The Ben Shapiro Show


Dennis Prager | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 10


Summary

Dennis Prager is the author of The Rational Bible, The Book of Exodus, and a Bible Commentary. He's also the co-host of the conservative radio show, The Weekly Standard, and hosts the podcast, "The Weekly Standard with Dennis Prager," and is a frequent guest host on the show. In this special, he joins us to talk about what it means to be a Christian in the 21st century, and why he thinks the Bible should be read aloud to every child in every home. He also talks about why he writes a Bible commentary and why it's the best book he ever wrote, and how he thinks we should all read the Bible more often. And he explains why the Bible is so important to him and why we should read it to all of our kids every night, even if it's not the most popular book in the world. Join the conversation by using the hashtag , and find us on social media using and in the comments section below. Thanks to our sponsor ZipRecruiter for sponsoring this special Sunday Special! Want to sponsor the show? Zip Recruiter is the smartest way to hire, fast, fast and smart employees? Check out their website here! Check them out! Thanks also for sponsoring the show, Ben Shapiro's Sunday Special: Ben Shapiro is a Christian, secular, conservative, Christian, feminist, and feminist, who writes about the Bible, and believes in God's existence, and wants to know what God is really thinks about it. The Bible is a tool to help us understand the Bible. . Thank you to Ben Shapiro for joining us on The Daily Wire for helping us bring God's word into the world, and we hope you enjoy this Sunday Special. Ben Prager, the writer, the author, the reader, the listener, the pastor, the preacher, the story, and so much more. Ben Shapiro, the host, the guy who does it all, the Bible does it so much better than anyone else does it better than we can do it better. Thank you for listening to us, and he's a Godly, and thanks for coming on the Sunday Special with us in this special with his wisdom, thanks for tuning in, and thank you for being kind and caring about us all of that, and for supporting us with his words of wisdom and good vibes, and good company, and all of his support.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 A good part of my sanity rests on the belief that there is a just God, and if there is a just God, there's an afterlife.
00:00:16.000 Welcome to the Sunday special with Dennis Prager, who's stopping by first.
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00:01:21.000 Dennis Prager, welcome to the Ben Shapiro Sunday Special.
00:01:23.000 Thanks for coming by.
00:01:24.000 It's just great
00:01:25.000 Well, I'm really excited to talk Bible with you because we have to bring some holiness back to the set.
00:01:29.000 Last week, we had Sam Harris and his blasphemy on the set.
00:01:33.000 So now we get to have the antidote.
00:01:34.000 Exactly.
00:01:35.000 Dennis Prager and his godly views on the set today.
00:01:38.000 Dennis, obviously, if you haven't been watching the news, you haven't followed the Amazon charts, is the author of the bestseller, The Rational Bible, The Book of Exodus.
00:01:45.000 We're going to go ahead and do all five volumes of the Old Testament, the books of Moses, and he's done Exodus.
00:01:50.000 It was a huge bestseller.
00:01:51.000 It sold tens of thousands of copies.
00:01:53.000 It was number one in the non-fiction list on Amazon.com, which has to be really gratifying since you've written a bunch of bestselling books, but this one is actually a Bible commentary.
00:02:01.000 So, let's start from the beginning.
00:02:02.000 What actually made you think, hey, I'll write a Bible commentary and then just release that out into the world?
00:02:07.000 Well, among the interesting things is, and it's great to be with you, Ben,
00:02:11.000 Among the interesting things is that of all the books I wrote, this is the one I least expected to be a bestseller.
00:02:18.000 This was written 100% out of idealism.
00:02:22.000 They're all idealistic books, but there was a hope, and some of them were bestsellers.
00:02:28.000 But this has been the bestselling book I ever wrote, and it's the last one I expected.
00:02:32.000 I wrote a book on happiness, on American values, I mean, some good stuff.
00:02:35.000 But whatever credit I get, I think 50% of the reason is that there is a thirst for exactly that.
00:02:45.000 Namely, I'd like to actually know what the Bible has to say.
00:02:49.000 I want it to be rational, which is my entire approach, and there's a thirst.
00:02:55.000 Look, this is the most biblically illiterate generation in American history, as you know as well as anyone.
00:03:02.000 The average American home throughout American history, if it had one book, it had the Bible.
00:03:06.000 They read it to their kids every night.
00:03:08.000 This was the source of wisdom.
00:03:10.000 I've asked callers on 33 years of radio, said, I'd like to know, if it's not the Bible, just name a book that is the source of wisdom for you.
00:03:20.000 And it's fascinating.
00:03:22.000 You know what people say if they don't have this?
00:03:25.000 Life experience.
00:03:26.000 And I go, yeah, but then everybody has to reinvent the wheel.
00:03:31.000 You mean there's nothing that precedes you that had more wisdom than maybe you do?
00:03:36.000 Anyway, I know it's the wisest book.
00:03:38.000 I am convinced of it.
00:03:39.000 And making it rational, verse by verse, has been my life's task.
00:03:44.000 I know the Hebrew real well, as you do.
00:03:47.000 And you know, there are wonderful commentaries by people who don't know Hebrew.
00:03:54.000 But I think to really do it right, you have to know the Hebrew.
00:03:58.000 So let's start from the very beginning of the basis for the rational Bible, because I think that you can make a really solid argument that the ethics that the Bible promotes, the ethical monotheism that you promote, that this is based on a certain level of human rationality.
00:04:11.000 In a little while, I want to talk about human rationality versus God's rationality.
00:04:14.000 We'll do the rip-throw problem, which stands above which.
00:04:16.000 But let's start with
00:04:18.000 The basis of Revelation.
00:04:19.000 So, when you say that the Bible is rational, do you mean that Revelation itself can be rationalized?
00:04:23.000 That it is rational that a voice came down from the top of a mountain and then proceeded to give a bunch of laws to a dude who's standing at the top of a mountain?
00:04:29.000 Okay, so you gotta go step by step.
00:04:30.000 Is it rational to believe that there's a Creator?
00:04:33.000 I think, as the late Charles Krauthammer said, when I asked him,
00:04:38.000 Because I never asked him about politics.
00:04:39.000 I figured everybody could hear him on politics.
00:04:42.000 So I asked him about other things.
00:04:44.000 And I asked him, and he was a totally secular man.
00:04:47.000 So I said, what do you think of atheism?
00:04:48.000 And I thought he'd said, well, maybe so.
00:04:50.000 I don't know.
00:04:51.000 He said, that's the most foolish of all possible possibilities.
00:04:55.000 He said it's absurd.
00:04:56.000 I mean, he dumped on atheism more than I have.
00:05:00.000 So, to me, that there's a Creator is purely rational.
00:05:03.000 So then, that's purely rational.
00:05:06.000 This didn't come out by itself.
00:05:08.000 This world, this universe, you, me, Bach, it just didn't happen by chance.
00:05:14.000 Okay.
00:05:15.000 Is that a point of faith or is there a rational argument?
00:05:17.000 No, no, that's purely rational.
00:05:18.000 I'll tell you where faith comes in, that God is good.
00:05:22.000 There's so much bad in the world that I admit there's a leap of faith to believing that the Creator is good.
00:05:27.000 It's no leap of faith to a Creator.
00:05:30.000 I believe there's a leap of faith to God is good.
00:05:32.000 But once you've made that leap that God is good, which I think is somewhat rational, after all, why would a bad Creator make a person capable of being good?
00:05:43.000 It's a bizarre sort of situation.
00:05:45.000 So if the Creator cares how we live, then the Creator will give us guidelines.
00:05:52.000 Those guidelines are in the Bible.
00:05:53.000 That's how I look at it.
00:05:54.000 Okay, so let's define good.
00:05:56.000 So when you say that God is good, what do you mean by God is good?
00:05:58.000 Because obviously you don't mean God is good by human moral standards, because then that would put us, that is the Erypto problem, right?
00:06:04.000 That puts us above God.
00:06:06.000 Is God living up to our standards?
00:06:07.000 And if so, why do we need God in the first place if we're just
00:06:10.000 I think there's a mixture of God's standards and our standards, otherwise we can't understand anything.
00:06:15.000 If it's purely divine, then we can't understand it.
00:06:18.000 When Abraham, the first monotheist, the first Jew, argues with God, which, by the way, is one of the reasons I'm in love with these first five books, what is called the Torah.
00:06:28.000 I mean it.
00:06:30.000 I'm in love with those books ever since I was a kid.
00:06:32.000 And I'm not the most traditional guy, but that I fell in love with.
00:06:36.000 And I love the idea that you can argue with God.
00:06:39.000 I tell Christians all the time, and that's largely of a huge Christian audience, and I'm a Jew, and I explain, don't forget, Israel, God's people, has a meaning.
00:06:53.000 It means argue with or struggle with God.
00:06:56.000 And a lot of Christians forgot that, and a lot, you know, and secularists don't even know that.
00:07:02.000 There's something beautiful about that.
00:07:04.000 Let me, can I tell you a quick anecdote?
00:07:06.000 A Muslim woman called my radio show many years ago, when I was just on in L.A., and she said, Dennis, I know you, we could ask you anything.
00:07:14.000 I said, that's right, well I'm a Muslim woman and I'd like to know why aren't you a Muslim?
00:07:18.000 And I told her, I want you to know I am complimented by the fact that you would even ask.
00:07:23.000 It means you think I've given this serious thought, and I have.
00:07:27.000 So I said to her, here's my answer.
00:07:31.000 Islam in Arabic means submit to God.
00:07:36.000 Israel in Hebrew means struggle with God.
00:07:40.000 I'd rather struggle with God than submit to God.
00:07:43.000 There was a moment of silence and she said, good answer, and hung up.
00:07:48.000 She knew as a Muslim I was right.
00:07:50.000 That is a huge difference.
00:07:52.000 So the fact that we can argue with God means that we can perceive God's morality.
00:08:00.000 So when I say God is good, it is both in His terms and, I believe, our terms.
00:08:05.000 So when it comes to that standard of good,
00:08:08.000 There are two main sources in Western civilization for the standard of good.
00:08:12.000 One is the Bible, the Judeo-Christian tradition, and the other is this idea of natural law that you see reflected a lot in the founding philosophy.
00:08:19.000 It's reflected as well in Thomistic thought, this idea that you can look at the universe and you can discern from the universe that there are certain things that are true and certain things that are false.
00:08:28.000 So, for example, you're an advocate for traditional marriage, and the natural law view of marriage would be exactly this, that God created man and woman to be together, and the proof of this is that they are capable of producing children.
00:08:37.000 So, when we're trying to discern the good, do we need revelation, or can natural law alone suffice, or are they mirrors of one another, or is natural law itself irrelevant?
00:08:49.000 So, there are two questions there.
00:08:51.000 Do we need God pragmatically?
00:08:56.000 Do we need God philosophically?
00:08:58.000 You're asking philosophically.
00:09:00.000 I'm more concerned with the pragmatic, because that's how we live, we practice, we live.
00:09:06.000 But look, clearly, if we needed revelation from the beginning, God would have revealed the Torah, as it were, or the Ten Commandments to Adam and Eve.
00:09:16.000 So clearly, God believes it's possible to be good without his direct revelation.
00:09:21.000 Otherwise, it's not fair to have blamed Kain for killing Abel.
00:09:25.000 Right.
00:09:25.000 Kain could have said, hey, hello, you didn't give me any rules.
00:09:28.000 What the hell am I supposed to know?
00:09:29.000 But he didn't say that.
00:09:31.000 So, yes, there's clearly an embedded conscience.
00:09:36.000 I do believe that.
00:09:37.000 The problem is it doesn't work well.
00:09:40.000 And so I always say the Ten Commandments are God's third attempt
00:09:46.000 At trying to get us to be good people, and choosing a people to embody holiness and goodness, which is what is known as Israelite and then ultimately Jewish.
00:09:57.000 So that's that.
00:09:59.000 Then there's the pragmatic question.
00:10:01.000 That's the one I, not struggle with, but that's the one I advocate more.
00:10:05.000 I begin my introduction, which in and of itself is a book length.
00:10:09.000 Because the introduction is very important, what I'm trying to do and whom I'm trying to appeal to.
00:10:14.000 And I begin with a very revealing part of my own life.
00:10:19.000 Like many people in my late teens and early twenties, and even early teens, I had difficulties with my parents.
00:10:26.000 What else is new, right?
00:10:28.000 But I always honored them.
00:10:30.000 Always.
00:10:31.000 From the day I left my parents' home at 21 till they died, my father at 96, my mother at 89, I called them every single week.
00:10:40.000 It didn't matter where I was on earth.
00:10:43.000 And the reason was one, because I believed God instructed me, honor your father and mother.
00:10:51.000 And when I tell people who say, oh, I don't need God to be good, really?
00:10:56.000 Then how come so many adult kids who are angry at their parents don't call them every week?
00:11:02.000 Believe me, we can all use a commander in heaven to tell us what to do.
00:11:07.000 So when it comes to that, back to the philosophical question for one second, so to play skeptic since you're the rational Bible guy, so what took God so long?
00:11:14.000 Why did he need three attempts?
00:11:15.000 Why does he wait until the revelation at Sinai?
00:11:18.000 Great question, and I have dealt with that in my mind my whole life to show us why it was necessary.
00:11:26.000 That's why.
00:11:27.000 To show us, hey, hello, conscience alone doesn't work.
00:11:30.000 Look at how bad man got.
00:11:32.000 Because otherwise, if God had given the Ten Commandments, the Bible, the Torah, whatever, in the beginning, who needs it?
00:11:39.000 Conscience would be enough.
00:11:41.000 But conscience failed, and we ended up with the world of Noah, which God destroyed.
00:11:46.000 And by the way, I defend Noah, that Genesis is coming up.
00:11:49.000 I do defend God.
00:11:51.000 God wants us to be good, and if everybody's bad, he's going to start again.
00:11:54.000 I have a debate with my wife.
00:11:56.000 You're going to love this.
00:11:57.000 My wife thinks she shouldn't have saved Noah.
00:12:01.000 My wife thinks the world is so screwed up that it wasn't... It's dark.
00:12:06.000 It's very dark, yes.
00:12:07.000 She is as light as the sun in personality, but her view of... You wouldn't have called that one.
00:12:14.000 No, you wouldn't have called that one, exactly.
00:12:17.000 So, with all of that said, for a lot of folks who read the Bible and they don't know a lot about the Bible, and maybe their first experience with reading the Bible is going to be reading your book, when you read the text of the Bible, there's a lot in there that unquestionably is brutal, and it seems to our modern sensibilities
00:12:32.000 Just bizarre.
00:12:34.000 It's seen the Bible contemplating witchcraft, for example, or the Bible endorsing quasi-slavery.
00:12:42.000 This is an argument that Sam Harris gave me last week.
00:12:44.000 He was saying, well, this book, you could do better than this book today.
00:12:47.000 You could just remove certain sections from this book and that would automatically make it better.
00:12:50.000 So what's all this stuff in the Bible about slavery?
00:12:52.000 Well, first of all, since my first volume is about Exodus, I have an enormous amount on the slavery issue.
00:12:57.000 Right.
00:12:58.000 The first thing to be said is there's very little slavery.
00:13:02.000 What the laws are about is essentially a bonded indenture.
00:13:08.000 Which, by the way, is the way so many people came to America.
00:13:11.000 People don't know that, but a vast number of the white people who came to the United States came as indentured servants.
00:13:19.000 They got no pay, they started out life working for somebody for no pay, which you can call a slave if you wish, but they didn't.
00:13:26.000 And by the way, as I know you know, the word in Hebrew for slave is also the word for servant.
00:13:32.000 And I wish there had been a distinction in Hebrew, because Moses is called an Abed of God.
00:13:40.000 That's the word.
00:13:41.000 And is Moses a slave of God?
00:13:44.000 Nobody assumes that.
00:13:45.000 So it's not at all always slave.
00:13:49.000 It is, but if you look at all the... First, you cannot return an escaped slave.
00:13:53.000 That's a law in the Torah, a law there in Exodus.
00:13:58.000 That was immediately a statement of, hey, you mistreat your slave and they escape, you're not getting your slave back.
00:14:06.000 You kill your slave, you get killed.
00:14:09.000 I mean, your slave has to have a day off with you on the Sabbath every week.
00:14:14.000 I mean, this is major stuff.
00:14:15.000 Why didn't it just say, no slavery?
00:14:18.000 Because it wants the world to be better.
00:14:20.000 The Torah is not preoccupied.
00:14:23.000 And I'm using the word Torah because this is about the first five books.
00:14:27.000 But my commentary is for people of every faith and no faith.
00:14:30.000 But there is a realization that you can't ban all bad immediately.
00:14:37.000 Maybe the Torah wanted us to be vegetarian, so a hundred years from now, when I think most people will be vegetarian, people will sit like a Sam Harris and say, well, why didn't it ban meat eating?
00:14:46.000 Instead, it humanized meat eating.
00:14:48.000 It moralized it.
00:14:49.000 That's what it did to whatever slavery it had.
00:14:53.000 It humanized it.
00:14:54.000 Because you can make the world better much more so through evolution than revolution.
00:15:00.000 Okay, so in just a second I want to ask you about the religious objections to applying rationality to the Bible, because so far we've dealt with sort of the rationalist objections to the Bible itself, and then I want to come at it from the right as opposed to from the left.
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00:16:26.000 So, let's talk about the, the sort of skepticism of applying reason to the Bible from the right.
00:16:32.000 So, so far we've talked about, you know, people on, on sort of the secular left, uh, or just secularism in general, who would be skeptical about the Bible itself.
00:16:40.000 There are a lot of folks in the religious community, the community I grew up in, the community you grew up in, who would say that attempts to apply rationality to the mitzvot, to the commandments of the Torah, is actually counterproductive.
00:16:52.000 Because now you're placing man above God, and what you are doing is infusing a need, you're implying that God needs man in a way that is not true.
00:16:59.000 That God gives a certain level of commandment, and now we're trying to reason around it, but as soon as we start using our reason, reason also is a universal acid to a certain extent.
00:17:09.000 I think so.
00:17:29.000 What rules of reason ought we apply that will prevent the destruction of the rules themselves?
00:17:35.000 Because if you think that the mitzvot are important, if you think the commandments are important, then either, you know, which ones do we have to keep, which ones don't we have to keep?
00:17:41.000 Well, first of all, let me explain on a personal note.
00:17:44.000 My vehicle to God is reason.
00:17:47.000 I don't have a great emotional bond with God.
00:17:50.000 I wish I did.
00:17:51.000 I don't.
00:17:52.000 My vehicle to God is reason.
00:17:55.000 My vehicle to faith is reason.
00:17:56.000 My vehicle to religious life is reason.
00:17:59.000 So I can't be what I'm not.
00:18:03.000 If someone doesn't care about reason, then they won't find my book interesting.
00:18:07.000 But we live in an age where almost everything has to be rationally explained.
00:18:13.000 I like that fact.
00:18:15.000 I think it's good.
00:18:16.000 And there was a book written when I was a kid called We Have Reason to Believe by an English rabbi, Louis Jacobs.
00:18:25.000 And I'm embarrassed to say I didn't read the whole book, but I am equally embarrassed, but I will tell you the truth.
00:18:34.000 The title changed my life.
00:18:37.000 The title.
00:18:38.000 I can't say that about any other book.
00:18:40.000 It was a brilliant double entendre.
00:18:42.000 We have reason to believe.
00:18:43.000 The obvious is there are reasons to believe.
00:18:47.000 But the secondary meaning was we have been given reason in order to believe.
00:18:55.000 And that is what I felt at 20, and I feel today.
00:19:00.000 That reason is my vehicle.
00:19:03.000 So let me give you a really good example.
00:19:05.000 There is a law in the Torah that says if you have a particularly unruly child, a terrible son, you take him to the court, and if they find him guilty, they stone him to death.
00:19:20.000 And people use that as a great example of how primitive the Bible is, or the Torah specifically.
00:19:26.000 I used reason to realize, wait a minute, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
00:19:31.000 That law was a moral genius.
00:19:35.000 That was the first law in human history to take away a parent's right to kill their child.
00:19:43.000 That's what the law did.
00:19:45.000 No child was ever killed in Jewish history by a court.
00:19:49.000 But what they did was, what the Torah did was, parents, you're still in charge, but wait a minute.
00:19:55.000 You can't kill your child, only a court can.
00:19:58.000 So what it did was, it maintained parental authority, but took away forever their right to kill their child.
00:20:04.000 So it was a staggering moral advance.
00:20:07.000 I show that with every difficult law in the Torah.
00:20:12.000 So how do you tell which are the moral advances that we need to move beyond, and which are the moral advances that's as far as we go?
00:20:17.000 So to take an example,
00:20:19.000 You suggest that let's use the one you just used, just to take the counterpoint.
00:20:24.000 So your argument is that this is a movement away from parents being able to kill their children willy-nilly, and so you have a court process that's put in place specifically to prevent all of this.
00:20:32.000 So the goal of the commandment is to prevent the fulfillment of the commandment to a certain extent.
00:20:35.000 So now take the commandment with regard to the one that's popular today, with regard to homosexuality, for example.
00:20:41.000 How do we know that that wasn't just a progressive attempt to move away from something worse, but the really progressive thing would be to say that what it's really talking about is we're moving toward monogamy for male couples or female couples, which is the way that some people in sort of liberal congregations try to reinterpret that phrase.
00:20:59.000 In other words, where does reason stop?
00:21:01.000 And we say, OK, we've gone far enough.
00:21:02.000 And where do we say, OK, well, this commandment was written for the time and it was determined to drag people out of a certain level of primitivism.
00:21:09.000 And now we can drag them even further out of that level of primitivism.
00:21:13.000 I am... That's in the third book of the Bible, Leviticus.
00:21:19.000 I devote 20,000 words to that verse.
00:21:24.000 And this is the gist of it.
00:21:26.000 The gist is this.
00:21:28.000 I thought, before I did my research, and I'm sure everyone thinks this, that the Bible simply
00:21:37.000 codified what every other society believed, and that is homosexuality is bad, end of issue.
00:21:45.000 It turns out, and I learned this from homosexual scholars and pro-homosexual, pro-gay scholars.
00:21:52.000 This is not from me.
00:21:54.000 Every society in the world, except for biblical society, said that homosexuality was good.
00:22:03.000 This was a total revelation.
00:22:05.000 Ancient China, ancient Incas, ancient Egyptians, ancient Greeks, anywhere on earth.
00:22:13.000 I read a book by a Harvard professor, and, you know, this is not my favorite reading, and it's not only because it's very involved, obviously, on ancient Chinese homosexuality.
00:22:25.000 So this was the rule, like in ancient Greece.
00:22:27.000 Women were for babies, boys were for fun.
00:22:31.000 The Torah said it the opposite.
00:22:34.000 The Torah said wives are for fun.
00:22:37.000 The Torah in that law eroticized marriage.
00:22:41.000 It was a staggering revolution in human history.
00:22:45.000 So, even accepting your logic, let's take the laws of Sabbath to take a less controversial example.
00:22:54.000 So, there are certain laws of Sabbath that have been made strict over time.
00:22:59.000 You and I disagree on the interpretation of Sabbath, for example.
00:23:02.000 You'll drive on Saturdays, I won't drive on Saturdays because there's a rabbinic tradition that you don't drive on Saturdays.
00:23:08.000 Right, by the way, I don't drive to a ball game, I don't drive shopping, I drive to a Sabbath-oriented thing.
00:23:16.000 No, I just wanted to make that clear.
00:23:19.000 Yeah, for sure.
00:23:20.000 But the question is, at least from the Orthodox point of view or from a fundamentalist point of view, so how does Orthodoxy not slip into Reconstructionism or into reform?
00:23:30.000 So which laws do you get to abrogate and which laws do you not get to abrogate?
00:23:36.000 Don't think we can change Torah law.
00:23:39.000 Torah law, I believe the Torah is ultimately from God.
00:23:42.000 Whether it was all given at one time or not, even the rabbis themselves differed on when exactly.
00:23:48.000 Was it through prophets?
00:23:49.000 Was it later?
00:23:49.000 It doesn't matter to me.
00:23:51.000 Who wrote it is more important to me than how it was written.
00:23:54.000 I believe it's a divine document.
00:23:56.000 That is, if I didn't, I would never have spent this time and I wouldn't take it seriously.
00:24:00.000 I believe it is a divine document.
00:24:03.000 So, I don't believe that not using spark plugs is divine.
00:24:09.000 I will acknowledge that it is rabbinic.
00:24:13.000 If you're asking me from an Orthodox Jewish perspective, and by the way, Orthodox Jews love the commentary, as they should.
00:24:18.000 It brings people to great faith, and I want that.
00:24:22.000 But it is true that I think rabbinic law can change.
00:24:25.000 I do believe that.
00:24:26.000 As for Torah law, for example, I don't smoke
00:24:30.000 My pipe or cigar, which I do every day of the week, I don't do it on Shabbat, because it says do not burn a fire on the Sabbath.
00:24:38.000 So I just want to make that clear.
00:24:40.000 I take this stuff very seriously.
00:24:42.000 And by the way, I show, you'll love this, I show, and it took a lot of research, why is fire, aside from the guy who
00:24:56.000 The guy who picks up sticks on Sabbath.
00:25:03.000 The issue is only fire.
00:25:08.000 Why does fire?
00:25:09.000 What's the big deal on fire on the Sabbath?
00:25:12.000 Fire is the only thing outside of making a baby that we do ex nihilo.
00:25:18.000 And so fire represents creation.
00:25:21.000 And the Sabbath's purpose is to not create, to imitate God, and rest and not create one day a week.
00:25:28.000 So, and my proof is, you are not banned from fire on the Jewish holy days other than the Sabbath.
00:25:37.000 That became a rabbinic law later.
00:25:40.000 But in the Torah itself, only on the Sabbath, because the Holy Days, Passover, Tabernacles, and Pentecost, Shavuot, Sukkot, and Pesach, do not represent creation.
00:25:52.000 But this does.
00:25:53.000 Anyway, this sounds a lot convoluted, I'm sure, to a lot of, or at least complex.
00:25:56.000 It's not.
00:25:57.000 I make things very clear.
00:25:59.000 But, yes, I admit that there are laws that, you know, I believe that a dish that has been put in boiling water has effectively gotten rid of its prior foods and can be eaten from.
00:26:17.000 But, you know, look, I know that the Orthodox, within Jewry, the Orthodox are my allies.
00:26:22.000 I know that.
00:26:23.000 And by the way, the Orthodox invite me to speak, knowing that I'm not Orthodox, to their great credit.
00:26:28.000 Every year at Passover.
00:26:29.000 That's right.
00:26:31.000 That's a perfect example.
00:26:32.000 Exactly.
00:26:32.000 So, let's talk about why the Bible.
00:26:35.000 So, what is the proof that the Bible is the best moral system, as opposed to other divinely ordained moral systems?
00:26:41.000 How do you make that judgment?
00:26:43.000 Because you're not a comparative theologian, per se.
00:26:46.000 I mean, you spend time reading about other religions.
00:26:48.000 Right.
00:26:49.000 Yes.
00:26:50.000 From what I understand, you don't consider yourself an expert on various other religions, so why this religion in particular?
00:26:56.000 The obvious answer is the fruit.
00:27:00.000 The United States of America was not founded only by Orthodox Christians.
00:27:08.000 In other words, not every founder believed in the Trinity.
00:27:11.000 But every founder believed that the Bible was the greatest book ever written, including Jefferson and Franklin.
00:27:18.000 And Lincoln, it's the one book he had.
00:27:21.000 He didn't go to church much, but he had the book.
00:27:26.000 There are people who believed in the Bible who did a lot of evil.
00:27:29.000 There's no question about that.
00:27:31.000 But people did evil everywhere.
00:27:33.000 So the only question mature people ask is not, why was there evil anywhere?
00:27:37.000 It's, why was there good anywhere?
00:27:39.000 It's not like, why was there poverty?
00:27:41.000 That's the norm.
00:27:42.000 Why is there any affluence?
00:27:44.000 That's the only question that intelligent people should ask, and the answer is capitalism.
00:27:48.000 Capitalism is the only thing that creates affluence.
00:27:50.000 The Bible was the only thing that created moral society.
00:27:53.000 So, when it comes to God, you've made the argument that you can be a moral person without God as an individual.
00:28:00.000 Of course.
00:28:00.000 But you can't build a moral system without God.
00:28:02.000 That's right.
00:28:03.000 So, can you explain that a little bit for people who have... Yes, of course.
00:28:06.000 You know, look, there are good people who believe in anything.
00:28:09.000 There were good people who believed in Zeus.
00:28:11.000 But nobody would argue that Zeus made good people.
00:28:14.000 That's the point.
00:28:16.000 Of course there are good people who believe in nothing, who believe in anything.
00:28:19.000 Of course that's true.
00:28:20.000 And there are bad people who believe in God.
00:28:23.000 I say that every time.
00:28:24.000 And yet, all over the internet you will find Prager Says that you can't be good if you don't believe in God.
00:28:30.000 And I've never said it in my life.
00:28:32.000 I'd have to be stupid to say it.
00:28:33.000 There are good atheists.
00:28:35.000 How many times can I say it?
00:28:36.000 The answer is there's no limit because they don't want to hear it.
00:28:40.000 But you can't build a good society without God.
00:28:44.000 You can have good individuals.
00:28:46.000 We care, you care, I care, all of us should care about what kind of society we make.
00:28:52.000 This country, there's a reason there are three mottos, e pluribus unum, liberty, and in God we trust.
00:29:00.000 Okay?
00:29:00.000 That's pretty important.
00:29:03.000 And Franklin did not believe we could have a good society without God.
00:29:07.000 Franklin's autobiography, his theology—and I just read Thomas Kidd's book on Franklin's theology, just to make sure—is identical to mine.
00:29:16.000 Identical.
00:29:17.000 God exists.
00:29:18.000 God will judge all of us.
00:29:21.000 That's what I believe.
00:29:22.000 That's what Franklin believed.
00:29:23.000 And Franklin is called so-called deist.
00:29:26.000 Deist is not what people think deist means.
00:29:28.000 Deist, most people think, is like Aristotle, the unmoved mover, a creator, and then the creator went to sleep or retired to another universe.
00:29:36.000 That is not what they were.
00:29:37.000 They believed, they simply weren't orthodox, small o, in their Christianity.
00:29:43.000 But they believed in providence, in a God who judges, and that God had a role in the founding of America.
00:29:50.000 Okay, so I want to talk in a minute with you about death, because we've talked a lot about sort of the life-affirming qualities of rationality and the Torah.
00:29:57.000 First, however, let's talk about your online privacy.
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00:31:09.000 Okay, so, Dennis, let's talk a little bit about the afterlife in the Bible, because you mentioned the idea of God judging and the notion that after we die, God basically decides whether we were good or bad.
00:31:23.000 The Torah doesn't have a lot about the afterlife, actually.
00:31:25.000 The five books of Moses are pretty vague on exactly what happens when you die.
00:31:28.000 There are a few sort of vague references or allusions to it, the idea that
00:31:32.000 You know, God kisses Moses and Moses goes somewhere, but you're not really sure where.
00:31:38.000 And there's obviously, in various different theologies, whole worlds built up around what happens after we die.
00:31:45.000 So, number one, what do you believe about what happens after we die?
00:31:49.000 Number two, where does that come from in the Bible?
00:31:52.000 And number three, do you actually need to believe in the afterlife in order to be good?
00:31:56.000 Okay, so one at a time.
00:31:59.000 One of the 850 reasons I'm in love with the Torah, I said, I'm not in love with God, I admit it.
00:32:05.000 I wish I were.
00:32:06.000 I've written actually an essay that the hardest law in the Torah is to love God with all your heart.
00:32:13.000 But with all the suffering in the world, I admit it, I find it hard not.
00:32:18.000 I hope I'll achieve it one day, but I do love the Torah, ironically.
00:32:21.000 I really, I'm in love with it, I admit it.
00:32:24.000 And one of the things I'm in love of is its reticence to talk much about the afterlife.
00:32:30.000 Because life is so hard, and has been for the vast majority of people, it's very easy to focus on the afterlife and ignore this world.
00:32:41.000 God wants us to make this world heavenly.
00:32:44.000 Not heaven, that's not possible.
00:32:47.000 And not to think about heaven all that much.
00:32:50.000 However, I will tell you,
00:32:53.000 There is no doubt in my mind that the Torah believes in the afterlife, and I will give you two proofs.
00:33:00.000 One is that about of six people, it says, when they died, they were gathered unto their people or their kin.
00:33:12.000 Four of the six people it says it about were not buried with kin or family.
00:33:17.000 Four of the six.
00:33:19.000 So, being gathered to their kin cannot possibly be about where they're buried.
00:33:24.000 Secondly, it says it before they were ever buried.
00:33:29.000 So the act of dying itself means you are gathered to your kin.
00:33:33.000 I don't know any other read other than there is a soul that gathers with those that preceded you.
00:33:41.000 There is no other, I think, fair read to that verse.
00:33:46.000 Number two is not my argument.
00:33:47.000 It's Richard Elliott Friedman, who's not an Orthodox Jew, but he is also a very serious scholar of the Bible.
00:33:54.000 Wrote his own commentary.
00:33:56.000 And he made the following argument.
00:34:00.000 I believe it was in an email to me.
00:34:02.000 I don't know if he actually wrote it up.
00:34:04.000 He might have.
00:34:05.000 And he said,
00:34:08.000 Given that the Torah is so preoccupied with rejecting ancient Egypt's values, because that's where the Hebrews grew up, right?
00:34:16.000 In ancient Egypt.
00:34:17.000 And it's, you know, like, all the plagues but one are against the gods of Egypt, so it's all a rejection of ancient Egypt.
00:34:25.000 But he said, the biggest belief in ancient Egypt was the afterlife.
00:34:28.000 The Torah could have easily just said, reject everything about Egypt, including the belief in an afterlife.
00:34:35.000 But it said nothing.
00:34:36.000 The biggest belief in Egypt is not contradicted in the Torah.
00:34:41.000 So that's a second reason.
00:34:42.000 It is clear the Torah believes in it, but it doesn't want us to be preoccupied with the afterlife.
00:34:48.000 The guys who believe they're going to get 72 virgins for blowing innocent people up are preoccupied with the afterlife.
00:34:56.000 Okay?
00:34:57.000 The Torah is afraid of that, and for good reason.
00:35:00.000 Now, you asked another, a part three on that one, right?
00:35:03.000 Is that?
00:35:03.000 Yeah.
00:35:03.000 Okay, good.
00:35:04.000 So a part three is, do we have to believe in an afterlife to be good people?
00:35:08.000 Or at least to build a good moral system.
00:35:10.000 Well, I would put it this way.
00:35:13.000 Without belief in an afterlife, it would be so obvious to me that God was not good that I would disregard anything that I thought this God said.
00:35:22.000 If I didn't believe in an afterlife, I'd be an atheist.
00:35:26.000 Because if God is good, there's an afterlife.
00:35:29.000 I mean, because it's so obvious.
00:35:31.000 Torturers have the same oblivion as they're tortured.
00:35:35.000 Mother Teresa goes to the same place as Adolf Hitler?
00:35:38.000 What kind of crappy world does this deity make?
00:35:40.000 I don't want anything to do with him.
00:35:42.000 I rest my whole case for belief and for sanity on the afterlife.
00:35:49.000 I admit it.
00:35:50.000 I fully admit it.
00:35:52.000 And for those interested, there's a five-minute PragerU video on the afterlife, which I happen to give.
00:35:58.000 I don't give most of the PragerU videos, but you give, I give.
00:36:01.000 Good people give.
00:36:03.000 And there's a five-minute case just for the afterlife.
00:36:07.000 But I fully admit it, and I know I'm mocked for this, I don't give a damn, but I'm mocked for it.
00:36:12.000 A good part of my sanity rests on the belief that there is a just God, and if there is a just God, there's an afterlife.
00:36:21.000 Okay, so let's talk about where the United States seemingly has gone wrong in all of this, because we've become a significantly less religious people.
00:36:28.000 If you go back to the 1950s, the vast majority of Americans were going to church on a regular basis.
00:36:32.000 If you look at the United States now, that's just not the case anymore.
00:36:37.000 Religious numbers, particularly among people my age, have declined markedly.
00:36:40.000 It's a much more secular country.
00:36:42.000 What happened?
00:36:43.000 Why is it that religion seems to have lost its appeal?
00:36:46.000 Maybe it's coming back, and we'll talk about that in a second.
00:36:48.000 We'll talk about whether you're optimistic or pessimistic in a second.
00:36:50.000 But what happened in the 1950s, 60s, 40s?
00:36:54.000 Why exactly was it that this religious worldview that gave birth to the greatest country in the history of the world, people just decided to toss it overboard?
00:37:01.000 Because the generation that's called the greatest generation, the World War II generation, which was a great generation, greatest or not, they were great, they made one horrible mistake.
00:37:13.000 They didn't teach their kids what made America tick.
00:37:17.000 And part of it was the Bible.
00:37:20.000 They were so preoccupied with making sure their kids didn't have a depression.
00:37:24.000 I don't mean psychological depression, I mean economic depression.
00:37:28.000 And that they wouldn't know war.
00:37:30.000 That's all they wanted.
00:37:31.000 Peace and prosperity.
00:37:33.000 That's all that generation ended up caring about.
00:37:37.000 So they taught their kids nothing about America and nothing about God and the Bible.
00:37:43.000 And the results are the chaos that we see today where teachers can't even call their kids boys and girls because of this
00:37:50.000 True.
00:37:51.000 The ultimate irrationality of denying that there is male and female in the human species.
00:37:56.000 By the way, I will say this.
00:37:59.000 I wrote an essay many years ago.
00:38:00.000 It's on the internet.
00:38:01.000 How I found God at Columbia.
00:38:02.000 Then I went back to Columbia and gave this speech.
00:38:06.000 And I mean it sincerely.
00:38:10.000 Seeing the moral idiocy that pervades the universities, which are clearly the dumbest of our institutions, I believe that literally.
00:38:18.000 I wish I didn't believe it.
00:38:22.000 They are also the most godless institutions in Western civilization.
00:38:28.000 Columbia, where I learned nonsense in graduate school,
00:38:34.000 Columbia made me realize the genius of a line that you know well, wisdom begins with fear of God.
00:38:43.000 And that changed my life.
00:38:44.000 One day walking through Columbia, I remember I asked myself, why am I learning that men and women are not basically different?
00:38:51.000 That they're basically the same.
00:38:52.000 This is ridiculous.
00:38:53.000 How am I learning?
00:38:54.000 I was at the School of International Affairs.
00:38:56.000 How am I learning that the U.S.
00:38:58.000 and the Soviet Union were moral equivalents?
00:39:00.000 That's what I was being taught.
00:39:01.000 That they were just two superpowers struggling it out.
00:39:04.000 It wasn't a battle between liberty and evil.
00:39:07.000 It was a battle between two superpowers.
00:39:09.000 And then I realized, oh my God!
00:39:12.000 There's no wisdom at Columbia because there's no God at Columbia.
00:39:16.000 I got to believe in God thanks to the irrationality of secularism.
00:39:22.000 So how do we restore any sort of biblical value?
00:39:25.000 Is there a way to draw people back to it?
00:39:26.000 I think there is a, you know, I've seen in my own life, I think there are people who are in search of something eternal and meaningful because they're looking around at the system being presented by
00:39:35.000 What is left of our moral leadership and saying this is a shambles and they're looking for something that actually has some eternal value to it.
00:39:41.000 Are you optimistic or pessimistic that's going to happen and how is the best way for religious leaders to have an impact in driving that?
00:39:47.000 I'm not optimistic and I'm not pessimistic.
00:39:49.000 I wish I could say I'm optimistic but there was a... I was in a major discussion, a dialogue years ago with a great Catholic thinker and a great Protestant thinker
00:40:04.000 And I was the Jew.
00:40:05.000 I'm not saying I'm a great thinker, but I was the Jew.
00:40:09.000 And one of them made a very powerful point.
00:40:13.000 The Catholic, actually it was Robert Novak who just passed away, and he was great.
00:40:18.000 And he said a very important thing.
00:40:20.000 He said, Dennis and I are the pessimists because I'm from Eastern Europe and he's a Jew.
00:40:27.000 We know how bad things can get.
00:40:29.000 The Protestant, God bless him,
00:40:31.000 doesn't know how bad things can get.
00:40:33.000 And I've told this to Protestant audiences frequently.
00:40:36.000 And they've agreed.
00:40:37.000 They never looked at it that way.
00:40:39.000 I didn't look at it that way.
00:40:40.000 Robert Novak brought it to my attention.
00:40:43.000 So I'm not optimistic and I'm not pessimistic.
00:40:47.000 I can only say that a big part of the failure is religious people.
00:40:52.000 They did not make the case for the moral and intellectual necessity of religion
00:41:00.000 They relied on a lot of cliches.
00:41:04.000 They're nice people, but they didn't know what to do.
00:41:07.000 That's the reason I feel so committed to this five-volume work.
00:41:13.000 And the fact that it is a big bestseller, I guess, believe it or not, not personally, but it gives me some reason for optimism.
00:41:22.000 I don't know the answer, but I know we have to get the message out.
00:41:26.000 This is the best thing going, and America will die and the West will die without this.
00:41:31.000 So Dennis has a bunch of things that you do, obviously.
00:41:34.000 You have the Rational Bible, you have PragerU, which has reached hundreds of millions of people at this point, with your various videos.
00:41:40.000 You have your radio show as well.
00:41:42.000 A lot of what you do is politically driven.
00:41:44.000 It's not just values driven, it's politically driven as well.
00:41:46.000 So how do you
00:41:48.000 How do you merge?
00:41:49.000 How do values play into politics?
00:41:51.000 How much of your politics is driven by biblical concern?
00:41:54.000 A hundred percent.
00:41:55.000 It's a hundred percent.
00:41:57.000 And yet you're not a theocrat, obviously.
00:41:59.000 That's correct.
00:42:00.000 Not at all.
00:42:02.000 The founders of this country, of the United States of America, were giants.
00:42:07.000 They came up with a line that is so awesome, God wants us to be free.
00:42:12.000 They merged liberty and God.
00:42:15.000 Most religious life, Christian or Islamic or any other, did not merge liberty and religiosity.
00:42:24.000 This country is unique, and we're blowing it.
00:42:27.000 And I'm going crazy over that.
00:42:29.000 This is the last best hope of man.
00:42:31.000 Lincoln was right, and it's being blown.
00:42:34.000 And you know where it started?
00:42:36.000 This is the irony of ironies.
00:42:38.000 Because they didn't give PhDs in America, so in the late 19th century, scholars in America went to Germany, of all places, to get their PhDs.
00:42:48.000 And there's a basic rule in life, Germany is always wrong.
00:42:52.000 I'm sorry to say it because I have such close German friends.
00:42:54.000 They're not on music.
00:42:55.000 But I'm sorry.
00:42:56.000 They're not on music.
00:42:58.000 In fact, I end my essay, but never on Germany.
00:43:01.000 It's on the internet.
00:43:03.000 But thank you for Bach.
00:43:05.000 That is exactly how I end my essay.
00:43:08.000 That's exactly right.
00:43:10.000 I mean, but even Merkel, I mean, she's just, she's, she's blew it.
00:43:14.000 She just blew it.
00:43:15.000 I, they, they get, so they, these are the, Bismarck gave us socialism, not Marx, and Marx was German too.
00:43:22.000 But, but anyway, this, so these people get their PhDs in, in the socialist universe, this atheist universe of the German university, come back to America, and the rest is history.
00:43:35.000 So let's talk a little bit about the modern political tenor.
00:43:40.000 There are a lot of people who complain right now that morality and politics seem to be completely foreign to one another, and I have a lot of sympathies toward that position.
00:43:47.000 Not in terms of the positions being espoused, because obviously you and I, I think, agree on 99.9% of all things political, but
00:43:54.000 With regard to sort of the way the politics is being carried on, whether it's people accosting each other in restaurants and screaming at them, or whether it is some of the president's tweets.
00:44:04.000 There's a feeling that morality has sort of gone by the wayside.
00:44:07.000 How much of biblical values and morality is character, and how much of it is public policy when it comes to politics?
00:44:15.000 Because this was a big argument, obviously, in 2016.
00:44:18.000 It'll be a big argument again, I assume, in 2020.
00:44:19.000 This is going to blow your mind.
00:44:23.000 I raised my boys to believe that character was more important than anything.
00:44:26.000 I'm one of the few Jewish parents who didn't give a damn about my kids' grades.
00:44:31.000 I mean, didn't give a damn.
00:44:34.000 I couldn't care less.
00:44:35.000 All I wanted was good kids.
00:44:37.000 Because I really do believe character, Uberalus, that character ultimately will determine their lives.
00:44:45.000 And whether they go to this college or that college or no college is secondary to their character.
00:44:52.000 And having said that, I don't really care about Donald Trump's sins.
00:44:57.000 So it sounds like a contradiction.
00:45:01.000 This is the most important value I taught to my kids, and then the President of the United States, I'm saying it's secondary.
00:45:08.000 But I live with that.
00:45:09.000 I live with that conjunction, and ironically, part of it is that I got a lot of my wisdom, if I have any, from the Bible.
00:45:17.000 God uses King David, who makes, I mean, Donald Trump look saintly.
00:45:22.000 I mean, Donald Trump didn't have any husband killed so he could sleep with the wife, let's be honest.
00:45:27.000 King David did.
00:45:29.000 And then God chooses, who does God choose of all the Canaanites?
00:45:34.000 Who does God choose to be the one to help the Israelites get into Canaan?
00:45:38.000 A prostitute!
00:45:40.000 It's almost the Bible's and God's way of saying, listen, I could take these sexual sinners and I could use them for good.
00:45:48.000 And I emphasize the word sexual sin because I think that a lot of religious people place too much emphasis on sexual sin beyond all the other areas of life.
00:46:00.000 I think that's a problematic issue, worthy another hour one day, but it's a big deal.
00:46:04.000 Anyway, so
00:46:10.000 I care more about America than I care about the character of a president.
00:46:16.000 Okay, so let me give you the counter-argument.
00:46:18.000 So the counter-argument is not that the policy that the president espouses doesn't matter, because obviously I'm very happy with a lot of President Trump's policies.
00:46:24.000 I think the country is winning because of a lot of President Trump's policies.
00:46:28.000 But there are externalities to public character, meaning that, you're right, I don't care all that much about Donald Trump's peccadillos in the past because
00:46:35.000 Whatever.
00:46:35.000 It doesn't affect the public discourse, I think, in any serious way.
00:46:38.000 But when the president says things that are vile about people publicly, or when the president says that, you know, if people come to his protests and they make trouble, you know, punch them in the face or whatever it is.
00:46:48.000 When this sort of stuff happens, it
00:46:50.000 From a character perspective, not only does it create a problem, I think, for the country, it also creates a problem for a lot of Christians who are tempted to start saying King David instead of just saying, being Nathan.
00:47:01.000 Saying, like, right, that's wrong.
00:47:02.000 You're not allowed to do that.
00:47:03.000 Like, it's tempting to play God in the King David story and say, right, he's King David, as opposed to, well, God gets to pick who King David is.
00:47:09.000 It's our job to say, right, you're not allowed to take that guy's husband, that woman's husband, and send him out to the battlefield to get killed.
00:47:14.000 So that he can repent, right?
00:47:17.000 I think that what's happened, one of the things that I think is driving apart the country is it's not a referendum on the president so much as it's a referendum on evangelical Christians and religious Jews and people who are overlooking, at least publicly,
00:47:30.000 Some of the president's sins in order to maintain a level of, I think, emotional support.
00:47:36.000 Because I think you can intellectually support what the president does on policy and still say, right, he's acting like a schmuck right here.
00:47:42.000 And it's that gap that I think is really driving away young people, particularly with regard to President Trump.
00:47:47.000 Well, I don't want them to be driven away.
00:47:49.000 I mean, when you said we agree on 99.9%, this might be the point where we have a difference.
00:47:59.000 I admire the religious community for sticking with Donald Trump.
00:48:04.000 I have defended them in writing a great deal.
00:48:08.000 Whether it's religious Christians or Jews.
00:48:11.000 Because they understand what's at play here.
00:48:14.000 The fate of the United States of America, the last, best hope of humanity, is at risk here.
00:48:19.000 I'm not saying they shouldn't vote for him, mind you.
00:48:21.000 I'm not saying they shouldn't even support him politically.
00:48:22.000 So fine, so look.
00:48:24.000 But when he sins, should they say, that is bad what he just did?
00:48:27.000 Yes, that's fine.
00:48:29.000 And many do.
00:48:31.000 But they try to keep a perspective.
00:48:35.000 And this is where I know I am not for saying this.
00:48:39.000 I believe there's a civil war in the United States.
00:48:41.000 There is no joy in my saying this.
00:48:43.000 I've said this for years now.
00:48:46.000 I pray that it remains non-violent.
00:48:49.000 I don't know if it will.
00:48:50.000 I think there's a lot of people on the left who if they could get away with it would hurt, physically hurt people on the right.
00:48:57.000 And more so than the other way around, as Alan Dershowitz, Hillary Clinton supporter, lifelong Democrat, lifelong liberal, said to me, and it is on video, in his apartment in Manhattan last year.
00:49:09.000 He said, let me tell you something, as a Jew, as an American, as a liberal, I don't fear a handful of Nazis.
00:49:16.000 They mean nothing.
00:49:18.000 I fear the far left.
00:49:20.000 And that's how I feel.
00:49:21.000 And the far left is taking... Nazis are not taking over the Republican Party.
00:49:25.000 That's an absurdity.
00:49:26.000 It's a libel.
00:49:27.000 It's stupid.
00:49:28.000 But the far left is taking over the Democratic Party.
00:49:32.000 So there's a civil war, and I am not going to spend my time criticizing the only guy who has saved me from losing the country.
00:49:40.000 Because if there'd been any other Republican... And by the way, I was against him.
00:49:44.000 I was, and it's all in print, I was against him during the entire primary.
00:49:49.000 I said, but I said from my first article, if he wins the nomination I'll support him, because there's no choice.
00:49:59.000 There is such a war at stake right now.
00:50:01.000 Nobody else would have defeated Hillary Clinton.
00:50:04.000 He was the only one, I believe.
00:50:05.000 I don't think Ted Cruz would have.
00:50:06.000 I don't think Marco Rubio would have.
00:50:08.000 I don't believe Jeb Bush would have.
00:50:10.000 And that was the brink.
00:50:12.000 Supreme Court-wise, values-wise, you name it, that was the brink for this country.
00:50:18.000 So in light of that, a moronic tweet or an awful statement is very small
00:50:29.000 The question is why does that always have to be contextualized?
00:50:31.000 I mean, I can agree with virtually everything that you just said there, but the question that I have is that the next election, the biggest single voting bloc is going to be millennials, it's going to be younger people.
00:50:43.000 And those people actually take his tweets seriously.
00:50:45.000 They actually, when he does something that, when he says something, they find bile, that actually matters to them even more so than the policy in many cases.
00:50:53.000 And what matters even more than that is, I think,
00:50:56.000 So many people on the right who seem to refuse to acknowledge.
00:51:02.000 I just don't see why you can't do both.
00:51:03.000 I don't see why you can't say, his policies are great.
00:51:05.000 I'm thrilled with his policies.
00:51:07.000 And I wish you would stop doing that.
00:51:08.000 Or it would be better if you would stop doing that.
00:51:10.000 Or what he just said was garbage and be better off as a country if he hadn't done that.
00:51:13.000 That doesn't mean I'm going to turn over the country to this bunch of nutjobs on the left.
00:51:17.000 But you just contextualized it and that's great.
00:51:19.000 If you put that in that concept, hey listen, I can't stand what he just said, but frankly the policies are saving the country.
00:51:26.000 There isn't anybody who supports him who would differ with you.
00:51:29.000 Right, the only problem is that by saying, the point of the contextualization, I'm making the contextualization to you and to the audience so I can make clear the position.
00:51:37.000 The problem is that if, let's say he says something about Charlottesville.
00:51:41.000 And it's something that I find distasteful.
00:51:43.000 We may have a difference of understanding, and I have perused this a tremendous number of times.
00:51:48.000 He didn't say there were good Nazis and... He said there were good people on both sides on the Friday night.
00:51:54.000 On the Friday night.
00:51:54.000 Wasn't that about statues?
00:51:56.000 The Friday night was a white supremacist party.
00:51:58.000 Okay, do you think he was saying that there were good Nazis?
00:52:00.000 Do you believe he believes there were good Nazis?
00:52:01.000 I think he was saying there were good people who were marching, not good Nazis.
00:52:04.000 I think what he was saying is that there were good people who were marching with the Nazis to the statue which I... Okay, so here's my tell-me-even proof that he didn't say that.
00:52:10.000 Okay.
00:52:10.000 Because he doesn't believe there's good Antifa.
00:52:13.000 No, but I think the easy way for him to say things is there's good people on both sides.
00:52:16.000 Right, but he doesn't believe there's any good Antifa.
00:52:19.000 I'm not sure that he thinks things through to the extent necessary to actually... Okay.
00:52:23.000 Whether he does or he doesn't... The point is not Charlottesville, and I'm happy to argue Charlottesville, and we can go back through the text and we'll bring out our Talmuds and we can actually look through the legislative history of what he said, but anything that he said that people find distasteful, particularly, or that you would find distasteful in any other context.
00:52:40.000 Why can't we just say, that's distasteful?
00:52:43.000 Here's a good example.
00:52:44.000 He just went and he met with Kim Jong-un.
00:52:46.000 He was extraordinarily warm toward Kim Jong-un.
00:52:48.000 He said really nice things about a guy who was a dictator of 25 million people or so.
00:52:52.000 He's a butcher.
00:52:53.000 He's one of the worst people on planet Earth.
00:52:56.000 And the president of the United States said, he's a strong guy.
00:52:58.000 Only one in 10,000 people could do this sort of thing.
00:53:01.000 And as somebody who studied the former Soviet Union, I'm sure you look at this and you go,
00:53:04.000 Well, hold up just a second here.
00:53:07.000 So, why can't we just say that, and then when it comes time for 2020, say, right, and the overall opinion is, I'll vote for him anyway, because that's that.
00:53:15.000 But not every day is a referendum on the election.
00:53:18.000 This I guess is my main point of criticism, because you and I are probably going to vote the same way in 2020, right?
00:53:24.000 The chances are very good that I vote for President Trump in 2020.
00:53:25.000 Or this year.
00:53:26.000 Right, well in 2018 we'll certainly vote the same way.
00:53:29.000 I'm going to vote Republican in 2018.
00:53:31.000 In 2020 there's a very high likelihood I'll vote for President Trump barring some sort of cataclysmic event.
00:53:36.000 All of that said, I do think that there is something deeply important about conservatives pointing out when he does something wrong because otherwise we lose our intellectual credibility and look as though it is our job to become his lawyers as opposed to being advocates for a position for which he is the
00:53:52.000 I understand that, and it makes sense.
00:53:55.000 You and I both speak a great deal to young people.
00:53:58.000 I through PragerU, and you through, of course, The Daily Wire, and all of your podcasts, and all of the things you do.
00:54:07.000 I have a big following, you have a big following.
00:54:10.000 I don't think they're thinking, gee, this Prager who talks about morality, he doesn't have that much credibility with me because he supports the president.
00:54:18.000 Because people understand why I do, and I try to make it clear why I do.
00:54:23.000 So, your worry is not my worry.
00:54:27.000 But we need you.
00:54:28.000 You're the last person I would patronize of the six billion people on earth.
00:54:34.000 So I'm not patronizing you.
00:54:36.000 We need you terribly.
00:54:37.000 Remember, though, that there are people on our side who don't... There is one, I don't want to say his name, because I know him pretty well.
00:54:46.000 And it'll be obvious if anybody wants to research it, but most people won't.
00:54:50.000 Who said that, who's a lifelong Republican, and said Trump is worse than Stalin.
00:54:59.000 That's idiotic.
00:55:00.000 Okay, it is, it's idiotic, and it's very destructive, and there are those who, you know, they've left the party.
00:55:07.000 George Will, I adore George Will.
00:55:09.000 He's done Prager University videos, and he's left the Republican Party.
00:55:13.000 This is overwrought reaction.
00:55:16.000 The world is dirty, and I wish we had Donald Trump with tremendous style and all the wonderful things you would like, but we have him.
00:55:29.000 It's sort of like a marriage.
00:55:32.000 He's a package.
00:55:34.000 Trump is a package.
00:55:35.000 This package saved this country from the left taking it over in the last election.
00:55:42.000 That is so big that I somehow never lose picture of that with the sins that he commits.
00:55:49.000 That's my position.
00:55:50.000 Your position is, for our credibility, let's point out each of the sins that he commits.
00:55:55.000 Fine.
00:55:55.000 We need you and we need me.
00:55:57.000 And I mean this quite sincerely.
00:55:59.000 And yours is as morality-based as mine is morality-based.
00:56:05.000 But I am so focused on the near death of America that took place in 2016, and I believe that.
00:56:13.000 I believe had Hillary Clinton, or any Democrat,
00:56:17.000 I don't get it.
00:56:18.000 Joe Biden, it's irrelevant.
00:56:19.000 Had any Democrat won then, I had no reason to have faith that this country will not go the way of Western Europe.
00:56:27.000 Well, it's always great to have you here, and I want to part with one question for you, Dennis Prager, author of The Rational Bible.
00:56:34.000 So, if you are going to pick your favorite section of the Torah, what is your favorite section of the Torah?
00:56:40.000 This is just a fun kind of parting question.
00:56:43.000 That's like, what's my favorite part about my wife?
00:56:47.000 That's how much I love the Torah.
00:56:49.000 Well, let's not get dangerous here.
00:56:50.000 I'm sorry?
00:56:51.000 Let's not get dangerous here.
00:56:52.000 Yeah, no, I understand.
00:56:53.000 I'm crazy about the Ten Commandments.
00:56:56.000 I am, and I spend a vast amount of time in this, the book that's out, the first one on Exodus, explaining why they alone, they alone, in fact, do not steal alone, would make a good world.
00:57:09.000 And I guess that's why I began with Exodus, because I'm in love with the Ten Commandments, including Honor Your Father and Mother, which changed my life.
00:57:20.000 And I hope my kids follow it, too.
00:57:23.000 Okay, well, Dennis, it's great to have you here.
00:57:24.000 And obviously, Dennis's next volume comes out next year.
00:57:27.000 His book on Genesis comes out next year.
00:57:30.000 Can't wait for the rest of them to unfold.
00:57:31.000 Dennis, thanks so much for stopping by.
00:57:39.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is produced by Jonathan Hay.
00:57:42.000 Executive Producer Jeremy Boring.
00:57:43.000 Associate Producers Mathis Glover and Austin Stevens.
00:57:46.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.
00:57:48.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Karamina.
00:57:49.000 Hair and makeup is by Jeswa Alvera.
00:57:51.000 And title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.
00:57:53.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
00:57:57.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.