00:00:10.000Probably one of the most influential conservatives on the planet, someone who has influenced me more than almost any other conservative thinker out there, Dennis Prager, host of the Dennis Prager Show, the national radio program.
00:00:21.000Dennis Prager is a dear friend and someone who cares deeply about our country and defeating the left.
00:00:27.000This is one of my favorite conversations I've had recently.
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00:02:34.000Super thrilled to have this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show to present to you today.
00:02:38.000A friend of mine and someone who I have learned from more than any other person in the conservative movement in a variety of different ways.
00:02:46.000I have watched every single one of his fireside chats and I catch as much of his daily radio show as I possibly can.
00:03:43.000So there's a lot happening in our country, and I want to ask you about that.
00:03:47.000And I also want to ask you about some things that I've heard you say multiple times and just kind of get more context on it, especially on how to live a good life, which is a focus of your life's work to try to create good people, which I think is a phenomenal mission statement for a country that we have been missing so greatly.
00:04:07.000Let's start with this, though, Dennis.
00:04:09.000Do you, in the last couple of weeks, in the last six weeks, we have seen America grow into more discord and unrest, a lot of which you predicted years ago in your incredible writings and your book, it was still the last hope.
00:04:30.000Where you talk about the American Trinity, and you aptly said in your book, you describe the left better than I have seen anyone else describe it, where they take their protests, they take their rituals with the same sort of intensity and the same sort of seriousness that a religious person would take a religious ritual.
00:08:50.000If you only fight when you're optimistic, we don't need you.
00:08:54.000Well, and I think there is a second part of the question, though, why I ask it, which I think we have to be honest, because there's an equal as many people, though, that are complacent, that think that things just work in cycles that will go back.
00:09:23.000And a lot of people do, and they believe because things have gone rather well for our country in the last couple of decades that we have this inevitability to self-correct.
00:09:34.000It's gone good for this country for the last 200 years.
00:10:02.000I communicate with a lot of those people and predominantly in suburban America that they don't want to necessarily get involved in the culture world.
00:10:12.000Well, they won't be very suburban if Biden wins because he's going to put poor people's housing in the suburbs.
00:10:43.000I was sent into the Soviet Union by Israel.
00:10:47.000The Israeli government, until 1967, it sent Israeli young people to smuggle in religious items and to smuggle out names of Jews who wanted to leave.
00:10:59.000So it was somewhat dangerous, but I'm not saying that I'm not a hero, but I just don't want to understate that it was, you know, it was somewhat risky behavior.
00:11:10.000But once after the Six-Day War in 1967, the Soviets ended relations with Israel.
00:11:17.000So Israel sent Jews who were not Israeli.
00:11:56.000They were all human beings, but they operated with almost a lower level of existence than they would in the West.
00:12:02.000Dennis, why is it that the Soviet Union and how Lenin took power post-Romanovs, why do you think specifically that is not taught in our school system?
00:12:14.000That is the number one piece of history that our young people have the least understanding about that has the most significance, I think, to what we're living through, and also so much applicability.
00:13:37.000And the idea, the lessons of the 20th century we are eerily repeating of grouping people by their skin color, allowing the loudest, most charismatic demagogue to get the most attention.
00:13:50.000And I believe it was Alexander Solshenitsyn that wrote the Gulag Archipelago, or was it Dosievsky?
00:13:57.000And that book, more so than any other, captures, it actually probably contributed more to the downfall of the Soviet Union than almost any other missile defense system did or any sort of military formations, because it was an honest assessment from within the Soviet Union as to how it fell and how it operated and eventually led to its fall.
00:14:19.000Dennis, outside of the Soviet Union, there's a lot of young people that watch this show and listen to this show.
00:14:24.000What is the one piece of history that you are saddened that they are not learning?
00:14:29.000What is the one chapter in world or human history that you believe is not being taught?
00:14:34.000And because of that, we live in a less free America.
00:14:38.000So you're including all communist history?
00:14:55.000I mean, number two, although, I mean, in some ways, that would be number one, is the Bible.
00:15:02.000That that is not taught means that you are going to have a generation with no wisdom.
00:15:09.000And wisdom is more important than good intentions.
00:15:12.000Good intentions not only do, you know, is the road to hell paid with good intentions, but good intentions without wisdom necessarily leads to evil.
00:15:24.000Not every person who is protested, every person who is violent is vile, but not every protester is a bad person.
00:17:21.000I published the book a long time ago in my 30s.
00:17:26.000It's gone through, it's been in print for all of these years, Why the Jews?
00:17:31.000But interestingly, the last edition, about 10, 15 years ago, the third edition, I wrote a chapter on how anti-Americanism is almost identical to anti-Semitism.
00:19:02.000This is an example of the lack of wisdom in our society.
00:19:06.000Well, so-and-so said an anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-whatever, sexist, misogynist comment privately, like the president thinking he was talking privately when he, of course, he wasn't president with regard to women.
00:21:06.000So I guess my question is then, Dennis, would you support, because conservatives, a lot of times now in the last couple of years, we have done a lot of undercover journalism.
00:21:15.000There's been a lot of people that have found private remarks.
00:21:19.000Even Hillary Clinton's deplorable comments, it was not supposed to be leaked publicly.
00:21:23.000It was to a private fundraiser that a lot of people, you know, made popular.
00:21:30.000Do you see any issue with that of conservatives leaning in on it too much?
00:21:34.000When you talk to an audience, that's not private.
00:24:05.000So, I think we can agree that America is going through some form of a conflict.
00:24:11.000Dennis, you've called this an American Civil War.
00:24:14.000In fact, you've called it for many years a civil war.
00:24:17.000Do you think that it might, what we're experiencing now is still a civil war, or is it more a revolutionary war where they want to destroy the country that pre-existed them and build something new?
00:24:26.000For example, when Robespier tried to take power in the French Revolution, we called it a revolutionary war, not the French Civil War.
00:24:34.000So, do you think that this is now more a revolutionary aspect and less a civil conflict?
00:24:40.000Well, if it's a revolutionary war within a society and not against an outside force, then by definition, you have both civil war and a revolution.
00:24:50.000But this is actually not a revolution.
00:24:53.000It is a revolution, but it's really a counter-revolution.
00:26:02.000What do you think has been the greatest failure of conservatives of the last couple of decades?
00:26:06.000It seems conservatives had a huge amount of political power post-Reagan.
00:26:11.000We had a majority of the country believe that this is a generally decent country.
00:26:16.000And now we no longer have any of those sorts of successes in a lot of different ways.
00:26:21.000You know, we have a generation that has been taught to hate America.
00:26:24.000What has been the greatest failure of the conservative movement?
00:26:29.000It emanates from right after World War II.
00:26:32.000The traditional American, call person conservative, if you will, did not teach their children what America stands for.
00:26:43.000They assumed that just as they loved America and they loved liberty and they loved the flag, their kids would.
00:26:55.000No good values are passed from generation to generation without effort.
00:27:04.000The effort that the baby, what is called the greatest generation, the World War II generation, the effort that they made was to provide their kids with everything they didn't have, namely peace and money, monetary security.
00:27:25.000And when I began lecturing at your age, I looked at audiences and said, you know, you've given my generation everything you didn't have, but you haven't given my generation everything you did have.
00:27:44.000And as an extension of that, you know, my parents and my generation was taught even to a lesser extent about what America meant because we were being taught by the people that were never taught what America meant.
00:28:49.000Again, your viewers can watch me testify in the U.S. Senate subcommittee.
00:28:55.000And I said in my remarks that people ignore largely what Prager U has suffered at the hands of YouTube, owned by Google.
00:29:11.000But I said, one day you will say they came after the conservatives and I did nothing.
00:29:18.000And then they came after me and there was no one left to speak up for me.
00:29:23.000It was a play on a very famous statement about the Nazis.
00:29:28.000So now the left is, which always happens, it eats its own.
00:29:34.000So, you know, with the Me Too excesses, so you have Al Franken, who, you know, who was a big gung-ho fan of Me Too and, you know, all the feminists and women always believe a woman.
00:29:52.000And, you know, the guy was removed for very nebulous reasons.
00:29:57.000Well, was there a picture of him jokingly with his hands on a model of a breast or something or something to that effect?
00:30:16.000This is, by the way, I will admit, this is an argument I've had with my closest allies, which is evangelical Protestants, who for years, not all by any means, but evangelical callers would call my show because I do shows not just on the news, and I have an ultimate issues hour, talk often about religion.
00:30:40.000And I always have held there are gradations of sin.
00:30:44.000And many Christian callers would call me and say, no, no, no, in God's eyes, all sin is equal.
00:30:51.000And I say, so you think that God believes molesting a child and stealing a stapler from the office are equivalent?
00:31:51.000And so, so to answer your question, this notion of, well, private enterprise has free speech, that's like saying the utilities can do whatever they want with your electricity.
00:32:03.000What if the utilities decided to say, your local gas company or electrical power company, you know what?
00:32:11.000We will not provide electricity to conservatives.
00:32:25.000Google supplies the roadway to the internet like your power company supplies the roadway to power.
00:32:34.000And so I think we've reached that breaking point where you can no longer protect free expression in our country in the First Amendment if tech companies don't want to allow that to happen.
00:32:44.000I think we're really and I think the tech companies are more powerful than the government in a certain sense.
00:32:54.000So, Dennis, you talk about a lot, and I actually was listening to one of your fireside chats where you talked about a fun kind of mini-series you did with Jason Alexander, and I actually watched it.
00:33:45.000There's a lot of young people that listen to this podcast that we get emails from that struggle with living a good life and finding meaning.
00:33:51.000And we try to be more than just a political podcast to them.
00:33:55.000Can you just give a very short version?
00:33:57.000I know it doesn't do it justice, of what some applicable piece of advice, or at least just pique their curiosity as how they'll pursue your book further.
00:34:06.000Well, the book on happiness has a chapter on meaning, but it is about happiness.
00:34:12.000If you want meaning, then obviously my Bible commentary, the rational Bible, I really beg people to read, which is, you know, I have a lot of dignity and I hate begging people to anything, but I know it will change.
00:34:30.000Look, there are over a thousand reviews.
00:34:32.000It's the best-selling Bible commentary in America.
00:34:48.000That it will or will not animate another.
00:34:50.000I fully recognize there are different ways of finding meaning in life.
00:34:58.000My basic core belief is there is a God and God wants us to be good.
00:35:05.000That has always been my single biggest belief.
00:35:08.000Goodness is very hard to achieve on a personal level and certainly on a societal level, which is why I'm so angry at the left because they are crushing the best society thus far made.
00:35:22.000And that idea that God wants me to be as good as I could be, not an angel.
00:35:31.000I'm not interested in producing saints, just decent, good people.
00:37:57.000The damage that this has done, we're not even beginning to understand because the government is cushioning the damage to many people's lives because of the checks it sent out.
00:38:30.000Well, I'll tell you, Dennis, if I wanted the destruction of America, I would want to destroy the purchasing power of the currency, get people addicted to government benefits, get 30 million people out of work.
00:39:15.000South Dakota, the only state not to fully shut down, thanks to Governor Christy Noam, lowest unemployment rate in the country, $19 million surplus.
00:39:24.000They have the lowest death rate per capita in the country.
00:39:27.000They have almost, they have lower unemployment in certain parts of the state than ever before because cheap labor is not being brought in.
00:40:25.000So a couple of minutes left here, Dennis, but this kind of goes to a question that I have that I've been struggling with.
00:40:30.000And you know Russian history very well and you know the cultural revolution.
00:40:34.000I'm afraid that we as conservatives have focused too much on the cultural reason as to why we're losing the country and not enough on the economic.
00:40:42.000Because you just articulated that when you have people that basically are just being subsidized by the government and have very little invested future in what tomorrow will bring or the next year will bring, they're ripe for a revolution.
00:40:56.000And I think that if we as conservatives think the only reason as to why our country is declining is because all the cultural institutions have been taken over and not because of the real material economic downfall, I think it's an incomplete picture.
00:41:09.000And I think the Russian example is interesting in 1917 because as they were trying to industrialize their economy, I think that they didn't manage that correctly and they were a citizenry that was more ripe for a revolution in the urban center than not.
00:41:24.000Do you think that there is an economic component to this or do you think that that is probably not as significant of a contributing factor?
00:41:32.000Well, there's a huge economic component, and the issue is, but the issue is a cultural value called liberty.
00:42:44.000All socialism does is take the money from the free market and take control of it and use it to embellish its own power in the name, of course, of helping people.
00:43:48.000Look, we're getting a picture of what it will look like right now.
00:43:56.000If you say on your Twitter account, Twitter feed, or your Facebook page that you believe there's only one race, the human race, you are depersoned.
00:45:19.000I have entertained in my mind, as it were, the idea of a conservative states of America and a leftist states of America.
00:45:29.000And in 50 years, let's see who thrives.
00:45:32.000Yeah, and what you would have in that, let's just say, somewhat theoretical exercise, you'd have a brain drain from the liberal states go to the conservative states.
00:45:42.000Yeah, and then they would vote liberal again.
00:47:11.000Turningpoint USA is the nation's largest conservative student organization on over 2,000 high school and college campuses across the country fighting for freedom, liberty, and American exceptionalism at tpusa.com.
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00:47:42.000Thanks so much for listening, everybody.