Dennis Prager on the Lindsay Clancy Case and the Value of Human Life

Dennis, hello. Hi, Alan. Good to see you. Marissa is back on the road for PragerU, so I'm sitting in again, happily, and we are anxious to get your latest thoughts. There's so much going on. I know you have a lot to say. Before you do, I need to tell you about two important events. The first one comes from our friends at TPUSA on September 10th. They are hosting a memorial event for Charlie Kirk at UVU, Utah Valley University. They want everybody to know about it, and we're happy for our audience to know about it. The place to go for information is charliekirklegacy, all one word, charliekirklegacy.com. Second event is something we're very excited about here at PragerU, and we want everybody to know. Your first live, in-person appearance since the accident is going to happen on October 15th in Miami. It's going to be at a PragerU event, and you can get information at prageru.com forward slash Miami, and of course you can get all the information you need on all the events PragerU is hosting at prageru.com forward slash events, but prageru.com forward slash Miami. That's where you need to go to find out about Dennis's first live appearance since the accident. Okay, so what's on your mind? All right, as usual a lot, but I try to focus on one thing and draw large lessons. So the Lindsey Clancy case is what I want to talk about, but two things need to be said. I'm not really talking about Lindsey Clancy and what she did specifically, and certainly not the verdict. At this time that we're recording this, we don't have the verdict, and I'm talking about the larger issue, about what she did, and I'm going to do something quite different, though I've devoted much of my life in writing to this. I'm going to ask, as odd as it sounds, what does the Bible say about what Lindsey Clancy did? A lot of people who say that they're Christian or Jewish will say that they read the Bible, or the Bible is important to them, but very few people really ask what does it say about a current issue. So I would like to offer some thoughts on this issue. I remember studying, and I'm talking now entirely about the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, because everything in the Old Testament and New Testament derives from there. Love God and love your neighbor, which is what Jesus said as the essence of religion, though he didn't use the word religion. They're both from the Torah, loving God and to love your neighbor. So what does the Torah say? I remember learning a law in Exodus, and as a kid when I first heard it, it didn't make sense to me. If an ox gores a man to death, an animal kills a man, you kill the animal. Now, some people will say that makes sense in order to prevent it from killing again, but there are other ways of preventing it from killing again. You could pen it up. You could do whatever you want to do. That might be the reason or a reason, but I don't think so. I think you kill the animal, and this is my overriding theme. The taking of a human life cannot be inconsequential. Let me repeat that. The taking of a human life cannot be inconsequential. That's what the Torah says. An ox, an animal that killed a human, dies. It's given capital punishment, as it were. It is making a statement. What statement does it make? What I just said, and here is proof, or what to me was proof. You may remember this, Alan. A woman called and mentioned that her father was killed by an ostrich. He had an ostrich farm. I think he was kicked to death. I don't remember. I think that's the way ostriches kill, and I said, what did you do to the ostrich? And she said nothing. So, I said, when people come to visit, you say, oh, this is the ostrich that killed my father? And she says, yes. And that's when I realized the wisdom of the Torah. It rendered her father's death more of a spectacle than of a killing. He was killed. A human life was taken. You don't have Betsy the ostrich walking around and being introduced as the animal who killed my father. And I said that to her, and if I recall, it made sense to her. Give you another example. If a human kills another human totally by accident, and the Torah gives an example. Somebody is hacking at a tree, and the hammer handle falls off and kills a man. Complete accident. In our society, the man would, I don't know, it's hard to know, but if it was shown to be a complete accident, I'm not sure he'd go to prison at all. In the Torah, the man must go to what is called a city of refuge. He doesn't lead a normal life. He's not imprisoned. He's imprisoned, in effect, in that city. But one reason is to protect him from vengeful families. But the other is, there's a consequence. You didn't check your hammer well enough. There's no such thing as, or rarely, as complete accident. I'll give you another example. Again, it's Torah law. If you find a murdered person somewhere in your, outside your city, there's an elaborate ritual you go through. Because you, none of you may have killed him, but a murder took place, and you did nothing to prevent it or find the murderer. That's how serious taking a human life is in the Torah. Now, if this woman is found guilty, not guilty, because of insanity, and spends a year or two in a hospital, it doesn't strike me as announcing how serious what she did was. And I also believe that it's an invitation to more women who are sick of their kids, to kill them in postpartum psychosis. No, it's a very big deal to take a human life. Very big. Nobody's talking about the kids. Nobody's talking about the father. They're all talking about her. There are whole demonstrations on her behalf by other women. I want demonstrations on the children's behalf, and on the father's behalf. I know they were divorced. Doesn't matter. He was still their father. We don't treat it seriously enough. Murder, or even unintentional murder. It's the biggest deal. It's why it is the only offense in the Torah that capital punishment is noted in all five books. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. The only one. So, that's my thinking. We need to take homicide really seriously. I have two questions on this topic in a general sense. One is from me, which I'll ask in a moment, and one from one of our viewers. So, here's my question. What is your general view on the insanity defense, just on that? I'm very skeptical of it. I have to believe anything is possible. Somebody might really hear voices and think God is telling them to do something. But you're not guilty. You are guilty, but you are mentally ill. You have such a psychosis that we will make the verdict reflect that fact. However, the purpose of punishment is not just for the individual to be punished. It is to tell society how serious the offense was. That's half the reason for punishment. It's an announcement. I'll give a proof. If society said that if you murder somebody, you have to pay a fine of $850, wouldn't that be a society that was communicating that murder wasn't terrible? That's what punishments are for. They're didactic. They're educational tools about what society thinks about a given offense. In California, if you steal up to $950, it's a misdemeanor. That means California has announced it's no big deal to rob $950 worth of items from a store. And what has happened? Far more kids are involved in stealing items up to $950. Very simple. Okay, here's a question from Nancy in Ontario, California on this topic. Dennis, I'm so glad to see the progress you've made and continue to pray for you. I'd like to ask you a question about the Clancy trial. I know that this is an emotionally charged trial, but I've been reading your book, If There Is No God, and I wanted to know your thoughts about the feelings versus values angle in coming to a verdict. Boy, that's perfect. What is the writer's name? Nancy. Nancy, you're really reading the book. I can tell. This is perfect example. If she really was suffering postpartum psychosis, and she really now regrets terribly what she did, and she's in mourning, and she's profoundly apologetic, and she's bathing in tears over what she did, I would have feelings for her too. But that's exactly the issue here. There's a value. Three human beings were murdered before they could even begin to live a full life. That's a big deal, and we're not treating it that way. So yeah, this is very much feelings versus values. Perfect question. Here's a question from Lincoln 13 in Prescott Valley, Arizona. I'm currently homeschooled and have been since COVID. I'm also enrolled in a Christian homeschool speech and debate league, and my question is, why do you think public speaking is the number one fear for most people, and do you have any advice about public speaking? Yeah. I only have thoughts on it because I can't relate to it. I gave my first public speeches in high school, but I realized in my early 20s, I had a gift. Part of my gift was that speaking to a thousand people was as easy as speaking to one, but I thought this through. First of all, a lot of people can develop the ability to do so, to, in other words, shed that fear, and the way you shed that fear is by doing it, maybe to five people, then to 15, then to 50, whatever it is. I must say, Franklin Roosevelt said it well, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. You should fear the fear, not the speaking. What you do is you get up and you talk as if you're talking to one person, though it's irrelevant because everyone in the audience is a one person, right? You really are speaking to one person. Nobody is a thousand people. It's just a thousand ones. You just do it. When I was a kid, I was very afraid of horror movies, monster movies. I told it to my older brother, who was almost six years older, and he was a god to me when I was a kid. So I said, Kenny, what do I do? I can't watch this stuff. He said, Dennis, watch it so much that you will start to laugh at how they make people into monsters. So I watched it and watched it, and it lost its hold on me. He was absolutely right. That's how I got rid of that fear. So that's what you got to do. I'm going to follow up on this one with a question also about public speaking, but here it is. Was there a speech that you gave in which you were ever nervous? Yes. When I know how significant the speech is, not afraid of the numbers. I've spoken to 10,000 people live, but for example, I don't know if I was nervous, but I was something, bordering on nervous. When I debated at Oxford, I knew how important that debate was. At the Oxford Union, it's on the internet, and my opening talk has about 10 million views. It worked out, thank God. But my wife was with me. She can testify as to how much I thought about it. I don't normally think about a speech that I'm going to give. So that's one example. When I spoke to the European Union, I knew the significance. But that's not the same as speech fear. That's when you know you have an awesome responsibility to do well for the cause that you believe in. So those are the few that I had that. I had one final follow-up because I think people will be interested in this. I know you say a prayer before every speech. Why don't you tell the audience what that prayer is? Yeah, very, very briefly. God, I want to say what you want me to say. Please help me do so. Good. Here's a question from Dan in Indianapolis, and this gives you an example of how involved people are in listening to this show, because this question deals with the previous show. Dennis, are you worried about the door you are opening with this teaching that it's harmless to indulge in evil thoughts, not just in your own life, but to the young men who adhere to your otherwise wisdom? As a man thinketh, so is he. Can a man take fire into his heart and not be burned? Well, look, I spoke a lot about it on the show, on this podcast. That is a worry. Obviously, I don't want people to relish evil thoughts. I was really speaking more about sinful thoughts than evil thoughts. How we act, everybody will acknowledge. How we act is more important than how we think. Now, if you dwell and dwell on robbing a bank or on raping a woman or on murdering somebody, that's not good. I'm not saying it's good. Obviously, if somebody wants to kill you, it's a hell of a lot better if they just think about it than if they do it. Everyone would acknowledge that. That's all I'm saying. Don't preoccupy religion or yourself with your thoughts. Preoccupy yourself with your actions. Good. Does that answer it, Alan? Yeah, it does. Next question is from Travis in Waco, Texas. The more I study the Hebrew Bible, the more I find that my lack of knowledge of the Hebrew language impacts what I get from the text itself. How does the experience of reading the Hebrew Bible change when you understand Hebrew, and do you think it is worth learning Hebrew to get that experience? Well, the easy way out is to read my commentary on the Torah, the first five books, because I do know the Hebrew very well, and I explain often what the Hebrew says literally. For example, and this has affected a lot of people, it does not say, thou shalt not kill. The Ten Commandments says, thou shalt not murder. Hebrew has a different word for murder and for kill, just as English does, and there's a big difference. If, you know, the guy who was using a hammer and the head fell off and killed somebody, he didn't murder that person, he killed him. Likewise, nobody ever says, after they swat a fly, I murdered that fly. I killed that fly. You know, animals are not murdered. Human beings are murdered. So that's when you know the Hebrew. It's very helpful, but it's not mandatory. You will be rewarded many times over if you learn the Hebrew, but if you read the Concordance or use the Concordance, if you study commentaries that refer to the Hebrew, like my Rational Bible series, which I pray you'll all read, it's called the Rational Bible, one for each of the five books, one volume each, you don't then have to know the Hebrew. It helps, of course, but it's not mandatory. All right, here's our last question. This is from Ryan in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Why do you think most cities lean left? The supposed reasons for this I found online are that cities are more diverse and generally more educated, which implies that conservatives are ignorant and uneducated. Could you weigh in on this? It's a great question. If you read again my commentary on Genesis, I show that in the story of the Tower of Babel. People don't ever think about this. Every time the tower is mentioned, it says, and the city adjacent to it. Even then, problems started in cities. I think one of the reasons, and by the way, those reasons are accurate, but another reason is the anonymity. In a smaller town, people know each other, so they act better. In New York City, you're anonymous, and people love the anonymity because then what they do is not known, and they can do anything. I wish every city in America lost half its population to a rural area. By lost, obviously, I'm not referring to died out. That they moved. America is divided. The cities are left wing. The rest of the country is normal. I won't even say right wing, just normal. The only people who believe that men can become women or women become men live in cities. It's unbelievable. Yes, they're better educated. That doesn't mean they know more. It means they've been more, what's the word? Brainwashed is certainly what I'm thinking about, but they've been more indoctrinated. That's what more educated means. I mean, people who graduated Yale are more likely to believe a man to become a woman than high school graduates. What does that tell you about education? I knew I wanted to leave New York City at a very early age. I just felt more comfortable in other cities and in smaller places. I moved from New York City to Simi Valley, California in the late seventies when I was 25 years old. I loved it. I joined the Rotary Club in Simi Valley. I loved the members. It was a breath of fresh air, but a lot of people love New York. It's exciting, they say. I always wonder about that, the need for excitement. I don't entirely relate to that. We ought to do a session on that, the need for excitement. All right, there we go. Another topic. Great to be with you, Alan. Great stuff as always, Dan. So before we sign off, let me tell everybody about Prager United. It's the people who donate to Prager U through Prager United who make this show possible. They make Prager U possible. We are very much indebted to them and very much need their support. So if you're not a member of Prager United, now is the time to join. Go to prageru.com, look for the Prager United button and sign up. It's a great program. You get great merch on top of helping us out. And as I mentioned at the top of the show, Dennis is making his first live in-person appearance in Miami on October 15th. Information about that is at prageru.com forward slash Miami. And finally, our friends at TPUSA are hosting a memorial event in Utah at UVU, Utah Valley University, and you can get information about that at charliekirklegacy.com. Thanks, Dan. See you next week. Thank you.