Ami Horowitz Shows the Left is Unwilling to Compromise

Dennis Prager is my guest. He makes these videos about humanity, my way of putting it. He asked a number of questions to his fellow citizens of Manhattan, and the first one was, uh, are you tolerant? And then asked them what they thought of Republicans. So the, the answers were, that I recall, Or of course this woman who said she was the most empathetic person in the world, literally, I mean she meant it seriously, then said that Republicans, of all the creatures of the earth, the Republicans are the lowest or something like that. And then others, the young people you interviewed said they're monstrous. I remember that, monstrous. And of course selfish. You know, Republicans give more charity and donate more time to volunteering than Democrats do, but they don't know that. I'll tell you, the only area in which the left is superior, uh, or ranks higher than the right is self-esteem. That they're there, they are the inventors of the self-esteem movement, and they are the practitioners of the self-esteem movement. What was the second question you asked?

Well, so once we've established their level of intolerance, we then moved on to compromise. And because look, now, what's the catchword that all the Democrats are using? Unity. We have to unify. We have to get together. Now you and I both know, certainly suspected, but we really No, when they say unify, they really mean unify on their issues and their perspectives and their way of doing things. So I decided to put to the test. I did a little bit of an acid test. I said, okay, should we compromise? How important is that? Of course, across the board, they talk about how important and vital it is to compromise, to move forward after these dark 4 years. So then we said, okay, let's talk about all the major issues. And I started naming them. How can we compromise on healthcare? How can we compromise on climate change? How can we compromise on income inequality? And without— Dennis, I know sometimes you say, well, how many of these people really respond in this way? And usually it's always a majority. Usually it's 60, 70, 80%. 100% of people I spoke with could not or refused to find a single compromise. In fact, It's rare that I put an exchange with someone longer than 20, 30 seconds, 'cause anything longer than that, it just gets boring. But one of the first times I put an exchange between me and another woman over a minute, because it was so elucidating, it was so fascinating. She brought up to me, she said, "Well, we can compromise on climate change." And I said, "Well, how can we do that?" And she couldn't come up with a single, and every time I said, well, can we, I offered, common sense compromise, she would say, no, no, no, we can't compromise that. No, we can't compromise on fracking or ANWR or CAFE standards or anything. At the end, I was so frustrated. I kept asking, well, what are you— a compromise means you have to give something. What are you willing to give? And she couldn't come up with one. I finally, you know, said, I'm not sure you understand the meaning of the word compromise. I think that's— it was so frustrating to hear them say, I want to compromise, and then simply couldn't find one area of compromise. Not one.

And then there was a third question which eludes me. What was that? Do you remember?

I think that was— I think the third was going through all the different examples of possible— oh no, at the end I asked them, well, do you— now that we've gone through this exercise, right, in real time, what do you think of compromise? And, and they all said, well, now that you say it this way, maybe there isn't compromise. Maybe I'm not willing to compromise. They all kind of admitted that, you know what. And, and of course they will use grand terms. Like one woman said If it's good for humanity and for everybody, then we can't compromise, right? Because the left always likes to use grand language because they're such a grand theology to help all mankind. But they really, they didn't have some self-realization of saying, well, okay, for issues that I care about, there's no compromise.

I have said, I'm very honored you're an avid listener, so you know that I've said this really as long as I broadcast, and I could tell you where I learned it. Whenever people, even my side, whenever people call for unity, there's a falseness at the heart of it because it's unity on my terms. And I learned it from, interestingly, religious people.

And I remember when I did my first radio show, I mean, religion on the line, the first time I called in at 12 years old, religion on the line.

I love that. That's right, I forget that. That's great. You called my show, now I call you.

How do you like that?

That's really— that you've really risen. So yes, he heard of me when he was 12. I was 14. Anyway, I remember when Catholic priests and Protestant ministers on the show, because it was clergy and there was a rabbi as well, each week did this for 10 years. And loved it. And periodically, uh, the priest or the minister would say it's so important to have Christian unity. So I found, I found that very interesting. So I would ask the, the priest, so for the sake of Christian unity, would you, would you give up, uh, the papacy? I mean, that the Protestants don't recognize the Bishop of Rome as having authority. No, no, no, I can't give up the Pope, obviously. So I would ask the Protestant, are you prepared to accept the Pope for the sake of unity of Christians, right? And a whole bunch of other questions. Are you going to accept the Catholic sacraments? And they go, well, can't do that. So then the same with the Jews. You know, oh, we want Jewish unity. So I would ask the Orthodox Rabbi, okay, so are you prepared to accept the intermarriages of Reform Rabbis? Well, can't do that. And then, you know, same with the reform. So everybody, and I liked all these people. I had no issue with them. So people I like, even their calls for unity are false. We all want unity on our terms. I want unity in America. I want everybody to believe in liberty, e pluribus unum, and in God we trust. So that's, sorry for the long soliloquy here, but that's what you're, You're sitting out in front of—

It's exactly right. You're exactly right. And look, it is not— it is part of the problem for the left anyways when it comes to unity is they don't get it because, and again, you've said this a million times, it's so true. They have no connection whatsoever to the right. They don't have friends who are on the right. They don't look at the right-wing media or even right-of-center media.

That's right. Hold on.