Dennis & Julie: My Favorite Word is Earn

Your dog and a stranger are drowning. You can only save one. Who do you choose? 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. Order now at PragerStore.com.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Dennis and Julie podcast. I am the Julie of the Dennis and Julie and we have Dennis Prager here. Boy, Dennis, it is an honor to open up a show when I have a seasoned talk show host here.

Listen, uh, you have gotten a lot of honors from me in the last year.

I have.

You have earned every one.

Where—

I'm a big believer, by the way, just, just to note, you know, my— I think you may have heard me say this— my favorite English verb and I'm not joking, is earn.

It's a great word.

And do you know that almost only English has that verb? In the— and yes, it's fascinating. In the Romance languages, you know, Spanish, Portuguese, French, the word is— like, I know French— is gagner, which means to win. They don't have a word to earn. When you, you win a living In Hebrew, you profit a living. Earn is almost uniquely English.

See, this is why I wish I spoke multiple languages. Unfortunately, I only speak English, but you, you get information like this, and boy, is that fascinating.

Julie, that, that, folks, is typical Julie Hartman. She picked up exactly the point I have learned so much by studying a lot of languages, and I knew it at the time, and I knew how lucky I was to learn them. You learn to think differently, to have a perspective on your own language. Anyway, uh, we could, we could go on anything for so long, which is why we have the Dennis and Julie podcast. But I know you have something you wanted to raise, so take it away.

Yes. Well, before I raise that, I want to remind all of you that this podcast is sponsored by MyPillow, and you can go to mypillow.com and get great discounts on all of Mike Lindell's products with the promo code Hartmann, which is my last name. That's spelled H-A-R-T-M-A-N. So the topic, the first topic that I want to raise pertains to these Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings. Of course, she is the judge who is currently being nominated to serve on the Supreme Court. She's President Biden's first Supreme Court nominee, and assuming that she is confirmed, she will be the first Black woman to serve on the court. Dennis, I was watching some replays of her hearing. I am by no means a Supreme Court expert, but I love watching nomination hearings going as far back as decades ago, and I have to tell you, I have never seen anything like this. Her answers to the questions that the senators asked her were just so baffling. At one point, one of the senators asked her if she could define a woman, the definition of a woman, and she responded, no, I can't, I'm not a biologist. The next question that she was asked was, when life begins, and she responded, I don't know. Another highlight, if you will, of the hearing was when she was asked about court packing, and she said, quote, I haven't really thought about it. Uh, can you provide a definition for the word woman? Can I provide a definition? No. Yeah, I can't. You can't? Not in this context. I'm not a biologist. The meaning of the word woman is so unclear and controversial.

God, I'm not a biologist. Do you realize, Julie, we have— we are so transcended an Orwellian world. Orwell could not have come up with that. A Harvard Law School graduate And by the way, it's not irrelevant, unfortunately. A Harvard Law School graduate is asked at a confirmation hearing for a Supreme Court Senate seat, what is the definition of a woman? And she says, I can't, I'm not a biologist. By the way, the implication is a biologist could. I'm not sure she'd want to be on record as saying that a biologist could give you a definition. This, if this doesn't prove the sickness that pervades the left and its stranglehold on the minds of all of its adherents, nothing will. This should be— anyone who has a good heart and a good mind should leave the left on the basis of that. The rot that we have descended to, that it is controversial, indeed not controversial, impossible to define woman for a Harvard Law School graduate who is probably going to be a Supreme Court Justice. And what was your other— oh yes, when does life begin? I don't know. I wish they would have said—

It's your job to know.

Well, it's not even— wait, whose job is it not to know? You don't have to be a Supreme Court nominee to have a thought on the question, when does life begin? Even if she would have said, look, I'm torn. Is it life independent of a mother? Is it life dependent on a mother? Nothing. I don't know. What is it in the womb? If it's not life, forget God, forget religion. If it's not life, what is it? Is it an inorganic pimple? What is it?

When does life begin, in your opinion? Senator, I don't know, ma'am. I don't know. You know, Dennis, by the way, she's not just a Harvard Law graduate. She's a Harvard College graduate. And she serves on the Harvard Board of Overseers, which is essentially the board of trustees. She is too cowardly to say the real answer to those questions, and she's Actually, interestingly, also too cowardly to say the answer that the left wants her to say, which is, I believe, in pertaining to the women question, I'm sure that the left's response would be, "Well, if you think you're a woman, then you're a woman." And that's sort of, if she's not even willing to say that, that sort of indicates to me that there's at least some part of her that knows that it's nonsense and that she may not really believe it. And it's just such an interesting example because what I have noticed, not only in this hearing, but I've noticed it among my peers, is that leftism severely weakens people's ability to think straight, and crucially, it infects people with this horrible lack of willingness to dissent. You know, the other day I was talking to one of my friends about feminism and hookup culture, which I know, Dennis Prager, we've talked about it. Because hookup culture is very prevalent on this campus. It's prevalent on a lot of college campuses. Very few people date. And I was telling her, you know, this really goes back to the modern-day definition of feminism, which tells us that men and women are the same. Men and women are equal, but they are not the same. And I think that by telling us that they're the same and that we want sex as much as men, where feminism is actually playing right into the hands of men by giving them what they want, sex without commitment. And my friend's response was so interesting. She said to me, I agree with you, Julie, but I don't want to criticize feminism because the same people who criticize feminism are the same people who think that women shouldn't have rights. It's the same argument that I heard in the wake of my Wall Street Journal article when I was criticizing Harvard's irrational bureaucratic COVID restrictions. So many people said to me, you know, I agree with you that the masking is ridiculous, but I'm hesitant to criticize masking because the same people who criticize masks are the same people who think that COVID is a hoax. I mean, it's just such a good example of how leftists adopt, their thinking is so jumbled and they are so unwilling to go all against the grain. And that's what we saw here with her responses.

God, your points are terrific. I want to go back to the point of the cowardice. Such an important point. She didn't have the courage to say what the left wanted her to say. Such an important point. That's right, she just should have said There is no definition. In fact, there's really no such thing. If you feel you're a woman, you're a woman. But she wouldn't say that because she would be laughed at by half this country, and it would be hard for even most liberals to swallow. Forget the left, which I divide, as you know, between left and liberal. So you're entirely right about the courage part. It's scary that somebody up for Supreme Court can't define woman. What is left in the indictment of leftism? What more can you want? Than those, those answers.

I see this happening now among people my age. Her responses are eerily reminiscent of the kinds of responses that I hear from my peers. And, you know, I really believe in life, the way that you develop good traits is through habit. You have to develop a habit of showing up on time. You have to develop a habit of being neat. And you have to develop a habit of being honest and courageous and standing up to nonsense. And that's why I am so determined to do that now, because I know that if I don't do it now, one day— I mean, I don't know if I'll be sitting before the Senate being nominated to the Supreme Court, but one day I'll be in a situation like that. And for my whole life, I wouldn't have done it. And it will show.

So I don't know if you know this one. You know so much about me, so I don't— I just preface that, but it's not relevant. Many years ago, a woman called my show and said, Dennis, what do you— what do you suggest I tell my daughter? She's in college, and she told me that if she writes what she really believes, she'll get a, a bad grade. A low grade. What should I tell her? I said, look, of course I can't tell you what to tell your own daughter, but you, you're asking me, so I'll tell you what I would say. I would say, if you are going to compromise on your values for a grade in college, when will you stop compromising on your values? That is exactly your point. I'll give you another one which I actually said on my show very recently. You talked about building your character through habit. So I, when I was making an appeal for PragerU on my radio show, I said, you know, we provide everything for free, but it's not a good thing to take things for free. And I use the example that I send money every year to a photography site because I'm, you know, into photography, and I use this guy's reviews of cameras and lenses, and I send him money. And I made the point that half the reason I send him the money is to help him out, but half the reason is to build my own character. I don't want to take things for free, and that's a character issue. So it's— ironically, there's a selfish component to my sending the guy some money. So you— I, I— so I'm just so reacting so positively to the point that you made with my own illustration.

One of the things I want to ask you, we, we've been talking about developing habits young, and I've realized that we've talked a lot about me and my journey to conservatism, or the way that I have tried to develop these habits. And we— I haven't really ever asked you about your journey when you were young. I remember you're saying that when you were my age, you thought the way that you did now. But how did— what was your path to your way of thinking? Were your parents conservative? Was it your religion?

The, the— in a nutshell, because of course I could spend hours on this, but in a nutshell, My pathway to almost everything is hatred of evil. I really hate people hurting other people when they— obviously when they don't deserve it. I hate it. I mean, it's a visceral— it's not just a moral and intellectual position, it's visceral. It's one of my favorite verses in the Bible is, those of you who love God must hate evil. If you don't hate evil, you don't love 'God.' It's my favorite line in the entire Bible. And I hated evil. I remember I was— there was a very famous TV show. It was the only one that the family watched together every Sunday night. It was called The 20th Century. Walter Cronkite, who was a national legend at the time, was the moderator or the narrator. And it was about the 20th century. And so a film came on, I don't know, maybe I was 9 or 10, and it showed Hitler, and I go, who is he? And they said, he's a very bad man, he murdered 6 million Jews. They said it quite matter-of-factly. And I remember thinking, what? He did that? And I was filled with anger and loathing not because I was a Jew. I mean, that was a factor, but the primary factor, because I feel the same to Stalin and Mao, was what somebody could do so much evil like that. So my route from the left was the left doesn't hate evil, and that was the, that was the thing. I stayed a liberal, I stayed a Democrat till Ronald Reagan, but I I knew I was as anti-left as I was anti-fascist because they didn't oppose evil. So I got a question for you. You could ask me more, obviously, but I do have a question for you on this very same subject, and it arose on my radio show, and I was mentioning that Every black conservative I know, and I know every, I think I know every single leading black conservative I know personally, and they all radiate joy. Like Ladapo, the great Surgeon General of Florida, whom I'm having dinner with this week in Florida, who, and I've had Shabbat dinner with him, and he's not a Jew, but I, as you know, A lot of non-Jews at Shabbat dinners. Anyway, the guy is such a joy to be with, and Larry Elder, and you name the person. And then I think of the Blacks on the left, and they radiate anger and bitterness and unhappiness, just like whites on the left. So I have a question for you, and you know, I may have a vested interest in the answer, but I I only want you to tell me the truth. So in your journey, you were never a leftist, I presume, but your journey from liberal— Amala, by the way, Amala Epunobi, she went from left. She has a BLM tattoo. She went from left to right. You went from liberal to right. It's not the same, but you— it changed. So I am curious, you reflect on yourself a lot. Are you happier moving rightward?

No question I am happier. And it's for two reasons. The first reason is that finding conservatism has given me gratitude. And because I've read all of your books, Dennis, I know that your thesis in your happiness book is that a necessary component of happiness is having gratitude. And when I read your book, Still the Best Hope, and I was learning about the American Trinity, E Pluribus Unum, liberty, and in God we trust. I developed such an appreciation for America, and I seriously walk around every day feeling just so appreciative that I was born into this free country. And, you know, the last podcast episode, I told you that I just got back from Israel, and Israel is a free democratic country. Going into the Lebanon-Syria border. And I remember I was standing on a hill overlooking Lebanon and seeing the Hezbollah, which is the terrorist organization that unfortunately has an outpost in southern Lebanon. I was looking at the Hezbollah flag fly, and I just wrote in my journal in all caps, underlined, I am so lucky to be American. And so that is what conservatism has given me. The second thing is that it seems sort of paradoxical, but conservatism embraces the truths about life, which are sort of pessimistic, that humans are inherently bad and that we need to combat the more malignant parts of our nature. And in a weird way, that has actually given me happiness because it's sort of comforting to me. To understand the truths of life. Because before I was a conservative, I sort of bought the Rousseauian idea that humans are born good and then it's society that corrupts them. And that's an extremely left-wing idea, as we know. It's not that someone commits crime because they're evil. It's that someone commits crime because society has pushed them to do so. So when you have clarity on life, for better or for worse, that does bring you a kind of a comfort and a joy. So yes, I am absolutely happier. That's something I think about a lot.

God, you should write a piece. I'm serious, you should write a piece on just even those two things. By the way, just for the record, I, I make this point, I mean, it's important I think to make it precisely. I don't say people are basically evil, just not basically We're basically evil, we'd have no free will. We can do both. Goodness is like gold. You have to mine for it. Or better, it's like— it's like— because I think in terms of music a lot— it's like piano playing. Virtually every human could play, can play piano, but there are very, very, very few who do. So you have to teach people to play piano. You have to teach people to be good, but it is there. It just, it needs to be mined. But the happiness issue— so now, you know, I'm sure you know this, but I think it's important to emphasize. You have an idea when you, when you answered my question and when I thought about it, why I conceive of happiness as such an important goal in life because it transforms you. That's why I say there were no happy leftists. There are happy liberals, there are unhappy liberals, happy conservatives, unhappy conservatives, but there are no happy leftists. When you leave the left, you become happier. And how's this? When you become happier you leave the left. It goes in both directions.

That's fascinating.

It is. It's absolutely fascinating. If I— you know what, I have to respond to the Chabad rabbi at Harvard. I feel terrible because I want to speak there before you leave, and it's getting late. But if I spoke there, I would be as happy to speak on happiness as on religion or politics. Because it's transformative, the importance of the happiness issue. Do you think the average student at Harvard thinks of himself or herself as happy?

It's a tough one.

I know it's a tough one. As I asked it, I thought that.

Go on. It's hard to say. For other people. I would say that they think that they are happy, but I don't know if they truly are. I fear that many of us lack the capacity to be happy because part of being happy is having agency over your own life and making decisions for yourself. And again, not to always bring up the Wall Street Journal article that I wrote, But my thesis was essentially that so many of us throughout our lives, our principal goal has to bend, has been to please the people who can grant or withhold approval— parents, teachers, coaches, admissions officers, job interviewers. And we have so adopted whatever they want us to do. And I said in that article that the reason why we wear masks, even though a lot of us think that it's irrational, is because they want us to do it and we want to please them and attain the next credential and get that Harvard degree. So if they want us to wear a mask on the treadmill, so be it. But back to happiness, when you live a life like that, that is not your own, when you are just acquiescing to and following whatever the people around you want you to do, how can you be happy? What do you think, Dennis, about young people?

Oh no, no, look, I don't think, I don't think there, They're happy. First of all, I don't know how you can be happy if you believe that you live in a country that is essentially a moral cesspool, that it was founded by bigots, racists, slave-owning evil human beings, that it was founded in order to protect slavery, that you've been told only lies about this country, that today it remains systemically racist. And not only is your— so not only is your past awful and is your present awful, but your future is even worse because you will be killed by climate change. I don't see how it is possible to have those convictions and be a happy person. You would have to dissociate from your deepest convictions. My past stinks, my country stinks, and my future stinks, but I'm a happy person. I, not being on the left, I think my past as an American is noble with obvious awful things in it. I am the luckiest person in the world to be American today and all of my life until today, and I do not believe for a nanosecond that there is an existential threat to biological life posed by climate change. So I don't have any of the three suppositions of every single human being on the left, which is the vast majority of your campus. And it is that those are some of the reasons I at least have the ability to be happy.

Well, to your point, Dennis, yes, you're right. There is there's definitely a cohort of people that believes all of those things that you said. And you're right that when you believe that you live in a rotten country that's against you, how can you be happy? But I do think that there also is another cohort of people who claim to believe that those things are true, but they don't actually believe them. Because think about it, if you truly believed that this country was as rotten as they say it is, they wouldn't want to be here. They would leave. Similarly, there are all the people who say that climate change is going to produce an apocalypse in the next 10 years. If they really, really believed what they were saying about climate change and the threat that it poses, they would not live the way that they do. They would not live in these fossil fuel-run dorms. They wouldn't drive the cars that they drive. They wouldn't go on the vacations that they go on. They wouldn't even have the iPhones that they have. So that is what gives me pause. And it actually sort of goes back to what we were talking about earlier with Judge Brown Jackson, how she was too cowardly. She wouldn't even say the answer that the left would want her to give. And again, I think that's because there is a part of her that knows that it's nonsense and that she doesn't believe it herself.

I have wondered I hope my whole life whether they believe what they say. And if you believe America is systemically racist, how do you explain 3 million blacks have moved here in the last few decades from Africa and the Caribbean? Are they idiots? I mean, I ache to ask any of your professors that that question. Before we say goodbye, let's, uh, let's have a word for, uh, MyPillow. Take it away, Julie.

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That's right.

By the way, I just want to add, I use his product. They are terrific. Politics aside, love him or don't love him, the fact is he makes a fantastic product. This was, uh, this was, this was very, very good stuff. This was so rich, and I'm just saying this to all of you watching, that I, I hope you will consider sending this over to other people or just letting people know what Julie and I are doing, because you obviously must know how much I think of her that I would do this every week. I've never co-hosted anything with anybody in 40-year career on the radio. That's, uh, that's how much I think of her. Anyway, it's been great to be with you, Julie. I, uh, I'll have a report on my son's wedding at our next, uh—

Yes, congratulations to Aaron and Felicia.

That's right, quite excited.

Well, Dennis, it is always good to be with you too. I have to tell you how much I enjoy these podcasts. I'm sad that they're only once a week because there's something of a therapy session for me. So thank you so much. And I want to thank all of you for listening. And I also want to remind you to please send in your questions to us. We would love to read some aloud and answer them in our subsequent episodes. You can send them to me at my website, which is julie-hartman.com. And you can find this show, Dennis and Julie, on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and on the Salem Podcast Network. See you all soon. Take care.

Everybody wants the same. Everybody wants the same thing. 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.

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.

If There Is No God by Dennis Prager, available now at pragerstore.com. That's pragerstore.com.