So Nice They Named It Twice

Dennis Prager here. Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast. To hear the entire 3 hours of my radio show commercial-free every single day, become a member of PragerTopia. You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives as well as the daily show prep. Subscribe at prageropia.com.

Hey everyone, good morning. It is Thursday, June 8th, 2023, and I am your guest host for today. My name is Julie Hartman. I am the host of Timeless with Julie Hartman, which is a Salem News Channel show. It's also available on YouTube Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. We segment that show by doing first news, that's the Julie Noted portion of the program, and then we talk about timeless, eternal subjects. Because as important as it is to know about politics, sometimes we are just too damn political in this country. So that is my show, Timeless. And I'm also honored to co-host a show with a guy you may have heard of, Dennis Prager. The show is called Dennis and Julie. You can also catch it on the Salem News Channel, or every Monday it premieres on YouTube on my Julie Hartman YouTube page. We have a really great show coming up today. The first hour we are going to talk about domestic news with a specific focus on the immigration crisis that has come to characterize this country in just a short amount of time, really since President Biden took office. Of course, we have always dealt with immigration issues at our southern border. But since President Biden took office in 2021, according to the Department of Homeland Security, over 5 million undocumented immigrants have crossed into our, our country via the southern border alone. That's the first hour. I'm going to interview Representative Beth Van Dyne. She is a congresswoman from Texas. 40th, uh, uh, 24th, excuse me, Congressional District, and she is fabulous when it comes to talking about immigration. I'm very honored to welcome her to the program this first hour. The second hour, we are going to move on to foreign policy. We'll be discussing what's going on in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and a recent terrible attack in France by a Syrian refugee who stabbed several students at a kindergarten playground. So that's the second hour. And then the third hour, those of you who listen to me guest host know that I typically do a history hour. Today I'm going to do a literature hour focusing on how overanalyzing literature, focusing on symbolism and the hidden social meaning behind each text ruins the beauty of the book. I have been reading some old classics that I read back in middle school and high school, and I didn't like these back in middle school and high school because they were overanalyzed to death. Titles such as The Scarlet Letter, which has become one of my favorite books, as well as Jane Eyre. And now that I'm older and I'm reading these and I'm not in a classroom, I don't have to write a paper on it. I am enjoying these books so much. It is such a shame the way the American education system today, as I said, overanalyzes these books to death. It kills the joy of learning and reading for students. So that's the third hour today, literature hour. But let's dive in here to the operating issue of this first hour. That is the immigration crisis. As I mentioned, according to the Department of Homeland Security, over 5 million undocumented immigrants have crossed into our country via the southern border since President Biden took office. I might add that the Department of Homeland Security also said that none of these over 5 million immigrants were tested for COVID-19. Doesn't that seem to be a bit absurd to you? This was during the time that our country was still locked down. The economy was slowing. Actually, in 2021, I was a junior in college and I wasn't even allowed to be on campus. I was experiencing college, if you can even use that verb, experiencing college via Zoom. At the same time where there's all this COVID hysteria, millions of immigrants untested for COVID were allowed to come into our country. The hypocrisy, the overlooking of that is just unbelievable. But today there is a news story that was headlined in the Wall Street Journal about how New York State, and specifically New York City, is bearing the brunt of this immigration crisis. Especially, how interesting is that? Those of us that know the geography of the United States know that New York is a northern state. It is not exactly close to the southern border. So if northern states are sounding the alarm on this issue. It indicates the extent to which it has come to plague our society. 1-800-PRAGER-776 if you want to call in and talk about it. 1-800-PRAGER-776. The mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, is filing a suit against 30 New York counties, including the neighboring counties of Orange and Rochester. Those are very near to New York City, Rockland, excuse me, that have issued executive orders in order to prevent their individual counties from sending asylum seekers to hotel rooms that the city has paid for. Okay. So the municipal leaders of these counties are trying to resist sending migrants on the city's dollar to hotel rooms. And Mayor Eric Adams is filing lawsuits against those municipal leaders. This is the same horrible, immoral, and waste of resources that we saw a few weeks ago when it came out that the Department of Justice is filing a lawsuit against the state of Tennessee over Tennessee passing a law that minors should not be able to get gender-affirming care. Really? This is where our litigation resources, time, and energy are going. 47,000 illegal immigrants are currently under New York City's care. 2,000 have entered New York City in the past week, and New York City has heard over 2,000 asylum claims in the past week. But don't worry, everyone. According to Mayor Eric Adams, this number is far down from what we saw at the end of May, when there were over 5,500 undocumented immigrants coming to New York City during the week. Isn't that funny, the way that the mayor's going, oh, it's fine, the bleeding, gaping wound is not bleeding as much as it was 2 weeks ago. It's still a bleeding, gaping wound. It is taking $1.2 billion of taxpayer money to pay for. That is the amount of money, $1.2 billion, that has been allocated to the issue of undocumented on immigrant housing and healthcare in New York City alone over the past fiscal year. The mayor's office has also said that they expect $4.3 billion will be spent on this issue alone by this time next year, June of 2024. My dear viewers, if you could see Sean's face right now. You would not be surprised. His mouth is gaping open in shock. Are we really shocked though? I mean, Mayor Eric Adams, he ran on this when he was trying to secure the mayoral seat, if you will. He said that New York City would be a sanctuary city, that they would protect immigrants. And now, you know, you got to give him credit. I guess you could say he followed through. On a campaign promise, but at what expense? Mayor Adams has said that he wants to subsidize New York citizens for hosting migrants in their homes. They have such an overwhelming problem. Migrants are living on street corners. They're going into churches and synagogues and mosques. They are being put up on the taxpayer dime in hotels. But still, this is not enough. So the mayor is trying to pay citizens to keep undocumented immigrants in their apartments or in their homes. Additionally, the mayor is pushing with full force to house thousands of these undocumented migrants in, ready for it, an empty hangar at JFK International Airport in the state of New York. $40 million so far has been given by the federal government to New York City to deal with this problem. According to the mayor, that number, $40 million, is enough to pay for the problem for just 5 days. It covers the expenses for 5 days. But Representative Jeffries of New York and Senator Schumer of New York have approved $105 million to now be allocated towards this problem. So that will solve the problem for 10 days, maybe 12 days, it seems. Not to mention that this is on the backs of all of us American taxpayers, people who have worked hard for their money, who are paying, as much as we may have sympathy for these individuals, for citizens not of our own country. In the next segment, we're going to have Representative Beth Van Dyne, a Republican from Texas, She has been at the forefront of trying to solve this immigration issue on the southern border. It is an honor to have her on the program. I'm Julie Hartman. This is The Dennis Prager Show.

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Welcome back to the Dennis Prager Show. I am Julie Hartman sitting in for Dennis today, who is on a listener cruise somewhere in Europe. We've opened the show today by focusing on the immigration issue, which has come to plague our country, especially over the past 2 years. The rapidity with which an issue like this can metastasize is really concerning. Over the past 2 years, over 5 million undocumented immigrants have come across our border. Cities like New York City are struggling to maintain and support all of these migrants. I have someone here today who knows this issue all too well, and I admire her hugely because she is trying very hard to solve it. She is a representative serving in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican for Texas' 24th Congressional District. This is Representative Beth Van Duyn. She is serving her second term in in office. She was previously the mayor of Irving, Texas from 2011 to 2017. And she also served in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Trump administration. So you can tell she's from Texas, she's in the leadership in Texas, and she served in the Trump administration on this exact issue. She is an expert when it comes to immigration. Hello, Representative Van Dyne. Thank you so much for coming on.

Oh, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here, and I appreciate you highlighting this issue. As you know, it's affecting every single community in our country right now.

Yes, well, I remarked in the previous segment, it's amazing that New York, which is a northern state, is facing this onslaught. It shows you the extent to which this is an issue. So can you please provide some more color to this situation? You, you know very well what's going on.

Well, I'll tell you, you know, to New York, welcome to the party. It's something that Texas has been dealing with for years, and has only been exasperated by the, by the president administration. You don't have to just live in Texas, though we are a border state. We're getting hit by it harder than most. But you are seeing, as you mentioned, 5 million immigrants that have— illegal immigrants that have come into our country since Biden started. And if you look at the numbers and how many people, the record numbers that are coming in, we are hit to, to get to 14 million illegal aliens entering our country by the time Biden finishes his first term in office. To put a little bit of color on that, put a little perspective on it, that is larger than the state of Pennsylvania. Another way to look at it is it's the population of 12 states in our country. And that's how many just in the first term of Biden's presidency that he's going to let into our country illegally. This is planned. I mean, there's no doubt about about it. When you think about the warning that this administration had when they were coming in, you had folks from the previous administration who had finally wrapped their arms around it. They had put down the tools that had worked. They had shared with this administration what would happen if you removed them. And what did they do? They removed them. And they have become now partners with cartel members in Mexico, basically by allowing this to happen, by giving open freedom once these people get here, and by even being more like a logistics partner by putting them on planes and buses into a brand new era of slavery in the US. And it is heartbreaking that it's happened. We've got solutions on the Republican side, starting with our border bill that we just passed last month that could handle it. We just need the president to take it seriously and to sign those bills.

That number, 14 million, is just staggering. And I was reading that 1/10 of the electorate in the 2020 election was illegal undocumented immigrants or people who were not born in this country but may have gotten citizenship. Can you talk a bit more about this border bill that was just passed? What does it entail and include?

Well, our border bill actually supports local law enforcement to be able to do their job. It supports Customs and Border Protection, gives them more tools, gives them more technology. It puts money towards finishing a physical barrier, the wall, which when you talk to these agents and these law enforcement officers that are down there, they'll tell you they need that. And I'll tell you from a, from a local perspective, when I was mayor of the city of Irving, we had a high number of people that were coming in during the Biden administration. We had a high number of people that were entering our city illegally and we found increase in crime. So we actually worked with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. When we stopped someone who was doing a criminal activity in our city, if they weren't able to prove that they were here legally, We, we held them. We called up Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They interviewed them. If they were deemed to be in our country illegally, they were deported. And what we found— we got a lot of negative publicity from outlets like New York Times. But what we found was our crime dropped. When you enforce the laws which we have on our books, when you take control of your communities in a safe manner, that actually crime drops. We became one of the 5th safest cities in the country. And as a result, instead of the threats that we were told by folks, again, from the New York Times, that we were going to have people who moved out, we became one of the fastest-growing cities in the country. Businesses continue to move there. People want to live where they feel safe and where their kids can go to school in a safe environment. And so from a local perspective, this is what we were trying to do. Plus, we were saying— we were having to tell the administration and the agencies do your job. There are already enough laws on the books. If you just enforce them, you could get control of the border within 30 days. It was ridiculous that we even had to have that border bill because we already have those laws on the books, but we're having to force the Biden administration to do their job.

30 days. Wow. They can just be solved in that short amount of time. You said something that captured my interest. You said that this immigration issue is a modern-day form of slavery. I hope I'm I'm just summarizing what you said properly. You've very eloquently outlined the problems that this poses for American citizens. The crime issue, obviously overwhelming our education system, our housing system. But let's talk about the, the immigrants just from our healthcare system. Yeah.

Sorry.

Healthcare. Every system basically. But can you say more about this, this modern day form of slavery? What is happening to these immigrants that come into our country from a humanitarian perspective?

We're seeing people sex trafficking and human trafficking. There's been a number of cases that have already been outlined in places like Oregon where they had hundreds of illegal marijuana farms and they were taking people by bus or by plane there and having them work sometimes at gunpoint. And there have been people who have died because they've been working at these places. They're not getting paid and they're having to pay off a debt to come over to this country. And that is what we're seeing. We're seeing kids as young as the age of 13, 14 who are working in meatpacking plants. Um, overnight, again, not getting compensated. These— this is illegal activity, and it's happening because they're being allowed into our country by human traffickers, by cartels from Mexico, and it's not being stopped. And when you think about the, the power that Immigration and Customs Enforcement used to have to enforce our laws, that's been stripped under this administration. It's, it's planned. And I, I've said it before that the best The best partner of the cartels is the Biden administration by not doing its job.

We will be back in the next segment. More on immigration with Representative Beth Van Dyne. You can see why I've had her on the program. Your command of the facts is really astonishingly great. Yes, this— I wonder if this, this issue, you know, from a humanitarian perspective, if that may be able to convince the left that we need to do something about it because they don't seem to care that it's overwhelming American citizens. Maybe they would care about it actually being a humanitarian issue for the immigrants involved. We'll be back in just a few moments with Representative Van Dyne. I'm Julie Hartman. This is The Dennis Prager Show.

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Julie Hartman here. This is the Dennis Prager Show. I am honored to have Representative Beth Van Dyne on the program. We have been discussing immigration and she has outlined all of the issues that we are seeing According to her, by the end of President Biden's tenure in office, he will have allowed 14 million undocumented immigrants to come into the United States. We are seeing that this poses many problems, both for American citizens and for the immigrants themselves, who are the victims of sexual abuse, of child labor, and many other harmful, terrible things. And we have just scratched the surface. With this discussion. We haven't even talked about the, the fentanyl issue.

I was just gonna say that. Yeah, you haven't even talked about that. And the amazing thing is, in communities across the country, you know, they, they hear that this, um, um, victory lap that the Biden administration is taking, but they're seeing it firsthand. You know, they're seeing the problems. You know, everybody has known, um, someone within their, their, their close network who's died as a result of illegal fentanyl. It's targeting our youth. It's targeting our kids. It's being laced into everything from Adderall, you know, to candies that look like rainbow candies that are drugs. And the first time somebody takes these, they can die. And that's happening as a direct result of our open borders right now. And, you know, you're seeing millions of people come over and the administration has even given them an app. And they are saying that the numbers are low under the Trump administration. If the numbers were— they were— I think there were 1,000 a day, and that was considered a failure, and they were told to work on that. Under the Biden administration, it's 4 to 5 times that much, and they're doing a victory lap. It just shows you the difference, you know, between having a Republican and having a Democrat in office.

Yes. And in New York City, which we've been discussing, Mayor Adams has put in vending machines on street corners which can dole out the fentanyl-reducing overdose medication. And I'm thinking, that's the solution, really? Instead of stopping the issue, you want to have people have access to Narcan.

And, you know, and I support that. You know, I definitely support having our law enforcement and our fire department have that. But at the same time that they have those things and those vending machines, they also had drug paraphernalia on, you know, they had needles and other, other drug paraphernalia there for free. Come take it. And what was it, in the first 24 hours, all the machines were emptied. So they're going to supply every day. Are they going to put new, new supply in? It's, it's not a sustainable solution. And it's actually ridiculous when you start to think about it.

Mm-hmm.

Before we move on to other issues, I was saying to Representative Van Dyne during commercial break, there's so much to talk about. The Hunter Biden investigation, this potential bribery. That President Biden allegedly took as vice president, certainly the debt ceiling. Before we get to that, though, as a final question on this immigration issue, you've talked about Mexico's responsibility here. And recently, the president of Mexico was bragging about the fact that the United States was letting in so many immigrants. Can you say more about that?

A month and a half ago, I was actually with the Mexican president. I was with Obrador. In Mexico City with a small number of Ways and Means members. And, and I'll tell you, he was bragging to us about how much safer Mexico is than the U.S. He was bragging to us about how we don't have— how Mexico doesn't have a cartel issue, it's the U.S. How Mexico isn't letting fentanyl in, and we're having fentanyl deaths in our country because we have weak parenting. That is what the Mexican president is telling a, a small codel, a small group of U.S. Congress members. And I pushed back. I said, this is ridiculous. We're not seeing the level of of partnership from a country that we have an amazing opportunity to work on trade and other humanitarian issues with you. We're seeing you being very nasty, very negative, and not taking control of the situation at all or even being willing to work with us. And Biden continues to defend this president. And this president, Obrador, loves Biden because he sees how much money is coming into his country. As a direct result of illegal drug sales, human trafficking, what the cartels are getting. And he has no incentive at all to put a stop to it because the more the money the cartels make, the less problem that they cause for the Mexican government. They really are, it seems, to be in partnership with this administration. And it is tragic that it's happening. But Mexico is flourishing and the U.S. is hurting as a result.

And it isn't a coincidence that the president of Mexico was recently in a speech telling people who go to the United States to vote Democrat. Not a coincidence indeed. We'll be back with Representative Van Dyne. We're going to be talking about, as I mentioned, the debt ceiling talks that have been happening over the past few weeks, the compromise that Republicans and Democrats came to, as well as the House's investigation into the Biden family. Back in a few moments, 1-800-PRAGER-776. I'm Julie Hartman. Welcome back to The Dennis Prager Show. I'm Julie Hartman. I have been talking with Representative Beth Van Dyne from the great state of Texas. I have to tell you, dear viewers, you're probably thinking the same thing. Sean, during commercial break, said, can she please run for president? And I totally concur. It really gives me a lot of hope knowing that someone like like Representative Van Dyne is in our Congress. So let's move on in our final segment together to some other issues that have been plaguing our country. So many that we could talk about. We've just discussed immigration. Let's go to this debt ceiling compromise that was finally accomplished just a few days ago. Can you please outline for us what that entailed and some consequences of our debt problem that we have now?

Well, I've been saying it for the last year, even when I was just campaigning for this office, that the trillions of dollars that we're throwing into— it's the spend, it's government spend. Um, and we were throwing trillions of dollars into the system during COVID Um, we wanted to help people, but we went way overboard on that. And those trillions of dollars that were just kind of pumped into our economy have resulted as a direct result of the huge amount of inflation that we're all people paying now and seeing. That is one— that's one portion of it. But the Biden administration's denial of the spend and continuing to push more trillion, multi-trillion dollar bills— thank God you actually have a Republican majority in Congress. We were able to pass the Limit, Save, Grow bill that did a number of things. It was going to be the largest cut in our U.S. spending in our nation's history. That was important. It was going to take away the 87,000 additional IRS— is there funding for $80 billion IRS funding. It was clawing back the unspent COVID dollars. It was, it was saving American taxpayers from giving people who had gotten college loans, you know, college loan forgiveness. It was taking all those things back. It was also looking at regulatory reform. We were able to do that as a Congress with only a 4-member majority. That's really tough to do because it's a balancing act. You've got, you know, moderates in one, one areas of the country, then you've got, you know, highly conservative individuals in other areas of the country. It was a balancing act, but it was one thing that I think people did not think that we were going to be able to do as such a small majority. But we did. And we sent it back. We said, this is our— we were the only chamber. The Republican-led chamber was the only chamber that had a solution. It avoided default. It cut spending and it cut our debt. The Senate didn't want to do anything with it. The Biden administration took over 100 days to talk to Speaker McCarthy on that. Well, all of us supported that for the most part. The vast majority of us supported the limit, save, grow. And then we went into negotiations. Speaker McCarthy entered into negotiations with the president, who again was fighting tooth and nail on any kind of cuts which needed to happen. And as a result, we came out with a much lower, lesser bill than we had with limit, save, and grow. But I will give McCarthy credit. I did not vote for— I did not vote for the latest debt ceiling bill because what I heard overwhelmingly from my constituents We had calls, we had emails, we had text messages directly to me. What we heard overwhelmingly from them was it did not go far enough. It did not cut the spending. It did not have the work requirements necessary for Medicaid. It actually grew the SNAP program. And the regulatory reform that has been killing our businesses was not addressed enough in that bill. So I voted against it. But I will give Speaker McCarthy credit because he stuck to his to his word. And he let that bill at least 72 hours before we had to vote for it. We could all read it. We could talk to our folks about it back home, which is something you would never have seen under the Pelosi, the Pelosi reign. You never saw that. So at least we were able to get some things done. There's a split right now, but I think we have gotten a lot accomplished in those several first 5 months of this Republican-led Congress. If you think about the parents' rights bill that we were able to pass, our border bill that we were able to pass, the limit safe grow bill. When we work together as a conference, we were able to achieve a lot of things. It is the one stopgap from the craziness on the left, from the Senate and from the president.

Yes. Let's just hope that we can have more stopgaps in the coming years. We're all biting our fingers there— our nails, excuse me. Hopefully not biting our fingers, biting our nails there. Maybe we're so nervous we were doing that too. You know, as the days were approaching with that June 1st deadline, thankfully Republicans did come to this agreement. So for the sake of time, I want to move on quickly to all of this Biden corruption scandals that have come to characterize at least right-wing news, not left-wing news. The House has replaced the January 6th Committee with an investigation into this corruption. We have recently learned that our president, when he was vice president under the Obama administration, may have taken a $5 million bribe from a foreign national. But we've also seen that our own Attorney General Merrick Garland suppressed the IRS's investigation into Hunter Biden. Can you say more about what the House is doing to try to uncover these atrocities? And also, you're working against a government that seems to want to suppress your efforts to expose it.

Yeah, well, I mean, when that— when, when it's coming from within, of course they're going to take every opportunity they can to protect their own. And that's what we've seen. We've seen these agencies be weaponized to be able to use against American citizens simply because they don't believe in their political ideology. Um, that should never have happened. That's what we're trying to put a stop to. And you've got folks like Jim Jordan and James Comer who are, you know, taking these, these, these accusations very seriously. And we're asking for people— we will provide you with whistleblower protections. Just come and let us know what's I'm on the Ways and Means Committee, and we've done that very seriously. We've actually set up a portal that if people have seen waste, fraud, or abuse, you know, that they should feel free to come forward and talk to us about that. We need to know to be able to put a stop to it. These investigations are going to continue. It is not only just a waste of taxpayer dollars, but what— it's also opportunity cost when they could be doing their job. But also, if you think about that weaponization against American citizens, We saw it under the Obama administration, and it's continuing throughout the Biden administration. And now they're protecting their own, not just their own agency members, but now they're protecting the Biden family and other influential political families. We have had whistleblowers who come out on a number of occasions, multiple whistleblowers, not just one, who has said that the way that some of these investigations have been handled have been completely one-sided. Incompetently by party, and that should not happen. And, and we are prioritizing getting to the bottom of it and, and calling for investigations as well as people to step down when necessary.

Well, thank you so much for all the work that you do. We thank God for the whistleblowers, and we thank God for people like Representative Van Dyne. I appreciate your coming on to the program.

Thank you so much for having me. Keep up the good work.

Welcome, welcome, welcome. I'm Julie Hartman. I am the guest host today for The Dennis Prager Show. I am the host of Timeless with Julie Hartman, which is both a news and non-news program because we need both in our lives. We need the political and the non-political. And I also am the co-host of Dennis and Julie with our dear Dennis Prager, who is out today. He is on a listener cruise somewhere in Europe. I believe right now he is in Serbia, of all places. It's a great honor to be with you. First hour we covered immigration and domestic issues. We're now going to turn in this hour To focus a bit more on foreign policy though, I'll also talk about some information that has come out about puberty blockers that are being prescribed to young adults in this country. Actually, not even young adults, just young people, period. And in the third hour, I'm going to do what I call a literature hour. I have recently been reading Jane Eyre, which I read back in 8th grade and I hated it in 8th grade. I thought that it was boring and dry. And I didn't understand it. And now that I'm out of school and I don't have to write an essay on it and I don't have to analyze the symbolism of some obscure, uh, symbol, for lack of a better word, I, I love the book. And so in the third hour, we're going to be discussing how overanalyzing these great works, these great pieces of literature, actually ruins the love of learning for middle schoolers in high schools and how we can restore this critical love of learning. In order to be a full person, to be a healthy person, I really believe that you have to love learning. And so part of what I want to do on my show Timeless and through my work as a talk show host is bring that spark back to people. So please stay tuned for the third hour of the show. But first, let's talk a bit about foreign policy. 1-800-776-1836. 877-243-7776. We're going to be focusing in this first segment on Iran. Iran is one of the biggest oil producers in the world. It holds 17% of all of the oil reserves in the Middle East and 25% of the oil reserves in the world. And what we have seen over the past 2 years is that Iran has become closer to some of the United States' adversaries, that is China and Russia, and increasingly has become more adversarial with the United States. There have been some recent news stories that have come out over the past few days that have shown the sort of dichotomous relationship that we have with Iran. On the one hand, we are becoming more adversarial with this country, but on the other hand, we are seeming to reward them in some ways when we really should be trying to punish them or at least subvert their progress. Last week, more high-level positions were rewarded to Iranian leaders in the United Nations. I'm going to explain in a moment why this is a problem. Iran has been amidst a political upheaval over the past few months based on the way that it misogynistically treats its female population. There are all of these egregious human rights abuses. And instead of putting effective sanctions and icing out Iran, they have been given more high-level positions in the United Nations. That's the first development. The second development is that we know that there's been this scandal here in the United States of leaked documents. There was a young man who was tried in Worcester, Massachusetts recently for leaking some classified documents to media outlets. But one of these classified documents showed that the United States is working to get Iran and the United States back into the Iranian nuclear deal. For those who are unaware of this deal, it was signed under the Obama administration, and it was essentially giving Iran the right to develop nuclear weapons. Under the Trump administration, this nuclear deal was reversed. But now, according to these leaked documents that have just been publicized within the past few days, uh, slash weeks, we see that the Biden administration is clandestinely trying to bring Iran back into that deal. So we see here that the President of the United States has talked a lot publicly about how Americans condemn the actions of Iran, how we want to ice out Iran and make them pariahs. But then behind the scenes, our president is working to try to give Iran the most powerful resource that a country could have, that is a nuclear weapon. Recently, the Atomic Energy Commission came out and said that Iran was caught developing uranium to 84% purity. 90% purity is what is needed in order to fashion uranium into an atomic bomb. There are two types of nuclear weapons, and atomic is one of those weapons. So Iran is just a few percentage points, as far as uranium goes, away from developing a nuclear weapon. And according to these documents, it appears that the Biden administration is supportive of that and trying to help them. So let's look a little bit at the history over just the past few months of what's been going on in Iran, how Iran has become closer to our adversaries. And yet we are still rewarding them by helping their world influence. Back in September of 2022, there was a Kurdish young woman, a 22-year-old named Mahsa Amini. She was in the capital of Tehran visiting her brother and her hijab, her head covering, was worn loosely. A few strands of hair were poking through the head covering. The Iranian morality police, which which appears to be an Orwellian name, but it actually is in actuality a real thing. The morality police arrested Mahsa Amini, brutally beat her in the back of a van, and she died from the injuries that she had to endure. Starting in September, the death of Mahsa Amini led to mass protests across Iran against the Ayatollah's and the leadership of Iran for its brutal misogynistic policies. Iran is arguably one of the worst places in the world to, A, be a citizen, but B, especially to be a woman. The age of criminal responsibility for men is 15, but for women it's far lower, it's 9. Marital rape is allowed in Iran. If a woman is accused of extramarital rape, She has to go to court with a certain number of male witnesses in order to corroborate her case. Women in Iran need permission in order to obtain certain degrees, to go into certain lines of work. It is just a terrible, terrible place. By the way, on my show Timeless, I did a history of Iran talking about how, uh, the 1970 or 1979, excuse me, revolution ensued. Actually, Iran for most of its history in the 20th century was a secular place that gave equal rights to women. And then in 1979, there was a revolution which installed the Shia extremist fundamentalist ayatollahs, which inflict such suffering on the citizens and especially female citizens of the country. So there was this upheaval starting in September of 2022 in the wake of Mahsa Amini's death. And Iran actually for a few months seemed to be out of options. They had to abolish their morality police. They had to give certain concessions about female freedom and female rights in the country. So a few months ago, Iran was in this place where it was kind of desperate. It needed the help of, in support of world powers, and it needed to acquiesce to the demands of world powers. So the United States, during this time that Iran was in a tricky situation facing such upheaval domestically, we could have used that as a leverage to get out of the nuclear deal, to prevent Iran from continuing to potentially fashion an atomic bomb. But instead of using Iran's weakness as leveraging power It appears, according to these leaked documents, that we have tried to bolster this power, which is both a power that is terrible towards its own citizens. It is also terrible to Israel, which is one of the United States' allies. Iran sells weapons and gives funding to the Hezbollah, which is a terrorist organization in Lebanon, which fires rockets and sends suicide bombers into Israel. And the creepy part about all of this is that this helping of Iran has been done clandestinely. We only know about it because of these leaked documents, which weren't supposed to come out, but came out showing that the Biden administration is trying to support this regime, which poses a threat to Western civilization and to its own. We'll say more in the next segment about Iran before moving on to other news. I'm Julie Hartman. This is The Dennis Prager Show. Hey everyone, welcome back to the program. I'm Julie Hartman sitting in for Dennis Prager today, who is on his listener tour in Europe. We started the first segment of this hour by talking about leaked documents, which reveal that the Biden administration is trying to clandestinely or secretly reenter the Iranian nuclear deal, which would allow Iran and indeed support Iran in obtaining nuclear weapons. I have said that there are two main issues with this revelation. The first is, why isn't this something that is public? If the Biden administration wants to help Iran get back into this nuclear deal, Why are we learning about it through a leaked document? A teenager or a 20-something-year-old who worked for the United States government leaked this document and now he is under investigation. Why are we learning about this arguably very significant development with regard to foreign policy via a leaked document? That's the first question I have. By the way, there are some people who argue, and I think it is a legitimate argument, that we shouldn't impede Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, that sometimes impeding people from doing things that they will already do may make an enemy where there doesn't need to be an enemy. That's certainly a legitimate conversation to be had or argument to be made. But again, the weird thing is, why doesn't President Biden come out and say that this is his position? Why is he hiding it from the American people, according to this document? That he wants to aid Iran in their development of nuclear weapons. That is the first issue. The second issue is that we, the United States, appear to want to help Iran develop and increase its stature on the world stage at the same time that Iran is becoming closer to our adversaries, that is Russia in China. Iran has gone to great lengths to help Russia during its war against Ukraine. In fact, it opened a drone factory recently in Russia in order to manufacture this weaponry to give it to the Russian side in order to demolish Ukraine. Additionally, China, Xi Jinping, the president of China, has gone on a world tour a great effort in order to create strong diplomatic relations with that country. Earlier this year, the president of Iran visited Beijing. This was the first time that an Iranian leader actually visited China in 20 years, and they extended a deal which allows China to invest $400 billion into the country of Iran. And China is actually going to build a railway line in Tehran. They're going to industrialize the Ayatollah Khomeini International Airport. And crucially, they are going to give money towards building more plants and more fracking facilities in order to get even more Iranian oil. In March, Beijing also brokered an agreement between Iran and Iran's once former bitter adversary, Saudi Arabia. Iran is a Shia country. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni country. They were at odds for many years. They're both big oil producers in the Middle East. The president of Iran called— or the president of Saudi Arabia called the president of Iran, quote, close to Hitler. They were these terrible enemies, and China brought them closer together. And signed further infrastructure agreements in order to get more oil from both Iran and Saudi Arabia. What does this do? This allows China to corner the oil market. This allows China to depend fully on oil resources in the Middle East, and thus it renders Western sanctions null. If the United States imposes sanctions on China or on oil producers, it won't matter very much because China has gone around the corner, if you will, and secured these economic agreements with Iran and Saudi Arabia. So it's disconcerting, to put it lightly, that we see Russia and China, our two biggest adversaries, becoming closer to Iran, trying to take resources, develop diplomatic relations with Iran. And at the same time, We, the United States, are trying to help Iran by fashioning— helping them fashion a nuclear weapon and also giving them more high-powered seats in the United Nations. Doesn't that seem a little bit dichotomous to you? Tell me. Call in. 1-800-PRAGER-776, 1-877-243-7776. From my perspective, The United States benefits from one or one of two, if you will, arrangements. The first is to be the peace broker in the Middle East, okay? I.e., the position of China. Wouldn't it be great if the United States came in and developed this diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia? If we have any presence at all, it should be one pursuing a more conciliatory relationship with certain world powers. Okay, that's one way the United States could go about things. Another way the United States could go about things is if we can't be a conciliatory or peacemaking power, we should at least divide our enemies. We benefited from the fact that Iran and Saudi Arabia over the past 10 years were at odds with one another. As awful as that sounds, You want to have your enemies be opposed to one another. Now China has eliminated that, bringing our enemies closer to one another. So we see here that the United States isn't doing either of the positions I outlined. They're not being a peacemaker and we're not dividing our enemies. In fact, it's the very opposite. We are bringing our enemy or allowing our enemies to become closer together while also helping those very enemies, again, as evidenced by the UN seats and the supposed Biden administration's wanting to help develop this Iranian nuclear deal. Let's go to a call. Robert from Albany, New York, on this subject of Iran. Hi, Robert. Thanks for calling in. Well, it appears that we don't have Robert. Robert, why don't you try calling back? I'll take your call if you can, can make contact with us again. Alongside this issue, helping Iran in a clandestine way while Iran is becoming closer to our adversaries, we are also seeing a situation with Saudi Arabia becoming more involved in the United States against the wishes of President Biden. I'm going to talk about this more in the next segment. Saudi Arabia has launched this LIV Golf group, and recently there was a merger with the PGA Tour group here in the United States, which is the organizer of professional golf tours in this continent. In the next segment, we're going to talk about why this matters pertaining not just to professional sports development, but also pertaining to international relations. Saudi Arabia is coming in establishing a presence in the United States while also giving the backhand to our own President Biden. More in just a few moments. I'm Julie Hartman. This is The Dennis Prager Show. Welcome back, everyone, to The Dennis Prager Show. I'm Julie Hartman, host of Timeless with Julie Hartman and co-host host of the Dennis and Julie podcast here on the Salem Radio Network. You can also see them on YouTube. Mondays, Dennis and Julie comes out, and then Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays we have Timeless. This hour we've been talking about foreign policy. Leaked documents have revealed that the Biden administration is trying to secretly, at least hiding from the public, reenter the Iran nuclear deal, which would give Iran nuclear weapons, or at least support them in doing so. What I have argued is that Iran is getting— or Iran, however you want to call it. I realized I started off with Iran. Now I'm going to Iran. I'm going to now call it Iran. Iran has become closer to our adversaries, Russia and China. And then alongside that, we are trying to help them grow, It seems a bit odd and especially odd that President Biden is trying to hide from the public that this is his intention to reenter the Iran nuclear deal. Another foreign policy development of note actually pertains to golf. I'm going to tie these two together, that is Iran and this Saudi Arabia Gulf development in just a moment. So bear with me. But Saudi Arabia's backed LIV Golf Group has announced, announced a merger with the PGA Tour here in the United States, the organizer of professional golf tournaments in Europe and in North America. This is really interesting because Saudi Arabia only recently— by recently, I mean like a few months ago recently— launched this LIV Golf group. And actually, over these past few months, this LIV Golf group backed by Saudi Arabia has been at odds with the PGA PGA Tour of North America. That is because the commissioners of American golf have said that this Saudi-backed golf group was actually trying to offer more compensation, more prize money to golfers who would choose the Saudi Arabia-backed golf group instead of the American one. And the PGA was arguing that this was cornering the market, this was unfair practice, and actually these two entities were at legal odds with one another until recently when the Saudi Arabia LIV Golf Group merged with the PGA in order to have a joint tournament. Well, why does this matter? It matters maybe because golfers have to choose between fewer options, but it actually matters for foreign policy because it appears that Saudi Arabia is trying to increase its presence and its power in the United States. They're trying to come in. They've merged with this PGA golf tournament. Now they're in the realm of professional sports. Additionally, Saudi Arabia actually has invested in many resorts here in the United States and Saudi resorts in order to gain more money from American tourists. To add even more, Saudi Arabia has invested in many top venture capital and private equity funds here in the United States. Meanwhile, President Biden's public position on Saudi Arabia is that we should make Saudi Arabia into, quote, a pariah state. We should be at odds with Saudi Arabia because they are tyrannical as far as setting oil prices. They can kind of manipulate the oil market however they please without any regard to United States interests. Also, the Saudi Arabian president or crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, initiates many human rights abuses against his own citizens as well as foreign citizens. So the point that I'm trying to prove here is that there's a disconnect between the public position taken by the Biden administration and what's actually happening with both Iran and Saudi Arabia, two very important countries as far as economic world dominance. With Iran, they're becoming closer to our adversaries, yet we, the United States, are saying publicly that we want to oppose them, but backdoor we're helping them. With Saudi Arabia, it's the same thing. Publicly we're saying we want to oppose them, but backdoor we're allowing them to come in, invest in the United States economy, invest in venture capital firms, have this joint golf tournament. My question is, what is our foreign policy position under the Biden administration? It appears that our president has not articulated what this is. At least under President Trump, you knew. He talked about America first. He was kind of an isolationist. What is going on here under this administration? There appears to be reasons for us to doubt that what President Biden is saying publicly is actually being implemented in practice. 1-800-PRAGER-776. We'll be back.

There we go.

Hey, friends, welcome back to the program. I'm Julie Hartman. We're talking about foreign policy this hour, specifically the seemingly duplicitous relationship that we have with some of our adversaries. I'm focusing specifically on Iran and Saudi Arabia. Those are two of the top producers of oil in the world. We have entreated to these countries for oil, but at the same time, these countries are becoming closer to our adversaries, that is Russia and China. What I'm trying to highlight here is that while these countries are becoming closer to our adversaries, we seem to allow them to do some things that maybe we shouldn't allow them to do if they are really our adversaries. For instance, with Iran, there have been these leaked documents that show that the Biden administration wants to reenter the Iranian nuclear deal to allow this country to fashion a nuclear weapon. And then with Saudi Arabia, publicly, President Biden has said that he wants to make Saudi Arabia a pariah state. Yet the Saudi Arabia LIV Golf Tour is merging with the American PGA Golf Tour. Saudi Arabians are investing in many American resorts as well as venture capital and private equity firms. So what's going on here? What is our foreign policy? Do we oppose these countries or do we not? Do we want to support them or do we not? There doesn't seem to be any outlined foreign policy here. And even worse, The talk seems to diverge from the action. We have many calls on this subject. It seems to have hit a nerve. Let's go to Steve in Chicago, Illinois. Hi, Steve. Thanks for calling in.

Yeah, thank you. So in terms of strengthening Iran, the number one president we have to thank for that is George Bush, who invaded Iraq. Iraq had been the mortal enemy of Iran. And they were consuming their resources in their, their opposition to one another. And Iraq was broken up into 1,000 pieces and Iran became the regional superpower. The second president we can thank for empowering Iran is, is President Trump. Iran signed a treaty in which they, they had agreed to cease all development of nuclear weapons. They were abiding by the treaty. Rex Tillerson, Trump's Secretary of State, said they were abiding by the treaty, and for reasons I cannot contemplate, Trump decided to give an outlaw nation, which is what Iran is, the right to develop nuclear weapons again.

Well, Trump reversed the nuclear weapon deal. I'm so sorry to interrupt you. I don't mean to be rude. I just want to clarify. I want to understand what you're talking about, Steve. My understanding is that Trump reversed the Iranian nuclear deal that was signed in 2015 under President Obama, but you're saying that that they, that Trump allowed Iran to develop this weaponry. Can you clarify?

Yeah, the treaty that Trump ripped up prohibited Iran, prohibited Iran from developing nuclear weapons. They had to destroy their centrifuges. They could not enrich uranium to the point where it could be fissile material for a nuclear weapon. There was international monitoring and they were abiding by it.

Okay.

And Trump withdrew from the treaty. Rex Tillerson, his Secretary of State, strongly opposed that move. Iran's a terrible country. There's no question about it. But why would you— why would you allow a terrible country to march back in the direction of having nuclear weapons again? So Biden is doing the opposite respect for what you're saying. The Biden administration is trying to resurrect the treaty that prohibited Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Okay, I see what you're saying. Thank you, Steve, for your call. I do appreciate it. This is complicated stuff here. The Iranian nuclear deal that was signed in 2015 allowed Iran to develop nuclear weapons. But what Steve, I believe or surmise, is pointing out is that it limited that or it put certain sanctions or guardrails around that development. Development. But nevertheless, it did allow that development. This is where I disagree with our caller here. Yes, there were guardrails and international watchdogs, as Steve was saying, but still, Iran was allowed to fashion this nuclear weapon in 2015. Donald Trump in 2019, I believe it was, reversed this deal saying, no, we're going to scrap it altogether. Iran is not going to be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, whether there are these guardrails or not. No. There are arguments to be had that maybe we should allow Iran to do it, maybe we shouldn't allow them to do it. There are good arguments, as I say, on both sides. There are some who say that maybe we should allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. They're going to do it anyway. We see right now they already are trying to do it. The Atomic Energy Commission, as I mentioned, has said that Iran has developed uranium to 84% purity. 90% purity is needed to fashion an atomic bomb. Iran is doing this backdoor clandestinely. So if they're already going to do it anyway, we might as well not get in their way and create an enemy. And then there's another argument that says, no, we shouldn't be supporting this regime in developing nuclear weapons. Both of those arguments, I have to say, I understand my position here on the second hour of the Dennis Prager Radio Show. Is that we don't know what the Biden position is. That is the problem here. President Biden has said publicly that he denounces the Iranian regime. A few months ago, when Iran was committing these human rights atrocities against Mahsa Amini and other women in the country, the Biden administration said, we're putting sanctions on this country and they're not going to be the world power that we want them them to be. So that's the talk that we're getting publicly. But then behind closed doors, we see because of these leaked documents that the Biden administration is doing the very opposite of imposing sanctions. They are actually trying to help this country develop this nuclear weaponry. What I'm trying to highlight here is this dichotomy, this duplicity, indeed this deception of our president saying one thing but then in actuality practicing another. Now, as far as what our caller said about President Bush's invasion of Iraq, it is true that that turned out to be a disaster and did bring Iran actually to the place where it could manipulate Iraq. Iraq right now is a client state of Iran. But still, the point is, what are we doing today to try to remedy this situation? The duplicity, the dichotomy is bizarre. We'll be back. Some final notes on this. I'm Julie Hartman. This is The Dennis Prager Show.

The Dennis Prager Show.

Welcome back to the final segment of the second hour. Boy, this Iran-Saudi Arabia foreign policy talk has come to characterize the hour. It really has resonated. We've gotten a lot, a lot of of calls on this subject. I'm going to do what our dear friend Dennis Prager does in the final segment of an hour, which is synopsize the calls for the sake of time. I wish, I really do wish I could take your calls. It's a subject of consequence. How do we deal with our adversaries? It's kind of the first point. And the second point is, why is our administration saying one thing and doing another? It's not fair to the American people. We deserve to know what our government, who we voted for, what our taxpayer money is paying for, what our government is doing with regard to these important countries. That is Iran and Saudi Arabia. I've specifically focused this hour on Iran. We've gotten a lot of calls from individuals, according to the summaries on this sheet, that say that President Obama is running the show. "He wants to work with Iran." This is what Don from Louisville, Kentucky is saying. Mike from El Segundo, "Obama and Biden deal will allow Iran to do a nuclear holocaust." Okay. We see a lot of calls about this issue of President Obama pulling the strings. Again, I wish, I really do wish I could take your calls, and I thank you for calling in. With respect, however, I think this Obama issue is a red herring. Maybe Obama is influencing Biden. I don't believe that to be the case. I think that is focusing perhaps on something that isn't the real problem. The real problem here is what President Biden is doing or not doing, whether he's being manipulated by Obama or not. I don't think he is. I think this is his own bad judgment. His own idea of what pursuing a good government looks like. And it just, I guess, complicating this discussion by surmising whether or not a former president is pulling the strings isn't really the point. We have a situation here now with this president and we need to properly assess it and deal with it. So again, with respect to those callers, I don't necessarily think that's the case. I thought it was worth mentioning and recognizing, however, because there has been a multitude of callers who have talked about this supposed presence of President Obama. On a final note, there is breaking news that the Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson has died at 93. He founded, as this headline indicates, The Christian Broadcasting Network. He was also the host of The 700 Club television show. According to this article, he's helped make religion central to Republican Party politics. That's fascinating. That's a Fox News article. I don't really know if one individual can make religion central to Republican Party politics, but still, that's at least how some mainstream media, uh, sources are characterizing this individual. He actually ran for president in 1988. May he rest in peace. The final hour, we're going to be doing literature. See you soon. You all, I am giddy right now. I am sitting here smiling like a fool. Why? Because it's literature hour of the Dennis Prager Show. I am Julie Hartman. I am the guest host for today. I am the host of Timeless with Julie Hartman and the co-host of Dennis and Julie here on the Salem Podcast Network. You can check out Dennis and Julie. It premieres every Monday, and Timeless is every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. You can see that on Salem's website, or you can just go on YouTube to the Julie Hartman YouTube channel and check out both of those shows. But yes, indeed, it is Literature Hour. Those of you who have listened to me know that I usually do a History Hour. I feel like literature and history go hand in hand with one another. I've been impelled to focus on literature today because, my friends, I have to admit something to you. I recently started rereading Charlotte Brontë's masterful work Jane Eyre. I read it because I was traveling and I was bored in an airport. It was one of the only books available at the store, and I thought, you know, I'm going to try to be an informed citizen and reread this book that I so hated. In 8th grade. I could not put it down for the entire flight. I'm not done with it yet, but I have to tell you, the moments when I'm not reading Jane Eyre, I'm thinking about the time when I can start reading Jane Eyre, when I can go home and pick up the book, because it is that good. This is coming from someone who was in remedial reading for most of her early adolescent years. I was in remedial reading for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade because I was I was so bad at reading and so bad at English class. This is coming from someone who read great works of literature in middle school and high school, and frankly, it went over my head. I didn't appreciate these works. I thought that they were boring. And so now that I'm at the stage of my life where I've graduated from college, I'm out of the education sphere, and I have the time to revisit some of these works. I am realizing what a profound loss it is that I didn't appreciate them. Indeed, what a profound loss it is that Americans writ large don't seem to appreciate this work. It's an interesting paradox that we in 2023 have more access to great works of art, literature, and music than ever before. and yet we don't seem to take advantage of that access. We have so many museums. Yes, I'm in Los Angeles, and Los Angeles is a major city, but all around the country there's been incredible work by archivists and other people to, to try to bring the, the glory and the, the treasure of museums towards, or to, to many different communities and places around the country. We can go look at great art. We can order Hester Prynne, The Scarlet Letter book on Amazon, and it can be at our doorstep the next morning. We can go on YouTube and look up great symphonies by Bach and listen to it immediately. We have all of this treasure at our fingertips, and yet we seem to revile it, or we don't seem to be interested in it. Additionally, if you look at our education system, if we look at the time when people could explore these great works of art, music, and literature, they're not. They're going in a different direction. According to the United States Department of Education, the foremost major chosen by undergraduates today in the United States is business. Recently, in 2022, 300,000 undergraduate degrees were awarded to individuals who were pursuing business degrees. 37,000 only were rewarded with degrees in philosophy. Okay, that is amazing. 10 times the amount of American undergraduates today are pursuing business rather than philosophy. Oh, sorry, I'm reading from a note here. Actually, only 37,000 in philosophy, English, and history combined. It would've been remarkable if only 37,000 were in philosophy, but this number is philosophy, English, and history combined. It shows you how much these disciplines have dwindled. And this is the time when you are supposed to explore. You're in college, you're supposed to interact with these great pieces of work, and instead students are choosing to go in other directions because they don't think it's worth it. Okay? The situation in graduate education is even bleaker. 42% of all master's degrees awarded added in 2018 to 2019, that school year, were concentrated in education and business. So we're seeing this in hard numbers, but also anecdotally, I think we're seeing this in culture, that people aren't as well-versed in great works of literature. And, you know, there's an argument that, oh, well, it takes an educated person to know about Nathaniel Hawthorne or Charlotte Brontë or William Shakespeare or these other titans of literature. You can only go to a certain college or a certain high school in order to be well-versed in that. No, that's not true. I reject that on principle. Okay? If you look back at the late 19th century in the United States, have any of you read the Civil War letters that were exchanged from family members to soldiers? These were people who had a limited education, a limited access to resources. Their letters are magnificent. They are magnificent in their diction, in their command of the English language, and they are magnificent in their wide breadth of references to literature. If you look, I recently was reading a book about education, or an education project pursued in West Africa in order to bring some of those impoverished students more of an access to education. This person in the book wrote the, the number one, uh, determiner, if you will, of whether or not someone learned wasn't actually the quality of their book, wasn't actually how industrialized or well-built their classroom was. It was their desire to learn. You see these people, for instance, in Burundi was one of the countries that the book profiled These individuals who have nothing. The daily rate of payment a day in the country of Burundi is $1.91. Okay? These individuals have nothing, no access to the kinds of resources that even the most impoverished American has here. And yet so many of these young schoolgirls want to learn. They are in these classrooms, they have limited resources, and there is this desire to soak up knowledge and learn. We have that here in the United States at our disposal, and we are not appreciating it. We are not taking advantage of it. So my friends, this hour we're going to talk about why. I was once one of those people. I didn't appreciate Jane Eyre. When I read Jane Eyre in high school, I couldn't wait until it was over. I thought it was boring. I thought it was dull, antiquated. Ugh. I wanted to be done with it. I think a lot of this— I'm going to pause it in this hour, and I would highly encourage you to call in. I welcome your calls, 1-800-PRAGER-776, 1-877-243-7776. I want you to call in, tell me what your experience is with these books, your education system, et cetera. But I would like to posit that our American education system is primarily responsible for this death of learning, as the great author John Agresto puts it. We overanalyze books to death, and I literally mean to death. We analyze them and we kill them. In high school, I would read these great books and we would focus on the symbolism of rivets in a ship. That is a reference to Heart of Darkness, the Joseph Conrad book about imperialism in Africa. Apparently it is one of one of the great works of the 20th century. You know what I remember from that book from high school? Rivets, which are apparently parts of a ship. Okay, Sean's laughing. I don't really know what rivets look like. I can't remember any well now that I did then what the rivets supposedly symbolize in this book, but that's what I remember from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Okay, from The Scarlet Letter, I I can only remember that this woman, Hester Prynne, was unfairly persecuted by her townspeople. I am telling you, after reading these books a second time around, I have them actually right here. I have my high school copies of these books, and it's this great symbolism for me. I know I'm using that term in a duplicitous way because I'm decrying the symbolism practiced in classrooms, but I also have the symbolism here. These are my high high school copies of these books, and I hated these copies in high school, and now I'm resurrecting them. I promise you, if you think you are too stupid to understand the literature of the 19th century, if you think you don't understand Middle English, if you think you can't grasp these concepts, it's too far off, it's too antiquated, you are wrong. These are treasures that are waiting for all of us. I have a secret for you: life is better, life is more enriched when engage with these great pieces of wisdom. That is conservatism at its essence—respect and reverence for what has come before us, most especially literature. More on this, not just in the next segment but the entire hour. I'm Julie Hartman. This is The Dennis Prager Show. Welcome back everyone to The Dennis Prager Show. I'm Julie Hartman. I am calling this the Literature Hour. Those of you who listen to me know that usually I do a History Hour on The Dennis Prager Show, but today we're talking about literature. And for those of you who are just tuning in going, oh well, I don't read that much, I don't want to hear hear her talk about some book. That's not the point. The point is to revive an element of excitement, bring up the spark of joy when it comes to reading great books. I have personally undergone a transformation, once thinking that certain great books of Western civilization were old, antiquated, and boring. And now I, I know it sounds corny, they pillars of my life. They instruct me, they fulfill me. It is so fun to read a great book. On my show Timeless, on my set, I have a book behind me that has a big great A on it, and people are writing going, what's that A behind you? It's The Scarlet Letter. It's a beautiful leather-bound copy of that book. I read that book after I graduated from college. And if I'm being honest with the viewers, a really difficult family situation was going on in my life and I was feeling upset about it. And I read this book totally outside of my family situation, just, just wanting to read and become more acquainted with, with great texts. And it really gave me a lot of strength during that difficult period of my life. Hester Prynne is the main character of the book. She has engaged in an extramarital affair, and she has conceived a child, Pearl. And she has been punished in the book, uh, and the, the person, the, her counterpart, the male with whom she conceived the child, is not punished. He is not known to the townspeople that he was the, the second half, if you will, of the union. Only Hester Prynne, the female, is criticized and shunned, and she has to have has to wear a big A on her breast, which stands for adulteress. Wherever she goes, she has to have this branded A to remind everyone of what she has done. And I'm sorry to give away the book, but it's important to this discussion. If you don't want to hear the end, turn me off for 15 seconds, but it's very important. Spoiler alert! That's what— that's what Sean's saying. I have millions of ears. Spoiler alert. Yeah. By the end of the book, Hester Prynne is still wearing this A, and people forget that the A stands for adulteress. They think the A stands for Abel because this woman, Hester Prynne, has so transformed herself. She didn't sit and mope and cry because she was wrongfully— and she was truly, you know, wrongfully accused. We live in this society today where everyone's talking about Oh, I've endured this invisible instance of a microaggression and racism. Oh, I've endured this. This was someone who was actually persecuted, someone who was unfairly, quite literally branded for something that she did and had to carry it with her for the rest of her life. She put her head down, she worked diligently and with fidelity. She actually opened up a seamstress business, and within a decade, the people in the town thought that the A stood for Abel instead of adulteress. That is an amazing lesson. That is an amazing lesson for someone of a young age to learn when they're reading this book in middle school or high school, that, that you can transform yourself, that you are going to be given a difficult lot sometimes in life. Some, sometimes unfair things are going to happen to you. but if you react appropriately, you can transform yourself. I love that message. And when I was going through this difficult time in my life, I was feeling a bit sorry for myself and, and I, you know, was sort of wallowing in the pain and reading about Hester Prynne, I think transformed me. It gave me a sense of, no, you can rise above this difficulty with your conduct, the way that you behave, can help you transcend the hardship of this time. That is what great literature can do for you. It's not about symbolism. It's not about the stitches on the A representing the gradations of anti-feminism. I mean, you think I'm kidding by bringing up that example. I remember it was like, how many stitches are on the A? It's a numerical representation of how many times Hester Prynne has been wrongfully accused of— I mean, people, history teachers and English teachers, and this is said with respect for, for those in that line of work, the teaching gets a bad rap today unfortunately because of many of the, the woes we've seen in, in the American public school system. But there are many great teachers out there, and I've been the beneficiary of their wisdom. But we overanalyze these books to death. We focus on the symbolism of a particular object instead of the eternal message that that book has to offer. John Agresto, the author of The Death of Learning, is an individual who I had on my show Timeless. He writes about this phenomenon that we, that we as a society have turned our backs towards these great works of literature. And he has this great argument where he says that English teachers nowadays focus on making a book a commentary of the time. We live in this woke culture where everything is symbolic of a grievance and of persecution against a certain protected class, and the way that we teach books, he argues, is not any different. And I learned about this when I was in high school. You know, Hester— the book of— I call it Hester Prynne. It's not the title of the book. She's Just So My Hero, I think it's the title of the book. Book. The Scarlet Letter is the title. I remember reading and learning about The Scarlet Letter, and my teacher would talk about, oh, it's a commentary on how women were persecuted during 17th century Puritan America. Yes, maybe it's— I mean, not maybe, it's definitely true that women were persecuted in 17th century Puritan America, and Hester Prynne is one of those. But if that is what you are focusing on with The Scarlet Letter, you are missing the entire eternal point. In Jane Eyre, if you are focusing on the fact that Jane is wrongfully treated by her evil aunt and her evil cousins, and it's a commentary on the youth of the time being mistreated, you are missing the eternal messages that this book has to offer. Allow me to read from Mr. Agresto: Historical, social, or economic reductions—using history, society, or social status as an explanatory vehicle for attack Distances the text from the students. It makes it an other, a museum piece. By contextualizing everything, this educator says, we set up a barrier to learning from people from the past since they don't inhabit our universe. If what Dante wrote, did, and thought, he wrote, did, and thought because he was a late medieval Florentine. If we can only truly understand him By understanding how he was a product of his time and place, then he can teach us very little since we don't inhabit that world. That is a perfect synopsis of what is going on here. We think that these books are just confined to the era in which they were written, that these authors are solely commentating on that era. We are missing the relevance to today, and that's what you have to make clear to students When you're an 8th grader sitting in class reading a book from 200 years earlier, it is already going to feel distant from you. It's going to be difficult to read. The task of an educator is to make that relevant to that 8th grade student's life now. The caller board is lighting up. I am thrilled about it. In the next segment, we are going to get to your comments and talk more about the deadening of literature and wisdom in US society. I'm Julie Hartman. It's a pleasure to be with you. This is The Dennis Prager Show.

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