Dennis Prager on Why France's Riots Are a Warning to the U.S.

Dennis, I just want to say that your recent speech in Miami, your first public speech was probably one of the best speeches you've ever given, at least one of the best ones I've ever heard. And so kudos on that. And it is up online. If anybody wants to listen to the entire speech, it's almost an hour and it's just incredible. So amazing. Good job. Thank you. It was one of the greatest evenings of my life. I don't easily say stuff like that because I, I'd like to have a temperate attitude toward life. As I've always said, I'm very happy to be at a constant seven. I never aim for a nine or a 10 in terms of having a high in life, but it was, it was too much. I was overwhelmed. The nearly 300 people, as you pointed out from all over the country who came to Miami to to watch me at my first public appearance in two years the love that they uh they demonstrated with with such passion i i'll never forget it i i couldn't imagine that there was a dry eye uh at the event first when David opened up with a beautiful blessing in Hebrew and English. And he choked up and cried. And I have almost never seen David cry. We're not a family of criers. And then Aaron, my other son, spoke and he cried. And then Sue wheeled me out to a massive, roaring, standing ovation. And she wiped my tears. And then she wiped her tears. I mean, it was, it was, it's indescribable. And I spoke for an hour, which is pushing it. Even if you're, if you don't have any problems, it is pushing it. But I, I was happy to speak for an hour. And let's tell people, how can they watch the speech? Where do they go, Marissa? Yeah, so it's on prageru.com, and the links are also available on our social media channels. So it should be pretty easy to find if you go to our website. Yeah, and it's worth watching, not just hearing, because of the event and seeing me. And I spoke the entire time about how I'm handling my situation. The editor of the Jewish Journal visited me for a number of days about six weeks ago, and he wanted to understand. He said, why aren't you depressed? And I decided to answer his questions with an article, which he then published on the front page of the Jewish Journal. And it's very important. What I had to say, not so much for me, but for everybody, people have to know how to deal with tragedy. For most people, tragedy hits, and then they're blindsided. They have no idea how to react because they haven't prepared for it philosophically, emotionally, intellectually. but i did and i proved it by reading from my book on happiness happiness is a serious problem which i wrote 30 years ago and i read excerpts from it which perfectly predicted how i should react and how i'm prepared to react if something awful happens to me and it's it i did do that But most people don't. They're blindsided, as I said. I gave the example of the woman who called my radio show once and told me that she wanted me to know that I had not changed her mind. She had changed her mind and now agrees with me with regard to capital punishment. I have always been a firm believer that premeditated murderers should be put to death. And I asked her, well, what changed your mind? And she said, my brother was murdered. Well, that's a terrible thing to happen. To have a loved one murdered is trauma. And I certainly offered her my sincerest condolences. But then I said to her, I didn't let it go at that. I said to her, but I'm just curious, with the millions of other brothers and sisters and sons and daughters who were murdered, then you were against capital punishment. But when it was your brother, you changed your mind. And she got my point and she took it. She took it well and maturely. But it's a perfect example of not imagining the reality of tragedy, which is almost inevitable. We all will die. Loved ones of ours will die. And you've got to work through philosophically a philosophy of life and of suffering beforehand. So I explained all this during that evening in Miami last week. And I hope people were affected because it's a very, very important thing to do in life. I've also been given a gift of Dr. Stephen Marmer, a dear friend of 40 years, professor of psychiatry at UCLA. And he said on the air once when he was a guest on my happiness hour, he said, you have a very strong set of shock absorbers. And I do. I have a very strong set. One final word on that. From the very beginning, that I would say was two weeks after my catastrophic fall, as soon as I regained full consciousness, I realized I had only three choices, truly only three. One was death, because I could have died or could wish to, theoretically. Another one is depression, and the third one is perseverance, to persevere through what I'm dealing with. Well, I don't want to die. I love life and I love it now as much as I did when I could move my body. So that's not an option. I don't want to leave my loved ones. I don't want to leave my hobbies. I don't want to leave my world, my joie de vivre. I certainly don't want to be depressed. I thank God I have never been depressed. My heart goes out to people who battle depression, and I don't want that ever. So I only had one option, and that is to persevere. When you think of it that way, what is your choice? It's a very important answer in life when you deal with something. what's my choice and that applies to so many things in life anyway i hope people will watch the talk i hope they will forward it to friends and others anyway it's there you were there marissa you were terrific and you uh you witnessed uh i i think it's fair to say a truly memorable evening Dennis, it was a truly memorable evening, and it was truly a roadmap to victory. I'm just seeing you on stage winning like that, truly winning in life. What an amazing example you set for all of us. We're just so grateful to be able to learn from you and look at you as somebody who chooses life, chooses to love life. And really, I mean, you're a winner. By definition, you're a winner. So great job again. I'm just so grateful. Oh, thank you. as i always note my uh my secret weapon is my wife sue i i just needed to mention that so dennis what can you what can you teach us this week what's on your mind well i'll tell you what's on my mind and it should be on everybody's mind and i don't know if it is that's the interesting thing, the riots in France, I don't know how widely covered they are in the mainstream media I literally don't know. So I, I don't have an answer, but this is a huge, a huge thing that is happening in France. And it's huge for us in America because that is what is happening there. The attempt to tear the country down, to literally burn it down is what is attempted in the United States by the same exact groups so for those who don't know, here a little bunch of statistics there's been so far 100 billion euros in damage, 2,400 people have been arrested at least 30,000 businesses have been uh looted or damaged and uh if you can go on YouTube you just you could see video after video of cars burning blocks of cars uh old beautiful French municipal buildings that are being burned to the ground and here is what the New York Post reports foreign flags Morocco, Algeria, Palestine came out at the start the crowds are mostly blacks and Arabs overwhelmingly from Muslim immigrant communities in other words that's rather important. The idea of bringing in millions of people whose values are antithetical to one's own countries, to the entire Western civilization, was an act of such idiocy, of suicidal idiocy. I cannot think of a comparable act in Western history. This is how to destroy the Western world in one fell swoop. Bring in people who loathe it. And there are also indigenous people, leftists, Marxists, socialists, who want to bring down the Western world, who want to take down the U.S. There are candidates in the Democratic Party. There are Democratic Party candidates for the upcoming elections for House and Senate who are socialists who want to get rid of the U.S. Senate who want to get uh rid of the Supreme Court as we know it they want to pack it with more with more people than nine they they want to have the country run by Congress by pure popular vote and uh they they want to get rid of capitalism the free market they want government ownership of so much it's this is the i gotta believe this is the most dangerous time in Western history since perhaps the uh the Islamic Empire came to Vienna got all the way up to Vienna but there's a difference. External enemies are eventually conquerable if you have internal values. But if you lose your values and you lose your memory, you're gone. This was something I spoke of in my Miami talk. Every human being is memory. No memory, you're gone. The same with a country. No memory, you're gone. And what is being done is the left in America is obliterating America's memory. We weren't even founded in 1776. We were founded in 1619. That's what's taught now across the United States. We were founded not to make liberty, but to make slavery. That was the purpose of our founding, the 1619 Project of the New York Times, one of the leaders in the attempt to undo the United States of America. A friend of mine told me that a teacher friend of theirs said that she had asked some students at a high school what they knew about Abraham Lincoln, and the only thing they knew they said was that he had slaves, which aside from being a lie, he's the man who liberated slaves. He is one of the moral giants of Western civilization. This stuff is coming to America. What's happening in France? They're burning down France, literally and figuratively, all because the liberal and the left thought it was a great idea to have multiculturalism, one of the dumbest ideas in history. There's no such thing as multiculturalism. Multiculturalism means you celebrate all cultures as equivalent, as morally equivalent, but they're not. How many Westerners are moving to Syria or Iraq or Morocco or to the Palestinian territories or any of these places? All the movement is to the West. It's freer. And of course, it's more affluent. Freedom leads to affluence. People should look at what's happening in France and get worried this is what's coming it's a uh it's a trailer as you will that is a uh preview of what can easily happen and might well happen in America and in other western countries so everybody should keep their eye on France Dennis I think many Americans are paying attention to what is happening in Europe specifically in France but what are we supposed to do? What we're supposed to do is make sure that Islamists and communists and socialists don't get elected. That's what we're supposed to do. And if we don't do that, it's over. It's so easy to lose greatness. It's so easy to destroy beautiful buildings. It's unbelievably difficult and lengthy to make them. Tell me what the left has constructed other than concentration camps, like the gulag. Really, seriously, what has the left, I don't mean liberals, I mean the left, I mean the socialists, the communists, what have they ever made that was good? All they do is destroy. And the Islamists, there might have been a golden age of Islam a thousand years ago. But I'm sorry to say the contribution of the Islamic world to civilization in the last 500 years has been minimal. And the amount of awful things has been immense, like the Arab slave trade and the killing over a thousand year period of about 80 million Hindus in India. when the Muslims ruled it. But people don't want to acknowledge these truths. The United States is an exception. American exceptionalism is not a boast. It's a fact. And most young Americans have no idea about it. What's your reaction when people say that if you make these kinds of claims about Islam spreading, you're Islamophobic? They could say anything. They could say, I have diphtheria. Why do I care what they say? All I care is what is true. It's a way of not answering the truths and the charges. It's a way of getting around the issue. Is it or is it not true that Islamists want to take down Western civilization? Yes or no? You know, you asked earlier whether legacy media is covering what is happening in France. And I've asked around people who have supposedly been paying attention, and they are aware of the protests, they call it, in France. And they say that, you know, every once in a while in France, you'll see protests. And every once in a while, they'll go a little violent. Do you think these protests and the current riots are different from past ones? Apparently, they are in every way. in how big they are, how destructive they are, how prolonged they are, and that they're being led by the green-red coalition, Islamists and communists, of whom there are many in France. I don't know when the last major eruption of protests in France took place, but I can tell you that France now, I believe it is about 10% of France is Muslim. And the last time there were such riots, it was not nearly that number. So it's a new world. Dennis, I have some questions from some of our Prager United members, people from all over the world. Are you ready to hear some of them? I am indeed. Okay. So this one comes from Karina, 42 years old, from Hillsdale, New Jersey. Hi, Dennis. My question concerns my 25-year-old daughter, who considers herself an atheist. And as a Catholic parent, I want to help her remain open to the possibility of God and the wisdom of faith without pushing her away. How can I encourage her curiosity about Christianity in a way that would genuinely resonate with her? Well, I hate to sound self-serving, and people know I'm not, so I'll risk it. My latest book is If There Is No God. It exactly answers all these challenges. What happens if there is no God? And the subtitle is The Battle Over Who Defines Good and Evil. So I would strongly recommend it's in question and answer form. And it's a lifetime of thought, but it doesn't take a lifetime to read it. If There Is No God. I mean, if I could sit with her, I would tell her that atheism is as irrational an idea as any that I have ever heard. The idea that the universe came from nothing, that anything came from nothing, is so contraintuitive. It is so contralogic. Everything that exists was made. I mean, we have AI, right? AI is intelligence, but it was made by intelligence. We are intelligence. We were made by intelligence. It just happened. Do you know what the odds are against life, let alone intelligent life anywhere in the universe? Now, that doesn't answer all your daughter's issues, though. That's whether there is a God. Now, whether this God takes interest in your life and loves you, that is a different element. That enters the realm of faith. Christianity, the Christian trinity, is a matter of faith. For me as a Jew, that God gave Moses the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai is a matter of faith. But there is a place for faith, especially if the faith has reason behind it. So these are all answerable issues, but they have to be addressed as intellectually, honestly as possible. Dennis, you mentioned the Hebrew Bible. So this one is very relevant from Henry 14, Canada. Hello, Mr. Prager. Do you think God would have punished Abraham if he had outright refused to sacrifice his son Isaac? That's an intelligent question. You know, it's funny. I'm almost embarrassed to say that in a lifetime of teaching that chapter in Genesis, I've never actually confronted that question. Let us say Abraham had said, no way, Jose, I'm not sacrificing my son. I think God would have been proud of him, but it's a legitimate question. I do think God would have been proud of him. God would have said, that's my man. That's my man, Abraham. That's why he's the father of the Jewish people, of the chosen people. So whether Abraham answered God's will or refused it, regardless, God would have chosen him. That's right, because remember the first verse in that chapter, everybody has to remember this, is, and the God, not just God, the God, oddly enough, a rare construction. The God tested Abraham. We know from the very first verse that God doesn't want him to sacrifice his son. Child sacrifice is one of the repeated evils in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible that the Torah fights against. So it was a test. Look, Abraham, do you believe in me as much as the pagans believe in their gods. That's, in effect, what was being tested. Would you do what I ask you to do, as terrible as it is? But of course, God sends an angel to stop him from actually doing it. And a ram is sacrificed instead. That makes total sense. Bentley, 29, from St. Louis. With the passing of Charlie Kirk, many young men have lost someone they could look up to for guidance and inspiration. Who would you encourage them to look up to, Dennis? Putting me in a tough spot, that's interesting. I will say his loss is immeasurable. By the way, it appears that I will be speaking at the TPUSA AmFest in Phoenix in December. And if it works out, and I think it will, I truly look forward to that. There are there are a number of people who, quite a number actually who provide really good guidance, uh to, uh, was this specifically young men, Marissa? Yeah, yes yes, specifically they're specifically asking unfortunately, tragically, amazingly, we not only lost Charlie Kirk, but I was rendered incapacitated for two years. And Jordan Peterson is incapacitated at this time from a terrible, terrible, horribly painful illness. It's been a bad time in that regard. But off the top of my head, there are some magnificent male figures out there that young men should be aware of Victor Davis Hanson is a giant and, uh, he's he should be watched on YouTube and elsewhere and read and and so on. Well, we have Victor Davis Hanson on PragerU as well, that's right his show is syndicated through us, you can find it on PragerU.com, it's of course a product of the Daily Signal but yes we have you know for your guidance we we offer young young people and people of all age to watch Victor on our on our program another name that you should all be aware of uh is Jeremy Boring, he was the uh CEO of of Daily Wire and that was on his own and he is he has a daily podcast which is magnificent is it accessible through PragerU? It sure is. All right. And he's a young, uh, relatively young man and he's brilliant and courageous. And of course, Ben Shapiro, Ben is, uh, a fighter and, uh, deservedly so, but, but he has extremely important things to say every day. And I listened to both of them uh every day, Glenn Beck is another male figure young men should be aware of who does a beautiful and powerful podcast broadcast every day and Dave Rubin, Dave Rubin is wonderful and he should be looked into uh i mean there's really no lack, God so he's written this very important book entitled uh Suicidal Empathy, Suicidal Empathy that's that's what we're going through uh he should be uh he should be listened to and watched oh the there's no lack but having said all of that i'll repeat what i said uh in the beginning and obviously i would i would like to include me in this list but given that you're already watching or listening i didn't think to mention me. But there's no substituting for Charlie Kirk. Not everybody is replaceable. It's just the way it works. And he's not. I'm sure that many who are listening have some additional thoughts of who they like to listen to. And so obviously you can always write into PragerU and make recommendations where we always love hearing from good, intelligent people who can be great role models for people around the world. The last question, Dennis, this is really a beautiful one. And this one comes from Nancy and Ernie, 69 and 73 from Aloha, Oregon. What have you and your wife done to maintain the strength of your marriage throughout this process? I'm hesitating because it'll sound so schmaltzy. we love each other so much that we haven't had to do much that's the thing i on my first marriage so i don't claim any greatness in in knowing how to choose a wife but i certainly lucked out with sue and we we uh we sustain each other when sue is asked how do you feel her honest And I know it's honest. Her honest answer is, just as Dennis does. And that's true. Certainly, if I have a good day, it helps her day. If I have a bad day, it hurts her day. But the whole condition is a loss to her. Our exciting days were going to a simple restaurant together at night and having dinner. We went all over the world many times, but we were just as happy just sitting in my study every night, me smoking one of two cigars, which she didn't mind at all. And she reading or listening to a podcast and then are making comments to each other. I never believed in the concept of soulmate. I thought it was Hollywood speak, but I have one. So really haven't had to make major efforts to stay close during this massive challenge. So beautiful, Dennis. Sadly, our podcast for today comes to an end, but I very much look forward to our next one, God willing, next week. And thank you again for all your wisdom. We love you so much. We're so proud of you. And just keep winning. See you all next time. And to prayer united members just thank you thank you for making this happen bye dennis bye