We Should Have a Healthy Fear of Authority | Fireside Chat | PragerU

If you really believe that you have to answer to a judging God for how you behave, you will behave better. They did a survey and found that people were more ethical where they believed in a hell than people were where they only believed in a heaven. If you think you'll get punished, you'll act better. People want to deny that, but I have a perfectly non-religious proof. When people know that there's no policeman, no highway patrolman on the highway, they go faster. If I can't get punished, then I'll drive the way I want to drive. That's human nature. We live in an age that thinks that God is a silly notion. We're paying the price because we're living in an age of utter moral chaos, intellectual chaos, emotional chaos. Now to parents. On my radio show, I asked one day, if you didn't take drugs in high school, why didn't you? Almost everyone who called gave me not only the same reason, but the same words. My mother would have killed me. They feared their mother. You have to fear your parents. We think of, oh, the most important thing is to love your parents. It's a wonderful thing to love your parents, but it's not the most important thing. The most important thing is to honor your parents, and it's very important to fear your parents. Not be scared of them, not quake when they're around, but to have a healthy fear. We don't have healthy fears now. We have unhealthy fears. I'll give you an example of another fear we should have. At this moment in the United States of America, there is very little fear of police on the part of many people. I'll give you an example. Policemen in the United States are being hurt at a greater rate than almost ever. There was a case where some illegal immigrants, I believe in New York City, young boys, teenage boys, just beat up, I think, more than one policeman. Just beat them up. There was no fear. When I was a kid, there was genuine fear of police, and that's a healthy thing to have.