Why Evil Triumphs - Dennis Prager

A very interesting thing occurred to me in high school. Not everybody hated communism. And I thought, I don't understand. If you hate Nazism, why don't you hate communism? Everybody hated Nazism for good reason. And then I realized one of Prager's rules of life: those who don't fight evil hate those who do fight evil. Wisdom begins with understanding that human nature is not basically good. If you think human nature is basically good, you cannot be wise. It's not that we're evil. It's just easier to do the wrong thing. Good intentions without wisdom leads to evil.

Dennis Prager, welcome finally to Trigonometry.

Is it finally? Because you— so you've been on my show, but I haven't been on yours.

Yes.

Oh, well, it's wonderful. I'm delighted. Thank you.

Well, and we've known each other for a while, and you were one of the people we were very keen to hear from. Thank you. We want to have a very substantive and in-depth conversation about what the West is and its Judeo-Christian roots and all the things that you are very eloquent on. But before we do, we'd love for our audience to know a little bit about you and how you came to be who you are, think what you think. What's been your journey through life?

So I'll give you the really big picture and you'll tell me if you want more details. So I grew up I was born in Brooklyn, New York. I've been in California for 40 years. I fled New York. And I will admit that there are exceptions. But when I'm asked why I left New York, what didn't I like about New York? I answer New Yorkers. There are many wonderful people there, like everywhere. But that is the big— New Yorkers think that New York is the center of the universe. Yet it is among the most provincial places I have ever been to. And I've been to 130 countries and all 50 states. It's not true. They're not the worldliest people. Anyway. Okay. It was not an important thing, but I—

We've just lost 10% of our audience there, Dennis Prager.

I know. No, no, no. Many New Yorkers agree with me. But yes, that is a danger. I'm well aware that I have a New York audience. There used to be. Okay. Anyway, I grew up there. I grew up an Orthodox Jew, a modern Orthodox within the parlance of denominations. And I went to yeshiva, which is an intense Jewish education, half the day in Hebrew, half the day in English till I was 19. And I, it was, I thank God for that education. It was formative. Having said that, it was quite provincial in that everything, my whole life was Orthodox Jews. It was like a cocoon. And I'm not saying this negatively because people love that. People love the blanket of intense community. I, my nature, I take no credit for it, but it was built in from an early age. I wanted to know the other. I wanted to know, for example, Christians. I ached. I used to interview the mailman or the postman, as you would put it, because he was like the only non-Jew in my life with any regularity. I would, I would, as in elementary school, I would interview him. What is it like? Tell me about your family. Tell me what it's, what is it like to go to church? So Anyway, I ended up in California. The dominating impulse in my life— there were two and they're very related— is from a very early age. I really was who I am at 13. And one is I hate evil. I mean, I really hate evil. And therefore, at a very early age, I hated communism. And a very interesting thing occurred to me in high school. Not everybody hated communism. And I thought, I don't understand. If you hate Nazism, why don't you hate communism? Everybody hated Nazism for good reason. Why don't you— do you know how many people they've slaughtered? Do you know how many people they've enslaved? And then I realized that one of Prager's rules of life Those who don't fight evil hate those who do fight evil. So what I found was the people who didn't hate communism often hated anti-communists. And that's when I knew in high school I was still a liberal Democrat, but I was anti-left. You know, I never flirted with the left. I thought I was a liberal because I was a Jew in New York. What was I going to be? So number one is hating evil. Number two, my division of the world is not ethnic or national or religious. And I am a religious Jew, but I don't divide the world by religion. I divide it as Viktor Frankl wrote in Man's Search for Meaning. There are only two races, the decent and the indecent. That is, that is how I believe God divides the world. That is how I divide the world. It's all like, I don't care if you're a Jew or a non-Jew, if you're white, if you're Black, male or female. It is of no consequence to me. Are you a decent or an indecent human being? So these were the animating impulses. I began going to the Soviet Union. My public life started when I was 21. I have, since my turning adult, I have been a public figure. I don't know what it's like not to be. I started lecturing at 21 because Israel sent me to the Soviet Union because of my knowledge of Russian, which I studied in college, and Hebrew, which I'd studied my whole life, to meet with Soviet Jews and dissidents. And, and I came back to America and I started lecturing on, on the Soviet Union. and the rest, so to speak, is history. What got into radio and then PragerU was born. Does that answer your question?

It does.

And it brings up a very, very interesting question that I think both Francis and I have noticed in, in doing what we do, because we've tried to seek the truth. We've tried to speak out against things that we thought were wrong. And one of the things we found very quickly was the people that we considered our friends and the people that we considered to be allies or on our side or share the same values were very angry at us for challenging things that we thought were wrong. And you said just now that the people who don't fight evil, I don't remember the exact way you said it.

Yes, the people who don't fight evil fight those who do fight evil.

Yes. And why is that?

That's a great question. I think the answer is psychological, but I'm not certain what the answer is. If I'm fighting evil X and you're not, I'm putting you in a difficult position morally. So you have two choices. Either, you know what, I should fight X because it's evil. Deny how evil X is and also diminish the stature of those that are fighting X. Because they have to rationalize they're not fighting. Why did they not fight communism? So either— so communism, well, it's not that bad. I mean, there's good intentions of equality, which is an awful intention. It's not even a good intention. But that's another issue. And you who— you're fanatics, you're extremists. So I have to justify my moral failure. So I either have to acknowledge it's a moral failure that I didn't fight communism or whatever, or Hamas. The hatred of Israel. Israel is fighting evil. So vast chunk of humanity is not fighting that evil. So they must diminish Israel's moral status and claim that, oh yeah, well, you know, Hamas is not a wonderful organization, but the poor Palestinians, what are they going to do? So it's— this is a mirror of what I grew up with. Israel. Israel is the anti-communist. Of my youth, fighting the evil of our day, which is Islamic terror, as you know, in Britain. I mean, and what we just saw in the Netherlands. I mean, it's just unbelievable. The Israeli press, which is not hysterical, called it a pogrom against Israel fans of an Israel team that was there. So it's human nature not to fight evil.

Dennis, what do you mean by evil? Because it's a word—

I mean, by what?

Evil.

Oh, evil. Yeah. It's so interesting. You may not know this, being Brits. There's a famous American story. I don't remember the Supreme Court justice, but he said something to the effect, I can't define obscenity or pornography. I don't remember which word it was.

It was pornography.

It was? Yeah.

Yeah.

I can't define pornography, but I know it when I see it. I think everybody knows what evil is when they see it. It's, but it is unjust harm done to another. That's it. The unjust is important because not harm, although that's interesting that even that is in our moral confusion. You know, well, Maybe the Brits were wrong for bombing Germany. This is, maybe America was wrong for dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. This is now not an idiosyncratic position. People's moral compasses has really been shattered, including some, I'm sorry to say, on the right, since you don't care. Where we have to be critical of. And I'm with you that that has to be acknowledged.

And one of the things I think that the— one of the crises that the West is facing is it's lost its moral framework. It doesn't know what evil is. It doesn't know what it means to challenge evil because it's got— it doesn't understand anymore.

Yes. Well, what the left has done— the left is, is the— is organized moral confusion. And what the left has done has redefined all of these terms. So we don't have good and evil. We have white and black, poor and rich, colonialist and colonized. Those are the distinctions rather than good and evil. And so Israel has everything going against it. It's West versus East. It's strong versus weak. It's theoretically white versus non-white, although half of Israel is not white and nobody likes to acknowledge that fact. And it's colonizer versus colonized. So the educated class doesn't speak in these silly traditional terms of good and evil, but rather of colonizer and colonized and so on.

And it's a great point, but I think what's tied underneath all of this is the fact that we are becoming more secular as a society?

Oh, well, yeah. You know, now my life's work has really been to teach the consequences of secularism. That's my— that's really essentially my life's work. And so I, within the last couple of years, I learned a line. It is attributed to G.K. Chesterton, but nobody could find if he really said it. I think he did, because it's a Chestertonian line. But I'm only noting this because I didn't come up with it, and I'm very adamant about citing sources. I don't want to take credit for anything that's not my idea, but it's brilliant. When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing. They believe in anything. The proof? Only secular people say men give birth. Not all secular people say it, but only secular people. There is no religious Jew or Christian who says men give birth.

I don't think the Muslims would say either, Dennis, to be fair.

Yeah, yeah. No, no, you're right. I agree. But I'm talking within the Judeo-Christian West. Yeah, of course, that's correct. But that would only affirm my point. They're religious. Yes. So the, the Here, I'll give another example. So I gave you that the men give birth. So why, why is the West not reproducing itself? People are not making babies, correct? In virtually every Western country, it's— they say it's affluence. It's not true. It's secularism. Religious affluent people have a lot of children. And, and You know, and poor religious and affluent religious, religious people have children. If you meet a family with 5 children in the United States, you will correctly assume they're either Mormon, Catholic, evangelical, or Orthodox Jew. It is inconceivable that there would be a secular family having 5 or more children, or even 4 or more children. So the consequence, people need to acknowledge I have never bothered arguing. I brought a lot of people to take God and the Bible seriously. Many, many people. I'm very happy about that. But I've never done it by arguing for God's existence. All of my arguments are for God's necessity.

And what are those arguments?

As Dostoevsky put it in Brothers Karamazov, where there is no God, all is permitted. You— moral chaos must flow because if God is not the source of do not murder, murder is not wrong. You can think it's wrong. You can feel it's wrong. Society may opine that it is wrong. Morality is subjective unless there is a divine source for it. You can be, you can be an atheist and acknowledge that. By the way, atheist philosophers till the very recent past did all acknowledge that if there is no God, morality is subjective. The good and evil objectively exist only if there is God who is the source of moral values.

That's why we've become so uncomfortable with the word evil.

Right.

That's why I think, and I say this as someone who is agnostic and Francis is too, but I think it's obvious that evil implies some kind of authority to opine on that issue, to say this is 100% undeniably wrong. And to say that as a human being sounds too arrogant because who am I to judge?

Right.

You need something from above that deigns this into truth, right?

Yeah. Even do not murder. You know, we think, oh, well, of course, it's obvious murder is wrong. It's not obvious at all.

Not at all.

You know, take rape. War liberates men to do what they want to do. Not all soldiers do this, but staggering numbers in all of war's history did it because there were no sanctions. But if you believe that God doesn't want you to rape, there's a better chance that you won't.

Yes. So this takes us back to what we really wanted to speak with you about, Dennis, which is the roots of our civilization. What is the West and where does it come from?

Well, Margaret Thatcher said it, and she's a heroine of mine. We're a Judeo-Christian civilization. By Judeo-Christian, I think it's important that people understand why do we use that term? Because there are Jews, you know, there are some Jews who don't like it and there are some Christians who don't like it. But it is a completely valid term. First of all, they're the only two religions on earth that share a Bible. So, excuse me, by definition, it's a legitimate term. No other— no two religions share a Bible. Islam does not share a Bible with any religion. Hinduism doesn't. It doesn't happen. But Judaism and Christianity, two-thirds of the Christian Bible is the Jewish Bible. That's a big deal. It didn't stop, unfortunately, a fair amount of Christian Jew hatred and persecution. But that doesn't deny that it is the Christian— the Jewish Bible is a big part of the Christian Bible. Without the Jewish Bible, there is no Christian Bible. As I tell my Christian friends, and most of my life is with Christians, Jesus, Jesus never read the New Testament. He only read the Torah and the rest of the Hebrew Bible. So, yes, our Judeo-Christian roots, obviously there are Greek roots as well.

Well, give us a very, very basic history for people who are unfamiliar with all of this. Well, it was the history of us.

Okay.

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In effect, you, you have the origins with the, with, with the beginning of the collapse of the Roman Empire. You, you have in 325, the Roman Empire adopts Christianity as the state religion, and that began the long, long road to civilize the barbaric tribes of Europe. I remember listening to, this was really fascinating, I was listening to a guy give a course on the history of the Catholic Church. And he noted, it's funny, 'cause it was like 14, 15 chapters. It was a long course. The one thing I remember is, He said there was one tribe that it was really difficult for the Catholic Church to convert to Christianity. And I'm thinking, okay, which was the Germanic? And he said they didn't understand why it was wrong to kill. If you're strong, you kill. And by the way, that's a completely rational argument. If I can prevail by killing, why wouldn't I kill? People think because we've been so Judeo-Christianized, they think that those values are instinctual. They're not. It's— it's— you're so— people are so naive. Here's— here's another Prager rule number 473. I just made up the number, but I have a lot of rules. Wisdom begins with understanding that human nature is not basically good. If you think human nature is basically good, You cannot be wise. It is not possible. True. Almost everything else you believe will be foolish. So the— that's essential to Judaism and Christianity from Genesis, where God himself says, you know, the will of man's heart is towards evil from his youth. God himself makes that declaration. That's a big deal. And so If you don't figure out how to deal with flawed human nature— and I never say we're basically evil. I've never said that, nor does the Bible. But we're not. But the inclination is towards bad stuff. It's easier to cheat on a test than not to cheat on a test. And see, I'll come back to this in one moment. I give real-life examples all the time, which is, I believe, one reason I'm effective, because I apply to real life. 2 years ago, I was in— I'm in Minnesota a lot because I just am. I don't know why. I give a lot of talks there. We have a lot of supporters of PragerU there. So I always rent a car wherever I go. I rented a car in Minneapolis, parked my car, and I had, for whatever reason, they gave me the biggest SUV that they had, a Suburban, which is too big. But be that as it may, it was too big for the spot that I was in. I scraped the car next to me as I pulled out. So I had two choices: just keep driving, nobody saw it, or leave a note, "I scraped your car, here's my phone number." And there's no doubt in my mind most people would not leave a note. And I'm not saying this to tell you I'm wonderful. I don't think I'm at all wonderful for doing it. It's elementary decency. But elementary decency is not common. The reason I give this example is it's so much easier to do the wrong thing. That's human nature. It's not that we're evil. It's just easier to do the wrong thing. Anyway, by the way, it's a very sweet story. I left the note. I— the scratches on the side of your car, and they were not extensive, but they were there. Uh, I, I did it. Here's my phone number. I get a text 2 days later from a woman whose car it was, and it really is a very sweet story. All she wrote was, I just want you to know, I don't know who you are, I don't even know your name, And I didn't leave my name because I'm well known, and I, you know, you never know what that could lead to. So, but I would have given it eventually, obviously. And she said, I just want you to know how much it meant to me that a person would leave a note that they had scratched my car or whatever, damaged my car in some way. And I told her how much her note meant to me, and I never heard from her again. All she wanted me to know was how goodness moves people. It's a great little story about that. But I give you the story only to talk about human nature. It is just— it is just so much easier to do the wrong thing. I'm not talking about murder, although that's easy too, apparently, given human condition. So the West is founded The beginnings of the civilizational aspect to civilize human beings begins with the church, which is a very flawed institution. But people who speak of its flaws, and I wrote a book on antisemitism, I know church antisemitism really well. But You have to be honest. It did a lot of good too. It's a mixed bag, but mixed means good too. And it did. It told the German tribes, hello, here are the Ten Commandments, and we believe God gave them, and you can't murder. And they were the last tribe in Europe to accept Christianity, and it was over that issue. So that's, those are the roots, plus the pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness has been essential to Western civilization. And now there's, with the post-Christian age, post-Judeo-Christian age, the pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness is dead. And it, I can almost date the beginnings. The late 19th century, essentially. Well, I mean, parts of the French Enlightenment, but the, the thing I use as the example is music, because I am a musician. I conduct orchestras as an avocation. And the atonal music introduced chaos.

What's atonal music?

Every piece of music is basically harmony, melody, and tonality. Tonality is basically my— we're following a key. Happy birthday to you. Happy is in a key. But if there is no key and I don't have to be governed by the key, whether it's C major, I don't know what, I don't have perfect pitch. I don't know what key I sang that in. And I do happy birthday. There's no key. There's no tonality. So Leonard Bernstein, whom I don't like, but doesn't matter. He said something very wise. He's a great musician. He said atonal music is an oxymoron. And by the way, it's not even written any longer. It had its 100-year take, started on Arnold Schoenberg in Europe. And but the same in modern art, contemporary art, where, you know, you could stand on a ladder and throw paint on a canvas and it sells for millions of dollars. This is the naked emperor. This is not truth, beauty, or goodness. This is chaos. And it's all a post-religious age. I interviewed one of the greatest British conductors. He wrote a book on Bach. And even though most of my listeners don't listen to Bach, I still had him on. John Eliot Gardner. And I had no idea what he would answer. I assumed he was, like most musicians, secular. And he might be. And I said, I just like Maestro Gardner, I would like to bounce off a theory of mine. That the death of God means we are not going to produce great music anymore. He said, I agree with you entirely. I was shocked. I mean, people could see how many recordings he has done of Bach and other— this John Eliot Gardner. The post-God era, you could be an atheist and acknowledge this. And, and if you pursue truth, you will. How? I don't know how you produce beauty, truth, and goodness without God. We're obviously not doing a good job with the chaos in our museums, the chaos in our school classrooms. I mean, again, back to men give birth. You are— again, this is, this is produced By the secular society. Women saying, I don't want children. I thought marriage— there was a song when I was a child. It was an American song. I wonder if you're familiar with it, or at least the lyrics. Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage. That song today would be considered an anachronism. Who the hell thinks that love and marriage go together at all? There's love and there's marriage. I'm pro-love, but I'm not pro-marriage. And this, this is, this too is the West will not survive. Let's put it this way. The West will not survive the decline of its origins, which are Judeo-Christian.

So that being the case, what should we do?

Well, Okay, well, this is— I'm hesitant because it sounds like I'm promoting something I do, but I am promoting something I do. But I want to make it clear, this is not for money. Nobody writes a commentary on the Bible to get rich. Okay? I make a good living. It isn't from a Deuteronomy commentary. This is pure work of idealism. I tell you what I do. There are many answers to your question. But one of the things I do is verbally and in writing, make the case for the Bible as the place to get your wisdom. Because without wisdom, there is no goodness. And I want to come back to the wisdom part in a moment. And so This is coming out right now, the fourth of my five volumes, The Rational Bible. And I call it The Rational Bible because I only use reason. Reason is my vehicle to God, not faith. I know that sounds odd to a lot of religious people. I understand that. My, my, my faith is my religiosity. My God-centeredness is, is 99.9% reason-based. God gave us reason. We should use it. I didn't— I don't like you just— well, just take it on faith if it doesn't make sense. That's why my commentary is widely read, because I write in the preface, if anything I wrote doesn't make sense, I failed. I make sense of the first 5 books, which are the most important books of the Bible. The whole Bible rests on the first 5 books called the Torah. So, this was very touching, but not— I'll give you two quick examples since I'm now going to reference me again. Is that okay? I feel a little self-conscious. But so, two very quick anecdotes. I spoke to young people in the Czech Republic a few years ago. And in front of the group, a young Czech comes over to me, said, "I just want you to know Ben Shapiro brought me to conservatism and you brought me to God." I was very touched. And just a few weeks ago, I spoke at Brown University in Rhode Island. And a young student at Brown comes over to me, says, "Hi, I'm so-and-so." from India, which was apparent by his accent and his looks. And he goes, I just want you to know I'm a Hindu and you brought me to conservatism and you brought me to God and Judeo-Christian values, and I'm converting to Christianity. So this Jew got this Hindu to convert to Christianity. And it's all done because the arguments make sense. It's not— I don't, I don't have the belief which Christians have. If you have a certain faith, you will be saved. And I respect that belief. I don't. But it's not— that's not how— that's not my approach nor my belief. I want people to adopt Judeo-Christian values to save the world, not to save their souls. That may be true, but to save the world, because we're going downhill without these values. That's what this Hindu kid came to understand. So that's what we have. We— so you guys describe yourselves as agnostic. So first of all, I live in the real world. Some of the greatest fighters for the values I believe in, we believe in, are secular people. I assume you guys are secular given that you say you're agnostic. You know, Douglas Murray, whom I adore, I think is agnostic. I don't believe he's particularly religious. So I'm well aware And there are a lot of religious fools. This is all true. But I have, I wrote a piece directed to secular conservatives. And the thrust of my piece was, will your grandchildren be conservative? And I suspect that the third generation of secular family member will not be conservative, that eventually secularism will gnaw at their conservatism. That's my suspicion. And, and it's not a perfect litmus test, grandchildren, but it's not bad.

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It's an interesting idea. One of the counterarguments to it might be what we had in the Soviet Union, where, you know, I can't remember who we've had this discussion with before, but a lot of my views about the world are really about, well, this is how my parents taught me, this is how they behaved. So I don't have a deference towards people who are older because of religion, but it's because what I saw around me when I was growing up. I don't walk a woman to her car, whoever she is, in the evening because of religion. I do it because that's what my parents taught me and so on and so forth. You know what I mean? But I don't dispute that a very strongly held religious code is the easiest way to pass on values to the future generation, for sure.

Yeah. Religion or good religion— there's a lot of crappy religion. Good religion is the ship that carries the moral cargo.

Yes. And you mentioned the interesting distinction for me is that A lot of religious people say that you have to have faith, you have to have what an agnostic might call the belief in the supernatural to some extent, right? Whereas what you're talking about is an argument from reason. So can you expand on that for us? What's the argument for a religious worldview from reason?

Well, I've been presenting it, and, and you're You probably, you sound like it makes sense to you that we do have moral chaos intellectually, if nothing else. But I do believe existentially as well. If there is no God, if, as that's why I began, if God doesn't say murder is wrong, murder is not wrong. You may think it's wrong, feel it's wrong. Intuit it's wrong. All of that is true, but it isn't wrong. There is no right and wrong. There is only opinions about what is right or wrong. And so when this case is made, an individual may conclude, wow, look, there's no arguing against that fact. But I personally just find it very hard. I'm not saying I, Dennis, but the person may say, I personally find it really hard to believe that there is this, this some divine presence in the world. Okay. That. And so my answer to that person is, okay, fine. I'm not— I'm not here to persuade you there is a God. I'm here again, as I said, I'm here to persuade you that we can't live without God. So I would say to you, just live as if there is. And if you, if you find it after years intellectually impossible, I'll give you an example. I mean, it just— I'm a very— I'm a big behaviorist. My book on happiness, one of my books is on happiness. And my book on happiness is totally behavioral. Act happy, you'll feel happier. It's not an original thought. It's been said by almost anybody who's thought about happiness. Act religious, you'll ultimately feel more religious. That's just the way it works. To take my religion, if you had Shabbat dinner dinner, Sabbath dinner Friday nights for a year. It's hard for me to believe that on the 53rd Friday night you'll be thrilled to go to the movies or not have the Shabbat dinner because that's— my Shabbat dinner, the same dozen people, one always invite often non-Jews to our dinner. Basic dozen people. And we met, by the way, the entire lockdown of COVID We missed 2 weeks. By the 3rd week, we said, this is ridiculous. And we lived as if there was nothing happening. And, and it was therapeutic. It was fantastic. I mean, if you have that, it's like I would say to a parent, You're tone deaf. You can't even spell Beethoven, but you should still give your kid music lessons. And a lot of that's what parents thought in the past. Yeah, I don't really get into this music stuff, but I'd like my kid to at least learn about it. You should do what is valuable whether or not you emotionally respond to it. So I always tell parents, you know, okay, you're an agnostic, you should take your kid to church anyway. What have you lost? It's life without a God is chaotic, at least intellectually. There are many fine secular people. You were— I have a strong sense. I don't know what religion your parents were, but I have a strong belief. I'm almost certain that your grandparents had some religious commitment. And so they didn't actually. Okay. So it's very rare. And then their parents did. Your parents didn't get the great values that they transmitted to you from personal intuition?

No, no, they got it from a previous generation. Yeah, okay.

And that previous generation got it from a previous generation.

Yes, I, I— but that's why I asked you about the Judeo-Christian West, because I think you, uh, nobody honest would deny that our civilization is dependent on its religious history. I mean, that would be insane. It's a system of beliefs. Oh, many people deny it, but, but they're stupid because If you look at it objectively, this is a system of belief, thought, let's say, let's call it a philosophical system even if you want to call it that, that swept the world, that millions of people fought and died to advance or defend or protect or whatever. The idea that it's not at the core of who we are, that it's not passed down from generation to generation to generation to make this world the way it is, different to other parts of the world, to which, unlike most people, I've been, where that isn't the case. That would be absurd. That would be the silliest thing that you could possibly say.

Right. So guess what? Our universities are teaching the silliest thing that you could possibly say. When the EU made its charter about 10 years ago, it didn't mention Christianity. It described Europe and it didn't use the word Christian. Yeah, that's a lie. And this is a Jew saying that. Hello, if it weren't for Christianity, there would be no Europe. Yeah, that's just— that's a fact. I don't care what you think about religion, that's a fact.

You know, one of— as somebody who was raised Catholic, struggles with various aspects of it— one of the most powerful ideas of Christianity to me is the idea of salvation. And I think part of the problem with the West is we don't have any idea what that means. And if you're not invested in your own salvation, then eventually your life will fall apart in the most awful way possible.

Yes, well, that's a— you're an example of the old— the Christian, the Catholic saying, you know, what is it? You could take the guy out of the church, but you can't take the church out of the guy, or whatever. Or once a Catholic, always a Catholic.

I was, uh, taught by the Jesuits. They said, show me the boy— I think it was and I'll show you the man at 18. Yeah, that's right.

That's another one of their sayings. So I'll just respond. I don't invalidate that theme whatsoever. The— that theme is not a specifically Jewish one. When I speak of Judeo-Christian, I always speak of Judeo-Christian values or ethics, not Judeo-Christian theology. We do have different theologies. For me, the salvation question is, and for virtually any Jew, is much less significant than for a Christian, whether Protestant or Catholic. The, which to my Christian listeners, the vast majority of my listeners in my national radio show in America are Christian. It sounds almost bizarre. And I know that. And I adore these people, but I don't judge. I really, really don't judge people by theology. You know what my definition of true religion is? And then I'll get back to salvation. I'm not evading it. My definition of true religion is, do you produce good people? A religion that produces good people. Is a true religion. That's it. That— there's— it's— I don't know. I don't know any other way to measure what, what is a true— how, how can an outsider measure a true religion? I, I measure you by your fruit, which is, you know, right? Faith without works is dead, you know, from James in the New Testament. So how, how How do I get saved? The traditional Jewish answer is behave well. The Christian response is you can never behave well enough to be saved. That is the traditional Christian response. But that is, that is not a Jewish pre-Christian view. It's— I don't believe it's a biblical pre-Christian view. It's a, it's a New Testament view. And by the way, I don't knock it. I don't. It's just not my view. Why do I get joy when a guy says to me, you know, I went back to church because of you, Dennis, not because I necessarily share the theological dogmas of the religion he will embrace, but because I know the odds are he'll be a better human being if if he becomes— if he goes back to church. Yes, I really do believe that. I just spoke today before you. I was on a podcast with a Christian podcaster about my Bible book. And, and I, I spoke to him about that. I see. Because Christians always ask me, why don't I believe in Jesus? By the way, I'm not offended by it frequently. Christians will say, you know, Dennis, you're probably the most prayed for man in America. And I say, you're probably right. And much of the prayer is that I'll come to Jesus. And by the way, I don't resent it. It only comes from a good place in these people. I don't know why Jews do resent it, who resent it, but don't start me on Jews. I have big problems with a lot of Jews. It's very sad. It's a sad part of my life. But I I— it's worth talking about for a moment, but I'll just finish this. So I just— I said, look, I do believe that you're doing God's work as a Christian and as a Jew. You're the ones bringing the Torah to the world. The world knows about the Torah. They do know about Numbers and Deuteronomy and Leviticus and Exodus and Genesis because of you. We brought it into the world, but you made the world know about it. We're related whether you like it or not. We need each other. So the— what happened, and this is paradigmatic of non-Jews too, Jews who left the belief that the Torah was divine, ended up adopting secular religions. Jews became among the founders of every secular religion, whether it's Trotsky in the Soviet Union and communism. Marx was the grandson of two Orthodox rabbis. Of course, he hated Jews too, but it doesn't matter. And Betty Friedan and feminism. If it's an ism except Nazism, Jews helped found it and certainly helped lead it. As I say all the time, Jews are the most religious people in the world. But for most of them, their religion is not Judaism. And that's really— Jews don't abandon religion. They, or to use your term, they don't abandon salvation. They just secularize it.

Dennis, this is a side question, but since you brought it up, it's a question I really wanted to ask you because I think we've asked it of a number of people, both privately and publicly, and I never get a satisfying answer to it. Why do people hate Jews?

Yeah, so I wrote a book with a prominent Jewish writer, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, many years ago. The third edition is coming out right now because of October 7th. Called Why the Jews. And every— and the reason we wrote it is that virtually everything written on it is wrong, in my opinion. So you'll— I'm really happy you asked me and I'm really happy I might give you an answer that's somewhat satisfying.

I hope so. Sorry, just to add, The reason I asked it partly is what you just said about the Jews having been involved in the various isms. Right. This is a theme that I see a lot of Jew haters use. Correct. Yes. But there are others, many, many others. Right.

By the way, I don't like a lot of these Jews either, but I'm not a Jew hater. No, no, no. A Jew not liker is not the same as a Jew hater. So I'll answer your question after I make the point. About that, please. Jew hatred is unique. It's the only ethnic or religious hatred that is exterminationist. Jew haters want to exterminate the Jews. 2,000 years ago, the rabbis wrote, which is said to this day by every Jew who has a Passover Seder, it's in the Haggadah, the Passover Seder liturgy. I'm debating, should I say it in Hebrew? Or? Or just English. English, I think. Yeah, no, no, I'm definitely going to say it in English. But I don't know if it's worth it. It's— I usually— I rarely do. So I won't bother with the Hebrew. In every generation, someone arises, literally they arise, to annihilate us. It's a very rare Hebrew word, but to annihilate, to end us literally. This is a very interesting thing. The Brits and the Irish hated each other for a while. Germans and Poles hated each other. You name it. Russians and Ukrainians, whatever it might be. But only to this day, to Hamas, from Hitler to Hamas and before, Jew hatred is annihilationist. The Jewish people must be exterminated. It's unique. So that just establishes its uniqueness. So if there are non-Jews annoyed with Jews' activism in left-wing causes, I share that annoyance. But they're not annoyed. I don't hate Jews for that. I hate those people who mislead people. I hate Trotsky. Okay, I do. I hate his guts. But I'm not a Jew hater. I hate Trotsky. I feel that way about George Soros. Okay. But, you know, does it lead me to Jew hatred? That's what— if every Jew were saintly, Jews would still be hated. It's— so here is— this is— Back to your question. So the Talmud is this enormous work of 60 volumes. I think it's 60. It's larger, it's as large as the Encyclopedia Britannica. It's in Aramaic largely. It's the second holiest work of Judaism after the Bible. And the rabbis who wrote it about 1800 years ago, they ask, why are the Jews hated? And you must understand, there are chapters devoted to arcane legal questions. Can you eat an egg that was laid on a Jewish holiday? Has an entire volume. Okay. You're allowed to laugh. Don't worry about it. It's okay. Yet you would think antisemitism would take 5 volumes. It takes up maybe 5 lines. Because it wasn't complex. And here I have to use the Hebrew because people will understand when they hear it. It's a play on words. The word for hatred is sinah, and the word for Sinai is sinai. It sounds almost the same, right? The great sinah. Comes from Sinai. The great hatred comes from Mount Sinai. And there was a Catholic scholar who wrote a book on antisemitism, Edward Flannery, who's a priest, is a bishop. He wrote, the Jews have never been forgiven for introducing a judging God into the world. No matter how Jews behave, religious, secular, bad, good. They, they, there is a metaphysical reality to Jewish existence. And that is evil focuses on the Jews. And many, many non-Jews dismissed Hitler as the Jews' problem. To their great error, because it ended up 60 million people minus 6 million, 54 million roughly were killed by, as a result of Hitler. And the staggering ramifications of all that suffering. The Jews are the canary in the mine. For those who don't know, apparently miners would take canaries to the mine. They would die before the miners knew there were noxious fumes. So the miner saw the canary die and knew, oh, there are noxious fumes. Let's fight them. Let's destroy the fumes. That's the Jew is the miner's canary. You can— so you have a choice if you're a non-Jew. Oh, look, the canary died. Too bad. Who knows why the canary died? Or you could say, oh, we know why the canary died. There are noxious fumes that need to be fought. So it's irrespective, you know, whether Jews are nice or not nice. Jews are a mixed bag like every group on earth. There are great Jews, awful Jews. By the way, I do remind this because again, most of my life is to and with Christians. When a Christian leaves Christian belief, no one calls him a Christian. When a Jew leaves Jewish belief, he is still called a Jew. I'm stuck with George Soros. George Soros is as Jewish as this glass, but everyone says he's a Jew. Whereas, you know, nobody says Stalin is a Christian, but he was born to Christian parents in Georgia. He went to seminary as a kid, but nobody says, oh, Stalin the Christian, he slaughtered 20 to 30 million people in the gulag. No, they just say Stalin. But if Stalin were born to Jewish parents and rejected Judaism completely, just like Trotsky did, so Stalin was a Jew. So it's a double standard in effect. I'm not blaming people because Jews also believe that if you're born to Jewish parents, you are a Jew because Jews are an ethnicity as well as a religion. Christianity is just a religion. So they get to disqualify whoever they want. We don't get to disqualify anybody. But the hatred coming from Sinai, the Jews, they— we have this crappy role that the bad focus on us. I mean, let's be honest. Antisemites have not been among the finest people in any given society. Is that fair to say? Yeah. I mean, that's why When Hamas are described as, you know, Palestinian liberation fighters or whatever other term is used, the absurdity of it, the moral absurdity, they're today's Nazis. You can finally use the word Nazi for someone who wasn't a German in the 1930s or '40s. They want to exterminate the Jews. They claim it. And Israel, you know, Israel is often charged with being an island of Western civilization in the the Middle East. That's exactly what it is. That's correct. It's hated because it's essentially good. That's the irony. I mean, it's not hated by good people. It's hated by bad people. Is every Israeli a wonderful human? Of course not. But it doesn't matter. So when, you know, if someone says, you know, Jews have played a disproportionate role in creating left-wing movements, that's either true or not true. And it is true. And I'm very unhappy about it. When Jews leave Judaism, and specifically belief in the divinity of the Torah, that's really what— you've got to believe something is divine. Whether you believe in God or not is irrelevant. My question to people is not, do you believe in God? Because I know nothing about you if I know you believe in God. I know nothing about you or your values or even your God. What text did God reveal? That's the question that matters. And so anyway, I hope that partially answers. This is the role Jews have played.

But I don't understand why. You mentioned the Sinai, the introducing and judging. That doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand.

Oh, yeah. Well, because People don't want to be told, first of all, they don't want to be told that they're judged. It's a very annoying thing. I have asked my colleagues at PragerU to do an experiment to buy billboard space on American highways, just 10 billboards across the country. And that would say something like, Yes, it is true God loves you, but it is equally true that God judges you. Have a nice day. It will annoy innumerable people. People don't want to be judged. That's huge. And the Jews introduced not a God who judges Jews. Of course he judges Jews, judges everyone. That's a big deal. The Ten Commandments applies to everyone. It was given to the Jews, but it applies to everyone. That's why I'm writing my Torah commentary. And I write in the foreword of the Rational Bible, the idea that the Torah is only relevant to Jews is like the idea that Beethoven is only relevant to Germans or Shakespeare is only relevant to the English. It's either universally relevant or it's irrelevant. There's no such thing as only relevant to a group. I don't even understand the concept. Is French literature only relevant to French people? It's an absurdity. Is any art, is any great idea? They're universal or they're worthless. The greatest Bach interpreters today are Japanese.

Okay, let me ask a slightly different question, but related. Why are Jews overrepresented in so many different things, good and bad?

So I thought I may have said this to you earlier. Jews are the most religious people in the world, but for most of them, their religion isn't Judaism. Judaism really created in Jews very powerful forces. Of very powerful values, which unfortunately, when secularized, can be problematic. Not necessarily, but can be. And so, for example, the love of learning. You know, Jewish women were literate in all of Jewish history that we have any record of. That it's the only group in the world we know of where the women were virtually as literate as the men. If you wanted your daughter to do well, to marry well, it was irrelevant how much money the potential groom had. Was he a Talmid Chacham? Was he a learned student? Brains were valued more than money. Or that was prestige was in intelligence. So these values carried on. I mean, the staggering number of Jews who were Nobel Prize winners is ridiculous given how small the Jews are in the world. The problem is Jews dropped the source of these wonderful values. They dropped Judaism. They dropped a divine Torah, and they ended up with a lot of foolish ideas, but they had still many of these values. I tell the joke. So there is no day, literally, in America— I can't— it's not true everywhere in the world, but it is certainly true in America. There is no day of my life that I'm outside of the house and someone doesn't approach me. Oh, I love your work. I'd like a selfie. Okay, it does not happen. So how do I always, so I've told people for years, how do I know if the person's a Jew or a non-Jew? Of course I don't. Unless if they tell me what college their kid goes to, it's a Jew. No Gentile has ever said to me, you know, my daughter's at Dartmouth. But Jews, which is terrible. I've always regarded that as idol worship. Harvard is a Jewish idol. Okay. Not anymore. Not anymore. Much less. That's correct. Not anymore. Yes. The idols blew up in their face after October 7th. That's exactly right. But I wrote this and lectured on this for 40 years that this was idol worship. And I went to Columbia. Okay. So I— it's not like sour grapes. Oh, I didn't get into one of these places. I was there and I knew it then. I was told men and women are basically the same at Columbia in the 1970s. But, but, so the— and by the way, even the learning thing could be taken too far. I did live in the Orthodox world. I went to the yeshiva world and they— the learning, even, even among the Orthodox Jews, learning went too far. The kids who were most esteemed knew the most words of Talmud by heart. Talmud is this, again, this gigantic work, post-biblical work. And they weren't chosen on character. They were chosen on brains or even memorization ability. So look, it's the values that made Jews quite successful. Are all from Judaism, but they have been de-Judaized.

Dennis, it's been a fantastic interview. Thank you so much for coming on the show. The final question is always the same. Yeah. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be?

Before Dennis Prager answers the final question at the end of the interview, make sure you click the link in the description. Go to our Substack to see this. Do you think you can slip some of your brand of common sense into America via the Trump administration?

The insignia of Yale University is in Hebrew. I'm amazed Yale students have not rioted. I mean, it's from the Torah.

Do you think this is the moment in which Western civilization began to fight back against itself?

What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be?

Yes. I will disappoint you. I can't think of any because you hit on the passions of my life. Explaining the— oh, I'll tell you, there is one because I alluded to it. I'm glad you have that as your final question. Wisdom is everything. Knowledge is not. The, the crisis, the moral crisis of the university, which are the morally most moronic institutions in the West, the universities. That's where people believe Stalin should be given nuclear secrets. Not everybody believed it, but that's where they came from, academia. Wisdom is much more important than knowledge and much more important than good intentions. Good intentions without wisdom leads to evil. Vast numbers of people supported communism from good intentions, vast numbers, and they produced Gulag and Pol Pot and Mao. The crisis, the moral crisis of the university, which are the morally most moronic institutions in the west, the universities. That's where people believed Stalin should be given nuclear secrets. Not everybody believed it, but that's where they came from. Academia. commentary I wrote is on the, it's called the Rational Passover Haggadah. So there's a story in there, it's thousands of years old, that the Torah speaks about four sons, the famous four sons. Almost every Jew who knows anything about Judaism knows the four sons. So there are four sons, and this is how you speak to each of them to explain the Exodus, because Passover is about the Exodus. So there is the— let's see, there's the evil son or bad son. There's the wise son. There's the son who was simple and the son who doesn't know how to ask questions. When I was a kid, I realized there's no good son. And nobody pointed that out at the Passover Seder. There was a bad son and a wise son, not a bad son and a good son. Because the opposite of bad isn't good. It's wise. Vast numbers of people mean well and do awful things because they don't have wisdom. And there is— and here, this is a challenge to secular people. There are certainly secular people like you, and I'm not buttering you up, but like you who are wise. But there is no wise secular institution. The most secular institutions are our universities, and they are the least wise institutions that we have in the Western world. There's more wisdom in a rural Iowa church than at Harvard. I truly believe that, partially because they begin with people are not basically good and you need a God and so on and so forth. So yes, I, I, that was, that's the one thing I want to believe people with, wisdom. And, and that's, uh, that's a biggie. Good intentions are nothing.

Dennis, it's been a pleasure.

I hope that's true. It has been a pleasure.

It's been a wonderful interview. Make sure to follow us on over to Substack where you get to ask Dennis your questions.

Is there a way to make institutions like universities less isolated and so less prone to creating an echo chamber, or is this an inherent flaw in the system?