Dennis Prager | The Left is Destroying Western Civilization | Reclaiming Conservatism Conference

the left is a destructive force in western civilization and the country will not survive four more years of the left hillary clinton means nothing to me it is all about the left she is utterly interchangeable with joe biden with with uh with with uh elizabeth warren they are interchangeable it doesn't matter if they were all uh taken away by extraterrestrials a whole new group would come in and it would be equally destructive i never spent time on hillary clinton i always speak about the left and it is one of my great annoyances with the republican party that it does not understand that the left is the problem most conservatives don't understand they they attack individual candidates now if you're running for congress you obviously have to attack your opponent i understand that but none of them attack the left the left is destroying western civilization and it intends to destroy western civilization it it is not coincidental it is not a byproduct of leftism it is the end game of leftism the the there is no area of life that it has not played an utterly destructive role take the arts let's think do you know what the latest exhibit at the guggenheim museum one of the most sophisticated museums richest museums in the western world is the latest biggest thing at the guggenheim in manhattan is an all gold toilet bowl i will speak about the scatological the left has a particular affection for the scatological and i and i have i have a theory as to why but uh the this is the the the not only is it an all gold toilet it is a functioning toilet and patrons of the guggenheim then use it you you pay a fee and then you either urinate or defecate in the all-gold toilet now guess what the name of the exhibit is sorry close no that is close i want you to think for a moment i normally don't do this with an audience i want you to think what is it the left loads the most well there's actually there are a few anyway i'm sorry close i yeah god would america the name of the exhibit is america you can literally on america that is the latest feature of the guggenheim museum the left is evil if you don't understand doesn't mean everyone with a left-wing view is evil if that were true most of my extended family i am jewish after all would uh i would consider evil but i know they're not evil i know that many of them are wonderful it is possible to be a wonderful person and support a vile cause it is one of the most difficult things to understand nevertheless it is true humans are complex i'm not interested in defaming everyone with the left-wing view i am interested in defaming the left and leftism and uh the conservative world has not done that it has not made the contrast the left is not the enemy candidate x is the enemy candidate y is the enemy democrat z is the enemy but not leftism if you don't understand that leftism is is destroying western civilization you're not in the ball game you are irrelevant to conservatism irrelevant you mean well you're kind you're wonderful you have a great family life and you're irrelevant it is like fighting world war ii but not fighting the nazis or japan you're fighting diphtheria in guatemala that's a wonderful cause but it's irrelevant to world war ii and people don't understand this it's not understood how destructive utterly nihilistic it is why by the way so schadological first let me make my case there are vast numbers of exhibits at leading museums in the world of scatological art vomit excretion uh fecal matter urine uh piss christ the famous crucifix in a jar of urine i i tweeted out i tweet out very rarely but because i don't have a comment immediately on everything well i do on the air but i i don't in a tweet which i think should be more immortal so uh but recently i tweeted out the following let's see if you put see something to this effect if you put a quran in a jar of urine you're an islamophobe if you put a torah in a jar of urine you're an anti-semite if you put a crucifix in a jar of urine you're an artist that's how well by the way isn't it interesting there is no word for christian hater how is that possible the only people who hate jews and muslims it just shows you how the left owns it owns the vocabulary in its morally distorted world and there's no there is a word for hatred of men but nobody knows it misandry but nobody knows it we bought misogyny you know you just say whoa is sh did you see the legs on that chick and you're a misogynist do you know how many teams have been suspended now from uh all from the rest of their seasons at harvard washington university st louis at princeton because guys on the team spoke about the girls soccer team or the girls swim team in sexual terms something unknown in in male and male life it's an amazing thing unique to these misogynists uh the fecal matter issue uh let me just give you so by piss christ here's another one germany uh the uh one of the biggest german art awards a couple of years ago more than a couple of years ago about ten years ago went to an artwork this is the sculpture it is a sculpture of a german policewoman i don't know why it's a policewoman crouching and urinating and the urine is sculpted as well there's a puddle that is sculpted it won one of the biggest art awards in germany the uh orange county museum of contemporary art in california where i live uh it's the as you go in there is a giant sculpture of a dog with its leg lifted above the museum peeing constantly peeing by the way which i thought was appropriate because i think that museum should be peed on and i can't believe how revealing this was of of the state of that museum but that so i could go on i could give you a talk about the scatological and the left because they're nihilists and their children it is not possible to be mature and leftist in your thinking you could be mature in many other areas as a parent as a husband as a wife as a as a as even as a psychotherapist i would go to a left-wing psychotherapist if they had insights into the micro i i i understand that people are complex and they're divided but wherever your views are left wing it reflects immaturity and kids like to play with with with the scatological you you grow out of it though by about seven but they don't grow growing up is a a non-left-wing idea and i have proof of that incidentally prager university i am proud to tell you was 250 million views this year it's the largest maker of conservative videos in the world and one of the largest conservative sites in the world i i truly want to live to see it get to a billion we we intend to change people's minds that is our task in five minutes at a time now we have put out videos on many many many subjects with many major and uh all major but not all well-known some well-known some not and uh guess what are the two most hated subjects and we have we have put up everything differences between left and right arguments against the progressive income tax i mean you know all sorts of subjects that you would think would elicit a great deal of hate and and many do but there is no comparison the number one most hated on the internet in other words simple sheer numbers of anguished hatred are on our two videos advocating that men get married it's you should read you should read the uh comments just go go to the video and you don't care you should see the video it's only five minutes either one but you should see the comments hatred hatred to such an extent there are alternate videos made by people who wish to just dump on prager university for coming out with a pro-marriage message the second most hated are our videos arguing for god's existence tells you a lot doesn't it marriage and god not economics not politics not left right it's amazing not america in the world not the defense of the united states on the world scene i mean they get a lot of opposition but nothing like marriage and god a another left-wing victory and that is why i have said for years now and it is very very important and brings me to another chapter in this talk the most dynamic religion in the world in the last century century has been leftism not christianity unfortunately certainly not judaism i i don't even i don't even aspire to that uh i i wish but it's not in the realm of the feasible and i will tell you why in a moment uh and uh and not islam not even islam and not mormonism for that matter which has been very dynamic by far the most dynamic religion has been leftism which owns education in the western world which owns the media of the western world i mean there's not much left after that what else is there to own and uh as i always put it leftism has influenced judaism and christianity far more in the last hundred years than judaism and christianity have influenced the world judaism and christianity have been largely irrelevant and leftism has not only been relevant it has deeply affected judaism and christianity most non-orthodox rabbis are leftists in their in their values and jewish in their ethnicity they are jewish ethnically they are leftist philosophically so is the pope not jewish the pope is catholic in theology and leftist in philosophy the pope has far more in common with the average reform and conservative rabbi than with a conservative catholic and the reason is leftism the pope comes from latin america the pope's comments have been be almost beyond and by the way this is painful because it is pain it's more painful for me actually to criticize the pope than to criticize the non-orthodox and i'm not orthodox the non-orthodox rabbinate uh because i the the pope play such a special role in the life of of of a catholic and i know that role and i and i and it hurts me but i would lie i would be lying 100 lying to deny what i just said to you that his values are left-wing not catholic and the reason is he comes from latin america and latin america that's the issue by the way the issue with latin american immigrants pache the left has nothing to do with race there's no latin american race the idea is an absurdity it's nothing to do with race or ethnicity it is values latin american values are not american values if latin american values were american values latin america would be rich it's as simple as that they have everything north america had land uh uh indigenous produce everything it's a screwed up continent it's a screwed up civilization because of leftism that's why whatever the left touches it ruins just remember that it's the opposite of the midas touch the religions uh the religions have suffered terribly from a leftism uh that is why there are so many jews who were opposed to israel because the left opposes israel and they get their cues from left even israel you would think i mean i grew up where it was it was a given if you identified as a jew left right center secular religious you were you you were passionately pro-israel not any longer american jews are leftists in their thinking and jewish in their ethnicity but i don't really give a damn about ethnicity nor in my opinion does the torah that's a sep now i'll be happy to amplify on that if you want later but that's that's a separate the torah is doesn't care about blood one of the greatnesses of the torah uh uh it cares about values and uh anyway the the influence of the left has been that profound it it is basically the death knell for mainstream protestantism uh the you know the last hurrah of the presbyterian church usa is is anti-israel resolutions the world is filled with evil spectacular evil and they isolate israel for condemnation you don't have to be pro-israel to know this is morally ill my worry in uh christianity uh is the evangelical community which has been a gift of god but uh i am not i don't know about the next generation there is a there is a sort of ideological civil war brewing within evangelical christianity uh and to a certain extent it really does it doesn't revolve around but as usual the jews are central to the difference and that is for example uh is is do is replacement theology going to take over evangelical christianity when the when the old testament refers to israel was god kidding that's really how i put it it's not how they would put it but it it it is and and i am there is no greater defender of christianity uh outside of christianity i don't believe i think they were equally great i don't think there's a greater defender than myself uh so i i feel free to therefore be critical when when i feel critical the notion that god didn't mean israel but he meant the followers of christ is to render god a fool and i hate when god is made to look stupid it really bothers me in fact my most heretical comment ever in my life religiously was i said this on religion on the line many years ago god has common sense this drives believers crazy because they they depict god as devoid of common sense i have no issue none whatsoever with belief in christ i actually admire it it is a non-issue to me i i uh i am so pro uh american christianity that jews who are angry with me say well why doesn't prager convert already we're sick of all this pro-christian talk i mean it's all over the internet you'll find critiques like that because the american christians were awesome they were they were hebrew bible centered this is the one judeo-christian country that ever existed and it's it's been it's in jeopardy because of the left because of the infiltration of all of society and the infiltration of parts of christianity uh jewish life uh is uh is uh is is i i can't tell you how sad jewish life is it's and it's almost across the board there are exceptions all over the place obviously but i i grew up orthodox i went to yeshiva till i was 18. i wrote the most widely used introduction to judaism with joseph tulishkin the one that david broad kindly mentioned and i and i've never ceased being involved in jewish life or she's being a committed jew but uh here here is the uh here's my problem with what i was with my only allies really as a group and that is orthodox jews and it is a loving critique it is not it's not nothing but that the uh the orthodox world is not taking on the left or the secular world it has retreated into halachic preoccupation that's why i actually it's why i left the orthodoxy not angrily i have no problem saying it's the only hope right now in judaism is in orthodox judaism a lot of people in fact think i'm orthodox i don't broadcast on schmini at sarah this is a very funny thing if you're if you're not a jew the chances of your having knowing what schmini aterat are are as close to zero as exists in the numerical sphere schmidt yazarit is the day of assembly the eighth day of assembly it is after the seventh day of tabernacles of sukkot and it is a torah holiday as much as passover you're not a lot of work and i don't whenever any jew finds out i don't broadcast on schminiker they immediately assume i'm orthodox and i always have said what a commentary on conservative and reformed jews that if you don't work on a torah holiday you must be orthodox this is the f it's just an interesting little sidebar by the way it's a great story i don't know how many of you know larry elder if you don't you really should he's one of the most articulate conservatives alive and he happens to be black and i had the honor of bringing him to radio he now has a national show as of about six months ago and you can hear him in in just about any of your cities including here in new york anyway uh so i used to be on abc in la with larry after i brought him on he had the afternoon show after me i was gonna have the drive time but i don't broadcast shabbat so i couldn't broadcast friday afternoons and so i did that's how i ended up at 12 to 3. uh at the time there and i'm 12-3 now eastern nine to 12 western but in any event he would be after me and we'd always do this throw throw-off you know hey larry come on in what are you going to talk about larry and then we banter and i would insult him every day i insulted him uh he didn't know what the insult would be anyway so one day says dennis i hear you're off tomorrow are you sick i said no larry it's a jewish holiday he said really oh okay what holiday i said larry schmidty at sarat okay the guy's a black guy from the ghetto of south central where schmidty at sarah is not a big deal i just just for the record it's not a reflection on anyone and uh so he goes what i said larry you've never heard of schminitzer yes it's a biblical holiday larry and he goes come on dennis you made it up you just want tomorrow off to this day he thinks iu schmidty at sarah as a way of taking a day off he he does not believe the thing exists it is this is very funny he and he is very funny anyway uh jewish life uh is uh is the the people that i could rely on don't don't fight the the the preoccupation is more and more uh except with there are exceptions some of them are here in fact but it is uh you know can we and i don't mean this i'm not saying this as a as a belittling line even though i don't i don't admire it but it's not meant that way but whether there are microscopic bugs in lettuce is more significant to a serious segment of orthodoxy than how the left is ruining civilization then here's this then same-sex marriage the number of orthodox jews who spoke out against same-sex marriage is close to zero they don't fight the fight and uh i don't have to be taught any lessons on tolerance of gays who might not only it's beyond tolerance uh i they are they are part of my life family wise uh they are part of my life professionally we have videos with lesbians and and gay males who give the videos one of the biggest supporters of prager university is a gay man who with his partner i don't think they married otherwise i would have said his spouse or his husband i have two kids my wife and i love those kids love that couple and they all and my niece is a lesbian who is married to a woman and i love them both and i love their kids and believe it or not they love me and i am one of the most outspoken opponents of redefining marriage and i have a motto on how you can walk this seemingly fine line you have to have compassion in the micro and standards in the macro that is how you walk that line i will not drop my standards but i will never stop loving you and you gotta mean it you can't just say it you gotta meet it and i mean it but uh if if orthodox jewry couldn't oppose the redefinition of marriage to include members of the same sex for the first time in recorded human history it had never happened the the torah i am my my ultimate ambition is to finish my 35-year project of commentary on the torah and i'm now truly well on the way it's recorded but i'm it's much more ambitious in the writing i want to tell you something about the torah and homosexuality that you probably don't know and that is life-changing when you know i wrote a paper about 25 years ago from my first publication called ultimate issues on judaism homosexuality and civilization it was 17 000 words i needed for my sake to understand the torah banning male homosexual relations because i believe in the torah and i also believe that a man shouldn't be alone and that includes being with a man if he can't be with a woman and there are such men there are men who who find women completely uninteresting as a heterosexual that is unbelievable but i believe it i know it anyway uh so i needed to figure it out and i did and i wrote this paper and needless to say it got a big award from christians it's amazing it got 25 years a 10 000 reward which is not a nobel prize but i'm only mentioning the number because it's a serious number for one article as given by a a christian foundation on one work on religion written that year and uh they had they had seen that and it it it is an important thing and i will publish it after my commentary on the torah because i don't want it to divert attention from the torah commentary which it will do but this is what i learned and this is eye opening everyone including me thinks that the torah's ban on male homosexual relations simply codified the quote-unquote homophobia that everybody that every nation had that's all it was the torah was just part of its times against homosexuality and it codified it and that was it well here is the historical truth every society was okay with male homosexuality every we do not know of an exception not ancient china not ancient japan not ancient mesopotamia not ancient egypt not ancient mesoamerica not the american indians not the south american indians every culture not just the greeks not only allowed for male homosexuality if you could afford it preferred boy and i don't mean pre-pubescent i just mean young like 15. just like male heterosexuals love teenage girls so do male homosexuals love teenage boys it is not this is not pedophilia okay it's very important that's sick this is not sick this is just this is normal if you will they loved boys women were for babies boys were for joy the torah was the first document in history to say you must confine sex to marriage meaning with a woman it eroticized the torah eroticized marriage it is a staggering achievement that nobody knows about it's just called homophobic everybody was homophobic in those days and that ends the issue there are egyptian prayers of anal intercourse with the gods prayers that's how common it was it's hard for for those of you who are straight as they say straight males in this room to to imagine this but it proves how deeply society affects human sexuality that i can't relate to male anal intercourse is i believe more a product of society than it is of genes because when it is fostered it seems to blossom unless you believe greek men for example were genetically different from uh contemporary american men but none of this is known and again my i don't want to lose this the point the point was the defenders of the torah should be orthodox jewry i've given up on reform and conservative and reconstructions i've given up on that so it should be the orthodox but they're too busy with halacha and uh and not all obviously christians well the liberal christians forget it they agree with the left so that they're gone but whether catholic or or protestant and uh not all of the uh uh not all even now of the if you will the orthodox small o christians are on our side in this matter so who's gonna who's gonna who's gonna fight who's fighting the scourge of our time leftism very few people do you know this will blow your mind well and if it doesn't it should i was invited to address privately about a dozen u.s senators uh during the george w bush uh era and i have a living witness to this alan estrin my dear friend my the producer of my show the man whose idea prager university was it wasn't my idea he was there with me and he heard me say to them i'm telling you you need to pass an amendment to the constitution defining marriage is between one man and one woman while you have the presidency and and congress every single one of them looked at me like i had landed from a spaceship they said it'll never happen the courts will always throw it out dennis let's move on they really they thought i was silly the the as i say there's a a war for western civilization but only one side is fighting you can't win when only one side fights it's mine mind-blowing but that's the case so judeo-christian values are under siege from leftism under siege from all of the left within the religions uh ignored uh by many of the religious as i have just pointed out uh pointed out to you oh by the way i said the pope and i perhaps i didn't back up my comments on how disastrous his views are but i'll give you just one example there are many i wrote i wrote about this uh in at least one column uh the most recent is five days after a catholic priest had his throat slit by a muslim shouting allahu akbar in france the pope was flying back from world youth day in poland on the papal plane was the representative of the french catholic news agency who asked holy father how come you never i'm paraphrasing you can get the actual transcript from my column or anywhere else on the internet of holy father how come you so rarely or never speak about islamic terror and and i'm going to paraphrase his answer his answer is worse i'm understating the answer the answer is worse than what i'm saying but i don't i never want to overstate and it was essentially well why would i i don't speak against catholic terror every time a a a catholic kills his girlfriend a baptized catholic kills his girlfriend so every time a baptized catholic italian kills his girlfriend is the same even though the guy never went to church in his life is the same as a guy as all these people slaughtering people in the name of allah all right and of course you know capitalism uh is as evil as a communism or fascism i mean it's it's an endless stream of leftist uh ideas that uh that are coming from this pope so i just wanted i i don't make the i never make generalizations without without a specific backup so this is this is the problem in a nutshell i i want to conclude because i want you to have i want to have time for dialogue with you my column that's coming out tomorrow i'd love you to see the town hall nashville view oh basically all the conservative sites have put it out so i could just go to my site but anyway it is about the the every year there are fewer and fewer christmas decorations in the united states you can travel entire neighborhoods in la or new york or philadelphia any urban center and not see a single home decorated or maybe one home i grew up in brooklyn new york and i grew up in an italian and jewish neighborhood and it there were so many homes on my block beautifully decorated that you basically i knew as a kid if it wasn't decorated it was a jewish home because a non-jew decorates his home for christmas and i loved it but i loved it it made the season so special secularism is joyless among its many horrible things it's only good for one thing government it has no other uh benefit secularism is a disaster uh by the way the proof there is a proof the university the place where moral idiocy you get degrees in moral idiocy advanced degrees higher degrees is the university it is the most moral idiotic institution in the western world and why because it's the godless one it's the most godless if you ever need a one sentence example of the impact of secularism on morality point to the university everything is upside down and i by the way i will just tell you and then i'll come back to the decorations i will just tell you how i learned this and it's an article i wrote many years ago you could it's on the internet everything is on the internet in fact whenever i want to look up anything i said i look up on the internet it it is so eerie i can't tell you and i uh i wrote a piece many years ago how i found god at columbia i went to graduate school at columbia university and i remember going i was the school of international affairs and i was learning drivel i was learning for example in my specialty which was the soviet union russian language and and communism i was learning that the us and the ussr were equally responsible for the cold war truman and and stalin were equally responsible you have to be an intellectual to believe that anyway and i of course learned that men and women are basically the same that it's only society that makes them different and uh so if this i i was puzzled i why are so many bright people believing and teaching idiocy and then i give you my word what happened was out of nowhere walking in the middle of colombia's you know small campus relatively small campus uh it hit me and a phrase that i said from kindergarten on in yeshiva which is from from the bible and christians here will certainly know it wisdom begins with fear of god of course it came into me hebrew wisdom begins with fear of god well it was almost as if god had implanted that memory in me that was the answer to my question the reason the university is so stupid is because there is no god there no god no wisdom that's a fact that's not even an opinion that's a fact read the new york times editorial page and that that is proof of what happens when there's no wisdom there there is none it is wisdom-free it's like you know the you know gun-free tobacco-free welcome to the wisdom-free new york times editorial page and that's what happens that by doesn't mean everyone who believes in god is wise uh if only there were a lot of religious fools but i don't know secular wisdom there is no secular wisdom there are individual secular people who have nuggets of wisdom there's no question but there's no secular wisdom is an oxymoron how could there be secular wisdom secular means there is no god there is no god there is no meaning how could you have wisdom based on no meaning it doesn't it can't it can't be i am now going to give you meaningless wisdom thank you when i walk around when i drive around and see no no christmas decorations i really lament and i realize what what secularism has done it it's it's it it's not only that it's killed wisdom that's that's not has nothing to do with decorations it kills joy i meet a lot of kids kids call my show this is a generalization which has exceptions but it's a valid generalization religious kids are more joy-filled than secular kids christian and jewish they they are more innocent they are less jaded they smile more easily they they just are happier and by the way it's true for adults every every poll acknowledges even the secular admit this that the religious are happier than the secular they just say it's well you know these people believe in stupidity and the stupidity makes them happy okay that's what they say that's fine i'm not arguing it's legitimacy i'm just arguing a an existential fact religious kids have more joy in their lives now you can go so far right in religion that it becomes oppressive that and then then i i obviously everything can be overdone but generally speaking you know you know the the secular family you know what guy called me it was great a religious guy said dennis i just want to tell you my son-in-law is secular and um he i love him and you know and i'm sure he does and he should he said i just want to tell you uh i asked him since you don't celebrate christmas what do you celebrate he lives in nebraska so this is relevant that is the son-in-law said so my son-in-law said the first snow isn't that cool ain't that that is so exciting to thank the family sitting around singing snow carols and lighting a snow tree and you know the birth of the uh messianic snow and it's this i just i just thought wow this guy's really got it he really he really knows how to bring joy to his life can you imagine that the first effing snow it's funny it is you're allowed to laugh it's hilarious it's so i i really know how to believe it or not i know how to control myself i i very rarely have said anything on radio three hours a day live and regretted it later i'm i this time i i wasn't sure if i went too far and i so he said i i thought i thought that was uh an odd thing for my son-in-law to say and i so i just said i actually sir it's not my son-in-law so let me just say my word would be asinine so i i i i i didn't know if later that was too hard on a father-in-law about his son-in-law but he didn't disagree so i don't know but can you imagine that and others the winter solstice by the way what if people in florida do who can't celebrate there's no universality about the first note do you realize how anti-african that comment is i mean think about it it's the most racist comment a man could come out with the snow is white black africa gets no snow it's a disgusting comment this is the world we live in it's the absurd secularism breeds absurdity this is this is what the son-in-law has decided beats christ the first snow so when i see no decorations i'll tell you what it reminds me of i i visited many communist countries in the heyday of the cold war as i said that was my field i went all over eastern europe i went to soviet union went to well i went to chu yeah i went to china right after mao died and you could you could go in the first thing that strikes any visitor to a communist country is how dull how lifeless how colorless and that's what i think when i go through neighborhoods with no christmas decorations that i'm revisiting the lifeless world of the soviet union thank you very much [Applause] you

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Published: Fri Aug 06 2021