Sunday Fireside Chat: When Childish Worldviews Take Over w/Douglas Murray

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Hi everybody, welcome. I'm Dennis Prager. This is the Fireside Chat. That's the fireside. I will chat, but not alone, as you— does everybody see my guest already, or is it only on me? Good. And of course Otto is here. And it is a very rare fireside chat that I have a guest. So it's an immediate statement of my belief in the importance of what they have to say. And nobody has more important things to say than Douglas Murray, who is British and who is an independent and courageous voice in Britain. Writes for The Spectator, has written major books. I've had him on my radio show. I quote your books. I learned now you started writing at 18.

Yeah.

Well, you probably started earlier than that. You were published at 18.

Yes. Yeah, my first book was outrageously precociously early.

Yeah. Yes, it was. You know, I just want to say for the record, my first book, I was 24. And I thought that was impressive. So that shatters that. Well, this is the purpose of life, I am convinced, is to be humbled on a regular basis.

Oh, it's very easy when you think, I mean, by the age that both of us were doing that, you know, Keats had written everything.

Oh yeah. Oh no. All right. Or, you know, Mozart had written 12 symphonies. Exactly. Right. It's endless. That's what I mean. Life is permanently humbling. Anyway, Douglas Murray is the author of The Madness of Crowds. That's the latest of your books. Then The Strange Death of Europe. Which is just— they're both extremely significant. So let me begin with a question that I ask all these independent voices that I have the honor of talking to. I have a theory, but I'm not going to tell you my theory till I get an answer from you. How does somebody like you develop. And I very specifically, I've always said there are many fine traits—kindness, honesty, decency, loyalty—but the rarest of all the good traits and the most important is courage. And it's the rarest. You have that. And I'm not complimenting you. It's just a fact. Even if one doesn't like you—and I do like you, obviously—but if you have courage Do you know where that comes from?

Uh, it's very hard to say for yourself. Um, it's easier to say about other people. Uh, uh, to my mind, it doesn't— nothing I do feels particularly like courage. Uh, I know lots of things that are courageous to do. I know lots of jobs that are courageous to do. I don't think that being a writer should be a courageous thing to do. It can be at certain times, it's true. My own belief is that it's something more like not being willing to put up with lies. And that if you have that instinct, and quite a lot of writers do, I mean, it's sort of the best reason to be a writer in a way. If you don't like lies and you just can't allow them to just flood by, and you have a voice, then it's likely that you will use it to try to stop that flood of lies. And for a lot of people, that's— and for a lot of writers throughout their lives, that's quite an easy thing to do. I mean, they can pick, you know, sort of fire shots at politicians when they tell fibs, for instance. And politicians do tell fibs. It's a long career just in doing that. But I think the more interesting thing to do, the harder thing to do, is to identify the things, the level beneath that, you know, what the big lies of the time might be.

Right. So you are confirming my theory, which is not a happy one. It is built into you to hate lies.

Or it could be taught. It could be acquired through parenting. Or do you think it was? Yes, to a considerable extent, I think. Do you have siblings? I do, yes.

Do they hate lies? Yes, I think so. Do they share your views on life?

A lot of things, yes. I think it also— a personal view on this is that your formative years are important for so many reasons, but one of them is giving you an idea of what you are defending. Now, when I was growing up, I was immersed in music, uh, I was immersed in literature, in the arts, and in other things as well. But I— and religion, uh, I knew what was good, you know. I knew what was worth defending. And I can think of a lot of people who I think don't particularly care about lies and don't particularly care about fighting some of the battles that some of us fight because they don't really know what is worth defending. They're quite happy to give things up, concede, let things flow away. And I think that if you know the wonders and the greatness of what our civilization has produced, And you cherish them, then you're willing to fight for them. Right.

But that is a big if. To my amazement, a vast number of people in the West do not appreciate the West. Yes. That is astonishing. To live in a place that has produced the only places that have given vast numbers of people equality. Opportunity, prosperity, the most sublime art, philosophy. It is the place, the Western world is where the rest of the world wants to move to in vast numbers. And yet at Stanford in the 1990s or '80s, Jesse Jackson led a march, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go." Yes.

These people fall into several categories. One of them is obviously, as you know, is people who genuinely think they have a better alternative. You know, I think erroneously, madly, insanely, but they think they've got a better alternative. Some of them think that Maoism might be the way forward, for instance, hasn't been tried hard enough in the past, or any number of other ideas. They think that. Now, another group that I think particularly exists in America is people who believe that Western civilization is something like the color that paint is until you add color. That is, it's the totally nondescript natural state to which everything else gets added in. These are people who've grown up in America in the late 20th, early 21st century, and they think that America in the late 20th and early 21st century is the natural order of things into which you can add all these wonderful colors. And they have no idea because they've never been anywhere else, they've never studied any history, they're wildly ignorant. They've no idea that what America is in the late 20th and early 21st century is unimaginably rare in human history and in the world today. But they think, they think it's just, oh, everything always falls out like California in 2020. You know, they think if you just drop people on, on the planet, it always comes out looking kind of like Manhattan. They've got no idea, but they think that that's the basic starting point. You know, they are the people I think of as the incredibly parochial and untraveled alleged internationalists, you know.

Right, who believe that civilization in America ends at the Hudson River. Yes. I grew up in New York. I'm very familiar with that attitude. We are in such agreement I, from the earliest age, knew how rare America was. And I don't know why I did and vast numbers of my peers didn't. Spelled America with a K, as if we were a fascist country. Do you not know what fascism is? And I realized something. They really don't know what evil is.

Ah, yes. Yes, I put it in other words, well, they've forgotten what Miguel de Unamuno describes as a tragic sense of life. Exactly. By the way, I mean, isn't there a problem in the American experience on this, which is that one of the things that's made America possible in a way is a certain forgetfulness of that sense? I write about that in Strange Death of Europe. Europe is to a great extent infused with that sense. It may never be able to shed it. And there is a lot of weight and tiredness, as I describe it, that can come from such knowledge, including growing up and being surrounded by such knowledge. In a way, I think a great problem for thinking of, of and for America is that the absence of that tragic sense of life is one of the things that's got this country going. I mean, the built-in optimism, the forward sense, the urge forward. And yet, having none of that sense, of the tragic sense of life, means that you have these people growing up who think this is, you know, that America is the worst state imaginable. And how do you educate those people other than by seeing firsthand what the rest of humanity learned before. But if they learn it, the lesson is to everyone's expense. It's a very hard conundrum, that one.

Well, the education system isn't helping. What did I just read? I've already made the case. They know nothing about communism. Yes. Which is the greatest killer of humans in the history of the world, and in one century. But they are increasingly not even aware of what the Nazis did. Yeah. I think 40%, is that right? 40% of American youth, not even, I don't mean kids.

This recent poll. Yes, never heard of the Holocaust.

And a tiny percent could identify Auschwitz.

Yes, yes. Well, well, in both our countries we have this phenomenon now of people, um, viewing history as this vast savanna of grievance, you know, which we can roam through and find things to feel grievance about. And quite often today you hear from the universities and elsewhere, you hear people saying things like, I was never told about this oppression that occurred to my people in year, whatever. And I always have the same response, which is, I mean, most people don't know anything very much. And what the example you just gave of the recent poll that came out about ignorance about the Holocaust in America is an example of that. It's no good saying, you know, I was brought up without knowing about this particular issue of oppression for my group if you've never heard about the greatest oppressions in human history. I mean, um, It's hard to know what to do with ignorance like this, particularly when it's taught.

It's like, I note that virtually every major instance of that popular, widely publicized instance of noose, swastika, N-word painted on a dorm door turned out to be a hoax. Yes, yes. And I made the point—

It's called a smallitism now, I think. Oh, is that right?

Oh, good, good. He deserves to be made into a noun. But the, I note, in the 1930s, no Jew in Germany made up an antisemitic hoax.

No, it wasn't needed. Wasn't needed. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. No, there's, I think of this, as I've explained in the past, as a supply and demand problem. America has a great demand for fascists, but a very small supply.

That is a great line. You gotta get that.

That is terrific. I mean, the demand is so great that you have to find them where they aren't. That's right. You have to identify people who are fascist who aren't. And if you were living in a fascist state, there would be no supply and demand problem. You'd find them on every corner, you know.

You know, I've lived a long life and I tell people I never met a white supremacist. I feel like What's wrong with me? I've been to all 50 states. Somehow or other, it just— I never met one.

Yes, the few that do exist, and there are some, I think. Of course. The few that do exist, I mean, they become world famous overnight the moment they identify themselves. I mean, Richard Spencer ran all of the news story. You know, people think he's some huge figure now rather than just some weird wacko loner guy. Same thing with David Duke. I mean, you hear about him every 4 years as some titanic force in American politics. Right. So if you are identified as that once, you can run and run on it for the rest of your life, it seems. But this just comes back to the supply and demand problem. The 2 people whose names I just rattled off, we wouldn't be able to rattle off if America was what America's enemies claim it is.

So the people doing this This is the £64,000, euro, dollar question. I prefer sterling. Yeah, yeah. I thought so. I included it there. By the way, before I continue on the great question, so I, this piece of trivia, and it's before you were born obviously, but I spent my third year at university in England at the University of Leeds. So I want to know if you will understand the answer I got when my first day in Leeds, I bought food for my flat, and I said, how much is it? And of course, this is before decimalization. Before, yeah. So he said, fawn tuppen seepney. Do you know what that means?

Um, the tuppen seepenny, I know. Yeah.

Oh, you do? Yes. Two pence and a half penny. How do you know that?

Um, from reading, I suppose, books and seeing films in that era where that crops up. If you tested me on pre-decimalization currency, I wouldn't be able to go very far. I think my grandparents probably explained something to me.

So, it was 4 pounds, 2 pence, and a half penny. So anyway, the guy says to me, and I'm from Brooklyn, New York, and my first time in England, and he goes, "Font up and zip me." So, I said, "I'm sorry, what was that?" And he goes, "Font up and zip me." And so I just gave him a wad of cash and said, I trust you, sir. Take out whatever it was. Is it this? It was. It could have been in Croatian. It was. I had a lot of— I had a great year in England, by the way. All right. Anyway, so here's the £64,000 question. There are so many people at the universities. I mean, the intellectual elite of the West is morally defective and they love lies, to use your phrase. They are the opposite of you. How did they come about?

This is, as you say, it's a very important question. I think there's several things. One is a certain, as you know, or certain strands of thought becoming very important and indeed in the end dominant in the late 20th century. Deconstructionism, French theory, then critical theory. These are people, as I say in The Madness of Crowds, somewhere who never found anyone that they— anything that they didn't want to deconstruct apart from their own departments. They rampaged through all of the disciplines And I think frankly they intimidated other people. And there's several forms of that intimidation. One is a perfectly organized one. I think most of the Marxists and neo-Marxists did this in an organized manner. You know, they actually organized to take over departments and indeed in the end whole universities. But others worked by a kind of intellectual intimidation, which I've noticed as you have throughout my life, which is that They advance on the idea that other people will be baffled and in the end embarrassed and then submit to the claims and the assertions that they make. That it will sound so intimidatingly obscure to them that they have to agree with it and go along with it for fear that they will look stupid. And that's how we've ended up with this Emperor's New Clothes situation of what's now become critical theory, developed from theory, which is that people fear that if they didn't get on board with it, they would look like, um, unintellectual dinosaurs at best, unintellectual or anti-intellectual at worst. Um, And not enough people stood up to it. I mean, one of my great mentors and heroes and great friend, the late Roger Scruton, was one of the very few people in the UK, and I think in the world really, who consistently for decades stood up against this. And he did it because he was curious and he read their texts as I do and as you do. I mean, you know, we read what these people we disagree with write, a favor by the way that they do not return. That's right. I forever peer on things with people who say that they haven't read my books, they don't need to because they know what I think. But we read their books.

I wish they knew what you thought, by the way.

They don't. No, I mean, it is a grievance, as it were, of my own, this fact, because I think that it's unfair to their own arguments in a way. It doesn't help their own case. That's why they don't debate. Yes, absolutely. I have found this. And less and less. You sort of think that they'll want to take you on more and more.

But the more I have offered on the radio, $10,000, $20,000 to any New York Times columnist who wants to debate me.

Yeah, yeah. And the money's on the table. Not just me.

It doesn't have to be me. I'll give a list. I'll give a whole list. They could choose.

It's, it's a very striking thing, but it is in the end. I hope I, I, I'm a sort of optimist on this. I think it will be to their own detriment. But yes, they, uh, uh, We look at what they say, and Roger Scruton did this, analyzed the texts and found that they were wanting, that the views that they put out were wrong, that they were narrow, that they were doctrinaire. And what's more, and this is one of the most interesting giveaways, because as you know, as a writer, your job is, among other things, to make ideas as easy to understand as they can be, you know. A great writer would distill Kant into an understandable volume. That's not a small thing to do.

That would have to be a great writer.

Yeah, it would have to be a great writer. It would have to be a great writer and a great thinker at the absolute top of their game. Same thing with any of the great philosophers. To try to sum up what a great philosopher is saying, you need a serious degree of intelligence but also clarity. And what's so striking about the anti-intellectual left that has emerged and become dominant in the West, and particularly in America, is that they take really quite straightforward assertions and they make them impossible to comprehend. And they write volumes and volumes, and by now have created whole libraries based on this. They take— I mean, it happens to me repeatedly. I look at the things that are written by the radical left, and particularly the volumes that are produced by people in universities. And I find that the game that they have engaged in is to take either a non-idea or an assertion and make it impossible to understand. And by this technique, they have advanced incredibly far, because most people are like Hans Christian Andersen shows in The Tale of the Emperor's New Clothes. Most people are too scared to say there are no clothes on this emperor. They are intimidated. And I think that any reasonably intelligent person should say, I call BS on this.

Well, you mentioned you had a musical background. You play an instrument?

Only the piano for my own pleasure now, but I play several.

So we both have a love of music here. Yeah, very much so. Sue, what is it, 4 minutes 26 seconds? 4:33. Are you familiar with that? Of course. Yeah. Okay.

This—

most of you watching do not know this. A prominent American composer, John Cage, wrote a piece, quote unquote, called 4 Minutes 33 Seconds. What happens? The pianist sits at a piano in front of an audience for 4 minutes and 33 seconds and plays nothing. And then the audience applauds. Now, you would think this is a gimmick. It's— this is the emperor's new clothes in the music world, as I think much of the atonality is. But I'm only raising this. This just I discovered yesterday because I conduct orchestras as an avocation. I'm very into music. And I, Katya Bunashvili, I think, a very well-known pianist from Georgia, the country of Georgia. And she just made a, released a CD. One of the pieces is 4 minutes, 33 seconds. So I went to it. And sure enough, there's silence. So you have bought a CD One of whose tracks is nothing for 4 minutes and 33 seconds.

I am— I have— I agree that the absurdity of what Cage was doing— there is one other way to view it, of course, which is in a way he put a stop to something unknowingly, I think. But I think by the time that Cage did that, music had come to a point where it had almost completely broken down. And in a way, after Cage does that, there is nothing more to do other than to start again. It's part of the argument that Alex Ross makes in The Rest is Noise, his history of music in the 20th century, which is that it requires everything to fall apart for people to start again with tonality, among other things. I think you could say something similar happens in literature, except that literature, when it's totally— I mean, People can listen to cacophony if they want. You can't read complete mumbo-jumbo for very long. So it was harder for literature to break down in the same way. But when it does, as with ideas, people start again. It's one of the things that I find rather moving about it. I think, by the way, that's something that's happening at the moment. I think we are actually in the end of postmodernism at the moment. And that from that people are starting afresh. Really? Yeah, I feel it.

Well, look, it's a joy to hear something optimistic. In Britain, do they have mandatory race consciousness sessions at places of work?

It's come in in the last few years. It's had a huge boost in the last few months. It's one of the bits of American export which I don't thank Americans for. Yes, we have got all of this flooding through us now. When I was researching The Madness of Crowds, I was— this was actually the one thing that shocked me the most. I knew what was happening in universities, none of that surprised me. I knew what was happening in the wider culture, none of that surprised me. I was genuinely surprised to discover the extent to which, you know, implicit bias training and all the gunk that comes along with it had gone rushing through major corporations, Fortune 500 companies. And that they were willingly taking this on. Yeah, it's everywhere now.

Well, companies— the association of companies with conservatism is an absurdity. Yes, isn't it?

But it's very hard for a lot of people to understand that, isn't it, from the outside? Apparently. Yeah, they really do think, oh, you know, energy companies won't go in for this. You think, oh yeah, you wait. All of them. Banks suck it all up.

They all do. So is it cowardice or what?

Oh no, my theory of that is it's the cheapest thing they can do because all the real prices they would pay would cost them. For instance, my bank in the UK goes huge on Gay Pride now, much huger than I am at all willing for them to go. They put last— and Pride has become now Pride Month, pushed by the and my bank had big signs all over it throughout this month saying, "Love happens here." And as I repeatedly said, I don't want love to happen at my bank. I just want you not to charge me £5 when I've lost my back statements and need them. You know, very basic things are required from my bank. Nothing in the realm of love is needed over the till or elsewhere. It's a very strange thing, and it's happened everywhere. The banks, the big corporations, They've all thrown themselves into this. Now here's my theory. After the crash of 2008, there were a lot of ways the banks could be made to pay. This is the cheapest thing they could get away with to cover themselves in pretend glory. Everything else required them to really pay. So I think that corporate—

So it's protection money. Yeah.

Corporate wokeness is the cheapest things corporations can do to dodge the things that would otherwise come at them. Or the energy companies, for instance, who pretend that, you know, what they really want to do is diversity. They're doing it because they know it's the best way to dodge what might be coming at them. And it goes on in case of— this happened in the UK recently. We had a case with a supermarket in the UK that actually for 24 hours boycotted The Spectator because a single individual said that we ran anti-trans articles, which we We don't, but they were complaining about some articles we've run by left-wing feminists complaining against some of trans extremism. This particular supermarket immediately apologized, and then we had a— we pushed back against them, and this supermarket apologized for boycott. We actually said, we don't want your adverts because you cannot dictate our editorial policy, and you will not. This has happened, however, repeatedly with supermarket chains in the UK. As it has done with similar groups here. And you look at these things and you say, what are they doing? And here's an example. It happened with another one the other day called Sainsbury's in the UK, which started pumping out things on social media saying, we don't want racists to shop in our shops, as if the UK is covered in racist shoppers, you know, KKK outfits in the cereal aisle, you know. And they send out these ridiculous, over-the-top messages saying 'We are for diversity and any racist should shop elsewhere.' Again, what are you doing? You know, you sell not very good products, you know, you should— and you never got people in the aisles at the right time, and your checkouts are never manned, and by comparison with your competitors, you overprice things. Anyhow, all of these things could be said. However, I did the other thing. I looked at their board. Their board is entirely comprised I think with one exception, of elderly white men. Their corporate board is entirely filled with elderly white men. The board of their bank is entirely filled with elderly white men. So what are they doing?

They're deflecting.

They are deflecting. They are hoping that nobody will notice this if they do this, "Hey racists, don't buy your chocolate from us" nonsense. So they're doing it They're doing it too much. And I think these. I think that these people are already making themselves absurd.

So your bank had a gay pride month. Yes. Did it have the flag? Oh, okay. You couldn't move for the flag.

Yeah, yeah, the windows were the flag.

Does it ever have the British flag? Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That it would be hated for that.

I presume it would be thought to be racist. Yes, exactly. And then it would have to be banned from certain supermarkets.

So let me ask you a question. Conservatives are accused routinely among the usual, as I point out, SIXHERBS: Sexist, Intolerant, Xenophobic, Homophobic, Islamophobic, Racist, Bigoted. I came up with that acronym like 20 years ago. And so on the homophobia issue, do you— what would you respond to conservatives are homophobic?

I'd want more information. I want to know what they're talking about. As with all these assertions, what's so strange is the assertion is just thrown out there with nothing else needing to come in. So people, if somebody said that, I'd say, what are you talking about? And I suppose the normal thing that happens is they say something like, oh, conservatives weren't on board with gay marriage till quite recently. I would say, well, I mean, nobody was on board with gay marriage till quite recently. I mean, the left wasn't, Obama wasn't, I mean, most people weren't. I think actually what all these things have become, homophobia is a good example, are just ways that people try to unperson you, you know. I know plenty of people like myself who are gay who happen to be right-wing who get told, for instance, that they must be Oh, I got a great one a little while ago from a friend in the UK who said he was accused of being a fake gay. Because he was conservative. Because he was conservative. Well, you're a fake woman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're not— Exactly. The examples I give in the 'Mads of Crowds,' you know, in 'Mads of Crowds,' Peter Thiel is denounced as not being gay by the main gay magazine in America when he comes out for Donald Trump. Kanye West is said by Ta-Nehisi Coates not to be black in the Atlantic magazine when Kanye West comes out for Trump. Germaine Greer is apparently no longer a feminist. And you go through this list, and as I say in The Madness of Crowds, you realize quite fast we're not talking about identity, we're just talking about brute politics. We're just talking about insane, demagogic left-wing activists using anything to win a political argument. And I'm not interested in that, and other people shouldn't be either. And here's the thing: people have been too intimidated by this for too long. It's just too late to be willing to be shut up by these people. And there are so many people who have been shut up, good honest people who are not homophobic or racist or any of these other things, who have been intimidated by being called these names. And my request to people on this is, is, or has become, we've heard enough about the silent majority. The silent majority has to stop being silent. It has to speak up. It has to say, we will not allow your spell words to work anymore.

Yes, that's the thing. This is the, this is the issue. This would be the turning point if people spoke up. However, I want to say on their behalf, because I hear from them on my radio show and in my email all the time, they genuinely believe that they would be fired from their job. Yes. Or they would be kicked out of— what was it recently? The— my God, some university, the president of the student union, the president reelected and reelected, was kicked out for not having a left-wing position on some matter. People write to me, what do I tell my daughter if she writes what she believes? The, it's okay, it's okay. He's very relaxed. When he's sleeping. I feel a little better because I intuit that he's bored by me at every fireside chat, but with you, I'm a little surprised.

I'm sorry I couldn't keep him awake.

Exactly. So what do I— what this is— so let me tell you, I want to know your answer to the, to the woman who called me. Dennis, if my, my daughter wants my advice— my, not me, Dennis, but her, the mother's advice— the mother wants my advice. My, my daughter, if she writes what she believes on an exam or in a paper, knows she will get a bad grade. What do I tell her? So this is what I answer, and I'm curious what yours would be. I say, look, I can't tell you what to tell your daughter. I could tell you what I would say to your daughter. I would say, if you start compromising on what you believe for a grade, when will you stop? Yeah.

What would you say? Um, I would agree with that. I would say Be smart and brave. Um, for instance, yes, there are— I hear similarly from people saying, you know, I'm in this firm and we've been made to do this, you know. Um, but here's the thing, if, if everyone was a little bit brave— it doesn't, it doesn't require everyone to do sort of kamikaze levels of, you know, of bravery. We don't need that. I mean, it wouldn't hurt to have a bit more of that, but what we need is for everyone just to step up one step forward. That's good. So for instance, if you're the only— if you think you're the only conservative in your class at university or the only conservative in your office, don't do something wildly over-the-top brave. Don't bring all of the attention to yourself and, you know, and get yourself in trouble that could be career-ending. But step forward a little bit. Know when you can and should say no. For instance, this is one I've got quite a lot recently. Bosses in America, as in Britain, have started in the last few months to be saying things like, "You, the employees, should read the following texts." I say to people, I mean, I'm thinking of, you know, the sort of the obvious text, The Unreadable Guff by Robin DiAngelo, for instance, a totally fraudulent pseudo-academic of very limited intelligence but serious entrepreneurial ability. Yeah. Robin DiAngelo of White Fragility fame, Kendi, a few others like this. These people's books have been sort of forced on workforces, indeed even in the public sector. And I say to people, first of all, don't do it. Say no. But also say to your bosses you'd be very interested to read these books, and would your bosses be interested in reading the following books? You know, you could do a book swap effectively.

That's a great one.

Because it keeps things open-minded.

Read Larry Elder or Candace Owens.

If they really wanted— Exactly. If they really wanted dialogue, let's have a dialogue. You give us your—

Oh, but they don't want a dialogue. Do you know that part of the rule is now— I just read it just today. So here's a rule now. When they come to your company— by the way, these people are making fortunes of money, these people who are running these companies that send people to tell you how racist you are. But when they come to your company, They will call on black employees of the company to get up and say how awful life here in America is for them, give examples, and you may not speak. The white has no right to respond. Yeah. Now, my, my— what the left is doing, among many other horrible things, is creating racial tension. Oh yeah, that doesn't exist. Yeah. If they said, I'm a Jew, if they said, and you're a gay, it'll be the exact same thing. Imagine we will bring all gay workers now speak about how homophobic America is, and you heterosexuals, you cannot speak. Yeah. Or all Jews who work at a place get up and speak about your anti-Semitic experiences, and you non-Jews Shut up. All that would do is create anger at the group, and that's what they want to do because happy people don't vote left.

Yes, well, they rely on resentment, and thus they need to foster resentment in order to keep getting a following. By the way, I've always found this a very interesting thing because The right very often sees the resentment that the left is playing with and thinks it can win it by playing at a different level. It thinks, for instance, when the left does inequality, that the right can respond by talking about zoning building regulations or something, or a specific tax issue. And that doesn't do it. Resentment needs, when it's used, as a political weapon, it needs something of similar clout. The right should respond to resentment with aspiration, among other things. Doing better for yourself and your loved ones, your family. And there's not enough of this, and there's all sorts of bleak things one might say about the way in which things are starting to break down in our societies because of this. Because the left is running rampant with resentment and the right is not playing something back of equal depth. But the resentment can be countered, and I would suggest it should be done this way, which is to say the problem with the resentment that the left is encouraging you to engage in is that it is never-ending. Because we could all do it. I mean, this is why I mind the privilege game and hate it with every fiber of my being. The privilege game is never-ending. And nobody can work out how you do it. Nobody can work out how you win it. You might see somebody who's inherited millions of pounds and has exactly the racial and sexual profile of somebody you think of as being a privileged person, and their life may well be hell. You have no damn way of telling. You don't have any way of telling from one hour to the next with the same person. So I suggest that all of these games that the left are playing, we've got to say, we've got to show They are unwinnable on their own terms. And to show that this is not the way in which a happy and fulfilling life is lived. You can live a life of resentment. We all know people, apolitical people as much as political people, who do live lives of resentment. People who resent a sibling or a parent or a friend or the success of a friend, for instance. We all know people, have met people who live lives of resentment, and these are thwarted lives. They are unhappy lives which spread unhappiness around themselves. And by contrast, we should say, if that is what the left is encouraging you to do, we would like to encourage you to live a better life as we see it. We would like you to live a life of what I describe as the most important counter to it, which is gratitude. The counter to resentment is gratitude. It isn't to say, look how much the world has not given me. 'Look how much oppression I've had to force my way through in California or London or anywhere else in the developed West.' It's to say, how about realizing how lucky you are? And in order to do that, of course, you need not just to know how lucky you are, you need to be shown the unbelievable good luck of being born in a country like America at this point in history. And people need to encourage you to realize it isn't just that you need to recognize that. You will live a better life if you recognize that. You will achieve more. Nobody who we know in our private lives who is a genuinely resentful person is ever going to live a happy life. And it's the same in politics.

She's laughing at my producer here because virtually word for word. That is what she has heard me say, which is so important that it makes perfect sense that we would have come from totally different backgrounds in different countries to the different generations, the same conclusion. If you think clearly, gratitude is the mother of goodness and happiness. The left doesn't want you to be either. And, you know, I have a great riddle. I actually came up with a riddle. What do you call a happy Black American? A Republican. And that, it is as true as the sun shines that that is the case. So I look to you, especially those of you, many, many young viewers, the left wants you to be ungrateful. And the left is giving you a recipe for lifelong misery. Because if you are happy, you are not a revolutionary.

Yes, yes, you're not cannon fodder for the left's latest ideological war. It's just, it's the single most important thing I think we need to shift around this. Maybe one of the reasons we do both share this is because among other things, we have a love of of music and art and religion and culture. A love of life. Yes. And then, you see, and if you have these things, you realize—

I mean, that's exactly right. If you have all those things, what's there to complain about?

One of the things, one of the things that amazes me is, look what's happened in our own lifetimes, in the last few decades. I think when both of us were growing up, if you didn't have the money to buy a CD or an LP before that, you didn't know how the piece of music went. Or if you had a radio, you could. But if you wanted to search something out, you— right— unless you had the money— and I remember saving up for cassettes and then CDs to find out pieces of music— and, um, but unless you had the money to get it, it wasn't all there for you. Today, a young person with an iPhone has access to all of the music in the world basically for free, right? And we just accepted that and moved on without even noticing it, right? The same thing with the world's great literature, by the way. All of the great novels, which again we had to either find in a lending library or buy, are free to download. And every young person—

Hear it if you want to hear it.

And so every young person has access to this. And we passed by as if it didn't even register.

Well, you said something else earlier. In my book on happiness, which I wrote in 1997 or '98, I wrote, uh, one of my chapters is, you can't be happy if you don't have a tragic view of life. Because I so understand how rampant tragedy is and has been, I am unbelievably grateful for, uh, what I call my answer to white privilege is you want to know privilege? Here are two privileges: two-parent privilege and American privilege. Those are the two biggest privileges I had. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And if people could be made to understand this, or encouraged, I wouldn't say made, encouraged to understand this, we would be able to do so much. You know, one of the great, as it were, grievance of my own that I do have is I regret that we are spending these years talking about these things. Yeah, you know, it's so true. I regret that we have to read the books we have to read. I regret we have to have the arguments we have to have, because at this point in history, with access to all of the world's ideas, I know, the world's music, there's so much.

Wouldn't it be better to discuss what, what did King Lear do wrong? Right? That's, that's interesting. That's important. Yes. I have one more item. Can we— you want to do the— want to do the video one? So here's a question from one of my young viewers. And if you can't hear it, I'll repeat.

I'll read it to you. Hi, my name is Grace. I'm 20 years old and I'm from L.A., and I've seen elements of critical race theory seep into all areas of my university.

University life, so from classes to extracurricular activities and even student leadership positions.

So with how prevalent this is in our student life and our student culture, do you see a way of our culture kind of surviving this manipulation of thought?

Thank you.

Did you catch that? I did. It's a very good question, and, um, the questioner is, is at a crucial juncture in this because this is the moment when you can decide to either go along with the flow or, or not. My own view is that there are— we've got to find the shortcuts for getting over this. We've got to find the ways to sort of get through this faster. And I would say that there are several examples. There are several examples I give in The Madness of Crowds which I've been thinking of for a long time. Of how to do that. There are doubtless many more that we could come up with between ourselves, and viewers will be able to of their own. But we've got to find the shortcuts around this stuff. One of them is to call people out on their ignorance. There is a lot of stuff in the critical race theory and more where people make assertions they haven't really thought about. They've just been told to repeat them. So ask very basic questions and you can expose the other party. There's a very, very fine example of this many years ago that I'd heard from Mark Stein, who were once on a panel, and he said that shortly after 9/11, he went to look up something in the library at Dartmouth and there was a protest by some students, you know, sort of a no war, and he said that they sort of He went over to speak to them and they were saying, "No war." He said, "What's all this about?" "Well, no war because war leads to poverty, leads to oppression." They'd had the whole damn thing worked out. And he said to them, "Oh yeah? What's the capital of Saudi Arabia?" None of them knew. Now I suggest that people do this to the people who have these totalistic— the thing about the world is the following. And then they tell you their totalistic view of life. Just ask very basic questions and you'll find out how thin this veneer of knowledge is. But I think young people in particular have to realise that when you hear people talking with the certainty that you hear the critical race theorists talk about, they must be blagging, as we say in Britain. They must be making it up. They don't really know. And if you see, it's like that thing of seeing your enemy naked. You know, imagining them naked in order to win. Imagine, just realize, conceive in your mind how ignorant these people actually are. That when they talk with these grand sweeps, they don't really know what they're talking about. And it's quite easy to just pick out those things.

I had an editor of The Atlantic on my show many years ago, said that America's wars were all imperialistic. Or since World War II. So I said, what about the Korean War, which was as unimperialistic as any war ever fought in history? It was purely to protect Koreans from communism, half of which we did protect from communism. South Korea is one of the most advanced countries on Earth. North Korea is the most backward on Earth. And you know what his response was? I, I don't know that much about the Korean War. Right. An editor at The Atlantic. Yeah, yeah. 37,000 Americans died. Yeah, yeah.

This, this story should— to the young woman who asked the question, that should be enormously encouraging because you, you should assume that the people making these assertions don't really know that much. So it's a very good place. By the way, the other one, the quick, quick example, the other one I give is Always say compared to what? Just always say compared to what? Exactly. Who are you comparing us with? Because they always then, if they do have an answer, and sometimes they do, they'll say something absolutely— A more perfect union.

Yeah. As Barack Obama would constantly say. That's what he compared it to. Something more perfect. Yes. Not to the rest of the world. No.

Often they give away their ideological bent in this moment as well. They'll say things like, you know, we're an incredibly unequal society or something, you say, compared to what? And they'll say, well, I mean, look at healthcare in Cuba, right? Or, well, look at the rates of literacy in Venezuela, or something like this. They almost always— they used to do the Soviet Union, as you know. I mean, they sort of gave up on that a bit.

There was no unemployment in the Soviet Union. Yeah, yeah. To which I always responded, there was no unemployment on slave plantations, right? Right.

It's— these people always reveal the ideological underpinnings. But even if they don't do that, by saying "compared to what?" you will highlight the fact that these people believe they're driving a bus in a destination they really haven't thought out.

Correct. My final question, and obviously we could do this for a very long time, but I want you to hear my audio system before you leave. This is I trap all music lovers into this.

Uh, he's panting in anticipation.

Totally, totally. Actually, it is a little ironic. When I go up to the, the room where I listen to my music, he comes with me. Oh, it's the only time he does come with me. Because it is interesting. Anyway, so I want to get to one other thing, and you, you hint at it, and I talk about it a lot. I see leftism as the culmination of the post-Judeo-Christian or post-Christian era. That it's two things. It's a secular religion or cult, more correctly, I think. And that without the order of the biblical worldview, you get chaos. And they, I see first and foremost as a force of chaos. Now, what's your take on that? Because you obviously had religion in your background. I don't know where you stand on it today. I'm curious though to get your— I think there is a very deep post-religion factor in the chaos we're seeing. Yes, I agree.

I mean, it's— It's because, as I've written before, it's because our society has so many God-shaped holes, um, places where God was which need filling, and people fill them with bad versions of what they think might fill the gap, the void, you might say. Um, I agree. I think it's, it's, it's quite often been remark that, you know, in this worldview Karl Marx is sort of the last and final prophet. Of course, that was a view that a lot of leftists were sort of perfectly fine with for a time. The problem is, of course, is that the nirvana never worked out, and a lot of people have never accepted that fact. I do think a great problem in our era— I find this particular— I'm very I'm blessed with the fact that a lot of my audience is very young, college-aged. A lot of my readership is young. One of the things that gives me enormous hope. I learn from them the extent to which we who are not of the left need to answer on equal terms the challenges that the left are making. I gave the example earlier of things like inequality or resentment. But it also seems to me that the left has done a good job of giving meaning in a meaningless age, or at least in an age lacking in meaning. What I write about in The Madness of Crowds, of the cancel culture and much more, comes about because of God-shaped holes. You know, it's something to do. It gives the day a purpose. It It gives the life a drive. Now, it happens, as I say, to be an ugly, retributive, unforgiving, ugly, ugly drive, but it is a purpose. And I do think that conservatives— not you, and I hope not me— but many conservatives have in the last few generations forgotten about this gap, this void. And they've handed it over because we have large institutions and think tanks that are dedicated to economic thinking. And economic thinking is very important, but it doesn't fill the void. We have institutions, we have publications and others that address specific things of Republican versus Democratic politics. But it cannot fill the void. Now the left says, "Yes, it can. This war, this jihad, this crusade against the right will give your life meaning." And of course, some people on the right might be tempted to say, "Well, we will play that back and say that's meaning." But I think we have to do better than that. We have to say, "No, that is something. Politics is important, just like economics is important, but it isn't purpose." It cannot be the meaning of life because apart from anything else, politicians, like economics, will let you down. It is an unhappy life dedicated to using politics as religion. So we have to say, to use a rather old-fashioned phrase but one I'm still fond of, what a life well lived looks like. And I have to say I'm positive and optimistic on this because I think, and I think you'd agree with this, that the things that we have to offer and suggest— never tell, but suggest, invite, you might say— people to see as being the elements of a life well lived are a heck of a lot better and will sustain people far more And that's why people gravitate to PragerU, because we do have answers to a life well-lived.

Well, this has been, it's been a nourishing dessert. That's my ridiculous gastronomic metaphor for the joy I've had with you. You must all read the Douglas Murray's works. They're truly significant. They are, in the best sense, simple because they are understandable. My motto when I write and when I speak is I work hard so that the reader doesn't. I have a feeling you do the same. Well, this was a joy. I've met you only through telephone prior to this. So folks, a very special episode. Is that the word? Of the fireside chat. Douglas Murray, Dennis Prager. See you next week.

Tomorrow on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

I want to say a few words about this subject, the moral case for Israel. And I'll start with a controversial statement, but it's not meant to be controversial. I don't like controversy for its own sake. There is something troubling to me that such a lecture needs to be given at all, and it is doubly troubling that it needs to be given, of all places, at a university. Whatever your position on the Middle East, Middle East conflict. It is a fact on this— left, right, center, pro-Palestinian, pro-Israel, undecided— anyone can agree there's no place in America where hostility to Israel is as great outside of neo-Nazi foundations as it is at the American University.