"The Denial of Evil," Best of Dennis and Julie

I'm reading Frederick Douglass's autobiography.

Oh, good for you.

It is riveting, riveting. And he describes without even— without terrible hostility or anger. And he— I think he was ultimately a religious Christian, but he describes how men, how men would go to church on Sunday, be devout and pray and then whip a slave bloody. Now, this is— what I'm saying has no hostility to Christians because the abolitionists were all Christians. So here is a fascinating question: if the abolitionists were Christians and the whippers were Christian, what is Christianity? Say, you could ask that about any religion. I'm just picking on the dominant religion of the Western world. I've always wondered, I truly have always wondered how you go to church and then whip a slave, or even own one, but especially whip one. And I don't have a good answer.

What do you think the answer is?

Well, I'll make it even harder. How do you justify as a Christian or a Jew, but Jews were so small they're irrelevant to this question. How do you, how did a Christian justify kidnapping blacks and transporting them as slaves when the, first of all, the Bible forbids that very act. You cannot kidnap people and sell them. It's actually, it's a capital offense in the Torah. So, and the Torah is part of Christian Bible. I mean, it's the first 5 books. Do not steal, the 8th commandment of the Ten Commandments. Always in religious life from the ancient world was understood you cannot steal people. It is also you cannot steal property, but it is first and foremost you cannot steal people. How did any Christian justify stealing blacks? And I don't— what is my answer? How did the guys on the way to the Crusades massacre tens of thousands of Jews? I mean, including babies. If the only, the only antidote is, I believe, emphasizing every single day by every single pastor and rabbi and priest. God most wants you to be good. As soon as you veer from that path, a lot of bad can happen.

Yes. And I don't go to church very often. I want to, and I should, But when I do go to church, I notice that the words salvation and damnation are rarely, if at all, said in modern churches. And I don't go to some hippie-dippy, you know, pride flag, BLM flag churches. It would make more sense if I went to those kinds, but I go to what I consider to be conservative Catholic, sometimes Protestant churches. I was raised at least nominally as a Catholic, so that's why I tend to go to Catholic churches. But you rarely hear those words salvation and damnation. And there's another example which you may find to be unrelated, but I'll explain why it is. I recently on Timeless did a show on funerals, uh, different religious practices with burying, and then I made it a general conversation of what is proper funeral etiquette. I did a show on weddings too, that, that's what started this, because people really enjoyed my show on weddings and how no longer is a wedding a sacred transformation of a relationship. Now it's a party. And I talked about why are some Brides opting to not wear white dresses? Why are some bridesmaids wearing different dresses? Why are religious ceremonies going down? Anyway, so I did this show on funerals, and one of the things that I found out was, in talking about how funeral services have changed, is that people tend not to refer to them as funerals anymore. They're now called celebrations of life. There was one other term I'm forgetting, but it was something positive as opposed to a funeral. And I think there's a correlation here. You know, you don't hear salvation and damnation in churches. In funerals, there's the spin. And it's that we're running away from the harsh reality that evil exists. And that death exists, and that things that are uncomfortable exist. And to your point, we need to make the entire discussion about good and evil. And I find that modern society is so— we're so afraid of confronting things that are uncomfortable. That's why I think in churches they don't want to say the word damnation, because they consider that to be too aggressive. No, the job of a church is to talk about salvation or damnation. That is what Christianity is fundamentally about. Those two things. We can't whitewash that.

Right, but that's not the same. You're right, but it's not the same as good and evil.

You're right, it's not, but I think this is a kind of an offshoot of that.

But you're right, they're avoiding tough talk.

They're avoiding tough talk, and I think it goes down to they're avoiding the existence of evil. They're avoiding talking about damnation. If you don't behave well, if you are evil, you will be punished.

They're avoiding individuals. That's why I want, yes, I love your example with the funeral. Celebration of life. No, they died.

They died.

Like, we can celebrate their life any time we want. Yes, but this is a funeral.

It's running away from reality.

I know. In Judaism, we— every funeral I've attended, I am one of those, as everybody else is, where we actually lift a shovel and pour dirt on the coffin.

I have to tell you, I said in my episode, thanks to Dennis Prager, I have rabbis on speed dial. And I called one of your, now one of my rabbi friends, and he wrote his rabbinic thesis on Jewish burial practices. It is incredibly moving, really moving.

Well, you really confront it.

And yes, and another thing that Jews do in burial practices is that from the time that the coffin leaves the synagogue or wherever the service is being held and then going to the site at which it's going to be buried at the cemetery, you stop 7 times. And you say a prayer. And Rabbi Woznika told me it's because you want to indicate that you're not rushing to bury the dead. And when you shovel the dirt, you turn over the shovel the first time you do it to signify reluctance. That's understanding the gravity of the situation and honoring the deceased. What I learned about modern funerals, you call them celebrations of life. It's customary now for a large portion of funerals to not have attendants wear all black. A lot of funerals are now very casual.

Really?

Yes. I think I read something like 33% of funerals now in the United States, you don't wear black.

The non-confrontation with tough stuff—

It's weird. I find it to be a little weird.

—is a big part of modern life. I'll give you an example from translations of the Bible. It says constantly, fear God. Overwhelmingly, the translators, modern translators, say revere God. And the biggest example is the law in Exodus, a man shall fear his mother and father. And nobody, almost nobody translates it that way. They do revere. Revere, shmavir, it means fear. There are two beings we're supposed to fear: God and our parents.

I love that. And I love, I love that being a God-fearing person is a moral term. It was.

That's correct. Yes, exactly. The non-confrontation with the difficult is— look, the ultimate— I mean, this is what I call the feminization of society. So You, you, you can't win a baseball game in, in with young kids by more than a certain number of runs because it humiliates the kids who lost by too many runs. Well, what kind of nonsense is that? At the Thomas Jefferson— if I lose 15-nothing, I lose, or 25-nothing in a baseball game, then I have to deal with it.

When I played water polo, we played against this high school which had a— first of all, it was 3 3 or 4 times the size of my high school, so bigger pool of players, that might be good, and they had a program longer than ours. Anyway, they kicked our butts. We lost 36 to nothing, and I remember being in the pool, and they were ruthless. Once you got to 20, maybe you could hit 3. And they just did it to stick a finger in our eye, and you know what, there were players after who were really upset, and parents after who were really upset, and I remember being in high school thinking, I'm really glad this happened to me. I'm glad I felt that humiliation. This is making me a stronger person. This is life. Life is not going to stop at 20 goals scored on you. Sometimes life's going to keep going. Yes. 25, 30, 35. Life is relentless. Hello, life. It's— I viewed it as an allegory for life. Totally. So if— I didn't mean to interrupt you.

No, no, go ahead.

One of the subjects that I wanted to discuss today—

Oh, wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. So this I just want to say this theme is really important. The non-confrontation with difficult— I'll give you another translation, by the way. It says, do not follow— in Deuteronomy again— do not follow— I got to translate from the Hebrew, sorry— do not follow your eyes or your hearts. And the translations are, after which you go astray. You know what the Hebrew says? What? Do not follow your eyes or your hearts, after which you whore yourself, prostitute yourself.

There are so many people who prostitute themselves, of course, literally.

But nobody translated correctly, like, don't fear about fearing your parents. There, there's just a non-confrontation. The whole denial of male-female differences was, I don't want to confront the unpleasant reality that men are different from me.

I was reading your Torah commentary this morning, A, for fun, and B, in anticipation of this episode. Your command of Hebrew is one of the things that makes this commentary so good, because when the consequences— some say the punishment, you say the consequences— were levied to Adam and Eve after they ate from the tree, God, the word for naked, like their knowledge that they were naked, you say is different from the earlier word of naked, and that in that it reflects this erotic aspect of sexual nature, the new Hebrew word that was used in that instance of naked. And I bet, you know, that's translated— I bet, I mean, I know it is translated into English and doesn't account for that erotic meaning because people want to run away from that. That's too off limits. You have really made me see, and I can't thank you enough for it, You have made me see that the central issue of our time and of any time is that people don't want to confront or understand the existence of evil. That is what animates everything. It's what animates interpersonal issues, political issues, everything.

Well, that's why you're so special to me, among many other reasons I might add. But that, that You get it. You truly get it. Most people don't get it. It's not a condemnation of them. It's just a fact. And this is the issue. It is the issue. There are only two races, the decent and the indecent.

And that's why we're conservative. People think that we, oh, we just like lower taxes. And there, by the way, there are some conservatives who only vote Republican because of fiscal policy or because— and I don't, I actually don't like those conservatives even though they vote the way that I want them to vote. I think they give a bad name to conservatism. The reason why you and I are conservative is because fundamentally we believe that conservative principles are more in accordance with bringing about good and combating evil. For us, it's about good and evil, not about policy. Bingo.

Well, let me, let me defend, let me defend the people who only vote Republican or conservative because of lower taxes. I mean, I get it. Low. No, no, no, no. Not just get it. I'll tell you why it's morally good. Because lower taxes means smaller government, and smaller government means less evil, period, end of issue. Totally.

But that's not the reason why. It doesn't matter.

You're right. Since I only judge behavior and not intentions, I don't give a damn. Oh, interesting.

Yeah, well, we've— we had that whole discussion on this show.

It is so big.

No, I mean, of course I'm— I love people that vote Republican. I don't care why. No, no, no.

But they're doing good. Yeah. Yeah. Smaller government means less genocide. Less corruption, less ability to arrest people because of political reasons like we're doing in America for the first time in our history.

You know, I would say, and some may believe this is an outrageous comment, but I don't think so. I would say that there's a large contingent of people in my age group who would even deny that evil exists. They may say, well, they may say that Well, they have transphobia, right? But I think it would more— I'm not explaining myself very well, but I think they would more talk about it like from a societal oppressive standpoint, like circumstances are not good and lead people to do bad. In other words, they won't acknowledge that outside of any external difficulties—

Right, but it is ironic, they do believe that their opponents are evil. Well, yes, so that's right. Yes, they don't believe that murderers are evil because murderers are most of the time because of poverty or racism. But if you believe that the police should be strong, or you believe— oh, well, better, you believe in the nuclear family as the ideal, a man and a woman married and then having children, if that's your ideal, you're a hater.

Once you see life from this perspective of good and evil, it's like a light switch has been turned on in a dark room and everything makes sense now. And so the other day there was, I think it was this shooting by this white guy, shot 3 black people. And I had a relative, right, or no, sorry, it wasn't that shooting. It was a school shooting because my relative blamed that one on white supremacy. Anyway, it was a school shooting and my relative wrote me a text saying, "F the Second Amendment." And now that I see the world through this good and evil perspective, I realize that blaming gun violence on the Second Amendment— and I want to put a little asterisk and say, I think there are legitimate— I don't know if I necessarily believe with them, but I totally recognize that there are legitimate arguments saying people ought not to have certain high-caliber weapons. I get that. But when you see gun violence and your instinct is to say, "Eff the Second Amendment," you are not confronting the real evil. It's not the gun. It's the person who pulled the trigger. You are wittingly or not giving a pass to that. Our focus needs to be on that crazy, deranged, evil individual, not on the weapon that they happen to use, which by the way, even if the Second Amendment didn't exist, we live in this time now where you can 3D print a weapon. Or you can go in and stab people or taser, you know, it's like, why are we focusing on the— that is a running away from the existence of evil. That's right.

I have said all of my life, you may not know of this book, but it was a, it was a major, major book, I guess. Was it written in the '60s? Uh, The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker.

Yeah, I need to buy that book.

So, well, I'm not sure. I, I, uh, I'm almost done. I've been— it doesn't matter. All I'm— what matters is the thesis is accurate. People live their lives most of the time denying that they'll die. That's just part of human nature. That's fine. But I've said the greater denial is the denial of evil.