban on the size of cups in which you can have a sugared drink.
The mayor of New York City has suggested this, and he wants it to be the policy of New York City.
You cannot get a Coca-Cola or a Pepsi-Cola or an orange soda or whatever it might be in a cup larger than 16 ounces.
Because we have an obesity problem in the country, sugared sodas are a tremendous source of calories, useless calories at that.
And so for the good of the citizen, he will restrict your ability to get soda.
Now, here's a great example of big government and less liberty.
By the way, I completely sympathize with him.
I have been drinking diet drinks since I was a kid.
So I have great sympathy for the notion that it's a ridiculous amount of sugar for one big, huge gulp that you finish in five minutes or even less.
I have total sympathy for the idea that you teach people about calories in drinks.
I have no sympathy for legislating it.
The reason I have no sympathy for legislating it is, as I have said on my radio show on a number of times, I would prefer to be obese and free than to be skinny and unfree.
Okay?
Between the two.
I would rather be skinny and free.
That's my first choice.
However, if the issue is obese or free, I'll take free and obese, or obese and unfree, I should say.
It's like in Cuba when people come back and tell us that all Cubans are literate.
What an achievement of the Castro dictatorship, that Cubans are all literate, to which I have always responded, what is the good of being literate if you're not allowed to read what you want?
I'd rather be illiterate and free than literate and unfree.
Okay, just that's how much I love liberty.
That's very American of me to love liberty that much.
Give me liberty or give me death.
You probably have heard that phrase of Patrick Henry, one of the founders of the country.
That's right.
That's a big deal.
Give me liberty.
We want to be free.
That means free to get fat, free to do stupid things, free to watch television six hours a day as most Americans, which is a form of mental soda.
And that's it.
You should be free.
I will do everything possible.
Look, I would like, I want Americans to watch much less television, but I won't legislate it.
I will educate.
I will offer ideas.
I will offer suggestions.
I will tell you why you are blowing the most precious thing you have in life, which is time.
But if it doesn't work, so be it.
It's your right.
Your right.
You have the perfect right to throw away your life.
You have that, but it comes with the beauty of the perfect right to do whatever you want to make a good life as well.
In Germany, you are not allowed to keep your store open after a certain time, like six o'clock at night, maybe even five.
You know why?
Because it's unfair to the next guy who has a store.
If you stay open an hour longer, you will make more money and have more business.
So since they care about fairness and equality more than liberty, there are laws in Germany.
What time you must shut your store?
24-7?
That's an American invention.
You want to work harder, work harder, and make more money.
The American Ideal Explained00:05:24
Not in Germany, which is the quintessential European idea of equality over liberty.
What I'm telling you is life-changing.
I don't care what your position is on this nearly as much as I care that you're clear about what America has stood for and what American values are.
Liberty is more important than equality.
Another equality example.
In Norway, the Norwegian law is that every large corporation on its board of directors, half the seats must be reserved for women.
Beautiful idea, right?
Equality.
Just as many women on boards of directors as men.
But it's not liberty.
A company should be free if they want to put 12 midgets on the board.
I know that, I don't know, small people is the current term, I think.
If they wish to put 12 small people, all of whom can sing the Norwegian national anthem in Swahili, that should be the right of that company to do so.
The odds are the company will go out of business having an incompetent board, but that is its business.
You are free to go bankrupt.
Liberty is the American ideal.
Equality, material equality, is the European ideal.
The United States is in a battle, a major non-violent civil war.
That is how big the battle is, between whether European ideas or American ideas will triumph.
Until the late 19th centuries, there was no debate about this.
But in the late 19th century, professors came over largely from Germany, where the first state with the first welfare state was created under Bismarck, and that was where the influence began.
Let's be more like Europe.
Liberty rather than equality.
Liberty rather even than perfect health.
New Yorkers may be healthier if they ban 17 ounces or more servings of Coca-Cola.
That's true.
But if you believe in liberty, you are prepared to say, let people be responsible for their own weight.
The government can teach, but not coerce, because we believe in liberty.
Okay, brings us to American value, or the second member, if you will, of the American Trinity, and that is In God We Trust.
In God We Trust is so deep a motto in this country that I will tell you something you probably don't know.
I didn't know until I went to Congress.
I was invited by a member of Congress to watch President Obama give a speech a number of years ago to a joint session of Congress.
If any of you have ever watched a president speak before Congress, usually the State of the Union address, you will see, now picture this please, you will see the President, and behind the President, you will see two people, the Vice President of the United States and the Speaker of the House.
You get the picture in your mind if you've ever seen it?
I have seen this since I was your age.
I didn't know this.
About 10 feet above where the Vice President and the Speaker of the House sit, giant letters chiseled into the marble wall of Congress are words.
The words are, in God we trust.
The members of Congress, as they're staring at the president, are staring at In God We Trust the entire time.
I never knew it.
Now, how could that be?
That's because no television network ever gives you a wide-angle view.
They always give you a telephoto view of the president while he's speaking.
But why don't they ever pull out?
That's a question that I find fascinating but beyond the scope of this lecture.
Because it's not normal not to give you a wider angle.
Think of a sport.
You get a close-up of the player and then you've got a wider angle of the player.
Whatever the sport, basketball, hockey, football, baseball, doesn't matter.
But you don't see that chiseled in the wall in God we trust.
It's the motto of the country in many ways.
Why is that important?
The founders understood the following.
And if you get this, you'll get the essence of the American value system.
If people are free and government is small, how do you keep people from doing bad things with their freedom?
Right?
Think about it.
Essence of the Value System00:02:41
What's going to prevent people from killing one another, from robbing banks, from mugging other citizens, if you have a very weak government?
Right.
This was the belief, but I have to explain this at length, at some length.
What keeps people good if there are no police around?
Well, there are two essential answers.
Conscience, God.
God slash religion.
The people who say you don't need God will say conscience is enough.
So here is where I have to digress for another incredibly important point.
The founders of this country did not believe people were basically good.
Nor do I, nor did Judaism or Christianity, the religious foundations of the country.
In fact, no religion has ever argued that people are basically good.
Not Buddhism, not Hinduism, not Islam, not Judaism, not Christianity, nothing.
The idea that people are basically good arose in the Enlightenment, what's called the Enlightenment, in the 18th century and 19th century.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
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Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Are Babies Born Good00:06:53
I have been battling this belief in my public life my entire life.
There are a few things that drive me crazy, but on the top five is when an adult, I understand when a kid says this, because kids don't know as much about life as adults should know about life.
If you've had 17 years of life, you're supposed to know less than someone who's had 40 years of life.
If at 40 you don't know any more about life than at 17, there's something wrong with you.
Right?
I mean, it's just a given, correct?
You know, you think about you.
What are you?
17 on average.
Okay?
Do you think you know a lot more about life than you did three years ago?
Okay, let me tell you, three years from now, you will still say yes.
I never met anybody, liberal, conservative, right, left, atheist, religious, who doesn't believe they know a lot more about life today than they did 20 years ago.
So I expect young people to have a romantic view of human nature.
Ah, babies are born beautiful and pure.
We'll talk about babies in a moment.
But nothing drives me crazier than when an adult says people are basically good.
It's so obviously untrue.
All right, you want to go to babies?
Here's the story on babies.
Ready?
Babies are born innocent, but not good.
There aren't good babies.
Now, it's true there aren't evil babies either.
That's true.
I never heard of a baby rapist or a baby embezzler.
That's true.
I'm unaware of it.
Or, as people, you may know, there are wanted posters in post offices.
There are no baby pictures up in post offices.
I understand that.
But they're not good.
In fact, here is the average baby if it could talk.
I want mommy.
I want nipple.
I want to be fed.
I want to be loved up.
And if you do not do all of these things immediately, I will ruin your day.
Okay?
Babies, in fact, are the essence of selfishness.
I want, I want, I want.
And I'll never forget my second child.
I actually followed his first three words.
First word was mama.
Second word was dada.
And his third word was more.
That's what they want.
They want mommy, daddy, and more of mommy, and more of daddy, and more of food, and more of drink, and more of being held, and more of being played with.
Has any baby ever said, enough?
Thank you.
I don't believe such a baby has ever lived or even thought about it.
Or, I think I could talk to you about this subject.
I don't think that there is a baby.
If babies were good, you know what they would say?
You know, I've been throwing up and puking and had diarrhea for the last week.
I've been crying for the last six weeks.
Mom and dad haven't been able to make love in a half a year.
I'm going to shut up tonight.
If a baby were good, that's what it would say.
I'm going to let mom make love with dad because I've really stopped their love life.
That which produced me, I have ended.
And so, if a baby were good, that's what it would say.
But when you are very young, you don't even think about others.
We are born narcissists.
I am interested in me.
And on occasion, I'm also interested in me.
And on other occasions, I'm interested in me.
In other words, I'm always interested in me.
We have a society that cultivates staying baby.
When I was young, your age, there was a big movement looking out for number one.
What's the big deal about that?
That's what babies do, is looking out for number one.
Number one was myself.
Women, I'll never forget, I couldn't believe they weren't embarrassed.
They wore necklaces, gold chains that had number one.
That's like, hello, my name is narcissist.
That's what they were wearing.
Babies are not born good.
They're not born bad necessarily, but they're not born good.
How many times did your parents tell you, say thank you?
Why didn't it come naturally?
If you're basically good, why would you have to be told to say thank you?
That's pretty basic, isn't it?
Saying thank you if somebody does you a nice kind thing.
We don't even have gratitude built into us unless it's taught.
I wish I had a nickel for every time I said to my kids, say thank you, say thank you, say thank you.
Eventually, I just said, this is a recorded announcement, say thank you.
And that's what I felt like.
I felt like a recording.
And then one day I heard my kids say thank you and thought, wow, it worked.
This is an amazing day.
And I get such joy, really, I got such joy when I would see my kids sit in a restaurant and say thank you to the waiter or waitress.
It's a big deal.
You have to teach goodness.
You ever see kids at a birthday party?
There are cookies available.
The kid takes as many cookies as possible.
If they actually ate all the cookies they take, they would have to have their stomach pumped at a hospital.
But they take it anyway.
And then if you say, well, why don't you share it here with little Joanne?
And the kid knows, no, no, they're mine.
But he can't even eat all of them.
No, no, they're mine.
You have to teach kids to share.
Very few kids share automatically.
Because people are not basically good.
Something must control their behavior.
You see, I don't believe that bad is unnatural.
I believe that certain bad things, like I believe sadism is unnatural.
I mean, to love excruciating pain in another, there's something, I admit that there was a wry there.
But bank robbery, burglary, rape, you think that they are unnatural?
Rights From the Creator00:06:00
A man takes a woman he is attracted to and grabs her for sex?
That's not unnatural.
It's just immoral.
That's the whole reason we have morality.
We have moral law because we need moral law to fight against human nature.
Otherwise, who needs moral law?
We wouldn't have to be taught good and evil.
Just be told, do what your nature tells you to do.
The founders understood, and everyone recognized we're not basically good.
Therefore, we had a real conundrum in American thinking.
If the government isn't going to stop you, if the king isn't going to stop you from doing bad, what will and the American answer was a good and judging God.
God judges your behavior, so you damn well better be responsible to this God of you, if you will, at basic of the Ten Commandments.
Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not steal, etc., etc.
And that was how America was founded.
When I was a kid, and certainly well before I was born, there was a term Americans regularly used for a decent man or a decent woman.
He or she is a God-fearing person.
You never hear the term today because we live in a radically secular age.
But that was the term.
God-fearing meant a decent person.
But as people don't fear God, they start to fear government, or you will have moral chaos.
That's why in Western Europe, which is very secular, government is gigantic.
The more secular the society, the bigger the government.
So America wanted small government, but wanted a big God.
And here is the unbelievable innovation of American values.
The unbelievable innovation was God wants liberty.
That's how the first two of the three values come together.
It's astonishing.
God wants us to be free?
Wow.
Declaration of Independence.
We have certain inalienable rights and they come from the Creator.
Where else do inalienable rights come from?
Where?
DNA?
Evolution?
Where?
There's no such thing as an inalienable right if there is no Creator who makes the inalienability.
So this was all the founders signed on to this.
Some of the founders were religiously Christian, some were just God-centered, but they were all God-centered.
All.
And understood that without God and religion, we're doomed.
As indeed we are.
Not doomed to hell, just doomed to making hell in this world.
So this is what they taught.
God wants liberty.
Let me give you a dramatic example of how this works in America.
I was talking about, on my radio show a number of years ago, talking about some taxi drivers in Minneapolis at the airport, an airport I've flown into very, very frequently because I go there a lot.
And a lot of the cab drivers in the Twin Cities are from Somalia.
They're religious Muslims from the African country of Somalia who've come as immigrants.
And there was a real problem because a lot of them would refuse to take passengers who had a beer with them or passengers who had a dog with them.
Because for many Muslims, for all religious Muslims, alcohol is prohibited.
And many believe that dogs are an impure creature and should not be indoors with a human being.
And I spoke about this as wrong.
You can believe you can't drink.
Mormons believe that they can't drink alcohol, but a Mormon taxi driver is going to take anybody who has a beer.
It's one thing to believe God wants you to desist from something.
It's quite another to believe God and your religion demand that outsiders obey your religious law.
Man called me up and identified himself.
The call was from Denver, Colorado.
And he called me and said, Dennis, I just want to tell you my story.
I am a religious evangelical Christian.
And I'm a mailman here in Denver.
And I want to make your point with an illustration from my own life.
I deliver pornography.
I do.
People who order or subscribe to pornographic journals, I am a mailman, I deliver the mail.
And the reason is exactly what you said, even though it completely violates my religious tenets.
Nevertheless, I believe God wants liberty.
Powerful stuff, huh?
Pornography is to an evangelical Christian what alcohol is to a religious Muslim.
But in the Islamic world, the idea that God wants liberty did not develop, and in the United States, it did develop.
Values are everything.
Mailman and Moral Choices00:03:48
Ethnicity doesn't mean a damn thing.
Everything is values, which brings us to value number three.
E pluribus unum from many one.
It first meant from many colonies one country, but it immediately after that was retained, and it means from many ethnic origins, from many races, from many nationalities, one American people.
We didn't live it because we had too much racism in American history, but we at least proclaimed an unbelievable idea.
Your race, your ethnicity, your nationality don't matter.
Blood doesn't matter.
Skin color doesn't matter.
Origins don't matter.
You matter.
And being American matters.
You are all one.
If I asked you what does a Norwegian or a Swede or a Chinese or a Japanese look like, you would all have an image.
But if I were to say to you, what does an American look like?
There is no image.
None.
There's no such thing as looking American.
You can look everything else, but you can't look American.
I learned this on a street in Nairobi, Kenya, in Africa, in my 20s, when I began my travels, which has taken me to 100 countries.
And I was on a street in Nairobi alone doing window shopping, and a little Kenyan girl and her mother were about 25 feet in front of me.
And the girl turned around and said in English, a lot of Kenyans speak English, apparently even among themselves, look, look, mommy, or look, ma, an American.
And I smiled, but they didn't smile back.
I couldn't believe they were rude.
So I looked behind me, and sure enough, there was a black woman about two stores behind me.
The girl was pointing at a black woman.
And incredibly, the girl was right.
I actually walked over to the woman and said, are you an American?
She said, yes.
She identified American as black.
And she was right.
American comes as black, yellow, red, orange, green, white, and every mixture in between.
Last night, I'm a big stereo lover.
And a guy was over who was a stereo salesman.
He was putting up some new speakers on my desk, and we were talking.
He is a Mexican-American civil engineer who does the stereo business as a side passion, makes his money as a civil engineer.
So we got to talking, and I said, are you married?
He said, no, but I'm seeing somebody.
I said, oh, really?
Where is she from?
Oh, she's Taiwanese.
So I said, yeah, that's American.
A Mexican-American is dating a Taiwanese American, and then they will have Taiwanese American Mexican children.
And then that kid will probably date a Jew, and then they will have Taiwanese Mexican-American Jewish children.
And then that kid will date an Italian.
You get the point?
And that's the way it worked.
Healthy National Identity00:09:50
That's America, because we don't care.
We really don't care.
And when we did, when we did care, which was horrific, whether it was slavery or Jim Crow laws, it was a total violation of the American value system.
We wouldn't be the first people in history to have violated our own values.
But we did fight a civil war in which the greatest number of Americans ever died and any war died in order ultimately to end slavery.
And we did.
And today, did you know, here's a statistic for you.
It's in my book, which I pray and hope you get, and not for monetary reasons, but because it makes the case so well in print.
Here's a statistic you may not know, probably don't know.
More black Africans have come to this country voluntarily as immigrants than came as slaves.
That's a statistic you don't read about, but every American black and white and middle and name should know that.
Because Africans know if you want to live a free life, you go to the United States.
That's what everybody knows.
It's why France gave us a Statue of Liberty.
This is the country where ultimately it really doesn't matter where you're from.
It's can you do the job?
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Gold and silver recently soared to record highs, then pulled back.
So are precious metals still a good buy?
Many Wall Street experts predict higher prices ahead.
Why?
Because we still have trillions in national debt, a declining dollar, and inflation that keeps shrinking our savings.
Even with corrections along the way, gold remains a historical hedge for wealth protection.
That's why Morgan Stanley's chief investment officer ditched the 60-40 stock and bonds portfolio and recommended up to 20% in precious metals.
They're getting educated and you should too.
Call Lear Capital at 800-992-2255 for your free gold investment kit and learn how you could qualify for up to $20,000 in bonus gold.
Lear Capital has over $3 billion in transactions and thousands of five-star reviews.
Call 800-992-2255.
That's 800-992-2255 or visit LearAlex.com.
Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.
A professor at Tufts, who spent much of his life in U.S. aid to Latin America, wrote a book, Who Succeeds?
And he asked a very interesting question.
With all of the raw materials in South America, with all the land in South America, why didn't South America prosper like the United States did, or indeed like North America?
And his answer was largely familism, discrimination on the basis of family, because in Latin America, they didn't trust people outside the bloodline.
In America, we couldn't care less if you're related.
The question is, can you do the job?
Not what your blood is.
E pluribus unum, from many, one, from all backgrounds, one.
I have a quote in my book from the president of the Republic of Georgia, a little country bordering Russia.
He was in the United States a few months ago.
Just as I was submitting my final, final, final draft of my book, I entered this the last day before HarperCollins said was the deadline.
I heard him say he was, he spoke English fluently.
He said, I was at a business, I don't know, remember where in America, and he said, it's amazing.
I saw Asians and I saw Africans and I saw every color.
But you know what I really saw?
Americans.
They spoke American.
They thought American.
They even had American body language.
And he said, and this was the key, only in America is that possible.
If you are a Turk who immigrates to Germany, you're still called a Turk three generations later, even if you no longer speak Turkish.
Or you're still considered a Turk.
In the United States, if a Turk moves to the United States, becomes an American citizen, the guy could have the thickest Turkish accent.
We think of him as an American.
Probably call him Joe.
I saw this when I was a member of the Rotary Club.
People from every background.
Nobody could care less.
Nobody could care less.
Anybody's color.
A question is: are you going to volunteer for the retarded kids that we're raising funds for or not?
That was the only question.
Not are you Hispanic, black, Jewish, Christian, atheist.
That's this country because of e pluribus unum.
And that's why we believe in nationalism and not internationalism.
Of course, we have to cooperate with other countries whenever possible.
But remember, again, we have a big conflict.
E pluribus unum not only means everybody becomes American, it means you become American, but you don't become something larger than American.
In other words, you're not just a world citizen.
You are an American.
Nationalism is an American value.
We want Ecuadorians to feel Ecuadorian.
We want Taiwanese to feel Taiwanese.
We want Uruguayans to feel Uruguayan.
It is good.
But in Europe, which is the other idea, Europe is the opposite in many ways of the American Trinity.
They want secular society instead of in God we trust.
They want equality over liberty.
And they want internationalism over nationalism.
That's why they have a European Union.
The hope is that Greeks and Italians and French and Germans and Portuguese think of themselves first as Europeans.
It's not going to work.
It doesn't work.
It's a few bureaucrats in Brussels who tell people how to live.
It's not good for people.
A national identity is healthy.
That's what has been produced.
That is the American value system.
Liberty in God We Trust and E pluribus Unum.
There is nothing like it, but it is universally adaptable.
You don't have to be an American.
You don't have to be a Christian.
You don't have to be white to adopt the American value system.
It is applicable to every country.
And the more places that adopt it, the more liberty and goodness will prevail in this world.
That's the American value system.
Now I hope it's clear, and now I hope you'll advocate it.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Yep, 17 times I heard that.
All right, time for questions, comments, and brief alternate speeches.
Please rise and what do you usually say, what group you're with, or tell me where you're from.
Hi, I'm Robert.
I go to St. Vernon Catholic High School.
We were talking about earlier how babies weren't born good.
So were you suggesting that we are all born animalistic in nature?
Was I suggesting that we're all born animalistic in nature?
Yes, I am suggesting that.
Did you want to have a follow-up question?
Okay.
Yeah, I am.
We are, my other love is theology, and so I'll just tell you from that standpoint, I think we're created in God's image and animals' image.
And we have a choice every day in whose image to live.
Yes?
My name is Connor Parker.
I'm from Cross Graves High School.
I currently, I enjoy radio broadcast, and I'm making a podcast with some students in the teacher in my school.
Do you have any depths here or someone like me who's interested in radio broadcasting?
You're interested in being a radio broadcast?
You'd like to do a talk show?
Okay, I do have a tip.
And you're going to laugh, but it's the real thing.
This is how you'll know if you can do it.
I want you to sit alone in a room and be interesting for three hours.
If you can do that, and I'm not kidding, then you have the makings of a talk show host.
It sounds like the world's easiest job, and it may be one of the hardest in the world.
It's up there with being a major league catcher.
Our task is to make it sound effortless, but it isn't.
The other is you have to know a lot, not everything, but you have to know a lot about everything.
If a caller calls me up and says, so Dennis, what do you think about X, Y, or Z?
Every so often I'm allowed to say, gee, I haven't heard about that.
Tell me.
But if you do it too often, they ask you to have another job.
So you have to know your stuff and be interesting.
So good luck.
I'll go here and then go back there.
Yes.
Sean Dranio, El Camino High School.
Secular Extremism Today00:02:06
What can we do to keep America based on in God We Trust when the government continually practices separation of church and state?
Right.
Well, it's a very complex question.
You all heard it?
It's a complex question because the phrase itself, separation of church and state, appears in no constitutional document.
It's not in the Constitution.
It was in one letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote.
That's it.
It was always understood that this was to be a non-sectarian religious republic.
Non-sectarian, meaning you didn't have to be a Christian to be president, let's say.
There were no religious tests in that way, but it was a God-centered society.
Every early president called for days of fasting to pray.
Christmas is a national holiday.
And I ask people who say, well, separation of church and state, then are you opposed to Christmas as a national holiday?
And the truth is, they say they are.
The ACLU was opposed to Christmas being a national holiday.
But obviously, the founders, and not just the founders, Americans throughout history understood that there was a religious basis to this republic.
That's why in God We Trust is one of our mottos.
So is there a tension?
Yes, there is a tension.
There's always a tension between values and life.
But ultimately, we have gone way, way far to the other end.
That A principal or a teacher or a clergyman cannot say to a graduating class in America, God bless this class?
Every session of Congress opens with prayer, but you can't have God bless the graduating class?
It's absurd.
We have gone, just as there is religious extremism, there is secular extremism.
I believe we have gone in that direction.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Tobacco Versus Drugs Debate00:08:07
Gold and silver recently soared to record highs, then pulled back.
So are precious metals still a good buy?
Many Wall Street experts predict higher prices ahead.
Why?
Because we still have trillions in national debt, a declining dollar, and inflation that keeps shrinking our savings.
Even with corrections along the way, gold remains a historical hedge for wealth protection.
That's why Morgan Stanley's chief investment officer ditched the 60-40 stock and bonds portfolio and recommended up to 20% in precious metals.
They're getting educated and you should too.
Call Lear Capital at 800-992-2255 for your free gold investment kit and learn how you could qualify for up to $20,000 in bonus gold.
Lear Capital has over $3 billion in transactions and thousands of five-star reviews.
Call 800-992-2255.
That's 800-992-2255 or visit LearAlex.com.
Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Anybody back there, the lady back there, yes.
Which high school?
Thank you.
I was wondering what you used on the rights of homosexuals such as marriage and same sex.
Right.
Given that God wants liberty, what is my view on the rights of homosexuals?
Now I'm repeating her question, such as same-sex marriage.
That would involve, I never, I won't avoid your question, but I will tell you that a full, honest answer would involve about 20 minutes.
So I will just be very brief.
Whatever your position on same-sex marriage, marriage is not a right.
It has never been regarded as a right.
It has been regarded as a privilege.
We, the society, confers that privilege upon X or Y group.
For example, you don't have the right or privilege of marrying your brother or sister.
Why not?
Why not?
If we only have liberty, then why can't you marry your brother or sister?
Or your parent if you're over 18?
Or your child if you're over 18?
These were very common practices in the ancient world.
They were uprooted by what we call the Judeo-Christian traditions.
Anyway, rights, marriage is a license officially bestowed.
Everyone agrees that two gay people or three or eleven have the right to love one another in any way they wish.
That's your right to live with and not be harassed by the society.
But to ask society to redefine the definition of marriage, that's different from a right.
That is not a right.
And it's very important that people understand it.
After all, do you know that Utah was not allowed to be a member of the United States, could not enter the U.S. until it abolished polygamy?
Why don't I have the right to marry two people?
Seriously, and I have asked this, I have debated this with LGBT heads for the last 25 years.
I've never gotten an answer.
All they say is that has nothing to do with the issue, which is avoiding my question.
If there is an unlimited right to marry anyone you love, why can't I love two people?
Of course I can.
And why can't I marry them?
And if you give me an answer to that, I will rethink my position.
Next.
Yes.
And that was a toughie because I pointed at two people, the blue and the plaid.
So I'll take you both.
Plaid first.
That's you.
Yeah.
I'm ready for Esperanto High School.
I was wondering, you're saying liberty, America needs to provide liberty and give the person, the individual, a choice to choose what they want to do.
But what if these liberties harm the individuals, such as drugs like marijuana?
Yeah, that's a very tough question.
And it really is, because that's why we had, for example, I mean, I'll give you two examples.
All the banning, all the taxation, which is a form of deprivation of liberty, taking people's money away if they want to smoke cigarettes.
I think people should be allowed to hurt themselves, but I do draw the line, and I admit it, I draw a line.
I'm not a perfect libertarian.
I draw the line with regard to drugs because drugs not only ruin lives.
See, cigarettes don't necessarily ruin lives.
Drugs do.
Two-thirds of cigarette smokers do not die prematurely.
One-third do.
That's a lot.
Obviously, it's in the millions because there are so many cigarette smokers.
But the other thing is, nobody has ever killed for a cigarette.
Oh, I don't have cigarettes.
I am going to rob a store and kill the 7-Eleven storekeeper.
But people kill for drugs.
Clearly, there's no comparison between tobacco and drugs.
The fact that the California Department of Health has said that they are analogous is one of the things that I find most upsetting because I don't like when the state lies.
There is no comparison between tobacco and drugs, and I will debate that till the cows come home because it's a dishonest message to you young people, because after all, if you watch Winston Churchill smoking his cigars, you might as well say, gee, look, he has cigars.
Why don't I have heroin?
I mean, that's the upshot.
If really tobacco is the same as drugs, then Winston Churchill was a drug user, which is so absurd that the vocabulary eludes me as to describe it further.
So I draw the line with regard to drugs because of the harm it does not just to the individual, but to those around the person.
You hear about people on, especially on the drugs that are created by drug factories, as it were, and people going crazy on them, jumping off buildings, killing others.
Listen, as the father of two sons, I would rather they not smoke cigarettes.
I don't give a hoot about cigars and pipes.
But I would rather that they not smoke cigarettes, but it wouldn't bother me one one thousandth if they were sniffing heroin.
And any parent who says it makes no difference to me if it's a cigarette or it's heroin is sending such a bizarre message to their child that I just don't know what to say.
Blue shirt.
By the way, I was in from May or not morning.
Like you were saying, you were talking about having like liberty and the government stepping back and having more freedom for Americans.
And I was kind of thinking, like, talking about like a free market, if you have like completely no government regulation and like business and stuff, then businesses can become like very large and make monopolies.
And I would think that that would make less freedom for other people that want to start their own businesses because the monopolies already have control over like that one thing and they can't get a chance and what's it called?
When you like sell stuff, they can't get a chance if they're like free.
Right.
Utopia Causes Hell00:14:59
Let me just say quickly, I agree with you.
I am not an anarchist.
Only an anarchist says no government.
I'm just saying that at a given point, as government enlarges, liberty diminishes.
I don't think it's a debatable statement.
But at a given point, clearly you need government.
I don't want private Air Force bombing other countries.
I want a United States Air Force, not the General Motors Air Force.
And everybody agrees with you except the most perhaps out in the forest ends of libertarianism.
So I couldn't agree more.
Let me just go in the middle here and take the lady right behind you, sir.
Then I'll take you, sir.
Because I see the frustration on your face.
Yes.
I'm sorry?
Oh, hi, Olivia.
Yeah.
I was wondering if someone's not necessarily believing this.
Do you still think that their moral compass stems from God?
If somebody is not religious, do I still believe that their moral compass stems from God?
This is, generally speaking, in our civilization, I would say their moral compass comes from a Judeo-Christian religion.
I do believe God does implant a conscience in every human, but most or many consciences are broken.
But yes, my view is I have, it's not original to me, and I wish I knew the person who it was original to because I always cite sources.
But somebody else came up with the idea of cut flower ethics.
Ethics are nurtured in a soil.
So are flowers.
If you take flowers out of the soil from which they grew, will they live?
No, you know that they will die.
But they don't die immediately.
They look like they're living, right, for about, I don't know, a few days, a week.
So too ethics.
You cut them off from the religious soil that nurtured Western ethics.
And they look like they're living.
But just like the flower, ultimately they will wither and die.
Remember, and people don't know this, so maybe remember is the wrong word.
Again, this is in my book, Still the Best Hope, where I make this case.
The vast bloodshed and sadism of the 20th century all came from secular movements, communism and Nazism.
The next time you hear what really is a lie, that, oh, the greatest evil by far has been created by religion and people who believe in God, it's just not true.
The greatest evil happened in the 20th century under communism and Nazism.
And they were both secular ideologies.
They were not Christian, they were not Jewish, they were not Muslim, they were not Buddhist, they were not Shinto, they were not Hindu, they were secular.
So an individual can certainly even be an atheist and a kind person.
I would be a fool to deny that, and there are religious bad people.
I would be a fool to deny that.
But everybody knows that, including the founders.
They were worried about the society itself.
If ultimately society doesn't have a God who says thou shalt not steal, you will have more stealing.
And of this, I am convinced, sir.
Karen Dennis can join that school.
My question kind of goes off because she said, if humans are inherently born evil, then how could good ever arise out of something that is inherently evil?
Right.
I didn't say we're inherently evil.
And I understand why you would think I did, but I've given talks about human nature for many years, and I never said we're born evil.
I said we're not born good.
And I said, we clearly have inclinations in both directions.
It is clear.
However, left to our own devices without some sort of moral code, we will do bad things.
Most people will.
You're not born with a desire to say thank you, or the desire to share, or the desire to be selfless.
We are born self-centered.
That I will say.
Not evil, but certainly self-centered, and that's why I did say we're born narcissists.
But that is why people believe you do need an external code.
Because that, it's a lot more powerful to think God says do not steal than just yourself.
I asked three high schools, four high school seniors, not four, four high schools, senior classes, so hundreds of kids in Cleveland many years ago, raise your hand if you would take something that you didn't pay for from a department store, if you were absolutely guaranteed you would not be caught.
Almost all of them raise their hands.
And they have very interesting answers.
They have insurance.
That was a common answer.
Nobody's hurt.
They'll get it paid for.
Another one said, well, I wouldn't steal from a mom and pop store, but a department store, they're so big, what's the difference?
But if you would ask that in a religious school, Christian or Jewish, as an example, I don't think you would get the same answer.
Some would, most wouldn't.
Believing that God says do not steal is a hell of a lot more powerful than are you hurting anybody?
Okay?
Yes.
Hi, Kelly.
What school do you go to?
Your biography except that you're a conventional right now.
Wait, it says that I am a what?
You've been in high bad.
I just, I feel terrible.
I didn't hear the middle words.
It sounded like I was in Vietnam, but I'm sure it's not what it said.
That's what I got here.
Say it again.
Shout it.
Oh, okay.
Champion?
Is that what it says?
Okay, go ahead.
That's why I think champion threw me off.
Okay.
Assuming that there is a right and wrong, what is wrong to still be legal and protectable liberty?
What is wrong with what?
Okay.
Isn't it very wrong and right?
If things are wrong, should they still be illegal for people that don't think they're going wrong?
Do they protect their liberty?
Well, you give me an example.
What is the prohibition in getting off?
Right.
Well, society, look, it's a very, it's an unanswerable question.
We have a tension between liberty and what we ban.
Like the drugs question.
You mentioned prohibition and alcohol.
Would society be better off if nobody drank alcohol?
Do you know the amount of child abuse, spousal abuse, and murder and rape that would be reduced if there was no alcohol?
Why do you think they stopped selling alcohol in the seventh inning at baseball stadiums or in the last period at a hockey game?
That's my sport of choice.
And it was a good year to have chosen it, as it happens.
But I would just, right?
I mean, clearly, yet I am not for banning alcohol.
With all the terrible things that result from alcohol, I am still for allowing it to be drunk.
These good people can differ on what you ban and what you allow.
My point is to explain to you simply, this is the key, that liberty is at tension with other values.
Health is one of them.
Equality is one of them.
And America has generally chosen liberty over all other values and hope that the individual will not get drunk.
The individual will not drink three Coca-Colas a day, etc., etc.
Okay?
Good.
I'll just keep alternating, so you two, and then we'll go.
Yes?
The two women, as it happens, yes?
Hi, okay.
So I'm kind of like some lawyers here from Baltimore High School.
And I wanted to catch up on the question about marriage between homosexuals.
Brought the point of agreeing.
And I think at the time when you tell me coming to state, it was like the concept of men and women equal.
So if you think you need only a man can have several wives, and I think that's why it's kind of like output out there because I can eye have several husbands.
So let me ask you, if women could have several husbands and men could have several wives, you would be for allowing it and calling that a marriage in America?
Why not?
Okay, this is exactly, you're consistent.
This is exactly what will happen once, or if I don't know if it will happen, but if indeed marriage is redefined to be same-sex as well as opposite sex, the next thing to go within 10 years will be monogamy.
It has to.
If we can't tell people what sex to marry, how can we tell them what number to marry?
And you are a living example of that thinking.
And I'm not saying this in any way except respectfully.
You are being more consistent than the people I debate.
They said, oh, no, we're not for polygamy.
We're just for same-sex marriage.
But that's inconceivable.
It makes no sense.
You make sense.
So if a woman wants to marry four men and they're up for it, who are we to say you can't marry?
Okay, thank you.
Yes?
My name is Mina Sadi.
I know this time on top of my book.
How else would I bring your own advocate in the regulation of this?
You'd like me to elaborate more on the African immigrant statistics?
Yeah, the statistics were actually given in the New York Times.
The source is in my book.
And remember, here's the amazing thing.
We have very strong limits on the number of immigrants from anywhere, Europe, South America, Africa.
If the number of Africans who wished to emigrate to the United States were allowed, it would be five times the number of slaves who came here.
This is with all the limitations the number of free blacks over enslaved and kidnapped blacks have come here.
That we don't celebrate that fact is a very sad thing to me.
It's a very big statement about the way in which people see the United States.
And its causes, it causes, I'm totally open, and I have found it to be always the best policy.
There is a certain tension between Africans who have just come here and African Americans who have been here for generations on their views of the United States.
Exactly over this issue.
Many Africans say, what are you talking about?
This is the greatest place in the world.
And many African Americans say, what are you talking about?
Do you know about Jim Crow?
Do you know about racism?
Do you know about this and that?
So it's not my battle to wage, but my battle, first and foremost, is to tell what is true.
And that statistic is available easily.
You could Google it or preferably get my book.
Thank you.
Let me see.
I didn't do in the center section.
Mr. Yellow.
Oh, you're pointing to Mr. Blue.
Very nice.
Mr. Blue, please rise.
Hi, I'm Austin Ford from Arcadia Ohio.
And I was curious how you feel we should go about restoring the American values.
How should we go about restoring them?
The number one thing is to know them.
That's why I come here, because I believe that it will matter.
And that's why I wrote my book.
I could have written an instant bestseller writing on men and women, which is a big issue of mine on my radio show.
My last book was a bestseller on happiness.
This is doing very well.
But I wrote this.
It was the hardest thing I ever did.
But my heart is in this.
And, you know, when you reach 60, you start thinking, how much time do you have left?
I'm totally honest with you.
Now, my parents, my father will be 94 next month, and my mother died at 89.
I got good genes, but you still don't know.
You don't know either.
I mean, you know, there are drunk drivers that don't distinguish by ages.
Anything could happen.
And it's, by the way, I've always said to people, if you think you're going to die in a year, how much TV will you watch?
It's just something you should think about.
A lawyer in Switzerland wrote such a book.
He was told by his doctor he had a year to live, and he wrote a book on how he changed his life.
It's good to think you have a terminal illness, which you do.
It's called life.
And it is absolutely worth thinking that way, because when you think that I have unlimited time, you will spend a lot more wasting it.
I don't know how I got to that.
What was your original question?
Oh, yes, how do we spread the values?
You spread the values by learning them, learning how to articulate them, and then X tells Y and Y tells Z, and then it works.
But I'm telling you, that's why it does my heart good to be in front of so many of you at this time on this subject.
Yes, sir.
Okay, then I'll go to you.
Yep.
Jeff Burtos, sir from Marathville.
We were discussing in our draft book the other day how looking at society, you can kind of tell there's a bit of a pattern from going at a bit of a horizontal perspective where we go back and forth from, say, genocide to war, economic troubles.
And I disagreed in saying no matter what, no matter what kind of troubles we go, we still learn from them and continue to move forward.
Well, some of us disagree that we were only moving horizontally.
Do you believe, as America, that without God, in the end, that we can never reach a utopia?
Well, number one, I never want to strive to reach utopia.
Utopian thinking causes hell.
It does.
It just does.
Every doctrine that believed in utopia on earth as opposed to utopia in God's time on earth or in an afterlife has created hell on earth.
That's why, and I have not been political for one second, I differed when President Obama was running for president and he said, I want to fundamentally transform the United States of America, something he said frequently.
And when he said it before he was elected, I said, that's very worrisome to me.
Feelings Define Right and Wrong00:02:05
I want to improve the United States of America, but I don't want to fundamentally transform it.
So I am scared of all utopian thinking.
People are too complex, too weak, too everything to make a utopia.
So we can incrementally get better.
As to the question, if this is what you were asking, do societies just morally progress?
Ask the Armenians who suffered under the Turks in the 1915, does society progress?
Ask the Ukrainians starved by Stalin, five million of them intentionally, does society progress.
Ask the Jews of the Holocaust, does society progress?
Ask the 75 million Chinese killed by Mao, does society progress?
I think you'll get a very different answer.
Thank you.
This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
Visit DennisPrager.com for thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs and to purchase Dennis Prager's rational Bibles.
Your beloved dog and a stranger are both drowning.
You can only save one.
Who do you save?
Every time Dennis Prager asks that question, his audience splits three ways.
One-third chooses the dog, one-third chooses the stranger, and one-third aren't sure.
Why?
Because we live in an age where increasingly feelings define right and wrong.
But if morality is based on emotion, then murder, rape, and theft are just opinions.
And if people feel justified, why is rioting or destruction wrong at all?
In his new book, If There Is No God, Dennis Prager explains why civilizations cannot survive without objective morality and why Judeo-Christian values shape the moral foundations of the free world.
Affirming God Through Morality00:00:17
If you claim that certain things are good, certain things are evil, independent of how you feel about it, you are, in effect, affirming God.