Timeless Wisdom - Why Do People Become Leftist?

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. I want to talk to you about something that has preoccupied me Those of you who know me know that I, I always ask why. And the why helps a tremendous amount. After all, that why explains life. Answers to the question why. I am preoccupied with it, and in every arena I want to know— forgive the analogy again— I know that had I been on the Titanic, I would want to know why we were sinking. I would go crazy Both I would be so sad about, probably drowning, but I'd also be crazed to know how did this happen to an impregnable ship. Why did it happen? Why just— if the world doesn't make sense to me, I get— I feel bad. It is not the reality as much as the confusion. That's why I wrote many years ago in my late 20s, early 30s, a book called Why the Jews, subtitled The Reason for Antisemitism. The world didn't need another book giving the history of antisemitism, but there was no book, to my belief anyway, and my co-author Joseph Telushkin, that explained it. Why? Why have Jews been so hated so often? They're such little people. Why have they been so hated? And so that, that gave me some peace to know the— to believe at least that I knew the answer to the question why. Likewise, in the world today, I want to know why do people blow themselves up and blow others up. What goes on? That's not my topic, but I want to know why. Then I can begin— you can't— first of all, you can't address any problem till you know why it occurs. It's very important to make war on terrorists, there's no question, but it is equally important to know why they are bred. Otherwise, otherwise you keep killing the mosquito, but you've never figured out that it comes from swampland, so you drain swamps. You have to know why malaria came about. So I want to talk about the why of the dominant ideology of the Western world, and that is leftist politics. Why do people become leftists? And I obviously, I'm not one, so you'll say, well, this is a skewed presentation. Well, you may conclude that. I believe it is an accurate presentation. You'll have to decide for yourselves. Why do people adopt views that I believe are almost consistently wrong? I mean, it's not enough to say it's wrong and show why it's wrong. You have to do that. But why do people adopt these views? Why does the typical professor think America is a villain? Isn't that— I mean, for those of us who think America is the greatest force for good in the world, Well, you have to explain it. Doesn't it puzzle you? Why would somebody— I mean, how many people in history could make so much money, have so much time off, have so much honor, and then crap on the society that makes that possible? It's a— I mean, you have to answer. Now you may say, well, they're morally elevated. You may say that they are smarter than the rest. I mean, whatever you will say, it still begs an answer. That's my point. Even if you agree with them, one has to answer the question: why do most intellectuals see America as a villain? And while not quite as far as Ward Churchill, the professor at Colorado University who said that all those slaughtered on 9/11 deserved it because they were mini-Eichmanns— that's his phrase, Eichmann being the architect of the Holocaust— while most professors won't use that language, virtually none at his university or any other condemned it. "Oh, he may have gone a little too far, but hey, if they, if those here—" This is what I think the average professor in the social sciences would say: "Those on 9/11 didn't exactly deserve it, but America deserved it." That's what they would say. That is a common leftist view of the United States. The United States brought 9/11 upon itself. There are many, many views that need to be explained, and I would like to offer you not an explanation of every view, but rather the general inclination. Why do people adopt views that are considered to be leftist? And I will begin with, in my list, I will begin with I'm debating whether, uh, well, I'll begin the way I wrote it. I came up with one that is overwhelmingly important, but they all are. Here we go. Number 1: people must have meaning and religion in their lives. If they don't have meaning and religion, and most people get meaning from their religion, then they will have to adopt meaning and religion outside of religion. They will have to have a substitute religion. This became clear to me, as it happens, and I'm, I really, I thank God that this was my field of study, and it was Marxism. I studied Marxism, and the I realized very early on that for Marxists, that was as much a religion as for Catholics Catholicism was, or for Jews Judaism, or for any Christian Christianity, for Muslims Islam. That was their way of understanding life. And the further left you went, the more it mimicked religion. Instead of, I don't know, instead of Easter, I don't know, they would have May Day. These were national celebrations that were class-based celebrations that were as meaningful as Easter or Passover might be to a Christian or a Jew respectively. So what you have is the human being needs meaning. You cannot live without meaning. You cannot. You go crazy. Even anarchists have meaning. Their meaning is anarchy. In other words, it gives them meaning to fight for anarchy. People cannot function without it. It is easier to go without sex. And we are in an age post-Freud that thinks that sex is one of the, you know, is the great, great human urge. And look, we don't reproduce without it. It is a great, great human urge. But there are, look, there are Catholic priests who have led very meaningful lives, even happy lives, though chaste. We confuse celibacy with chastity. Chastity is no sex. Celibacy is no marriage. One priest who wasn't chaste told me, "Look, Dennis, I only took a vow of celibacy." So, just want to explain, a lot of people get those terms confused, and I like to be precise. Even people who have taken a vow of chastity, which is no sex, not no marriage— obviously it includes no marriage— would have been able, some have been able to lead happy lives and meaningful lives. But no one, no matter how much sex, who does not have meaning has a happy life. So meaning, I would argue, is more important than the basic human urge for sex. I would say it's even more important than food, but we die without food. You don't physically die without meaning. You go crazy and may kill yourself, but I would say it's more important than food, except for the physical fact of food's need, obviously. That's how important— meaning is the most important thing a human can have in life. Without it, you cannot live. You cannot go on. You go mad. People will find meaning wherever they will find meaning. It could be found— you may find it in flowers. You may find meaning in being the person to list the most species of flowers in Eastern North America. And by the way, I'm not saying that at all in a condescending way. It may be in music, it may be in religion, it may be in politics, it may be in raising children, it may be in making a home, it may be in robbing banks, it may be in being the best criminal there is. But you must find meaning. Everybody searches for it in some way. Okay, the left historically— and left is that which follows from Marx, whether it calls itself Marxist or not. But leftists call themselves leftists, so why not use the term? And they have historically been secular. It has been outside of religion as we understand it, outside of religion. And so they have had to create substitute religions and make new meanings because religion gave you a meaning. Marx called religion the opiate of the masses. It's a drug given to the masses, said Marx. And this attitude prevails to this day on the left. Religion is a drug to keep the poor from rebelling against their rich oppressors. You with me? Normally people would say, look at the rich and I'm poor, that I, I, we, they must be overthrown. They oppress me, that's why I'm poor. This is leftist thought, this from Marx. But no, brilliant, the rich have given the poor religion. And that way they keep them silent. Oh, don't worry about this world, you'll be great in the next world, says religion. So don't bother revolting here on this planet. It doesn't matter what happens here. So you go and live in your own poor state while we rich shove religion down your throats. Or give you religion, not shove it down your throats. Give it to you and you embrace the silliness to give yourselves meaning and not revolt. That's the Marxist view. It continues to be the view overwhelmingly on the left. And that is how to this day they view religion. It is, uh, that is why leftist totalitarian regimes hated religion. Uh, the, um, the Chinese in Tibet hated Buddhism. The Russians in Afghanistan hated Islam. The communists in East Europe hated Catholicism. The Soviets hated Judaism and Russian Orthodoxy, and so on and so forth. And the only thing that has ever stood up to leftist totalitarianism has been religious people, like the Buddhists in Tibet, or the Pope, or Lech Walesa in Poland, and so on. And they know that that is the competition in life. It is between them and religion. Either you will get your meaning from our value system, the leftist, or you will get it from religion. And that's a major reason the ACLU and other leftist groups are so hostile to any religious expression in America. That is the only competing thing. It's the only thing that can stop them from their being in power. The non-religious tend not to fight them. And not all religious fight them, as I have pointed out about the cross in the Los Angeles County seal. So, what is the meaning that is given? Well, if you ask a leftist, "What gives you meaning?" "I battle injustice, I battle corporations and corporate greed, and I battle religious and secular conservatives." That gives a great deal of meaning. To a leftist life, battling these corporations, conservatives, religious people, and so on. And that is almost defining. I'm never always quite certain, other than large government and socialism, what it is a leftist is for. I think more is what they are against that gives them meaning. For example, Europe. Leftist Europe, which is almost redundant, but not fully, but it is almost redundant. Leftist Europe gets its identity and meaning from not being America, being the un-America. That is what they would call it. Same with Canada. And I've said this in Canada, or whenever I speak in Canada. I'll be in Canada next week, and I will say it again. You don't have much of a future if your self-definition is we are not Americans. What does it mean to be a Canadian? Is it to be a North American who isn't American? That's what it is now. The un-America, the non-America. That's why Canadians are very keen to have a maple leaf on their backpack when they travel. Not because people care about Canada and the maple leaf, but it is their way of saying, please don't confuse me with being American. In fact, American young leftists will wear a maple leaf. Because they don't— when they travel, they don't want to be identified with the America that they loathe. After all, America stands out as this uniquely religious and conservative country, largely, not certainly, not beyond just a bare majority. And that bothers them a great deal because that is not where their identity comes from. The left provides meaning as a substitute religion. Marxism and all leftism provide answers. People want answers to questions. Marxism provided answers. You may not realize this, and the answer was materialism. Now, most people don't understand the term. Most people think materialism is if you like to shop a lot, so you like material things. That is, that is the popular definition. It is not the philosophical. Materialism has a philosophical definition. That you believe that the only reality is matter. You with me? And there is no metaphysical reality. The only reality is matter, and Marxism believed that. So everything is explainable through material or slash economic explanations. Why do people act in such a way? There is an economic explanation. Why is there terror? Overwhelmingly, it was just said by George McGovern at a conference at Princeton University on the roots of terror, and he said it is because of poverty. People become terrorists because of poverty. This was at a Princeton University conference by a man who ran for President of the United States. That is a classic leftist explanation of terror. Now, there is almost no truth to it, which is basically saying there is no truth, but nothing has no truth to it. You know, the earth is flat has some truth to it. Look at the surface you're sitting on, it's flat. But there's no truth basically to terror is caused by poverty. First of all, the vast majority of poor people aren't terrorists. Secondly, among those who were terrorists, there is one overwhelming discrepancy. Among Palestinians, there were no Christian terrorists. There are many Christian Palestinians. Not one became a terrorist. Not one blew him or herself up. And they hate Israel too. But not one blew themselves up. Only Muslims among the Palestinians blow themselves up. Are there no poor Christians among the Palestinians? And third and most obvious, the greatest terrorist in the world is a billionaire, Osama bin Laden. And the 19 who attacked America were all upper middle class. So there's no truth to poverty causes terror. None, none, none. It's a lie. But it doesn't matter because exactly what the left contends that their opponents do, And that is give religion as the meaning. They give economics. That is the status of religion. I'll give you another example. The belief that people who are religious are usually poor. That it is the poor who gravitate to religion more than the rich. Historically, it is not true. Rich people have gravitated to religion proportionately more than poor people. The data are available in a book that I am reading by a professor of comparative religion at the University of Washington. The book is published by Princeton University Press. Rodney Stark, who gives data after data after data how disproportionately it is the rich who have dominated religion, who have become religious personally, including monks. Including ascetics, people who gave away the whole vow of poverty. The impoverished don't take vows of poverty. They already have it. Only a rich person can take a vow of poverty. So it's the rich who even invented the idea of the goodness of poverty. The poor don't think so. It takes a rich person to think that poverty is a noble ideal. So there's the leftist, the Marxist leftist analysis: poverty causes crime, whatever it is. It's all lies. It's a huge lie, but it must be believed or there is no leftism left. You must believe that this is true. You must believe the world is dominated by corporations. You must believe economics makes— that is the religion. It is for a leftist to stop believing that economics determines life is the same as for a Catholic to stop believing that the Pope is the vicar of Christ on earth, for a Christian to believe in the divinity of Jesus. It's the end. It's over. You get a new religion. It is a religious faith. So whatever they project on their enemies is actually true for them. They are the dogmatists and the irrationalists. One of the reasons it's so hard to debate a person on the left is because of the absence of reason. I have these people on my show regularly. Michael Medved has them on every day. He has a leftist on. Almost never is it coherent. Almost never. Because it isn't coherent. It's a series of suspensions of of reason and leaps of faith. It's a leap of faith that economics determines life in materialism. Under the Soviet Union, it was called scientific atheism. It was called nauchnye ateizm. That's what it was called. Everybody studied it. That's why it's so hard to this day for Russian immigrants to the United States to become religious. They were so deeply immersed for 3 generations in nauchniatyism, scientific atheism. Likewise, the materialist dialectic, the belief in that materialism. After all, he could predict history, a Marxist. Marx said, you go, this is the dialectic based on Hegel, and I won't bore you with that, but very simply, you go from feudalism to capitalism to socialism. It's inevitable. It's as inevitable as you go from youth to middle-aged to old age. It's just a scientific fact. That's what they believe. So they would call, unlike religious people who acknowledge that they don't call— nobody says, I believe in scientific Catholicism, scientific Judaism, but they have scientific atheism, scientific Marxism. So not only do we believe what we believe, but we give it the cachet of science. So number one, the left provides the leftist with meaning. When a kid in college becomes a leftist, why do they become a leftist? It gives them a great deal of meaning. They don't know life. Let's be honest, did you know life at 20? Of course not. We all knew nothing at 20, basically. We were 2 years out of high school when we knew less than nothing. Now we know less than nothing but think we know everything because we're in college. And so we're in college and, uh, and all I know— look at that big bad corporations. I'm gonna fight them. Now I have meaning. And a kid at 20, you ache for meaning. Life is so confusing, you are aching for an explanation. That's the time to get a kid, in fact, at 19, 20, 21, 22 is the most— people think get a kid at 7. No way, no way. You want to get somebody for life, or for a good part of their life, convince them of something when they're 19. At 7, they'll reject it later. It doesn't matter. When I was a kid, I believed that. But now I am studying in college. Now I really yearn for understanding life and giving myself meaning. And so indeed, they will have, they will learn leftist ideas, and they will be powerful. Aha! I have to fight for the poor. That's the beauty of it. Why do you become a leftist in college? Because you care about the poor. End of issue. You don't need to know anything. Why are they poor? Are they poor elsewhere? How do you make people not be poor? Etc. That's it. That's all you need to know. You need to know a lot more, as it were, not to be on the left than to be on the left. I fight for the poor. End of issue. So corporations are bad. By the way, I do believe corporations are bad. Just wanna make that clear. I do. I think corporations most of the time would sell their mothers for a 2-point increase in their stock. I have no doubt about it. But you see, I am not attached to a dogma. I am perfectly capable as a so-called conservative of saying corporations stink. Corporations provide the garbage television that pollutes our children's minds. Corporations— anything. Corporations— I totally agree. Corporations serve portions of food to make kids fat. There's no doubt in my mind about it. I can't sue them. That's a leftist idea. But absolutely, a corporation that— take, take— I was— I had mentioned the other day that my favorite candy bar as a kid was Baby Ruth. And when I was a kid, the Baby Ruth bar was 1 portion. It is now, if you buy a Baby Ruth bar, it is 3 portions. So the kid who eats a Baby Ruth bar gets 3 times the calories and 3 times the sugar as I did when I bought a Baby Ruth bar as a kid. This is corporate greed. Because we could jack up the price. The fact that we are almost poisoning the eater of this is of no concern to the corporation. But most of you are conservatives, and none of you have any problem with my attacking corporations. The difference between the left and the right on these and most matters is we are perfectly prepared to say you're right, big corporations are amoral, if not immoral. The difference is we believe big labor is also amoral, if not immoral. They believe labor is pure. Labor by definition is good. Corporations by definition must be fought. It is an amoral view of the world. Labor is good. Corporate is bad. I think big labor is every bit as corrupt, immoral, self-centered, and corrupt as any corporation in the world. But you'll never get a person on the left to say that. That ends their ability to be on the left. The moment they say labor stinks like I say corporations stink, they can't say that. Okay, so the first is One does not have meaning and religion. One wants meaning and religion. One gets it from a leftist substitute. Now, number 3: if meaning and religion are separate categories, this is utterly, utterly essential. Leftists do not have a national or religious identity. People need an identity, and they lack it. And the lack of such an identity has massive impact on the way you lead your life and view the world. I have a very strong American identity and a very strong Jewish identity, so I am two identities over the person on the left who has neither a religious nor a national identity. They are world citizens. To think American is to think provincial. To wave the flag is to be a flag waver, and we all know that the term flag waver is a pejorative. It is in and of itself a bit— oh, they're flag wavers. That is the leftist connotation of fascist. And they believe in their heart, they believe that. A person who waves the flag is one step away from the Nuremberg rallies for Hitler. That's what they view when they view a lot of American flags, most folks on the left. They will bring an American flag to a rally now for Michael Moore only because they know it doesn't go over well to have their rallies absent an American flag. And some people may actually love it. I grant that. There are some who do. But overwhelmingly, it is identityless. That is why the leftist professor, their first hatred— and I have this when I spoke on campus, leftist professors agreed with me— we hate nationalism. We hate it. They fear that nationalism will lead to Auschwitz. Nationalism equals, in the long run, if you push it far enough, Nazism. But of course, that is true, by the way. If you push nationalism far enough to become chauvinism and combine it with race, you can end up with a Nazi belief that America über alles. But although in America's case it's inconceivable because America is such a hodgepodge of races that you can't speak of pure American. I mean, the idea is so absurd, and nobody takes it seriously except for kids who shoot other kids at high schools, who take neo-Nazi ideas seriously in this country. But beyond that, it is— there's nobody does. Racial purity in America, it's a fringe of a fringe of a fringe. They hate nationalism because they are identityless. The identityless hate the identity-filled. That's a rule of life. They hate you and they are scared of you. And so the Christian Christian, the Jewish Jew, the American American is a frightening thing to be fought if you are on the left because you don't have that identity. What college tries to do, and the term for it we all know, it's called multiculturalism. Multiculturalism. That's the vanguard of no identity. All identities are wonderful. No identities are even better. The ideal is no identity. I'll tell you how I learned this. Many, many years ago, I was the director of an educational institute in Southern California, a Jewish educational institute, which my friends the Gilberts remember well. And I conducted a program in the summer for college students. They would come 19 to 25 years of age. That's what their ages were, where they would study Judaism with me and the scholars that I brought in. They immersed themselves for a month. Most had no backgrounds. Their parents promised them a BMW if they would come, or, you know, at worst, a Toyota. And by the way, I never had a problem with that. I'm a big believer that without broad library, it's very hard to raise a child. So to me, it's a non-issue. And I even told parents, promise them anything, just get them to come for a month. I'll handle the month, you handle getting them here. And we have very, very positive results. But I really, what I did was get a cross-section of American college and graduate-age kids from all backgrounds, or at least they were all Jews, but they were mostly, you know, non-Jewish Jews. So as we They were not religious, they were not ethnic, nothing. One night, one of the first years, I don't tend to do game-playing in education. It's just not my style. I'm not saying it's wrong at all, I just never did it as an educator. But I did this one, and I only did it once or twice. I said, oh, this is the first night of the summer session. And remember, they lived there, so we had a very intense month. So the first night, or the second night actually, the first night we just met everybody. The second night we gathered in a lecture hall and I said, "Alright, I'd like to know your primary identity. What you first identify as." So there are four corners to the room. If you are first an American, go into that corner. That's your first identity. If you're If your first is religious Jewish, go into that corner. If your first is as a man or a woman, go into that corner. And if your first is as a person, just a human being, go into that corner. And they divvied up. Male, female didn't get quite as much as the other three. Okay. But then a number of kids didn't go to any corner. And I thought, well, what's left? And I said, well, why aren't you going into any corner? They said, well, our— you know, they all had the same answer. Well, that's my primary identity is not one of those four. I said, it's not human, it's not male/female, not Jew, not American. What is it? And they said, living creature. Living being. And I remember saying, you mean you have, you have your primary identity as living being? You identify with tortoises or, or birds more than you do with humans? Yes, we are all living beings. It's too constricting. To say person. So I developed the fifth corner. We had a pentagon. But that was revelatory to me. And most of them, while they were somewhat equal on the three, the winner was human being. Citizen of the world, human being. And this was 30 years ago. It's much more so today, I would suspect, although maybe there is a change. In any event, That is what animates the left, is an identity-free— the left anywhere, almost anywhere, they don't trust, they don't like people with a strong national identity. It's chauvinism to them. It's frightening. They are frightened by us, and they loathe us, and they consider themselves far morally superior. A citizen of the world identity is a much greater, morally greater identity than American or what have you. And it holds true in any society that the left operates in. That is our— that's what animates the European left. French, Belgian, Dutch, pfft, we're Europeans. Of course, it doesn't mean anything. Europe is a a piece of land. That's all it is. It's coincidence, but it doesn't matter. We are Europeans. We Norwegians and Portuguese, we have everything in common. Of course they have very little in common, but by golly, we are all Europeans. This— there's a love of this. And after that, there's much higher than European. It's human. We are all humans. This identity issue is the source of the hatred, is one source of the hatred of religious and national identities. That is why the left is so pro-United Nations and the right isn't. And that's the battle right now in the United States. The right says, UN? You mean just because there are a lot of nations there, they know better than us what is right? You mean when Germany, Syria, France, China, Russia vote in the Security Council, that should be binding on us? Why exactly? Because there are more of them? Because it's international and not national? And the left says, yes, that's exactly why. We're no different, we're no better, there's no American exceptionalism. That's what the— what is American exceptionalism? That America can go its merry way which is what I believe it can do. We should always take the advice of others. Of course, you have to learn from everybody. But the final decision— I don't trust the United Nations nearly as much as I trust Americans, morally speaking. I just don't. But for a person on the left, what I am saying is chauvinism. It is terribly, terribly arrogant. That's why they believe in a world court and international law. International law is for a person of the left what the Bible is for a believing Jew or Christian. It is the Bible. It is binding. It is as binding as the Ten Commandments are. And that's why there's— to a religious person, that's why there's a battle over the Ten Commandments. 'You have your law, you religious people, Ten Commandments. We have ours, and that is judges. You have the Ten Commandments. We have judges and law.' The fact that judges and law may be immoral is a dilemma that they will answer, 'Well, it could be, but it's our best hope. And anyway, your Ten Commandments, or at least your Bible, is certainly filled with immoral think so. And that, and that, and so that will end the discussion. But now you understand where this comes from, all of these battles. I'm explaining the genesis of all of these battles that are taking place today. And the identity factor is huge. It is. The older I get, the more I believe that you cannot be happy or healthy without a specific identity. I'll never forget when in Bulgaria I met a family and they were very— one of the kids was studying Bulgarian history in college. And I was so happy. I wanted that kid to feel proud to be a Bulgarian. That's very, very important. What do you feel proud to be a human? What the hell is there to be proud to be a human about? What humanity's record in what? Torture and violence and killing and barbarity? If I ever come back to Vanuatu, which I loved, incidentally, just loved it, and the people were just beyond friendly. I mean, it was almost unbelievable how sweet. But if I do ever come back, I want to go to the Museum of Cannibalism. I don't know if you knew that they had one. The puzzle that my wife and the Estrins and I had was, what do they sell at the gift shop? It's something I raised and we had a good time imagining. Perhaps a cookbook was one of them. But the history of humanity is more cannibalism than it is beauty. And the beauty that arose came from largely people who were religious, which is very disturbing. To those who can't stand religious identity. Number 4: one of the things that all people want to escape is personal moral accountability. That I am personally accountable for what I do bad. We all want to escape it. Of course we do. Who wants to be judged wrong let alone punished. It's just that's human nature. The left gives the individual a way to avoid personal moral responsibility. And how does it do that? It does it in many, many ways. Number 1, or A— I can't do 1, I'm on 4— 4A: no objective personal code. There is none. Those who are religious and in a religion— I don't mean spiritual, that is the easy way out. I mean religious, having a religion. We have a code. I have to answer to my code. In my case, it's the Hebrew Bible and the Jewish values. In the Christian's case, it's both the Old and New Testament and the Christian values that have evolved in in their particular version of Christianity. Alright? But there's an objective code. You could say to Dennis, Dennis, you did X, but look, there's a law that says do not do X. Right? I mean, I have to answer to a code. One of the nice things of being on the left is you are codeless. I don't mean this as an insult. I ask all the time, I ask people on the left, I have a code, it's the Bible. What's yours? What's your written code? And say, I don't have a written code. Okay, there's a very big difference between having a written code to which you are morally accountable and not having a written code to which you are morally accountable. Because if you don't have a written code, you make up your code as you go along. And that's fun. And not to mention dangerous. The other has dangers too, because hardly everybody who believes in the Bible acted good. We all know that there's always danger. There's always danger. There's nothing that guarantees goodness, but you have a better chance with some things than with others. In any event, no objective personal code. Rather, I rely on reason, on my heart, on society, and on judges and law. That's how I will determine what is good. But I don't have to answer to a God, and I don't have to answer to a code. B. Again, this is no personal moral responsibility. A was no objective personal code. B: belief in human goodness. The left believes overwhelmingly that people are basically good. There is a very wonderful benefit to believing people are basically good, and that is You don't blame people for the evil they do. You blame society. If a basically good thing does bad, it's not the thing you blame. It's something else. Now, you might blame something went wrong in the wiring of the good thing. So you may blame psychology. People are basically good. If they do bad, it's because they're sick. Very common belief on the left that, that people who do bad are sick. Now, those of us who believe in Judeo-Christian values believe you can do bad and be normal, because bad is normal. Good is normal and bad is normal. Sometimes bad is not normal. Sometimes good is not normal. It is not normal to risk your life to save a stranger. That's not normal. The handful of people who did risk their lives, non-Jews in the Holocaust, to save Jews did not do something normal. They did something exceedingly good, but not normal. Normal is, hey, why should I risk my family? I don't want to kill any Jews, God forbid, but I don't want to risk my family's life for people I never met in my life. And there was a risk of life, especially in Poland. You were killed if you harbored a Jew. You were killed, end of issue. Your family was killed. But so for the person who believes people are basically good, which is outside the Judeo-Christian value system, which doesn't believe people are basically good but is part of the secular world and part of the leftist world— people are basically good, that's why I can rely on my heart if I'm a leftist. Since I'm basically good, my heart will open they always give me good answers. When I interviewed the Swedish woman, it's a tape that's available to you, and I played it on the air, I believe. But I know I sent it out to those who get my tapes every 2 months or whatever frequency they get it. I interviewed on ship, in fact. On a ship, there was a Swedish woman, late 20s, graduate student, working to see the world. I asked her if I could interview her, and she said yes. I said, "Do you believe in religion?" "No, of course not, that's silly." "You believe in God?" "No, of course not, that's silly." "How do you know then? How do you get your notions of right and wrong?" "From my heart." You have to believe people are basically good to rely on your heart for answers. But religious people know that the heart is a fairly unreliable source to know what is right and what is wrong. We're taught that in our religious credo. That you can't rely on your heart. Old and New Testament both assert how the heart is a poor guide. That doesn't mean you don't use your heart. It just means you can't rely on it for knowing right and wrong. If people do bad, those who believe people are basically good will ascribe bad to psychological wiring, physiological wiring, psychological upbringing, or socioeconomic circumstances. Well, how could you blame these people, these poor people who murder? They murder because they were poor. That's a common— or why is there— why, if a black murders, it's because of racism. If a white murders, It's because of poverty, or because of bad upbringing. But there's nobody to be blamed. You don't blame people, you blame corporate officers. They're allowed to be blamed. I always— I never understood that. Why are they blamed? They shouldn't be. Nobody should be blamed if people are basically good. But I guess capitalism corrupts, nothing else corrupts. In any event, that is another way of not having personal response, moral responsibility. Responsibility. External factors are responsible for any bad that I do. Number C: I am not personally morally judged. There's no God and no code. I mentioned that earlier, so I'm just repeating that. Number 4 in what makes a person leftist is utopianism. The belief that we have to have a perfect world. And that imperfect is the same as deeply flawed. So, for example, a leftist will say about America, look at all the homelessness, look at all the poverty, look at all the unemployment, look at all the injustices. Instead of saying, isn't it remarkable how a society filled with immigrants from all over the world has given more people more opportunity than any other society in history? That's how I look at it. But the leftist sees— I call leftists proctologists. They have a proctologist's view of the world. If all you see is the anal cavity, you have a certain, uh, I would say skewed vision of the human body. How could you see beauty? No human, no human is beautiful if you only look in their anal cavity. That is why What the left does, because the left sees flaws as defining the whole, because they— this is key— the left doesn't compare, let us say, America to other nations. It compares America to a utopian vision. We totally fail compared to utopia. That's why Jews who are on the left will frequently cite a Hebrew phrase, "let's take care of the world under the rule of God," and they— or "tikkun olam," they'll never talk about. There is a phrase in the Hebrew prayer book. It says that our task is to repair the world under God's rule. First, they never say "under God's rule." They only speak about "tikkun olam." The name of the biggest leftist magazine published by a Jew is "Tikkun." "Tikkun" means repair, but it's almost all always translated as perfect. There's a very big difference between repairing and perfecting. You can't make— you can't perfect the world. You can repair it gradually. There's a fact: repair and perfect are almost mutually exclusive. Why repair if it's so imperfect? Destroy it, which is what the French Revolution, which was much more utopian than the American Revolution, did do. It it ate up its own society. So deeply flawed is not good. Anything flawed— that's why the view of environment on the left is a utopian one. There should be no human encroachment on the environment, virtually. That's why, I mean, you would think that the drilling in Alaska that has just been passed by Congress, that one, we're destroying a staggering part of the natural beauty that people see and enjoy. First of all, nobody ever sees this place. You can't get more remote. I mean, Vanuatu is the center of the world compared to Anwar. And even the caribou— I don't know, do people know this? Did you notice that the number of caribou increased 5 times with the Alaska pipeline? The caribou love pipelines because they're warm. They make more babies when it's warmer. We interviewed caribou on my show. And they were absolutely for the drilling. They were annoyed that they had no vote in Congress, in fact. For those who feel that we're all living beings, they felt the caribou should have a say. But it doesn't matter. There's some imperfection on the land of the world if you have a pipeline. So they imagine it. They'll never see it. No one will be hurt by it. No animal will be hurt. Animals will be helped. But it doesn't matter. The vision of Earth Earth is utopian and this does something against it. It's like with DDT. DDT killed certain birds. The fact that it in fact saves millions of lives was not that important. Humans die, humans come, humans die, but we can't allow any bird to go extinct. And it was again a utopian vision of environment versus what others would say, but you know, Africans are dying of malaria again, and it's only because they're not using DDT in Africa. But it doesn't really matter for the utopian of the environment. Hundreds of thousands of Africans dying of malaria is not significant. And I am not the first to bring this up. This has been brought up by very many reputable sources. So that's, that's my take. I think it's an utterly fair take. It's obviously not positive, but I think it's completely fair. Why do people take these views? Why? That's why you can almost ask me any position a leftist will take, and I can put it into the categories and the reasoning that I described. That is why the battle is so deeply between Judeo-Christian values and the left. Different sources, different codes, different sources, different values. It's huge. That's why the ACLU spends the time it does finding any cross on any county seal and suing. They want— they have an image of a different society. They don't wake up in the morning and say, "Gee, how can I do bad?" They wake up in the morning and think, how can I make America in the shape, in the image that I want it to be? Which is less American, more, more international, less Judeo-Christian, more secular. They have a vision. These are competing visions. Most people don't understand the competing visions, and that's why I think that this is so important to to delineate. And this is why people adopt these views. That is why when you are younger, it is so much more appealing. Young people are utopian. Young people don't know much, and so they're very easily given to, "Hey, I hate poverty and injustice, so I'll be on the left." And it works until we get to them and offer a different view. And so that is why I believe that so many people adopt the view of being on the left, and that's why the ultimate battle still revolves around a religious or non-religious identity. Everything comes back to that, including this. Thanks very much. Time for anything you'd like to reflect on there. We'll take the lady back there. I'll come back forward. Yeah.

Yes, yes. Thank you. You made a statement that I have a hard time with. You said that people that— something about you can't be happy if you're accountable. Is that what you said?

I don't think I said you You can't be happy if you're not accountable. Does anybody recall what the context was?

What did you say?

Well, I don't know if I put accountable and happy. I said, oh, I said naturally people don't want to be accountable. That I do believe, yeah.

Well, I believe that if you're not accountable, you miss an opportunity to learn.

Well, I agree with you too. I'm all for accountability, but there is a natural human desire to flee believe it. That's all I'm saying. And the left has taken that opportunity and built a system around it. Oh, I agree with you, of course. Accountability is— is it— it's an opportunity.

It's a— yes. Another thing I was wondering, if we're so steeped in these different values of right and left, are they not teaching anymore in school about how America came into being?

Oh, they teach how America came into being by committing genocide against Indians and suppressing blacks.

I mean the real—

Well, to them, that's the real. That's the proctologist's view of America. That's what you get as a kid. Most American kids believe that America is founded in original sin. And I would say, probably today, I would say a fair number of Israeli kids are taught that Israel was founded in original sin. Because the left took over education in Israel like it took over education in America.

So we're really not teaching history?

Oh, we don't teach history, that's a given. We teach— the purpose of school is to indoctrinate future leftists.

I went to a parochial school, so I—

Right. Oh, it's a given. Truth is so utterly secondary. The fact that there was no one, no professors arose to speak book against Ward Churchill shows a truth and moral clarity are absent at the university. Also, courage is absent.

I was going to say, why didn't someone stand up and say, 'You're a fool'?

Because they, they only— they have— if— can you imagine if a right-wing professor had said that blacks who were lynched deserve to be black— deserve to be lynched, which to me is the moral equivalent of what Ward Churchill said about the whites? Then he would be pilloried. Yes, please. Dennis, you're coming across very black and white. Can you pigeonhole a little bit more your belief on how many leftists do we have in this country? Where are the Democrats? What percentage of the Democratic Party? And who specifically? I know you're targeting university professors as leftists, but who else? Well, it's, it's, uh, I don't know what to say on the black and white thing. Clarity is clarity, and sometimes there is black and white and sometimes there isn't. There are many Americans who don't fall into a pure leftist mindset, of course that's true, who emote these ideas. These ideas are not articulated except by the clearly left. The average person who Who votes left doesn't sit down and think all these things. "Gee, I don't want to be personally morally responsible." "Gee, I believe in a materialist universe." Of course not. They believe in vanquishing poverty. They believe in tolerance. I mean, there are beautiful words that are thrown out to them, but they don't mean anything. For example, what does tolerance have to do with same-sex marriage? They're not related. The conflating of the two terms is staggering. To tolerate homosexuality is not the same as to redefine marriage. They are unrelated. They have brilliantly been fused together so as to make Americans feel that if I want to be a good person, and most Americans do want to be good, then I have to be for same-sex marriage because, hey, otherwise I'm a bigot. So that's But that's the language used, and nobody wants to be called or thought of as a bigot. So we'll redefine marriage. So, I'm not saying everybody who thinks this way, or everybody who votes left, let's say, has thought all of this through. They haven't. In fact, I have a test on my website, "Are You a Liberal?" It's 22 liberal positions. In other words, positions held by the New York Times editorial page. Page. Not Pravda, not Michael Moore. The New York Times editorial page, which is mainstream liberalism today. And I said, I know for a fact, I would bet everything I have on this belief, that the majority of liberals in America do not hold liberal positions most of the time. They are liberal because they have been taught that that is the group that cares for the poor, that is compassionate, that is kind, that is giving, that is tolerant, that is non-bigoted. But they don't have the positions of what are called liberal positions. So I have people give their friends who are liberal the test, and the vast majority send me the results. I mean, the vast majority of the results that are sent to me— I don't most people don't send me results, I assume, are that, well, you know, it's amazing, my liberal friend only agreed with a quarter of these positions and said that you were unfair because the other positions really aren't liberal. That's the reaction I always get. I'm unfair. So for example, if I say that capital punishment, keeping murderers alive, keeping all murderers alive, is a leftist position, liberal position, they'll say that's not fair. Fair. What's not fair? If you're anti-capital punishment, you want to keep all murderers alive. That's what it means. But they don't like the language because it thrusts in their face what their position really means. They think they're just compassionate. I think anti-capital punishment is profoundly mean-spirited. That's my view. And it's mean-spirited because you're saying keep all murderers alive, which to me is a very mean thing to do to all the victims and their loved ones. But the world of compassion with Sister Pragine going there in her sweet nun's habit to the world and saying, "Oh, we who love life, we want to keep all murderers alive, we feel for them," and it works. It spins its magic. So what you're saying really is that they haven't thought it through, and if they had really thought it through, they wouldn't be voting with them. That is exactly what I'm saying. Exactly. It is felt. And I prove it almost every day on my radio show, and certainly every time I debate someone on the left.

So it makes it sound like we don't think very much of the time.

Most people don't think most of the time, that's correct. That's not a charge, it's a statement of fact. I think that's true for most people in any direction. Most people establish— that's why the name of my book of essays is "Think a Second Time." People don't. They establish views in college, religious or secular, conservative or liberal, and hold them for most of their lives. Most people do not like to challenge what they were raised with. I was raised Orthodox and liberal, and I'm conservative and non-Orthodox. So I have really taken a trip. Okay, most people don't take trips. Or they make one decision to take a trip in college, and that's it forever. My parents were wrong, end of issue, have a nice day. Most people are too concerned. Listen, how do you think if you watch 7 hours of TV a day? There's no time to think. And most Americans watch 7 hours of TV a day, so that statistic alone shows that thought is not possible. Most people are preoccupied with their families and with personal problems. I say this utterly sympathetically. That's true. The human being, most of the time— that's why every philosopher has been wealthy. The poor have no time to think. They're too busy. They're too busy making lunch and dinner and then lunch and dinner for the next day. So yes, of course most people don't think. And it's not said as a contemptible charge. It's just a fact. I am given the opportunity through affluence, through the work that I do. It's all I do is think things through. I am paid to do this. I'm not paid to cure people of heart disease. I'm not a doctor. I'm not paid to defend people in court. I'm not a lawyer. That takes up time. Lawyers don't have time to think. Doctors don't have time to think. They don't. They have time to cure patients. And then take care of a family. So yes.

Yup. Yes. Yup. Thank you. In your brightest times and then also in your darkest times, because we all, I'm sure you get up sometimes and you're very optimistic that the world is really, I mean, there is a tikkun olam, there will be a better time when everybody will start to think more like we here do, you know. Hopefully, I think. What do you feel in your darkest times? Are you getting worried? I mean, you have children, you want the world, you love the world, you're people's people.

What do you feel? Right. What do I feel in my darkest times? You don't want to know that. You want to know how frequent are my darkest times. That's more important. You're basically an optimist. I was not optimistic about the US or the world until after 9/11. Osama bin Laden made me optimistic. Made the world better in a perverse way. There's no doubt in my mind, and I don't wish it happened. That's not my point. All I have is images of men going to work and then jumping out of the Twin Towers, or stewardesses' throats being slit and choking on their blood. So I have a very horrible view of 9/11, but he did make the world better. The clarifying that he enabled through— I mean, of course it's George Bush who made the world better. I mean, let's be very precise here. I mean, it's not even a question. It's almost miraculous that a man had such strength to do what he has done. But the clarifying of the differences between America and Europe now— I mean, I know for myself what I am capable of saying on the radio and in speeches around the United States, which which in the past would have been regarded as just bizarre, is now— people are now far more willing to hear. So now, I don't know when the threat passes, we'll resume our spiral downward. I know I said to my older son the day that the O.J. Simpson verdict came in, that morning I looked to him, it happened right before before I was to broadcast, which was very bad for me. And I said to him, I said, David, please forgive me. I'm giving you a worse America than my father gave me. And I still feel that about that verdict. The reason it's a worse America is there were race-based verdicts that found white murderers, where white juries acquitted white murderers. Thing is, though, a good part of the country knew it was a race-based verdict. And had contempt for it. The New York Times thought this was a respect-worthy verdict. That's why it was frightening, not because of the verdict, but because the dominant opinion-formers of our age thought it was respectable. And so I was Actually, the biggest battle I had in radio was not to convey to my listeners how pessimistic I was, because people don't want to hear pessimists and they would tune out. Really, I just knew that. So I had to keep a cheery disposition while reporting that the country was in a semi-terminal state.

Being that you're such a compassionate and really a deep thinker, it's wonderful that you have it within you, you know, the muscle, the brain muscle, the emotional muscle, to get up there and to keep on being, you know—

well, that comes, that comes from a belief that my— that muscle comes from a belief that I'm doing God's work. And I don't mean I'm holy or any of this stuff, but we all have to do God's work. I'm not different from anybody else. But, you know, and I don't mean it in any gargantuan sense, just that I do believe I believe that, you know, God instructs us to pursue good, pursue truth, and it's very simple. You know, I boil it down to Micah even. "O man, has God not told you what he wants? To pursue justice, be compassionate, and walk humbly with your God." Ironically, there are people on the left who take the same sentence and believe that in light of that they should oppose oppose the United States liberating Kuwait, that America was wrong in Korea, that somehow or other doing good and killing are mutually exclusive. The superficiality of that view is actually frightening to me. Anyone who has "war is not the answer" on their car, I truly believe, is morally retarded. It is so stupid and so untrue that you can't imagine what must go wrong in that person to advertise such insanity to the world. Now, to make you a little annoyed, and I don't mean to, I've never seen that bumper sticker with a male driver. I'm not saying that there aren't, but I do believe that we have a problem in our society with females. Everybody knows male problems, right? Sexual predator and violent is their nature. So we have to work on men sexually and, and in terms of physical aggression. And we do a damn good job because most men are not predators and most men are, are not violent gratuitously. But we don't know what we have to work on women about, and we don't believe we have to. We live in the age of the celebration of the female as is. Another aspect of the foolishness of secular leftist life: the celebration of the female as is. The female needs as much corrective work as the male does, but almost none is done. It was mostly women clapping, incidentally. I want to note for the record, I looked around. No, I've raised this on the air. You know, we all know what we have to tell our boys: don't hit, and don't do what you want with girls. You have to control yourself. That's what we tell them. What do we tell our girls? Basically nothing. No. Huh? We encourage them. We encourage them. It's even worse. Right, okay, fine. So, girl, the female grows up thinking thinking I am superior to the male. He's this wild baboon. Huh? No, no, keep going. Some, some. I'm generalizing. Of course that's true. Well, my wife wants the floor, so of course. Go ahead, Fran.

I've had my hand up for 5 minutes.

Oh, I didn't— I can't— you shouldn't Sit in the dark.

Well, you know, just off the top of my head, having raised a daughter and around another little girl all the time, we try to teach these little girls not to speak unkindly because little girls tend to use their mouths instead of their fists. We try to teach them not to be bossy, which they want to do. We try to teach them not to be controlling. We try to teach them, um, that's what I think of off the top of my head.

Yeah, I think just as—

not to break out in fits of hysteria when they don't get their way.

Well, boys do that too, as we know. Well, how would you like to see females change? All right, I will say that, but first let me say that I do believe there are parents who work on their daughters. Obviously. I mean, of course. But I think— I'll tell you what I do believe. I believe in the way of rational thought. I think that so many females believe that their inners are good, that they are the compassionate sex, and that how they feel is identifiable with the good. And so that is how you can get— when now women change a lot, for example, when they marry, just as men change when they marry, influenced by their wives, so too women change, influenced by their husbands and influenced by marriage and family-making and parenthood and all of that. But until then, look, why, as I pointed out, I'll give one example of the overwhelming dominance of of single women in the animal rights movement. Like the head of PETA is a woman, most of the spokespeople are women, and that is the female— women want to nurture, which is gorgeous, it's a gorgeous trait. They want to nurture a man, and they want to nurture children. If they have a man and no children, they nurture the man. If they have no man and no children, then they nurture an animal. But women want to nurture. And so a very serious part of the animal rights movement— and I don't mean that we should all care about how animals are experimented on, we should care how they are, absolutely— but I'm talking about the, the equivalency movement has come from women who were not bonded to men. I think I would bet that the majority of cars with "War is not the answer" is on a female car. I'm willing to bet. I have observed it for the last year. I haven't seen a man yet driving. I'm not saying that no man has it on his car. And maybe I just drive at times when only women drive. I mean, there are any host of possibilities. But that woman knows that her love of peace is what matters, and she doesn't have to read about it and so on. So I hope that— yeah, go ahead. Yeah. I think we're— Oh, I'm sorry, I was just getting a response from my wife. Yeah.

Oh, I just want— I'm sorry. Just very quickly, I do believe that it's important to learn to be rational and to look at all the evidence before you. But if you expect women to be fully rational as men, then you take away that one wonderful magic called intuition, which is how we greatly know how to be married and to raise children. And it takes away also that feminine part of us that you love so much.

There you go. I'm sorry, what was that? Argument for why a woman should be president. Should or shouldn't? Should not. Oh, all right, well, I'm not going there right now. Let's, uh, yes please, go ahead. Yes, you're right.

I think we've been so busy trying to get men to feel that we've forgotten to teach women or our girls to think. We've, you know, said, oh, feel, feel, But I think we have been neglecting that way, having raised two boys and two girls.

Well, and it's also, let me tell you another thing, men are very loath to confront women. Forget wives, daughters, I mean to confront women. They're much, look, men will say to a guy, "Oh, that's ridiculous, what are you, a jerk?" They'll never say that to a woman. Never, never. Yet women do. Dominate education today. Utterly dominate. There are kids who will not have a male teacher perhaps till late high school or college. Is that healthy? I think it's healthy to have a mix. Some of the best teachers my child ever had, including right now my youngest, this woman is, is a genius in my— she is a gem. No man could be better. Maybe some man could be as good. I cannot imagine a man better. I also think she's exceptional, period. And so, we live in a feminist age in the sense that the feminine— or not the feminine, no, I wish the feminine were celebrated. Females are celebrated. And so, you know, there are prices paid where compassion overwhelms. Whenever schools have banned peanut butter because 3 kids are allergic to peanuts, it's been a female female principal. I always monitor these stories. Alan and I look at these things all the time. A male is much more likely to say, "Well, I'm very sorry. We'll have the right stuff to inject the kid who has a reaction, but we're not going to deprive 1,000 kids of peanut butter, their favorite protein, for the sake of 3 kids." But a female thinks of the poor kid. She thinks motherly and motherly literally terms, individually and micro, not macro. Men think macro, women think micro. Both are needed, both are needed. But in running— but in figuring out macro issues, you need macro thought. That's the difference. In figuring micro issues, you need micro thought. That's why I want children to have a mother and father. That's exactly the reason, exactly for the reasons that my wife was stating. That's the case for a mother and father. To have— there's no question that a woman is more often intuitive about a child's needs than a man. No question, no question about it. But intuition vis-à-vis society, I trust less. That's different. Yes.

Yes, I wanted to get back to something with regard to having— I have personally, so many liberal friends. And one of the things that I— a term I think all the time, I don't know where it comes from— is elitism on their part. In other words, they might consider me elite for, you know, for some other reason, but they'll say things to me. For instance, if you believe in God, you're— Donna, you're too bright. How could you possibly And I somehow, my definition is they're being so elite, a backward approach in the sense that they consider me less intelligent. Yeah, well, maybe that's the truth. Oh God, well, but I don't know how to answer that. Right.

Did you all hear that? Where she's told by friends, Donna, you're so bright, how can you believe in God? This is what, this is That's how effective the brainwash is. They don't actually have arguments for or against God. They never even thought it through. What they were told in college is intelligent people don't believe in God, and everybody wants to think they're intelligent. And so it is the task of those of us who are bright and believe in God to give them cognitive dissonance. A woman stopped me at— I'll never forget, she was driving her SUV out of the Samy's Camera parking lot. Samy's is one of my sponsors, as many of you in LA know, the great photography store. And she says, Dennis Prager? She was a woman about 35, 40. I go, yes? She said, well, I'm a liberal, and I can't stand anything you say, but I listen every day because you're so— and then she used the word effing I was smart. And this drove her nuts, that somebody she could not deny was smart didn't have liberal and secular views. So it's the task of those of us who are smart and whom liberals cannot deny our intelligence to say, well, apparently then your supposition is not correct. And to be perfectly honest, we have the same view of you. How can you be that smart and not believe that there is an engineer when things are engineered.

I think any conversation for me after— because they're usually saying something else that ends all conversation.

Oh, that's true. Yes. Well, ending, ending conversation is, is very effectively done on that side, because if you take a position, you're a homophobe. If you take If you take another position, you're a racist. If you take another one, you're a sexist. If you're against affirmative action, you're a racist. End of issue. You're against redefining marriage, you're a homophobe. End of issue. If you are against equal pay for equal work, whatever the hell that means, then you are a sexist. End of— so the beauty is that you don't have to think. I think that's where you don't have to think. Who else? Anybody else? Because I think it's time. Is that right? One more?

Oh, just to comment on the women thing and the war. Men, see, when war comes along, the men are— my son's going to war, he's a soldier, and they're proud and they see the overall. Women, even when they believe in the war, see their babies going off to possibly be killed. That's right. His mother, who recently was lost, was so mad in her 90s that that George Bush, because he was sending her grandchildren to war. And she was not mad at him in other ways until that came along.

It's a very important point. Again, the micro-macro. The woman— the child goes to war and she just sees her baby going to perhaps get killed. The man, if he believes in the war, sees— has pride in the fact that his son is doing what is right. I think that's exactly right. It is very— it is a very That is the reason it is very important for both people, both sexes, to first of all listen to each other in that way, but B, to have a value system that transcends anything else. And a woman with a belief system— because this is all, listen, this is all very, very thin. It's a very thin— there's a great Hebrew saying, Gesher Tsarim, that life is a very narrow bridge. Bridge, and it's a narrow bridge between both extremes. I don't want women to be like Palestinian women who celebrate their sons blowing themselves up, who give out candy and tell it is the happiest day of their life. To me, it is beyond the human realm to understand the mother doing that. On the other hand, I don't want mothers to think that the only purpose of their son's life to live. We are not here just to live because we all die anyway. That's the meaning of death, if anything else, that life must be worthwhile and that death must be worthwhile. And so that's why you need a very— this thin line of, of course, and men have to feel, that's my baby going to war too. And I think every loving Father does feel that. We didn't have it exactly like that, but when we allowed our older son to go to Israel during the worst of the terror, he spent 6 months in Jerusalem. He heard 2 terror bombings, heard them. That's how close he was. But he felt he wanted to go. It had been scheduled for years. He did not want to defer it. In fact, his ticket to Israel was 9/11 No one. I was going to take the day off from radio to take him to the airport to say goodbye, to send him to terror-filled Israel. And then it was terror-filled America, and he was delayed for a month before flights went. So these are— that's why— look, what is it? Was it Aristotle who said the unthought-through life is not worth living? I mean, but it is true. I'll take a final one.

Okay, go ahead. Yes. I just wanted to say that I have had friends ask me, how could you stand for your boys to be in the military? And I said, well, you know, they could get killed on the freeway. If they got killed fighting for their country, I would be proud. And it's hard. It's not easy. And it wasn't during the war.

It was before the war. But still. That's right. I, I, that's very, you're one Beautiful woman. You are the strength of this country. You know, we should have a 2-year— just like Israel, 2-year mandatory for men and women to serve in the service. Oh, I— Nationalism, unbelievable. Well, we need— since there will be an uproar on the left because they think military equals dirty, they think that goodness is solved in this world through treaties. And they're fools, they really are. On the issue of good and evil, the left is 100% foolish. But I would offer both military and non-military options. But the idea that you must serve your country, I just don't get why that isn't an obvious thing to do. I absolutely believe it should happen. I have always felt it should happen. That's exactly right, to know You know, you don't live just to go to graduate school or get a job. You're in a society that can make a demand upon you. That's exactly right. Now, tonight, what is the schedule here? Is tonight services? Is there a service? What time is that? 5:30 here. It's, you're welcome if you're not Jewish. In fact, overwhelmingly it's non-Jews who do come to my Sabbath services on the show. Ship, but it'll be a brief service and talk to you a little about— we have, we have a prayer book on board. Great. Okay, good. So that's 5:30. Anybody of any religion is welcome to come. Atheists are welcome too. Not just any religion, but even non-religion. Uh, let me just say, we— that, that's really, uh, this is our final time together as such. I, I have to, I have to do a radio show, so So it's hard to take off as much as I would like. However, I am leaving my dear partner in crime, Alan Estrin, with you. You will enjoy him immensely. And he will be— are you doing autobiography, Alan? And you doing anything else? You do a joint thing on movies or something? Is that— you are? Are you with Suzy? Yes. Oh, that's great. You'll really— you will love that. And you'll give me a report if Alan has behaved well and so on, you know, because— Sometimes at midnight you'll see him having his third brandy and it's an issue. Actually, if Alan is up at midnight, it can only be explained by massive clock change. It is not possible. So I know it won't happen. Yes? You can see Alan walking the deck in the morning. He exercises for both of us. It's a very beautiful thing that Alan does on my behalf. Sergeant, on the Italian cruise you went through an explanation. That's what I'll do again. Oh good. Yes, thank you. Anyway, let me tell you, because it's always hard, but you know, I don't patronize. You've been a terrific group, really. I've enjoyed you immensely. We've enjoyed you immensely. You have reinvigorated my desire to take cruises with listeners. I just want I want you to know, so— or at least something. Or at least— how many of you would like to go photograph birds? One. All right. Two. Three. Four. Africa? Oh, Africa is always good. That always gets— you see that? You see? People do like that. Anyway, I've really loved it. It has been— the cruise has been great. It's been great. I love sea days, so this has really been special to me. I can't stand humidity, but you can't ask Vanuatu to air condition itself. You know, it was— that was great. But thank you for making this trip as wonderful as it has. Thank you very, very much. This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit DennisPrager.com for thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles.