Afraid to Debate? - Sunday Fireside Chat

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Hi everybody. Dennis Prager fireside chat. For whatever reason, Snoopy has showed up. Maybe all the attention Otto gets, my beloved Otto. Has finally registered on Snoopy. On the other hand, he also is getting a rub, whereas Otto does not need a rub to be present. Anyway, now you've had a chance to meet Snoop. Good to be with you. This is a chance every week. This is what, number 100 and—

90.

90. By the way, you know what that proves? That this is number 190. I wanna share with you something. It's the beauty of the Fireside Chat is spontaneity. Well, one of the beauties. It's the 190th edition of the Fireside Chat. It proves something that every young person should be taught very early. The power of habit. The power of repetition, of doing something regularly. I guess that's just another way of saying habit. You get so much accomplished, not by doing a ton at one time, but by doing something regularly. Good habits are really sort of the essence of a good life. 190 fireside chats is a lot of fireside chats, but obviously I had 190 weeks to do it, but I did it every week. It was a habit and it remains one. Anyway, just a thought for you. Great to be with you. I always open— I think always— always open with a topic and then I take your questions. A few weeks ago, I did a fireside chat in which I analyzed a video of John Oliver. What is he considered, a late night comic? Is that correct? With his anti-Israel diatribe on his show. It was a particularly intellectually shallow and morally shallow appearance, in my opinion, and I reacted to point by point with my own points and said repeatedly I would love to debate John Oliver about the Middle East. After all, if you use your large audience to say certain things, you should— morally, you are bound to, to Defend it. I am bound to defend anything I say, and if someone challenges me to a debate who has an equivalent audience of mine, I don't mean some guys who write on the internet, "Oh, Prager won't debate me," and they have 416 followers. But somebody who has their own show or their own column, whatever, I would love to debate them on anything that I have said. So I said, "Why doesn't he debate me?" And I'm very courteous to people that I debate. As my radio show of 35 years bears testimony to. I said I would go anywhere, I would pay the expense, I would, he could choose his own moderator, his own city, anything. I'll go to his city. And of course I got no response, as I predicted, he won't debate me. The reason that I raised the issue is this is a really important avenue to understanding the left. They almost never debate. And they almost never debate because they cannot live with intellectual opposition. Left-wing thinking is feelings. Feelings cannot go up against— Ideas. Facts and logic. It's all emotion. It's all negative, often hate-filled emotion. But that's all it is. It's all it's ever been. The left doesn't debate. The left smears. If you differ with them, you're a racist. You are what I called 20 years ago, SICHERB. S-I-X-H-I-R-B. Sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted. The list is much longer today, but that was the list 20 years ago. You were all these things. So we don't debate you. We just label you. That, that has been done ever since Lenin in the Russian Revolution. That is all they have done. They don't debate. And you, especially those of you who are younger, just need to know this.

Yes.

The reason they don't want us at your campuses is that they are afraid that if students hear us for an hour and a half, they will change their minds. And they're right. That is a very legitimate fear. Because left-wing ideas that America is founded on racism, that America is founded and fought the American Revolution to perpetuate slavery, that America is systemically racist, racist, that Blacks and women and people of color are all persecuted in the United States. This is all false. Of course there's racism in the United States. It's like saying that, you know, there's something bad in every human being. Of course there is. So what? Does that mean that America is racist? There's antisemitism in the United States, but it's not an antisemitic country. I say this as a Jew who's written a book on antisemitism. They won't debate us because they can't debate us. And deep down they know it. So what they do is they talk people into believing, why would we debate racists? Well, I'll tell you one reason: to prove that we're racist. Wouldn't that be a great opportunity?

Yeah.

See, John Oliver doesn't know anything about the Middle East. Nothing. I am totally convinced of it. And so he knows he would never debate me on the Middle East. And by the way, he's right. When I said he won't debate me, I was as sure of that as I was that the sun would rise in the east the next day. But you need to know this. When they have cancel culture, it's because they're so afraid that people will become aware of what we have to say. Whether it's about ivermectin, or whether it is about systemic racism, or police brutality, or every one of their subjects. They know deep down that they don't have an intellectual or moral leg to stand on. And that then, but what they do is they convince themselves, not that they're afraid to debate us, but that there's no reason to. But of course there's reason to. We're as certain that we're right as they are that they're right, but we're totally open to debating. Why is that? Why are we open to debating the left? But the left is not open to debating us because we know that we'll win. Not win in the sense of a TKO or a knockout or a split decision in a boxing match, but in the sense that if people hear both sides, our side will make more sense and have more facts. Charles M. Blow writes hate-filled columns about America every time he writes a column in the New York Times. He's basically written one column 500 times. And it's about how evil America is, how whites are just spectacularly racist. Would he debate Larry Elder? I would pay $10,000 to Charles Blow to debate Larry Elder, a black conservative. He would never debate Larry Elder. It would end his career. He would look like the fool that he is. Name me one left-wing a New York Times columnist who would debate anybody. Would Thomas Friedman debate me? I would pay him $10,000 to debate. This is, this is the way it is. They just smear and cancel. Now you know why. That should tell you something. They are afraid of us intellectually. They have every right to be. Okie doke. Okie doke. Let's go to question number 1. Not, yes, that's the video question. Hello, my name is Raden Adair. I'm 18 years old and I'm from Gilbert, Arizona. Dennis, I was just curious to know, uh, what your thoughts are on third wave feminism And obviously we all believe that men and women are equal when it comes to opportunity, but when it comes to biology and work ethic, I was just curious to know what your thoughts are on that area. All right, thank you. Okay, so briefly, I could do— we should do maybe one on feminism. But first of all, I don't know how third wave feminism differs from second wave or first wave. I'm not being cute. I really don't know what is the intellectual difference. What is the ideological difference? But anyway, whatever it is, maybe it's just a chronological statement rather than an ideological statement. So I have a lot of problems with feminism. I don't have a problem with the idea that men and women are equal before God and before the law. That's such a given to me that I don't even think that time needs to be spent on it. The capacities of both sexes are essentially the same. You know when I learned this, interestingly? I didn't have a sister, so I didn't grow up with girls in my life, but I've always been a music lover and— Yeah. Some of you know I conduct orchestras periodically. I'm very involved in music. And I'll never forget this, this was transformative. I used to listen to the classical music station where I grew up in New York City. And they once did something on one of their programs where they had music critics listen to recordings and then react to them. So they decided to do an experiment. They had the same exact piano piece. I don't know, it was Beethoven, whatever, Bach. And they had, let's say, 5 versions. And they would ask the panel, and these were professional music listener critics, tell us if this is a male or female pianist. And there was absolutely zero. I couldn't tell. They couldn't tell. And these people listen for a living, and they, they could hear the— oh, every nuance in the interpretation of a piano piece. And I realized that was a very— I was in high school, and I realized, yeah, the capacities of the two sexes are the same. Not the capacity for every single thing. Obviously, there, there are ways in which women and men differ, and thank God they do. I'll give you, I'll give you, look, the obvious is physical, okay? But putting physical aside, here's an interesting difference, I believe, and I think most couples with a child would acknowledge this. The woman is much more likely to awaken if the baby whimpers. She marvels at the fact that he could sleep through it. And he marvels at the fact that it woke her up. Am I right, Rodrigo?

Yeah.

Yeah. Rodrigo is newly fathered and is probably living exactly what I'm saying. I suspect when your baby goes, uh-huh, uh-huh, you're out to the world. And your wife is out of there like Cape Kennedy. The woman, right, exactly. I mean, there are differences, but the capabilities, that is largely speaking pretty much a non-issue. Okay, so everyone with a brain has accepted, not just a brain, everyone who is a clear thinker, wants to be a clear thinker, there are people with brains that don't think clearly, knows that the sexes are equal. But they're not the same. By the way, thank God they're not the same. It is one of the delights of life that we, we differ in more than just biology of, of the body. Uh, but, uh, feminism did teach that men and women were the same, and that has played havoc with both sexes because On the one hand, they taught that. So for example, they told young women for the last 50 years that they should pursue career just like men do, and that will bring them happiness. But it has not brought a lot of women happiness. When at 50 they call my radio show and they have great careers but no husband and no children, they don't call up to tell me how happy they are. Otto is leaving the room, I hereby announce. Rodrigo, you want to allow the star of the show to leave? I don't know. It's hard to say why he's leaving. We did a lot of excitement. But we— there were— there— he's there. We had pre-show excitement for him. That is correct. The PragerU giant version of Otto was here. And it spooked him. So telling young women career will bring you happiness was not, was not wise. It brings some people happiness, but not most. Not as much as a— in terms of women, as a husband and a family. As difficult as husbands and families are, because human beings are difficult. And another thing that feminism told women when it told them that they were the same was that their sexual drive is similar to that of a man. And that just like men are very happy to have non-commit, non-committal, be essentially emotion-free sex, so too women. And you can go from partner to partner just like men do. And you will love it. Well, most women don't love it. Just the way it is. Some women do, there's no question, but most women do not. It is not in keeping generally with their nature. So feminism did a lot of damage, and it's done damage in another way. The obsession with the MeToo. Now I have zero, not only do I not defend sexual harassment, let alone sexual assault, which is evil. But I actually haven't engaged in it, which is pretty remarkable for a man of my age going back to a time when it was more common. But I always thought it was wrong to say something inappropriate to a woman, especially in a work atmosphere. I just assumed that.

Yeah.

But in any event, it's gone. It's gone too far where men now— young women are telling me this— men are afraid to ask a woman out to, as we would say in my time, maybe they still pick up a woman at a Starbucks now, because I'll tell you why they are told, oh, wait a minute, it was an unwanted advance. Well, how does a man know if an advance is wanted or not until he makes it? He doesn't know if it's wanted or unwanted. Now, once it's unwanted, it's unwanted, but nevertheless, I'm not talking about physical action. I'm talking about just starting a pickup conversation. But men are now afraid to do that. And it's not because they're all wimps. There are a lot of wimpy men, but that's not the reason. It's because they have reason to fear that they may well be charged. I don't mean necessarily legally, but morally and in every other way with, oh, yo, I made unwanted advances. And indeed the woman may even mention it on Twitter, who knows? So that's gone, that's gone too far. And finally, I charge feminism with not really caring about women. I've said this all, I've said this my whole life, that feminism is much more anti-man than it is pro-woman. And I've never changed my mind on that one. But one example of not being pro-woman is that I know of no feminist movement, I know feminists, but I know of no feminist movement that has come out in defense of girls in high schools who have to compete against biological males who say they're female in sports. This is not anti-transgender. It's a typical example of the left not debating, but smearing. To say that biological women should only compete against biological women is not anti-trans. It is pro-fairness. It is pro-fairness. It is pro-decency and it is pro-woman. No feminist organization has come out in defense of these women. At the Tokyo Olympics, which are scheduled, whether they'll happen or not, I don't know, but New Zealand is apparently going to be sending a trans— A trans, uh, woman. That is a biological male who identifies as a woman. In the weightlifting competition. The most obvious arena where men have a built-in advantage. And so a biological man will be lifting heavy weights against biological women who cannot lift the same weights as males can. Is that fair? Of course it's not fair. I'm tempted to say you have to go to college to think it was fair, which is probably true, which tells you something about what college does to the brain. Okay. Andressa, 41, Boston, Massachusetts. Hi, Dennis. One of my daughter's 5th grade friends came out as gay to her teachers and some classmates. The teachers embraced her, encouraged the classmates to make the girl feel comfortable in her skin. All seems well-intended, Until you find out the parents are being kept in the dark about it, what are your thoughts? Love the fireside chat. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, there are a lot of issues here. First of all, it is mind-boggling that the parents are being kept out of it, but it is not surprising. See, the undermining of parental authority is one of the major features of all cults. And, and leftism, unlike liberalism and unlike conservatism, is a cult. And one of the first things they do is break parental authority. They give it to the state. This is a perfect example that the teacher did not feel morally obligated to tell the parents, your 5th grade daughter is announcing to everyone that she's gay. But that raises another issue as well. Fifth graders knowing that they're gay, I don't know. It's an interesting question. A lot of gay friends, I'm gonna ask them, did you know in fifth grade? In fifth grade, do you know if you're heterosexual? In fifth grade, do you think about heterosexuality and homosexuality? Or is it that in our age, where these issues are discussed so early and the innocence of children is compromised so early, this has now become more common, which is what I think often the issue is. Jalen 17, Allen Park, Michigan. Hey Dennis, I recently just started watching your show after seeing ads of them on YouTube. My question to you is why do you think people decide to choose the left? Even though they divide our country and spread corruption, which is all true. Also, pineapple on pizza. Thank you. As to pineapple on pizza, my wife likes it. I thought it was inedible, and then I had it and liked it. What am I going to say? As to— as regards the first part, what was that about? Oh yes, why do people choose the left? The left is the default position. You know, like there's a default mode on your computer. There's a default mode in society. If you don't think issues through and just feel, you will probably be on the left. That is the way it works. For example, let the government take care of people is a very, very nice proposition. It sounds right. Correct? Oh, let the government feed people, pay for their healthcare, pay for their college education, pay for everything in their lives, pay for their children's lunches and breakfast at school. This sounds, without thinking, it sounds moral and beautiful and compassionate. So the default position for those who feel is going to always be left. There's another reason: people prefer to be taken care of to liberty. In the choice between being free and taking care of yourself, or less free, or unfree, and having the state take care of you, most of humanity will choose to have the state take care of them and give up freedom. There's no question. Liberty is a value, not an instinct. That's why there are very few free countries. But there are very many countries with big governments. That's the default position of the human species. Take care of me, I'll give you my freedom. So leftism, for very many reasons, is the default. All right, let's see here. Wow, 12-year-old Rockville, Maryland, Micah. How can you defeat the left in an argument if conservative arguments are based on reasoning and logic? While left-wing arguments are based on emotion and feelings. You can defeat them, but they won't debate. That was— ironically, that was my opening statement. It's not hard at all. But if they don't debate, that's very hard to defeat anybody in a debate if they don't debate. Zion 26, Pulaski, Tennessee. Hello, Mr. Prager. In a couple of your more recent fireside chats, You have mentioned that you do not agree with the idea of unconditional love, correct? In support of your view, you reference the condition between God and man to accept his son in order to attain eternal life. I don't recall using that example. I might have, but I'm not Christian. I'm Jewish in belief. I'm pro-Christian, very much so, as you probably know. But I don't know, I don't remember using that particular Example: I've always heard God loves the sinner and not the sin. Yeah, okay. So God's love— does God love require our acceptance of his son, or does God love us no matter what is, and is willing to let us make our mistake? So maybe I did use that, maybe in speaking about Christians, because I don't even think Christians should believe in unconditional love. I don't, I don't know what the biblical basis of it is. I don't know what the logical basis of it is. I don't know what the moral basis of it is. If love is given unconditionally, then love has been removed from moral considerations. It has become the only amoral act in life. That's what you're saying. There's no moral quality to love. No matter how despicable, cruel, vile you are, I love you just as much as I love the kind. Dennis Prager. That means love has no moral quality to it. It's bizarre to me. Just bizarre. You really think it's an ideal to love torturers as much as Mother Teresa? I don't get it. And I mean it, I don't get it. It's not a matter of hyperbole or rhetorical device. I don't get it.

I do.

It is better to love the kind. It's a moral ideal to love the kind. That's my belief. What, to me, the idea that God is in heaven and is sort of like an air conditioner. Air conditioners are amoral, right? They condition the room if a Hitler walks in and they condition the room if a Mother Teresa walks in. Correct?

Right.

So that is how people who speak of God's unconditional love, to me, are speaking about God. He just blows his love onto everybody equally. It is irrelevant how people treat other people. I don't know where that's from. By the way, if you check it, it's very interesting. Google has a fascinating graph on the use of terms in books and magazines and newspapers in the course of the last 100 years, from the beginning of the 20th century. Mm-hmm. Under 20 years. And I looked up unconditional love, and the graph goes like, like this. So virtually nothing, 1900, virtually nothing, then a little climb, then a little climb, and after the 1950s, it's, it's like a mountain. The use of the term unconditional love skyrockets after the '50s when people became stupid. Yeah. And that's— it cracks me up. It's like perfect. The timing is perfect. Now, what people— the joke is, as America got more secular, it spoke more about unconditional love, not as it got more religious. When America was much more religious in the beginning of the 20th century, people didn't talk about unconditional love. So, so much for those of you who are religious and think it's a religious idea, unconditional love. Unconditional love is a secular idea that I utterly reject. And it's a religious idea that I utterly reject. Now, I don't know exactly how God figures out whom he loves or not, but it's very hard for me to believe that God looks upon people who massacre other human beings, "I love you." It's just, I don't see it. And, you know, people say, by the way, people say, well, it's like children. If your children murders, you will still love, you will still love that. If your child murders, you will still love your child. Well, first of all, it's not a fully analogous thing because we are humans and humans are flawed. So I'm not sure that that is a perfect analogy, but even then, I'm not sure that it's true. There are plenty of parents who have seen behavior in children and don't love them quite as much as they did earlier or quite as much as they love their good children. Let me put it to you this way. If one of your children murders another one of your children, it's hard for me to believe you will love that child quite as much as you did before. Because remember, we're all God's children. So the person who tortures another person is one child of God torturing another child of God. So I'm not even— I don't— I'm not even sure that the child analogy among humans quite works out. There are parents who have given up on their awful children. And I mean, doesn't mean that they won't welcome them if they come back. God welcomes us if we do penitence. Mm-hmm. By the way, if God loves me anyway, why be penitent? If I have God's love while I continue to kill, rape, and murder— well, that's the same thing— murder, rape, and steal, then why stop? He loves me anyway. I got a lot of arguments against the idea. You know what my favorite verb is? Are we near the end? Are we at the end? My favorite verb. Did I ever tell you? You know, right? Do you know? You both know? The E word? All together now. All together now. You know, people, it's a very fun thing to do. Ask, what is your favorite 4-letter word? Now, I mean, if you ask young men, we all know, and so we won't even go there. So let's leave out the sexual for a moment. But I think people would say love, right? A lot of people would say love. And I would not. I would say earn. Earn is a beautiful word. I want to earn love. I don't want unconditional love from anybody. I don't want it from my kids. I don't want it from my wife. What does that mean? No matter how I behave? So if I come home, you know, and beat up some members of my household, just mistreat everybody, you will love me the same? By the way, I don't even think it's a good idea If you think your spouse will love you no matter how you act, you're not gonna act as well. I think emotional insecurity is very, very good. I don't want you to be fully secure in the love of people. I'm not fully secure that my syndicator, my radio syndicator will hire me every time my contract comes up, and that's a good thing. Every single day I think, after 35 years, this better be my best show or my job is on the line. I do better because I don't have an unconditional contract with my employer. If unconditional love is good, why isn't an unconditional contract good? Think about that one till next week. Dennis Prager, thanks for being with me. Thank you. Tomorrow on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Audrey Aman, Waitesburg, Washington. Hi Dennis, what do you think about assisted suicide? I noticed you avoid this topic. I don't think I've avoided it, but I don't talk about it much, but I don't think I've avoided it. I think it's something we must speak to. Everyone has compassion for those suffering in pain, who are terminally ill. However, pain management is the answer, not assisted suicide. If you took— if you look at the expense or the experience— my glasses are in need of a reading glass part, better than I have. Anyway. If you look at the experience of every nation where it's been tried, you'll see it is indeed a slippery slope. In Canada, oh poor Canada, it goes under the ever so comforting acronym of MAID, Medical Assistance to Dying. And let me see, lost my spot here. And the, let's see, goes under the ever so comforting acronym of medical assistance in dying. And the abuses are so frightening. Seniors report being told they could move into assisted living or, or chose, or choose. That's, they spelled it wrong. Or choose suicide. Disabled people living in poverty are eligible. Two disabled women on welfare were unable to receive housing that would meet their unique needs. Ever-helpful social services suggested they take advantage of the offer of assisted suicide, which they did. I'm laughing because what, what is— what a suggestion. The words mature minors are now being discussed so depressed teens can receive the assisted suicide, since having a psychiatric illness will soon make one qualified for MAID— MAID, which is their term for medical assistance in dying. It's an important topic. My thinking: only those convicted of a capital crime should ever be put to death. There is a good reason the Hippocratic Oath says, first, do no harm. We do not have the wisdom to dispense death to others. The potential for abuse is staggering. As the mom of a disabled son, who loves his life that could be euthanized tomorrow in the Netherlands, I feel we must speak up. It's an extremely difficult subject. Extreme— it's— there's— there's— and there's certainly no perfect answer, I'm convinced. I'm not an absolutist in the no camp, and I'm certainly not in the yes camp. My brother is the head of medical ethics at an Ivy League university. He's a doctor. And I, the last I spoke to him about it, his position was it should be illegal, but doctors should figure out ways to do it when necessary and just not be prosecuted. Now, that's my position. There are times when the only truly merciful thing is to put somebody to death, but those are not normal times, but they exist. Join us tomorrow to hear more on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. 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 Living International Bibles. We want to take just a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the podcast. Go to lifeaudio.com to find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network, including shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.