The Life Journey of Dennis Prager (Part 2)

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Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Hear thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs. And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com. On today's episode of Timeless Wisdom.

Okay, now it's time for part 2 of my story. and this is the evolution of my thinking and philosophies of life.

That's coming up on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager, and it starts right now.

Okay, now it's time for part 2 of my story, and this is the evolution of my thinking and philosophies of life. By the way, the word married was missing in the last moments of the last aside. That is a part 1 of my story, whereas you heard 2 years— it was— we were married after 2 years. Okay, so now here we go and enjoy. This is again on the ship to Antarctica. Good. Yes. Are you having a good time? First of all, isn't it extraordinary? I, uh— the, uh, worse the weather gets, the more I salute you for coming. Just want you to know that. You folks have picked— this is— how do we stop this from reverberating? You know what? I'm curious. Can you hear me like this? Yes? Not as well? This is better? Even though it's got that reverb? Okay. You can live with it, I can live with it. Okay, what I've decided to do is do a part 2 of from yesterday. This time, though, more philosophic. Yesterday it was introducing where I come from, what makes me tick, as it were. But today more so, and more reference to the inner thought processes that brought me to where you know me on the radio, to the present, since I am not what I— I'm not fully what I was raised. And so I want to talk to you about various preoccupations of my life and changes, and have time, more time than yesterday, for your comments and questions. I have been preoccupied my whole life with the issue of good and evil. And I mean preoccupied. I would, I'll never forget, I mean, somebody yesterday asked if my wife considers me an eccentric. Remember that from yesterday? Fran, by the way, would you say I am an eccentric? A little bit, you said? Is that what you said? Oh, a bit unusual. She's very diplomatic. She's good. You know, the funny thing is, I don't know if I am, and I took it as a compliment. Remember, I explained eccentricity, but not— you don't think not, but not real? Yeah, unusual is more accurate, I think. I don't, you know— a man of great passion. Ah, that's good. Keep going, keep going. Yeah, I won't come in mind on that now. Anyway, let me— I do know that this part of me was unusual and difficult for me and I think for others at times. And I will again give you an example. You know, you know you, and if you have children, you know we are born with dispositions. Clearly, I, in the nature-nurture debate, I give more weight to nurture than to nature. I want you to know that. I think that if For example, if my wife and I could have raised Adolf Hitler from birth, I don't think he would have come out the evil individual that he did eventually become. I mean, that's a classic example of nature versus nurture. Not to say that there wasn't an element of toughness, of hatred, or whatever, perhaps in his nature. But whatever it is, in this case, nature or nurture, I was preoccupied with human suffering and the problem of evil from a very young age, much younger than it is normal to so be preoccupied. I'll give you an example that drove my mother nuts, and the older I get, the more I understand it. I'm not even sure she would remember it. You know, we remember a lot of things our parents don't remember. They remember all the good things and we remember all the bad things. It's really not fair at all. So, uh, having said that, I was about 5 years old and I was driving my little tricycle around the block in Brooklyn. And only those of you who grew up in New York, I think, experienced seltzer bottles. Are any of you familiar with the seltzer bottle? It's got the spritzer on top and the thick glass. Well, they would deliver cases of these seltzer bottles. The seltzer man or the soda man would deliver this. And down the block lived a boy, he was a young teenager named Lee. I still remember. And while I was driving my tricycle one day, I saw Lee drop by accident a— the whole box of seltzer bottles, and it tore his leg open in terms of bleeding, of all the shattering glass. They, they like exploded, the seltzer bottles. And I was— it was, it was a trauma for me. I'm sure it wasn't even a trauma for him now that I think of it, you know. So he'll take some stitches and he's fine. There was no threat of life or anything. But all I could do for the next few days— and I, and I know it was day after day was cry about Lee and ask my mother, "Go over there and tell me how he is." Until finally, it was clear I was driving her nuts. And not that my mother didn't care about Lee, she did, but it drove her nuts after a while. I wouldn't stop crying about Lee and really an unhealthy preoccupation, I admit it. From even from later on, whatever it would be, if it was a cartoon, I I had great gusto when the good guy beat the bad guy. I, you know, it filled me with joy. It still does. If I see a World War II movie and I see the Nazi soldiers getting blown up, or for that matter, if I see Al-Qaeda getting blown up, it fills me with great joy. I love— from the most primal depths of my being, I have wanted the bad to be punished and the good to be rewarded. Both, both, by the way, are, are very passionate to me. I love to see good people rewarded for the good they do. Uh, it's perhaps one of the reasons that a film that I recommended on the air, which did not do well, uh, I, I do strongly recommend Pay It Forward, uh, where it's a very touching movie, and everyone who's seen it that I know said it can influence them to even do more good, which is, you know, what more could you ask for from a movie? So this has always been with me, this— I— these ideas. And I remember The earliest, my earliest memories of the Holocaust, watching the 20th Century Television series with Walter Cronkite. Some of you may remember that. And then I saw Hitler, and I asked my parents, we were in the living room, and I asked my parents, who is this, who is this guy? And I don't remember the exact answer, but something to the effect of how bad he was and that he murdered 6 million Jews and and so many other people died as a result. And it stayed with me. How could somebody be that bad? And how could people suffer that much? So these issues about the bad, about people unjustly suffering have always been my preoccupation and they continue to be and it animates me. And I like to fight for the guy. I like to fight for the right guy. A lot of people in America like to fight for the underdog. I don't want to fight for the underdog. I want to fight for the good dog. There is a very common misconception between underdog and good guy. And it is very common in our— in American media today for the media to back the underdog, but not the right one. It might be that the right one is powerful. The United States is powerful and may be right, but because whoever the US will fight is going to by definition be the underdog, there may often be sympathy there. I think in the Middle East that's the case. Israel is more powerful than the Palestinians, and those who root for underdog rather than right dog will end up rooting for the Palestinians who want to destroy Israel, but— and Israel— and not for Israel, which protects itself, but is, and is as it happens, much stronger than its enemies. I never divided the world between underdog and top dog, but between the good and the bad. That's why I told you again my motto: there are only two races, the decent and the indecent. This preoccupation stays with me in every broadcast. In some way you can find it. People who tell me that they will grieve for their dog as much as they grieve for a child, you know, this ongoing debate I will have. I had the woman from United Poultry Coalition on the other day. You know, okay, well, obviously I don't have to say anything. You know, I mean, I don't know if it— I really would love to know how you react when you're listening. I have to keep calm. You know, I can't really say, gee, when did you become an idiot? I, I, you know, you can. You see, you're freer than I. You could curse at the radio, you could kick it, you could call this person every name. But I had— I have to ask another semi-intelligent rational question, as if any of this is rational. I, I, you don't know. Do you know what I do sometimes during those interviews? I'm actually humming the Twilight Zone theme. I, I actually think I have entered another realm.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

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Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.

A woman is telling me That chickens grieve? Do you want— the idea is beyond preposterous. Yes, no, but chickens don't. Chickens are very— I, I believe that a dog that loves a master and the master dies, the dog will grieve. I believe that chickens don't. My wife is the reigning expert in this room, I am sure, of chickens. And when she's on with me, and we know we raise chickens I even said it to the woman, it was her bad luck. Chickens are not an abstraction to me. They're not just a food. We live with about 40 to 50 at all times on our property. If you've ever raised chickens, and we just take the eggs, we don't slaughter them or anything. We talk to them. Actually, the coyotes have them. Coyotes of our neighborhood. I'm not happy, it's just a fact. They do leave us thank you notes every so often. It's like the Prager Delicatessen. At any rate, you know, they only gestate 21 days. You know how primitive a 21-day organism is? And then they come out like reptiles out of an egg. Don't confuse chickens with cows, let alone with dogs. Okay, be that as it may, when she compared the grief for September 11th's attack on America to the grief of chickens slaughtered for food, I thought it was a bit much. But all I'm saying is— now, why? What is it all I'm saying? Do I say we should have no regard for animals? Of course not. It's a non-issue to me that, of course, you have to try to minimize animal suffering. But I believe— she said, I'm not belittling the suffering of those who lost a loved one on September 11th. But that's exactly what she was doing. If you compare the loss of a chicken to the loss of your husband daddy in the World Trade Center, of course you're belittling that loss. There's no way around it. Since while they're grieving, they're all having a chicken salad sandwich, aren't they? I mean, there's no comparison. Anyway, this brings me to a related fact that animates me tremendously. And that is— and those who don't agree with me may say I didn't, I haven't attained this— moral clarity. This has been a passion. Clarity in general has been another ongoing passion in my life. Understand why. Now, I told you, I think a lot of these things start off in your childhood. And you all, I assume, we're all psychologically aware enough to believe that. I'll give you an example of what bothered me as a child. If my parents— and every parent does this, this is not in any way a knock on my parents— but typically a parent would say, do the following. And typically a child will, in the beginning, until it is knocked out of the child, ask why, right? Why should I? The general parental response is, because I said so, because Daddy said so, Mommy said so, or because that's the rule. Those answers always drove me crazy, and I never stopped asking why. I am prepared to do almost anything if I understand the why of it. And that's why when you listen to me, if there is clarity, it is because I have always delved into why. Give you a political example. I'm a Jew, and I I am perplexed by how many Jews are on the left politically. That they are is not an issue. It's a fact, as most blacks are. And I believe they are, by the way, I think for virtually the same reasons. And if you want me to talk about that later, I'll be happy to. But in any event, the question that I have wanted to answer for years is why. Why is it that Jews vote this way, or Jews are political? I want to know why. I want to know why has America been different. That America has been different is important, but why is even more important. So I am preoccupied at all times with the question of why, and I've tried to raise my kids with an analogous response. And that is, if my kids ask why, and Fran does this too, we give them answers. Giving now, that doesn't mean they're free to therefore disobey. But in the final analysis, you know, put on a coat. Why? It's all kinds— became a joke with our littlest guy. I'd say, put on a jacket. Why? Because it's cold out. Why? Because the temperature at this time of the year will reach a certain point in the degrees that makes it cold. Why? Because God made 4 seasons and it is very important for us to have more. You know, it will go on. And so what has happened is he starts to laugh and what could have been a confrontation is now funny. But the answers are given. I mean, by the 7th why, it's the end of the issue. You're allowed about 7 whys and then you do it and that's the end of the issue. But I really believe that explaining things is critical. What has happened to America after September 11th? What's the first question most Americans asked? Why do these people hate us? Now, I happen to believe that I have answers to that, but the point is Americans were not asking just who did it. Americans want to know why they did it. It's a very rational question to ask. And if you like, we can talk about that, but since I've addressed it a lot on the radio, that's not something I chose for this trip. But in any event, wanting to know why. Here's another example. But I know that if you tell people why, they will do much more than if you don't explain why. I'm a big advocate of marriage. So I have, for example, talked on the air and in a speech on tape, the Why Get Married? And it's primarily a tape dedicated to men. Most of the time it is men who need the argument because it goes more against their inner nature to commit the rest of their lives to one person than it does, I believe, to female nature. You may not agree, and that's fine. And I think both sexes today do need a why on marriage. But the point is, again, why is the powerful question that always needs to be answered. And I have been preoccupied with why. So good and evil, clarity, moral clarity— these have been preoccupations in my life. By the way, I can tell you a funny story with the preoccupation with good and evil, the preoccupation, you know, with both. And, uh, I was once introduced by a student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and she was extremely nervous introducing me. Not because it was me, she would just never spoken publicly And so she read from notes, but she made a tiny error. And this is exactly what she said: It's my pleasure to introduce this evening Mr. Dennis Prager. Mr. Dennis Prager from Los Angeles is preoccupied with doing evil. And my first question was, gee, how did she know? But, uh, but— and that was based— she added, she added the word— whoops. Take 8. I was going to give the lecture on seabirds in the South Atlantic Ocean, but I decided I would do this one. By the way, if you do want to go to any of those, I will not be insulted. I understand you can get me any day on radio. How often can you get the seabirds of the South Antarctic Ocean? Okay, so I believe me, I appreciate that. Oh, it's on TV anyway. Oh, so if you leave, I should be insulted. Okay, all right. I just wanted to make it clear. All right. See, now you ruined it for anybody. Anyway, so she introduces me as being preoccupied with doing evil. Of course, I'm not preoccupied with doing evil to the best of my knowledge, but I am preoccupied with that subject and have been. And not everybody is, I admit it. And by the way, sometimes it can drive a person crazy. Like, for example, I don't like when drivers cut off other drivers. I think that's in the realm of evil. And sometimes I will follow them, which does not bring my wife great joy. Let me say, she is shaking her head at this time. She thought she had knocked that trait out of me. But I don't like people to get away with doing— not only cut me off, cut anybody off. I don't like it. I don't like when people get away with bad stuff. These have been Two of my preoccupations: moral clarity and clarity. I've also been preoccupied with the issue of God, and this is from, I would say, from my teen years when it occurred to me that God is the single most important question in life. Just intellectually, let me tell you about God and myself, if I may. I don't have the— my preoccupation with God is more intellectual than emotional. I cannot say to you— I don't say I don't have this, but it is not my rhetoric to say to anyone, God and I have this intimate relationship. I don't feel that. I'm not saying that I don't have a relationship with God. I do, but it's not what I most walk around thinking. By the way, interestingly, you know, the two callers when I spoke— what was it about that I spoke? Oh yeah, why aren't you married? And as singles called up my show, was just right before this trip, two singles called up and said, well, I don't need a relationship with anyone. I have my greatest relationship with God. And I thought, my God, that's not good theology. That's terrible theology. And I gave an answer that actually I learned from reading a Christian pastor on the book of Genesis. And I teach the Torah, of which Genesis is the first part, verse by verse for the last 10 years. I know it real well. Not as well as I'd like, but, but pretty well. And I teach it from the Hebrew. And he made a brilliant point, this Christian pastor. When God creates Adam, the first man, what does God say? What is God's first statement about anything, about people? It is not good for man to be alone, and makes him the partner, a woman. And this pastor— I keep emphasizing it's a pastor— said That's a brilliant statement, if you will, of God's, because what God, among the many things God is saying by that, is I, God, am not sufficient for the human being. You need a human partner. God made us human. We are not angels. We are not spirits. So to say that God is my relationship It's wonderful to have one, but God himself says you are still alone even if you have me. You still need people. People need people. In fact, they're the luckiest people in the world. That'll be my show tonight in the Ambassador Lounge, just a preview for my singing debut.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

We live in a time where the moment you question the narrative, you're told to stop thinking and start complying. That's why what Angel is doing matters. With eye-opening documentaries like Thank You, Dr. Fauci and RFK: Legacy, Angel is willing to explore the issues others avoid. In a culture shaped by gatekeepers, Angel offers something rare: a platform for truth-seeking storytelling that isn't constrained by fear or conformity. Go to angel.com/prager, join the Angel Guild, and Watch these films today.

Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.

This, this idea of God— well, not an idea, this reality of God— my preoccupation has been more with the importance of God than an ongoing emotional relationship with, which is wonderful But I realized early on that God is the big question. If there is no God, then there are two things missing in life. There is no ultimate meaning. It is all pure coincidence. You are nothing more than self-conscious molecules. I am nothing more than self-conscious molecules. And there is no ultimate good and evil. Everything is just a matter of opinion. If God doesn't say thou shalt not murder, Murder is wrong because you feel it is, and morality then becomes a matter of feeling. This is the most ongoing issue of my life, showing the consequences to people of the denial of God, of the— of God as the source of meaning, as the source of right and wrong. All these things have been the preoccupations that have really animated me with good and evil, with clarity, always having moral clarity whenever possible, and with God because of the absolute significance of God. I mentioned to you yesterday in my autobiographical talk that I was out of sync with my generation. I want to talk to you about that because that too has played a big role in, in shaping me. I am truly of the baby boomer generation, having been born 3 years after World War II in 1948. I went to college in the '60s, graduate school in the '70s, dab smack in the middle of the '60s-'70s generation. I saw the riots at Columbia University. I saw attempted riots at Brooklyn College. I was in England for a year during that time, which was also undergoing a social upheaval, but there it was much more— not because there was no Vietnam War there— it was much more social, as represented by the microskirt, which made studying very difficult in England. But that's another subject for another time. But England was going through its own rejection of, you know, traditional value systems and its own identity and so on. Well, why was I out of sync? I was out of sync with my generation because I— and I still feel— I don't feel this as much because I think a lot of my generation are now maturing, but I felt that it was a very narcissistic generation as a rule. Of the very motto, you can't trust anyone over 30. I believe it or not, I didn't even think the— and it was— I was in college then. I was opposed to the vote going to 18-year-olds when I was 18. And I followed the news. I read papers every day, unlike most of my colleagues. But I said, I said, we, what do we know? We don't know enough. And people looked at me like I was crazy. What sort of guy, what sort of kid is going to say no to the vote? Isn't it a human right? Everything was, isn't it a right to vote? I said, what do we know? I looked at my friends. I said, what do we know? We're going to make an intelligent choice on who's president of the United States or senator from our state? What do we know at 18? Of course, it's a good— as an example of how out of it I was, I remember being utterly alone in arguing that way. And the idea you can't trust people over 30, I thought, was the stupidest notion I had ever heard. I didn't think you could trust anyone under 30. Of course, over 30, I believed in the idea of wisdom. And this, by the way, and I'm going to come to this in a moment, is because I was raised in a religion religion as opposed to spirituality. I had spirituality, but I'm talking about religion. My religion— I would study every day my religion, and I would learn about what wise men from 2,000 years ago said. So the idea that all of a sudden we are the wisest generation, we the baby boomers of America, are the wisest generation to have ever been developed, is nonsense. You with me? I realized there were so many wise people who lived before I did. But if you are cut off from religious tradition, from your American tradition, from your philosophic tradition, you think that you know better. All of a sudden, you at Columbia University, you at the University of Michigan, wherever it is, you know better than all the people who lived before you, and certainly than your parents. And parents did not know how to answer their kids. Their kids would come home from college and speak about all sorts of stuff that they had learned there, how everything is relative and so on, and the parents didn't have intellectual answers. So the parents were, were in a sense paralyzed from giving these responses. That was one aspect, that, that narcissism. There was another narcissistic expression that was drugs. I hate drugs. I don't hate alcohol. I don't hate tobacco. In fact, I love tobacco, as it happens. But I don't hate gambling. I hate— of the vices, I hate drugs. Drugs are— they have no redeeming feature, in my opinion. Alcohol is very destructive when obviously you don't control it. What gambling is, sex is. Everything is destructive if you can't— everything is. Eating is if you can't control it. But there is no— I see no role for drugs, for narcotics. And I saw my friends, on the rare occasion when I was at Columbia, for example, and I would go to a party and they'd pass around joints to everybody, would smoke it. And I, you know, I didn't make a big deal out of it, but I felt so out of it, the fact that I thought that this was a bad idea. And I thought it was a bad idea for two reasons. Number one, I believed that God has given us all a good brain. Why would I ever want to tamper with it? I thought that that was an act of ingratitude. I have this beautiful brain. Why mess around with it? Second, I felt that it was a staggering weakness of appreciation of life. If you cannot get high on life, there's something wrong with you. Here we are, you and I, as I talk. There are, you know, these glaciers around us in Antarctica. If this doesn't make you high— and it obviously does, that's why you're on this ship— imagine having to be on the ship, you know, I got to have a joint. I just can't appreciate the scenery and this excitement of this adventure in Antarctica if I don't have a joint. Or if I don't, you know, sniff some heroin. That person, it's— I'm sorry, and it's not meant to be offensive, but it's pathetic. The trick is to get high on life. If you don't find— if a graduate student in New York City in 1970 did not have enough to get excited about in life— travel, music, love— I mean, every— what was open to my generation in possibilities of enjoying life was greater than any time in history. I live better than most kings in history. So do you. You've certainly seen more than anybody except maybe Magellan and Drake. And, you know, and we're where Drake was, and it's much more comfortable. I read about it, and I can assure you we have it better than Drake did. And so I— it was to me a terrible statement of I don't know how to be happy. I need to manipulate my insides chemically because I don't know how to be happy. Even in college, I felt this. There was some terrible aspect to drugs. Third, it was very narcissistic. Like, the attitudes were narcissistic. So, hey, I want to get into my own thing. It's very— after all, it is mostly on your own. You take drugs and then you really are away in many ways from anybody else. You're not getting high through someone else. It's through you shooting up whatever you've shot up, sniffing whatever you've sniffed, smoking whatever you've smoked. And I'm speaking obviously in smoking about narcotics. I was, I was very out of it with regard to my generation in this way. I was very out of it. For example, I attended anti-war rallies. I did. I, I was very anti-communist, but I did not believe that this was the place to make the stand. It was a very difficult decision to make because I loved America and I hated communism. But even at the demonstrations, I felt no kinship with anybody else there because they were celebrating Ho Chi Minh. They weren't saying communism is evil, Ho Chi Minh is a mass murderer, which he was. They were saying he was a hero and we're villains. But we weren't villains, and he's the villain. The North Vietnamese communists were villains. That may not have been the war to fight that villain. That was something I was prepared to accept, but not that they were not villains. So here I am again, alone. They're going, "Ho ho Ho Chi Minh," and I'm thinking, what is there to go ho ho Ho Chi Minh about? The man is vile. All communist dictators are vile. So alone on the drugs, alone on the attitudes, alone on the politics, alone on the music. The— I didn't care for the music of that period, and I'm not saying that's better or worse, I'm just saying I, I didn't get into me. It was usually very self-referential, my angst type of music, you know, sit with the guitar and say how life has been screwed, screwed you is how I heard a lot of that music. Now, there is some beautiful music from that period, there's no question, but I'm being honest with you to say there was nothing I had in common. Then there was dating. Well, here I am at Columbia University, graduate student, and the most logical, you know, girl/woman to date would be a girl who's attending Barnard, the girls', the women's branch at that time of Columbia. But of course, it was virtually impossible. Because they were so feminist. You know, again, we had nothing basically in common. They would think that they were basically the same as men. That's what they had been taught. That's what the '60s taught— men and women are basically the same except for the plumbing. And, you know, and I always believed men and women were very different. So I had very, very few comfortable moments of dating the most logical group I should be dating from, the, you know, women in New York, uh, and at, uh, and, uh, at Columbia. And so it was not a great, not a great time that way. But I was— remember from yesterday, I was doing a lot of lecturing around the eastern half of the United States. So, you know, I met women that did believe that men and women were different, you know, in St. Louis and in Columbus and in Miami, but not in New York. So I ended up, you know, having a girlfriend in St. Louis, in Miami, which is not such a terrible thing at that time in life. But in any event, that really is in effect what happened. But I really was out of sync with my generation. And another reason I was out of sync was I was religious. I was committed to my religion, Judaism, and most of my peers were secular. In fact, they were so secular that Time magazine, while I was in college, had as its cover story, you may recall, "God is Dead." And, and, okay, "God is Dead" is on the COVID of Time magazine, and if Time announces it, then by golly, it's official. And so I wrote— I'll never forget, I did my graduate work in Marxism and communist affairs I was at the Russian Institute at Columbia University at the School of International Affairs, and I wrote a paper because I studied Marxism. I wrote a paper comparing Marxism and Judaism for a professor who was a Marxist secular Jew, which if nothing else said I had guts. And I really expected a D. He was kind enough to give it a B-, and it was clear I annoyed him. Because, you know, he— I'm sure as he read it, he was thinking, oh no, how did this happen? Somebody believes in religion, a Jew no less, in my class, saying Judaism was far superior to Marxism as a moral philosophy. Anyway, that essay is— it was a great thing that I wrote it because it ended up one of the questions in my book, the first book that I told you about yesterday, 9 Questions People ask about Judaism. One of them is how does Judaism differ from a number of different systems, including Marxism. So that paper has a long shelf life.

This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.

We live in a time where the moment you question the narrative, you're told to stop thinking and start complying. That's why what Angel is doing matters. With eye-opening documentaries like Thank You, Dr. Fauci and RFK: Legacy Angel is willing to explore the issues others avoid. In a culture shaped by gatekeepers, Angel offers something rare: a platform for truth-seeking storytelling that isn't constrained by fear or conformity. Go to angel.com/prager, join the Angel Guild, and watch these films today.

Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.

Well, here I was out of sync, as I was saying. And the role of Judaism and religion in my life has also been a very powerful one, which has kept me centered. I have said frequently that it is primarily, at least in the beginning— and not now, it's not now— but in the beginning, the reason I got married, or knew I was going to get married, was because I was a committed a person to Judaism. My religion said to me I have to get married, that leading a life— now, and let me make something clear, not everyone on earth can be married, I appreciate that, but I do believe that for the vast majority of people it is the best growing experience they can engage in. And my religion said to me, Dennis, you You cannot live just to have more fun. Not that marriage doesn't have fun, but you know what I'm saying. There is fun in being single, especially at that time in the sexual revolution where after 12,000 years of men trying, women actually now said they could have sex as unemotionally as men could. And I thank God that I was born in that one rare moment of period in time. That women could so delude themselves into something so stupid. But of course, you had to go to a great university to really believe that, that sex doesn't mean anything to women. In any event, my religion said to me, as it became more important to me, as in my 20s, Dennis, this is not the way to lead a life. You should get married. And it was religion that pushed me. And without something like religion or tradition or family pushing people, a lot of people don't opt to marry. And that's the case today, and it's true for men, and it's even becoming true for many women. It played a very centering role in my life that there was a truth beyond my university, that there was a truth beyond the day and era in which I lived. I can tell you honestly, without it, I would not have been centered, I would not have been stable, I would have easily drifted, I believe, into whatever was the contemporary passion of the time. A deeply rooted religious identity helps you withstand the waves of life, if I may use a metaphor, that surrounds us now. And you don't get, you don't get, you don't get thrust around, thrown around bound by whatever is popular at any given moment. There are eternal truths to a religious tradition. But I want to continue on the religion issue because of other questions that were— that have evolved in my life. Believing in Judaism to be true, I then had a question thrust at me by life in my early 30s: is it the only true religion? Which most people in most religions believe about their religion. Well, I believe that if God intervenes in people's lives— and I can never know for sure, and I can't know for sure about my own, though I do believe God has— I was given this program at the age of 32, this radio show Religion on the Line, to moderate. I cannot thank God enough for having been the moderator of that show, to speak to clergy every single week week for 10 years. So approximately, given vacations, 500 shows, 1,000 hours without commercials, 1,000 hours with people of every faith in the world. Uh, and you know, they were different clergy each week, so it wasn't one priest, one rabbi, one minister. There were different ones each week. Some returned, obviously, you in the course of time, of course. And I opened it up in the midway point to Muslims, to, uh, to every other religion that could— Buddhists, whoever, uh, certainly Mormons were on, uh, very frequently. And I want to tell you something, I was deeply, uh, deeply moved, and I'll tell you how. I realized very clearly that I could not look at all these people and say, they're all wrong, only my religion is right. I could not, I could not honestly say that to myself because it was not what I was experiencing. I believe in the truth of my religion, but I could not look at all these Christian clergy, many of whom I really liked. That was a very profound experience for me. I really and I couldn't say, gee, that's not a vehicle to God. It was clear to me that it was a vehicle to God for those people, and that there's nothing wrong in believing that. It doesn't violate my own religion to believe that, but it was not something I was raised with. I told you I was raised religiously insular, but I was now meeting people of different faiths, good people, holy people, And it was not possible for me to say— you're all— forget publicly, public, nobody matters, it's a free country, America. But I didn't even say any longer or at all to myself, gee, you know, that's not a possible vehicle to God. Of course it was. It's not my vehicle, but it is their vehicle. And that had a wonderfully sobering effect on me. And over the course of time, I became a very big defender of American Christianity, uh, theologically, but particularly morally and so on. It's not a coincidence, as I mentioned to you, that my employers at this time in my life are evangelical Christians. That's the radio network that, uh, that syndicates me and pays my salary. And I tell you, I have learned a great deal, which I'll give you one fascinating thing. There are people who employ me who deeply believe I am not saved. There are people who employ me who think, if you push them to the wall, probably that I'm going to hell. And yet they employ me and treat me beautifully. And I have said to my fellow Jews repeatedly, they will call me up and say, Dennis, I can't believe you're so have these positive views of people who think you're going to hell. And my honest answer is, so what? I don't care about people's theology. I care about people's behavior. I'd much rather be treated beautifully by people who think I'm not saved than to be treated lousy by people who agree with me theologically. I care how you treat me in this life. Where you think I'm going in the next is an issue between you and God. But if you treat me beautifully here, and that is how I am treated, that is what matters to me. I don't judge people by their theology, and I don't want you to do that, I would say to such a caller. These are all deep evolutions in my life to come to this, I think, mature understanding of my own relationship to other religions. And I came to another realization about American Christianity. It is not like European Christianity, just like America is not like Europe. In fact, the truth is there's very little in common between American Christianity and European Christianity, historically and contemporaneously. It is a new world. It is a new world in tolerance. It is a new world in outlook. It is in, in so many areas. America has been a blessing. This too has evolved in my life, a realization of what a blessing America is, with all its flaws. Of course it has flaws, some deep ones. And frankly, before September 11th, I was very pessimistic about the direction of this country. I believe Osama bin Laden did more good for America than any single other person in my lifetime. How's that for almost a crazy statement? And believe me, I say it with the awareness that I still would never wish it to happen because of the suffering of those who lost loved ones and the loved ones themselves. But in the long term, he has turned this country around. I don't know if it's permanent, but he turned it around. People are asking what's so special about us. People are allowed to be patriotic now. People are allowed to show a flag. Flag. A lot of things that before September 11th were relegated to some very obscure people. I remember, it's one of my favorite scenes, the last game of the World Series, the 2001 World Series. They didn't open up the game, as they didn't any of the games, and, you know, with, with the Star-Spangled Banner, but with God Bless America. You remember that? And I was particularly touched the last game of the World Series. And there was a Black man playing the trumpet beautifully to God Bless America. And right after that, I had a speech to give that very night. My— it was not good luck because I was riveted by the World Series. So I actually went to the hotel where I was speaking and I said, can I come in a little later? I have to watch the 9th inning. And I saw the great 9th inning of the Arizona win over the Yankees. But anyway, When I went in there, I said to the people, I said, you know what I saw besides a phenomenal game? This— I saw a Black man playing God Bless America, a song written by a Jew, and 50,000 Americans singing their hearts out at an Arizona stadium. And that's America to me. The Black trumpeter, the Jewish composer, and 50,000 Americans of every background singing God Bless America. This does not happen anywhere else, anywhere else. And I have come in the course of this time to believe in the specialness of the United States. You could lose it, you could lose it if you, if you leave, if you depart from the values that made you special. You can lose that specialness. But I think God has blessed America in large part because America has blessed its citizens and has also blessed God. That was another— that is another way in which I have evolved. So I gave you the religion, I gave you the, that political aspect, my alienation from my generation. And I will end because I want time for some questions today. Uh, I was raised two things that I am no longer. Uh, I was raised politically, I was raised a liberal Democrat, and I was raised religiously an Orthodox Jew. Well, I'm no longer Orthodox and I'm no longer a liberal Democrat. I'm a, uh, I'm a Republican, which by the way is not easy to become if you start out a I want you to understand, it is tantamount to converting to another religion, because for many of my fellow Jews, politics is their substitute religion. It's not untrue for many non-Jews as well, where liberalism or some political ism becomes their religion. Religiously speaking, I stopped being Orthodox at about the age of 13, right after I was bar mitzvahed. Pesach. I simply stopped certain practices which were expected of me as an Orthodox Jew. I didn't do it to rebel. In fact, I tried to hide it from my parents so as not to hurt their feelings. So it wasn't rebellion, it was just not me. And that too has been a very big issue in my life because I have remained very religious but not Orthodox, and this confuses a lot of Jews because they think that only Orthodox are going to believe that strongly and be that religious. So within Jewish life, I have a very cut-out mission, which I won't belabor because you're not Jewish, but it is to make it clear how to be religious without being an Orthodox Jew. In politics, I was raised a liberal Democrat. I campaigned for George McGovern but largely because he was running against Richard Nixon, and I didn't feel that he was the right man for a lot of reasons. But in any event, after Jimmy Carter, I never voted for a Democrat again. And finally, I was persuaded to register the way I voted, and about in the mid-early 1990s, I Was that about right? Mid-'90s? I registered Republican. Why that is is another speech, but I will tell you that ironically, I feel that I am much truer to the liberalism with which I was raised being a Republican than I would be if I were a Democrat. I don't believe I left liberalism. I believe liberalism left me. The positions that are now take— what is the official spokesman of liberalism? I would say it's the New York Times editorial page. I have nothing in common with that page. My values are not its values. And so I don't think its values are usually even classically liberal values. They are modern liberal, post-'60s liberalism. So in that way, again, a change took place. All bringing me to where I am today, on the radio and elsewhere, writing things steeped in a preoccupation with good and bad, hopefully with clarity, and very much immersed in the life of people who are not in my religion and also who are. And that is a, is a summary of the ideological movement that I have made.

Tomorrow on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

You know that old joke about the 3 stages of human life? Youth, middle age, and you're looking great. By the way, ever since I heard that joke— isn't it a great one? I mean, even the young whippersnappers are laughing. And it is such a good line that I try to consciously not say to a person beyond middle age, "You're looking great." But then I think, "Well, wait a minute, they don't know the joke, so I can." Join us tomorrow to hear more on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

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