Dennis Prager Show - Why Don’t We Respect Authority Anymore?
Aired: 2026-04-23
Duration: 17:21


=== Society's Broken Body (02:26) ===

[00:00:00]  Today's episode of Timeless Wisdom.
[00:00:03]  Not only is the issue, this is the ultimate issues hour.
[00:00:05]  Not only does the issue, and I'm Dennis Prager, thank you for being with me.
[00:00:09]  Not only does the issue try, take three.
[00:00:15]  Not only does the issue, how else can I interrupt myself?
[00:00:24]  It's a little sad when you're not interrupted by others but by yourself.
[00:00:29]  That's coming up on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
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[00:01:03]  Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
[00:01:06]  Hear thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs.
[00:01:11]  And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com.
[00:01:25]  Or not to be?
[00:01:28]  That is the question.
[00:01:30]  Where was God?
[00:01:31]  Isn't God supposed to be good?
[00:01:33]  Isn't he supposed to love us?
[00:01:35]  Does God want us to suffer?
[00:01:36]  Ten years, you're not finished yet?
[00:01:41]  Morty!
[00:01:48]  Why did you do this to me?
[00:01:49]  Who are you?
[00:01:50]  Bruce?
[00:01:50]  I'm God.
[00:01:50]  Bingo, Yahtzee!
[00:01:52]  Is that your final answer?
[00:01:53]  Our service has God!
[00:01:56]  Bing, ding, Well, it was nice to meet you, God.
[00:01:59]  Thank you for the Grand Canyon, and good luck with the apocalypse.
[00:02:03]  And welcome, everybody.
[00:02:07]  This is Dennis Prager, the Ultimate Issues Hour.
[00:02:12]  The hour each week I devote at this time to some great issue of life.
[00:02:17]  And I am going to bring to you an issue today that explains a great deal about what is happening in society.

=== The Breakdown of Authority (14:21) ===

[00:02:27]  And the topic for today is authority.
[00:02:30]  Authority.
[00:02:34]  The breakdown of authority.
[00:02:36]  You know, that's the issue.
[00:02:39]  If you want, in a nutshell, what is ailing America, it is the breakdown of authority.
[00:02:46]  Many of you have a big kick out of my interview with my father on his birthday, and I've asked him on a number of occasions on his birthday, and he's now 89 years old, so he's seen a lot of life.
[00:03:00]  And I asked him, what is the greatest difference?
[00:03:03]  In fact, one of you asked him, what is the Max, what is the greatest difference between the America you grew up with and America today?
[00:03:10]  And he said, authority.
[00:03:13]  The breakdown of authority.
[00:03:15]  And he's right.
[00:03:18]  Think about it, folks.
[00:03:19]  Think about every area of life outside of government, interestingly.
[00:03:24]  And we'll get to that in a moment.
[00:03:26]  But every area of life, authority has broken down.
[00:03:30]  The authority of parents.
[00:03:32]  The authority of teachers, the authority of God, the authority of religion, the authority of text, all of them have been attacked and undermined.
[00:03:45]  You can now, when I think about the ability of a child to curse a teacher, I hear that in a sort of disbelief.
[00:03:59]  There are kids who get up and curse teachers.
[00:04:05]  I went to a school where you stood when the principal walked in.
[00:04:08]  You actually stood up.
[00:04:12]  And I didn't have any particular fondness or respect for this principle, but that was the principle, and you stood up.
[00:04:22]  End of issue.
[00:04:23]  Teachers called by their first name?
[00:04:27]  The moment teachers were called by their first name, authority began to be chiseled.
[00:04:32]  There is a huge, a huge difference between, or conflict between, I should say, authority and equality.
[00:04:42]  Because someone who is equal to you cannot have authority over you.
[00:04:46]  So the rampant egalitarianism of our society has removed any concept of authority.
[00:04:53]  If the teacher is my equal, dresses like me, talks like me, I call by her first name, she calls me or he calls me by his or her first name, then we're all equals.
[00:05:04]  And that is, by the way, that is what has happened.
[00:05:08]  The age of stupidity, as I call it, ushered in by my baby boomer generation.
[00:05:14]  Ushered in this age wherein kids were said to know as much as adults.
[00:05:21]  The vote was changed from 21 to 18, even though you and I know that the average 18 year old doesn't know anything about how society should be governed.
[00:05:32]  In fact, there are people in the California legislature who would like to extend the age to 15.
[00:05:39]  By golly, why not 11?
[00:05:42]  The notion of authority has been attacked the most severely.
[00:05:47]  Of all the notions, and it causes a terrible breakdown in society.
[00:05:54]  For whatever reason, people don't like it, although, ironically, they're very happy with it in the form of the government.
[00:06:00]  The government's authority is okay, but no other authority is okay.
[00:06:06]  I gave you the example of teachers.
[00:06:09]  You call a teacher by his or her first name, kids can say anything they want.
[00:06:15]  Teachers have lost their authority in the classroom.
[00:06:18]  And next, let's go to parents.
[00:06:23]  Parents, too, have lost their authority in our culture.
[00:06:26]  Look at the movies and the way parents are so often depicted in these films as boobs, as dummies.
[00:06:33]  The kid is the wise one.
[00:06:35]  By the way, I must tell you, every movie I see where little kids utter these brilliant phrases, they're witty and so on, immediately I am turned off to that film.
[00:06:50]  It's so, it's not real.
[00:06:52]  There's no sense of reality to it, and it is a way of saying kids are wiser than parents.
[00:06:59]  They're not.
[00:07:01]  They're not.
[00:07:01]  Overwhelmingly, they are not.
[00:07:06]  And so, and parents themselves have too often colluded in this, in allowing their authority to break down, with society helping them all along the way.
[00:07:18]  Other adults, I mean, my God, other adults' authority?
[00:07:21]  Adults as authority figures?
[00:07:25]  Every adult is known by their first name.
[00:07:27]  That was an immediate drop in authority.
[00:07:29]  Who are you to tell me what?
[00:07:32]  To do that notion of to another adult, you're not my parent.
[00:07:36]  Who are you?
[00:07:37]  Who are you to tell me what to do?
[00:07:40]  And so, other parents certainly have lost their authority.
[00:07:45]  So, parents and teachers, God has lost authority.
[00:07:50]  God has lost authority in two ways.
[00:07:53]  One, there are many, many more secular people, and God, and for many, many people, God is not an authority figure, God's a lover.
[00:08:05]  God is love.
[00:08:06]  A lot of religious people say that.
[00:08:08]  Well, then, where is the authority?
[00:08:10]  Love is not authority.
[00:08:12]  Love is love.
[00:08:14]  God is your pal.
[00:08:16]  God is the guy.
[00:08:17]  God is who you have a relationship with, which is fine.
[00:08:21]  That's fine.
[00:08:21]  I'm not against a relationship with God.
[00:08:25]  But the rhetoric of our time, even in the religious world, is undermining of divine authority.
[00:08:35]  Religion is presented today, or God is presented as a sort of pal in heaven.
[00:08:44]  My pal in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
[00:08:50]  And so, a pal in heaven doesn't make demands.
[00:08:53]  Religion is a place to make you comfortable.
[00:08:57]  Church, synagogue is a place to make you comfortable.
[00:09:00]  It's not a place to hear about the authority of this is right and this is wrong.
[00:09:06]  I'll never forget one clergyman spoke about God not being judgmental many years ago in a newspaper column that I had read.
[00:09:16]  God is not judgmental.
[00:09:18]  God doesn't make moral judgments.
[00:09:20]  It was one of the great moments of my life.
[00:09:24]  And it was a woman clergyman, and I say that because it's not odd.
[00:09:30]  Women are more of the compassion variety, of the.
[00:09:34]  Religion should be comforting and healing that rhetoric than the masculine rhetoric of this is right and this is wrong.
[00:09:50]  That's masculine rhetoric.
[00:09:51]  In the feminization of society and religion that has taken place, masculine rhetoric of right and wrong has been replaced with how do you feel about it?
[00:10:01]  I'm not comfortable with it.
[00:10:05]  So all authority has broken down except for government.
[00:10:10]  And by the way, you must know this.
[00:10:12]  Since without authority there is utter chaos, the human being needs authority.
[00:10:17]  The more you break down parental, teacher, and religious authority, the more strongly you build up government authority.
[00:10:30]  You must know that this is rarely pointed out.
[00:10:33]  Government increases in its domination of societal life as the other elements decrease their power.
[00:10:43]  The less power that God, religion, and parents have, the more power the government will have.
[00:10:54]  Lines are full already, and I haven't even announced the number.
[00:10:58]  I guess a lot of you have either questions or thoughts on this.
[00:11:01]  This is a very big, ultimate issue the question of authority.
[00:11:06]  1 8 Prager 776, in case you can get in, 1 8 P R A G E R 776.
[00:11:12]  A number of years ago, I wrote a column for the Los Angeles Times on this subject that it is not belief in God that divides people's values, it is whether or not they believe in a divine text.
[00:11:27]  Jews and Christians who believe in a divine text have far more in common than Jews who believe in a divine text have with Jews who don't believe in a divine text, or Christians who believe in a divine text have with Christians who don't believe in a divine text.
[00:11:44]  Because only divine texts have authority.
[00:11:48]  Man made texts have no authority.
[00:11:54]  Take your calls and much more to offer you on this edition of the Ultimate Issues Hour on The Dennis Prager Show.
[00:12:00]  This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
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[00:12:16]  Your lifespan.
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[00:12:38]  Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
[00:12:43]  You're listening to The Dennis Prager Show, and every week at this hour, I have the Ultimate Issues Hour.
[00:12:50]  An hour on some great issue of life, and this one is on authority.
[00:12:55]  The breakdown of authority is the breakdown of society, and that is what we are seeing in America.
[00:13:02]  Parental authority, teachers' authority, police authority.
[00:13:07]  I didn't mention that one earlier.
[00:13:10]  The contempt with which police are held in many places.
[00:13:13]  They should be feared, police.
[00:13:15]  Sorry, folks, they should be feared.
[00:13:17]  By the way, so should parents in a certain way when you're young.
[00:13:23]  It's good for a kid to say, if I did that, my father would kill me, or my mother would kill me.
[00:13:29]  I want kids to say that.
[00:13:34]  They need it terribly.
[00:13:36]  Now, if that's the only emotion a kid has to a parent, that's not good.
[00:13:39]  But we've gone way, way, way, way overboard in the other direction.
[00:13:45]  Parental, teacher, police.
[00:13:49]  Where is my list here?
[00:13:50]  What else did I say?
[00:13:52]  Oh, of course.
[00:13:52]  And God and religion and text.
[00:13:56]  So, you know, and the reason, and that's the key here.
[00:13:59]  What is the reason?
[00:14:00]  Because people don't like to have any authority.
[00:14:03]  The human being rebels against authority.
[00:14:06]  We want to do what we want to do.
[00:14:09]  Like the Swedish woman that I interviewed and played you the interview.
[00:14:13]  I played it for you.
[00:14:15]  You believe in any religion?
[00:14:16]  No.
[00:14:16]  You believe in God?
[00:14:17]  No.
[00:14:18]  So where do you get your notions of right and wrong?
[00:14:21]  My heart.
[00:14:23]  That's it.
[00:14:23]  Her authority is her heart.
[00:14:28]  It doesn't work, folks.
[00:14:29]  It doesn't work.
[00:14:32]  Let's go to your calls here.
[00:14:34]  And we begin in Evergreen, Colorado.
[00:14:38]  And Yvette, Yvette Dennis Prager, thank you for calling.
[00:14:41]  Thank you.
[00:14:42]  Hi.
[00:14:43]  I was calling about your authority issue.
[00:14:46]  We have two children who we have raised to address adults as Mr. or Mrs. Many times the adults will respond by saying, Oh, no, please have your child call me Kathy or Tom.
[00:14:58]  I know.
[00:14:59]  And there's nothing you can do then, really.
[00:15:02]  Oh, no, actually, we've come up with an answer because we now have a.
[00:15:06]  What is your answer?
[00:15:07]  I'm very curious.
[00:15:08]  We say to them, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be disrespectful to you, but we are trying to teach our children that time has not made them equal to you and that your life experiences are valuable and therefore worth their respect.
[00:15:25]  Do you actually say that to these people?
[00:15:26]  Oh, yes.
[00:15:27]  Do they stay friends?
[00:15:28]  Oh, yes.
[00:15:29]  And, you know, it's funny because many other.
[00:15:33]  Parents that we spend time with also share these views.
[00:15:37]  But very often we'll run into people who either I work with or my husband works with, or even people who don't have kids have never really given much thought to these issues.
[00:15:46]  And the comment that we often hear from them is, Oh, it makes me feel old.
[00:15:50]  And I say, You know, that's right.
[00:15:51]  You're old.
[00:15:52]  That's right.
[00:15:52]  Exactly.
[00:15:53]  You're older than my nine year old.
[00:15:58]  Yes, I'll never forget.
[00:16:00]  Thank you.
[00:16:00]  Well said, Yvette.
[00:16:02]  Your kids are lucky.
[00:16:03]  I will never.
[00:16:04]  I wrote this up actually about 20 years ago.
[00:16:07]  Who was the.
[00:16:09]  It was a great.
[00:16:09]  What was the Boston Celtics star, Larry Bird?
[00:16:16]  Larry Bird.
[00:16:17]  It was by just sheer coincidence.
[00:16:18]  I just remember this.
[00:16:19]  Larry Bird mentioned once when he was still a player that some kid said Mr. to him.
[00:16:26]  And he felt so odd that a child would say Mr. because it meant he was older and so on.
[00:16:33]  My generation.
[00:16:37]  Has not wanted to grow up.
[00:16:38]  I'm not picking on Larry Bird, who, you know, supposedly a terrific guy in many ways, or a terrific guy, period.
[00:16:45]  But I just happen to remember that particular quote that I cited.

=== Larry Bird and Mr (00:32) ===

[00:16:48]  1 8 Prager 776.
[00:16:50]  1 8 P R A G E R 776.
[00:16:53]  My friends, I say this about many of these ultimate issue subjects.
[00:16:58]  There is none more important.
[00:17:01]  There may be some that are as important, but there is none that are more important than the question of authority.
[00:17:07]  I want you to ask about your own life.
[00:17:08]  What has authority over you?
[00:17:10]  What do you recognize?
[00:17:11]  Do you have a religion that has authority over you?
[00:17:14]  Do you have a God that does?
[00:17:15]  Do you have a teacher that does?
[00:17:16]  Do you have a parent who does?
[00:17:17]  Or is it only the government?
[00:17:21]  Is that