The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and

00:00:05.560 important. Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those

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00:00:48.080 the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

00:00:56.700 This is season four, episode 44. Quick update again, dad is doing much better again. We spent some time

00:01:03.280 at a cottage and on a boat, and he's feeling better than he has in two and a half years. So thank God

00:01:08.220 for that. In this episode, my dad is joined by two guests, nationally syndicated radio talk show host,

00:01:15.540 New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of Prager University, Dennis Prager, and Adam

00:01:22.200 Carolla, comedian, bestselling author, and host of the Adam Carolla podcast. They spoke about their

00:01:28.200 film, No Safe Spaces, freedom of speech, religion, controversies in the film industry, and a variety

00:01:34.640 of present day political and global situations. I hope you enjoy this episode and have a great week.

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00:03:34.160 Hi, everybody. I'm talking today with Dennis Prager, who you might know from PragerU. He's a

00:03:40.840 national syndicated radio talk show host heard on some 300 stations across America and around the

00:03:46.040 world. I'm also talking with Adam Carolla, best known as a comedian, actor, radio personality,

00:03:52.360 television host, and New York Times best-selling author. I'll back to Dennis. He's also the co-founder

00:03:58.640 and president of Prager University, the largest conservative internet video site in the world

00:04:03.280 with over a billion views per year, 65% of which are by people under 35 years. He's a New York Times

00:04:10.680 best-selling author as well of 10 books, a biblical scholar with expertise in biblical Hebrew. The third

00:04:16.980 volume of his five-volume commentary on the Torah, the Rational Bible, will be published in the summer

00:04:22.380 of 2021. It's become the best-selling Bible commentary in the country. Back to Adam. Adam

00:04:29.180 currently hosts the Adam Carolla Show, which holds the Guinness Book of World Records for most downloaded

00:04:34.000 podcast. We're going to talk today about a movie that these two gentlemen were deeply involved in,

00:04:39.460 a documentary, No Safe Spaces, and the problems it's encountered in distribution. And, well, we're

00:04:46.460 going to range out from there into issues of free speech and perhaps beyond that as well. So welcome,

00:04:51.980 guys. Thanks very much for talking with me today. Dennis, maybe you want to start. Do you want to

00:04:56.940 talk a little bit about, well, about PragerU and also maybe about the movie, No Safe Spaces,

00:05:02.620 about the documentary? Well, one relationship of PragerU and the movie that Adam and I are in

00:05:09.980 is the suppression of free speech. I testified at the U.S. Senate two years ago on what they were doing

00:05:17.400 to PragerU videos. It may be the single funniest thing on YouTube, except for anything Adam Carolla

00:05:24.600 does. And I'm not being cute. Adam Carolla is perhaps the funniest human being in the English

00:05:30.000 language. He might even be the funniest in any language, but my ability to assess that is limited.

00:05:35.800 Well, I'm number four in Urdu. That's very impressive. It's impressive that no Urdu exists.

00:05:45.400 That's the Pakistani life. Well, you want to crack the top five. You better be familiar with it.

00:05:51.400 That's great. Well, you see what I mean, Jordan. I have a big problem when I appear on stage with

00:05:59.960 Adam, and that is I'm totally happy if he talks the whole time. All I do, then, do you know that

00:06:05.640 this is not even answering your question here, but I just want to say this. You'll get a kick out of it.

00:06:10.360 So Adam and I have gone around the country doing events on stage, and he may not even know this,

00:06:17.080 but there are times during the event, well, I will say to myself, Dennis, they're also paying you,

00:06:24.920 so you should speak. I feel a moral obligation to talk, but selfishly, I'd just rather laugh

00:06:32.200 because we all need laughter. And anyway, his insights are just deep. Anyway, so what I said

00:06:38.680 was the funniest thing on YouTube was this. I was at a Senate subcommittee on the suppression of free

00:06:45.720 speech testifying about what's happening to PragerU, where hundreds of our videos are placed on the

00:06:53.400 restricted list, meaning if you have a filter against pornography and violence, you actually

00:06:58.440 can't see the video. So one of them was, in fact, one that I had given. I only give one-tenth of the

00:07:04.760 videos, 90% of other people. But I have given a number of videos on the Ten Commandments, for example.

00:07:11.160 And so Senator Ted Cruz asked the representative of Google, people could see this on YouTube,

00:07:19.080 it is still there. Why did you put Mr. Prager's talk on the Ten Commandments on the restricted list?

00:07:30.520 And the man looked at Senator Cruz and said, because it mentions murder.

00:07:40.520 And I remember, I remember humming the Twilight Zone theme, because I felt I had entered an alternate

00:07:48.200 universe. So what do you think the reason was, Dennis? I mean, obviously, look, that's got to be a

00:07:53.640 bit of a PR nightmare for Google to do something like that. So it smacks of a certain degree of

00:07:59.000 incompetence to begin with. And I like to hypothesize incompetence before malevolence.

00:08:04.760 So why do you think it was censored that specifically? And then why with regards to,

00:08:09.960 is it reasonable to call what's happening with PragerU censorship? And why do you think it's happening?

00:08:15.960 Because, well, I'll tell you, I'll answer the last one first. And this will help you realize that

00:08:22.920 I think there's more malevolence than incompetence. There is never an instance in the history of the

00:08:28.920 world, and this is my field of study since I was in graduate school at Columbia. That's why I studied

00:08:33.880 Russian, was to read Pravda and visit the Soviet Union on multiple occasions and other communist

00:08:39.960 countries. There is no instance in world history that is since the Russian Revolution of the left gaining

00:08:47.080 power and not suppressing speech. Liberals offer free speech. Conservatives offer free speech.

00:08:53.480 The left has never been for free speech.

00:08:55.640 Okay, so let me ask you a clarifying question there, all right? Because, you know, I'm a Canadian,

00:09:01.080 and I suppose along with the Scandinavian countries, we're tilted a fair degree to the left compared to

00:09:06.680 the US. And so, I mean, freedom of speech is in reasonable shape in our countries, those countries

00:09:14.040 that I mentioned. And so, when you talk about the left, tell me more specifically what you mean and

00:09:19.960 how you would define that particular, because you're not talking about the Democrats per se,

00:09:25.880 I can't imagine, or perhaps you are.

00:09:27.880 The Democrats used to be, I was a Democrat. The Democrats used to be liberal. The Democrats,

00:09:34.280 when I was a kid in the 70s, Nazis, real Nazis, not people they just call Nazis, real Nazis with swastikas,

00:09:41.880 uh, demonstrated in, uh, in Skokie, Illinois, because a lot of Jews lived there, especially

00:09:48.360 Holocaust survivors. It was a particularly vicious act. And, uh, Jewish groups, the ACLU, liberal

00:09:55.160 groups, the Democratic Party all defended their right, because in America, anybody could say anything

00:10:01.080 except yell a fire in a crowded theater. That is no longer the position. You, you, you, look,

00:10:07.240 you're, what, why did you, why did you get in trouble? And you're, you're-

00:10:11.000 I've wondered about that for a long time.

00:10:12.920 Okay, so a pronoun, well, no. Well, I'm, if you're wondering, I'm not. You, uh, you said something

00:10:21.000 the left didn't like, that you were not going to be told by the government what pronoun you will use.

00:10:26.360 Okay, so let me, let me ask you another question. So when I look at political surveys,

00:10:31.960 I see that there's a very limited number of people on the right that you could describe as extremists,

00:10:38.840 and there's a very limited number of people on the left who appear to support the more extremist

00:10:44.840 leftist propositions. And so I do believe that, in some sense, it's more difficult for people on

00:10:51.320 the left to draw distinctions between acceptable leftist ideas than it is for people on the right.

00:10:56.760 I mean, on the right, you draw the line with claims of racial superiority. On the left, there's,

00:11:02.360 there's obviously trouble brewing on the extreme, but defining exactly where it is and drawing a

00:11:07.560 border around it is, seems to me, a relatively complex task. And well, you asked me why I got

00:11:12.040 in trouble. I mean, I got in trouble because I said, well, I'm not sure where to draw the line,

00:11:16.120 but that particular law compelling speech with its implicit theory of identity, that's gone too far,

00:11:23.080 as far as far as I'm concerned. But, you know, the fact that that caused so much trouble,

00:11:27.080 I think is indication of the fact that it's difficult to draw the line. And so, well,

00:11:32.200 I'm interested in both your comments about that. Well, I think you're onto something with the extreme

00:11:39.560 part of the right wing party is pretty definable. And I think most reasonable people agree that the

00:11:48.840 farthest right, you know, Jews shooting laser beams into the, into the sky and shooting down

00:11:56.360 satellites or whatever crazy stuff comes out of QAnon or sort of far right stuff, racial things of that

00:12:04.920 nature. I think we can all agree that that's pretty definable and that most people on the right

00:12:11.960 will not cross that border. And William Buckley helped with that, wouldn't you say?

00:12:18.040 I would. But on the left, I feel like there's a much greater sense of, well, we don't agree with AOC,

00:12:27.160 but we're not going to say anything about it, or we're not going to define it or, or the squad.

00:12:32.760 So there's a much more, you know, I live in California, most everyone, I work in Hollywood,

00:12:37.800 everyone's on the left. Their thing is sort of like, we don't like what Gavin Newsom is doing,

00:12:44.200 but he's still our guy. And we'll go along.

00:12:48.120 Well, that's part, that's part of this difficulty withdrawing borders. Like I've had conversations

00:12:52.040 with Democrats about the idea of equity, for example, which is no go zone, as far as I'm

00:12:56.840 concerned because of its connotations of equality of outcome. But they insist, generally speaking,

00:13:02.520 that most of the people who are using the term equity are really using it as a proxy

00:13:07.640 for equality of opportunity.

00:13:09.240 They're lying to you. They're lying. They're flat out lying either to themselves or to you,

00:13:16.440 and, and both are dangerous. Equity, why, if the, if the word equity means equality,

00:13:22.680 why don't they use the word equality?

00:13:24.200 Well, that's my, that's my argument.

00:13:26.360 It doesn't mean equality.

00:13:28.520 Well, what do you think it means exactly?

00:13:30.200 I know what it means. It means equality of outcome, just exactly what you implied it meant.

00:13:35.960 That's all it means.

00:13:37.560 And why do you think that's so toxic?

00:13:40.920 Because it means standards don't matter. It means results matter. Is there equity in the NBA?

00:13:46.520 How many Jews are in the NBA? How, how many, uh, how many Japanese are in the NBA?

00:13:53.480 There's no, there's no equity in the NBA and there shouldn't be. I only want the best basketball players

00:13:58.600 and I want the best pilots and I want the best physicists and I want the best, uh, do you know

00:14:03.080 that they, they are dropping, uh, the, the, I follow music. I conduct periodically. I'm, I'm very into

00:14:08.600 music. So, uh, the New York Times has advocated the dropping of the blind auditions for the New York

00:14:15.160 Philharmonic. No longer shall you choose the best violinist or oboist. You choose based on the color of the

00:14:23.160 violinist or oboist. That's equity. Okay. So you have, you're making two arguments about equity.

00:14:28.760 One is that it flies in the face of a rank order of value with regards to competence. And it's

00:14:35.240 predicated on, uh, distribution of equality by immutable characteristics like race and sex and

00:14:42.040 gender, perhaps sexual preference, all these things that have become part of the cultural context.

00:14:47.000 And that's equity. And there, the word is being used because it doesn't mean equality of opportunity,

00:14:52.440 which means a playing field that's open to everyone who strives forward and who are then

00:14:56.840 chosen on the basis of their merit. And how would you define merit just out of curiosity?

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00:19:20.120 And how would you define merit, just out of curiosity?

00:19:27.080 Well, I think, sorry Dennis, but I think the blind, you know, it's really hard to quantify

00:19:37.000 certain things like who is the best oboist. It's difficult, but that's why you put the curtain up

00:19:44.200 and you decide. And you have experts listen. You have experts listen. It doesn't mean they're right,

00:19:51.000 it just means the only thing they're factoring in is the ability or the perceived ability of the

00:19:57.960 oboist on the other side of the curtain. And once you pull that curtain down, you sort of bring

00:20:03.960 everything into question. Okay, so you know, if you're trying to hire someone in the U.S.,

00:20:08.760 the laws are set up this way. And I know these laws quite well. So if you want to hire someone,

00:20:14.680 you're bound by law, first of all, to do an analysis of the job requirements. So you have

00:20:18.920 to make a list of what competence means in that particular context. So that's merit as defined

00:20:24.360 by that job. Then you have to have to use the most reliable and valid test that's legally available,

00:20:31.560 that's to do the selection, or you can be, or you're liable under the appropriate employment

00:20:37.880 law. So merit has this very specific definition. It's sort of within occupations. So you define it

00:20:44.120 within an occupation. And then you have to use a selection technique that assesses for that. And

00:20:49.160 that should be blind to immutable characteristics like race, etc. And I mean, that's how the law was

00:20:53.720 set up for years. And now we see this situation where this is restorative justice, that's the doctrine.

00:21:00.600 Yeah.

00:21:00.760 Is that what we're seeing? And why do you have a problem with that? Exactly.

00:21:04.440 Well, I'll give you an example in my mind. You know, Dennis brought up sports. I try to think,

00:21:13.960 why, as human beings, are we so attracted to sports? Like, everyone loves sports, but why does

00:21:19.640 everyone love sports? Why is the ratings for the Oscars plummeting every year and the ratings for the

00:21:27.240 Super Bowl going up every year? You know, if you just looked at a chart of the Super Bowl starting

00:21:33.800 in 1970 and the Oscars starting in 1970, the Oscars, I think, outrated the Super Bowl. But at a certain

00:21:42.840 point, the Oscars have, you know, less than 10 million and the Super Bowl is always, you know, 40,

00:21:49.640 50 million. So what is that? As human beings, what are we responding to? Well, what we're responding to

00:21:56.760 is when we watch the Super Bowl, we believe that the best players are on the field, regardless of

00:22:03.960 whether the entire defense of side of the ball is black or Asian. There's never, or anything, there's

00:22:11.320 never been an instance of the owner's son starting on the defense or the coach's son starting on the

00:22:18.760 defense. So it doesn't mean these are, it doesn't mean there's not a 12th guy who's on the bench who

00:22:25.480 was actually better, but it means in the coach's eye, these are the 11 best players to put out on

00:22:32.520 the defensive side of the ball and the offensive side of the ball. And we never question it. When you

00:22:37.960 then watch the Oscars and you see a lot of the diversity and a lot of the force diversity, you think

00:22:45.320 to yourself, are these really the best seven or eight films of the year? Or are we trying to

00:22:52.920 conjigger it some way to open it up for things that are better or different, I should say, than

00:23:00.520 just the best film? And once you start down that path, I argue it's a very slippery slope. We tune out,

00:23:08.040 we lose interest. What's the big beef on the Oscars best films every year? It's like, I didn't see half

00:23:13.800 these things. And were they, were they really the best film? And then I saw two of them and I didn't

00:23:19.080 like them. So you don't think we trust the selection process. So I wanted to answer your question. You

00:23:24.600 said, why do we like sports so much? And that'll lead me to another question that maybe I can direct

00:23:28.680 to you. So I think Dennis will find this interesting. Maybe he'll agree, maybe he won't. But the word sin

00:23:34.920 is derived from the Greek word hamartia, which means to miss the mark. And so it's an archery term.

00:23:39.640 And, you know, people are very, very goal directed. And what you see in sports is the

00:23:46.120 assemblance of teams of excellence, competing and cooperating, because they're playing the same

00:23:51.240 game. So that's the cooperation to hit the target. And every time someone excellent hits the target,

00:23:57.160 it's it inspires awe in the audience. And that's why everybody leaps up sort of not even of their own

00:24:02.440 accord, right? They're possessed by the spirit of the game. And so there's something that's very,

00:24:07.320 very deep going on in a sports spectacle, because we're all participating in the celebration

00:24:12.040 of the team effort to facilitate the ability of the individual to attain the goal. And that runs

00:24:19.080 through sports. It's dramatized in a way that's not rationally criticizable. And your point is,

00:24:24.280 if that's gerrymandered, then people won't appreciate it anymore. But here's the question I

00:24:28.520 have for you. Why do you think that the meritocracy of sport is so widely accepted and not a subject of

00:24:35.240 public attack when there is a public assault on the idea of merit in almost every other domain?

00:24:41.320 Why does sports get a get a pass, so to speak?

00:24:45.160 I believe in sports, we would all realize the absurdity if we tried to mess around with the

00:24:54.360 meritocracy of it. If you said there's not been enough Jewish heavyweights in the last 30 years,

00:25:02.440 we need to get a Jewish heavyweight and put them out there with Tyson Fury or whoever the current

00:25:09.000 heavyweight belt holder is. I think we would all understand the sort of bizarre nature of that,

00:25:15.960 and we would all sort of inherently understand it wouldn't work. Or back to Dennis's

00:25:21.640 example, if we took, you know...

00:25:23.560 Why do you think it's more obvious to us? I think you might be right,

00:25:26.360 but I can't figure out exactly why. We seem to accept... I mean, people suffer for the

00:25:31.960 distinctiveness in athletic ability. I mean, it's a trope of many, many American films. You know,

00:25:36.760 there's the boy who would like to make the football team but can't, and it's painful,

00:25:41.160 and so we accept that that pain is real and it exists, but we don't use that to justify an assault

00:25:46.120 on the meritocracy of sport. I just can't figure out why it's so self-evident. You say it is, but

00:25:51.400 Dennis, do you have any ideas about that? Well, because it's more objective than subjective.

00:25:57.560 If you hit 40 home runs, you're a great player. We don't have 40 home runs in almost any other

00:26:05.640 area of life, so... So you think it's a measurement issue? Yes, it is a measurement issue. That's

00:26:11.960 exactly right. Stats are the... Fans are crazy. Baseball fans can tell you the batting average of

00:26:19.080 the first baseman on the Detroit Tigers 12 years ago. This is what they live for, stats,

00:26:24.760 but there are no stats in much of life. Back to my oboist. Right, so... Well, so that also means

00:26:30.200 that the people who are criticizing our society for its power base, say, rather than its merit base,

00:26:37.640 they're partly led to that conclusion by the fact that the stats of life are not nearly as obvious as

00:26:43.400 the stats in sports. I would argue... Sorry for cutting you off, Dennis, but I would argue that in this

00:26:51.480 particular case, stats are on the other side. So they go, Delta Airlines has less than 14 percent

00:27:01.080 African-American pilots. Delta Airlines employs less than six percent female pilots and less than one

00:27:09.320 percent transgender. So if you think about the stats, we do love stats, but they get used against us on the

00:27:17.320 other side when they're constantly talking about police reform or the fire department is in a mostly

00:27:25.480 Hispanic neighborhood, but yet the fire department doesn't represent the constituency of the group that

00:27:33.320 it serves, you know, because it's only 13 percent Latino. They do love stats, but they love them

00:27:40.440 from a different side of the equation. Right, but exactly. But those are not stats of excellence.

00:27:46.840 Those are stats of what Jordan calls immutable characteristics. Right. But they're easily

00:27:52.840 measurable. That's an interesting point. But yes, that's what I was pointing out about sports.

00:27:57.480 But I believe that other stuff is measurable, too. I believe that it is that...

00:28:03.320 Unless one enters the world of the absurd, which we have entered, Beethoven is greater than anybody

00:28:11.800 composing music today. Is greater, for that matter, than any non-German composer who ever lived.

00:28:22.520 The greatest composers were overwhelmingly Austrian and German. So why do I care? I only care about

00:28:29.800 there being great music. I'm a Jew. I know Wagner was a rank anti-Semite and Hitler's hero, and I love

00:28:35.960 Wagner's music. I don't care when I listen to his music. When I hear The Ring or any of his other operas,

00:28:44.280 the man was a genius. So I don't assess by that. At the University of Pennsylvania, they took down the

00:28:51.960 English department. The English department at an Ivy League university, took down Shakespeare's picture

00:28:57.640 because he was a white European male. And they put up a non-white lesbian instead. Not because of

00:29:07.480 measurable excellence, but because of immutable characteristics.

00:29:11.400 Yeah, well, I guess Adam's point is that it's easy for people to default into easily measurable

00:29:18.360 statistics. When the alternative measurement systems are somewhat obscure, it's harder to rank order

00:29:25.240 musicians by their quality. I mean, you could look at how often their pieces are played by major

00:29:29.960 orchestras, for example, but you could make a case that that's a consequence of systemic prejudice as

00:29:34.600 well. So you have these stats that signal immutable group membership that are pretty comprehensible,

00:29:41.480 and they lead people astray because they can't evaluate the broader context of excellence so

00:29:46.440 easily. I mean, we have to look for cognitive biases, right, when we're trying to explain things,

00:29:51.640 as I said, before reaching for malevolence, even though I'm perfectly willing to reach for malevolence

00:29:56.760 when I think it's there. So let's move back to no safe spaces.

00:30:01.080 Wait, wait, let me ask you. If you don't think it's malevolence, what do you think

00:30:07.080 is the justifiable reason for taking down Shakespeare at an English department?

00:30:13.320 Well, that might be envy and resentment. That could well be. I mean, I talked to somebody

00:30:18.440 interesting recently, Paul Rossi, who is the New York teacher who stood up against the political

00:30:23.640 correct incursion into the private school at Grace Church, it was. And he talked about the

00:30:29.000 attraction that postmodern theory held for him when he was an undergraduate. And he said he really

00:30:33.240 wanted to be a creative writer, but he really didn't have the talent for it. And so it was kind

00:30:37.880 of annoying for him in some sense to be exposed to all these great authors, because it represented

00:30:42.360 the pinnacle that he couldn't scale. And then when he was introduced to postmodern theory, which

00:30:48.360 critiqued all of these great authors as perhaps not great at all, let's say, it satisfied some

00:30:53.480 vengeful and resentful element of him. I mean, he grew out of that and was able to talk about it.

00:30:59.560 But I think he made a fair case. And as I said, I'm willing to identify malevolence. But for me,

00:31:06.600 it's a last reach. You know, I look for cognitive biases and that sort of thing first. And I mean,

00:31:12.680 I think too, you look at so many people that are attracted to radical left ideas, for example,

00:31:17.880 they're predominantly young people, not only, but predominantly. And, you know, they're looking

00:31:23.320 for a causal myth, let's say. They're looking for a myth and a causal explanation, and it's fed to

00:31:31.560 them. It's not a surprise that they devour it. And some of that's malevolence, because it gives them

00:31:36.760 a target for their resentment and their anger. But some of it's just ignorance. They haven't been taught

00:31:41.160 a more comprehensive viewpoint. I mean, you're trying to do that, at least to some degree,

00:31:45.000 on PragerU. And you're having some success with young people as well, which is quite interesting.

00:31:51.560 Right. I don't charge the young people with malevolence. I charge the people teaching

00:31:57.400 them with malevolence. People who teach the 1612 narrative are malevolent. They loathe the United

00:32:04.120 States, and this is their way of destroying our society, by teaching young people that it was

00:32:11.960 founded in order to preserve slavery. It's a gargantuan lie. And again, I just need to say this

00:32:18.360 again. I, to the dismay of many of my fellow conservatives, because I read comments on my pieces

00:32:26.360 on the internet. I'm interested in comments. And many think I'm a fool, or no, they don't say

00:32:34.760 naive, for distinguishing between liberals and leftists. But it's a huge distinction,

00:32:40.840 and the only way for the salvation of the West is to teach liberals that the left is their enemy and

00:32:45.880 not the right. That is the key task of all of us. Liberalism has nothing in common with leftism,

00:32:53.000 and it has everything in common with conservatism. So what do you think that liberalism and

00:32:57.480 conservatism have in common? Where's the common ground there? Free speech. Let's begin with free

00:33:01.800 speech, the subject of this. I also think an intellectual honesty. You know, a couple of guys

00:33:11.800 in this town who I know who are, I wouldn't call them leftists, but I'd call them Democrats,

00:33:18.840 Democrats, and probably progressive, who are also liberal in a true sense, are Bill Maher and attorney

00:33:31.320 Mark Garagos. They're both vote Democrat, but when subjects come up, they're intellectually honest.

00:33:39.720 And you end up agreeing on quite a few things with these folks, just because they're,

00:33:46.600 they have an intellectual honesty. So, you know, they may be on the left when it comes to some social

00:33:56.200 issues or maybe some border issues, but they do understand governmental overreach and tyranny and

00:34:04.520 oppression and things like that, especially as it pertains to COVID. And they have an intellectual

00:34:10.920 honesty. A perfect intellectual honesty subject is Israel versus Palestine. If you're on the left,

00:34:20.040 you have to side with Palestine. If you're liberal, you can vote Democrat, be liberal, and intellectually

00:34:28.600 understand that Israel's not the problem in that region. And that's a pretty good yardstick,

00:34:35.720 I would say, to measure liberal versus leftist Israel.

00:34:42.040 Okay. So Dennis, you're drawing the distinction between liberals and leftists, and that's,

00:34:45.960 and it's the leftists that you're having the trouble with. So here's a question for you. So

00:34:49.880 if the liberals and the conservatives have common ground, and they have the right behind them, so to

00:34:58.680 speak, I mean, the correct, let's say, the honesty, and the whole weight of, I wouldn't just say Western

00:35:04.600 civilization, but the central civilizational tendency, because I think it's a mistake to

00:35:09.080 identify this reflexively with the West. But in any case, why is the, why has the left become so

00:35:16.760 attractive? What are the liberals and conservatives doing wrong with regards to their, the education of

00:35:21.880 young people, or to the marketing of their ideas? I mean, well, that's gone, what's happened here?

00:35:27.240 All right, you're right. That's a very fair question. I, I did a research on the five embassies

00:35:34.760 that showed that the Black Lives Matter banner, the U.S. embassies around the world, five that I,

00:35:41.800 that were identified. One of them was the United Kingdom, the largest U.S. embassy in the world.

00:35:46.280 And I looked up, in each case, who the ambassador was. I was curious who would put up what I consider

00:35:53.160 a hate, a hate group banner in front of the American embassy. And it turns out, fascinatingly,

00:36:01.560 that the U.K., we don't have an ambassador to the U.K., we have a charge d'affaires. The head of the

00:36:07.640 embassy in the U.K. is a woman. And in the Wikipedia entry, it noted in passing that her mother

00:36:15.320 is on the board of the New York Civil Liberties Union. And I mentioned that on my radio show.

00:36:20.600 And I said, you know, leftists really do tend to perpetuate themselves better than we do.

00:36:29.320 The number of conservative parents with kids who are on the left is far greater than the number

00:36:33.560 of leftist parents with kids on the right. But the reason is obvious. The reason is they have

00:36:39.880 everything. They have kindergarten, they have elementary school, high school, college, university,

00:36:45.240 postgraduate, the media, sports, late night television. There is nothing that we have except

00:36:51.800 independent voices like the three of us here, and thank God others in addition to us.

00:36:57.080 That's the reason. If the schools were all conservative, then the leftist parents would

00:37:01.960 have a very difficult time keeping their kids leftist. This is not-

00:37:07.320 It's funny. You know, when I talk to left-leaning people in the United States,

00:37:13.160 they feel that they're on the defensive. They feel that the right has more power. They point more to

00:37:19.960 state governments, for example. And it does seem to me as an outsider, because I'm an outsider to all

00:37:25.400 of this, that one of the things that does characterize the United States, maybe more than any other

00:37:29.720 country in the entire West, perhaps not, because there are countries that might be an exception,

00:37:34.920 is that there is a reasonably decent balance of power between the right and the left,

00:37:41.320 if you consider the totality of the system. I mean, you have a Democrat in power federally, but at a

00:37:48.120 state level- I'll tell you what. Here's the deal I'll make with all of the people who say that to you,

00:37:52.120 the following deal. We'll give you state governments, you give us elementary schools,

00:37:57.000 high schools, and graduate schools and universities, and we'll make that-

00:38:02.200 Let's make that- We'll take the New York Times, make it conservative. You can have all the state

00:38:07.160 governments you want. I think it's such a- They live in a deluded image of themselves and the world,

00:38:14.520 if that's what they believe. Oh, you have state governments. We have the New York Times and CNN and

00:38:20.040 the Washington Post and Columbia and Yale and Harvard and Stanford, but you have state governments? Please,

00:38:26.360 So, okay, so that's interesting. I mean, you believe that these educational institutions,

00:38:32.600 well, you also included the New York Times, and I'm not going to dignify the New York Times by

00:38:37.000 calling it an educational institute, but you believe that the educational institutions from

00:38:42.840 kindergarten all the way up through the universities have the signal power in American culture. You think

00:38:49.000 that's a reasonable claim? I'm not disputing it. I'm asking you if that's what you believe.

00:38:53.080 How could it not be? That's where your kids spend most of their waking hours.

00:39:00.760 Well, I mean, it's-

00:39:01.880 No, he's asking-

00:39:03.080 Sorry, I think Jordan's asking, is it a foregone conclusion that all the universities and high

00:39:09.880 schools and junior highs are left leaning?

00:39:12.440 Ninety-nine percent, yes.

00:39:14.280 Yeah, well, I mean, it's certainly been something that's very disturbing to me. I think the objective

00:39:19.800 evidence supports the supposition that they're overwhelmingly left leaning, and it certainly

00:39:24.840 seems to me that these critical ideas, the idea especially that the structure of the West is

00:39:33.880 predicated on the arbitrary expression of power. I think that's the most fundamental pathological

00:39:39.240 claim that emanates from the West, is that power is the fundamental human motivation, and

00:39:43.720 that our functional institutions are essentially predicated on the arbitrary expression of power.

00:39:48.440 I always think that people who say that are confessing more than they are accusing, because

00:39:54.120 most of the people I've seen who claim that seem to be perfectly willing to use power as their

00:39:59.240 predominant mode of operation in the world. I guess I would also ask you, why is it that the story that

00:40:05.640 power is the fundamental animating spirit of civilization, let's say, but we'll say Western

00:40:11.560 civilization, just to keep it narrower? Why do you think that story has such resonance,

00:40:16.840 especially given, well, let's leave it at that?

00:40:21.320 I have thoughts that also pertain to the schools, because to me, and then I'll answer your question,

00:40:28.920 but I'm curious, what are the origins of schools, and why to the left and not toward the right?

00:40:39.880 So if you've got a group, and we've all done it, where they go, we want you to speak to a group of

00:40:46.360 commercial property builders. You know, these guys do tenant improvement work, and they do commercial work,

00:40:53.160 and they're real estate developers, and engineers, and architects, and builders.

00:41:00.120 You'd know who you were talking to. I mean, you'd know what their politics were. Just a small example,

00:41:07.640 in my spare time, I like to race cars. All the guys who show up to the track, they basically have the same

00:41:15.320 politics. And the reason they have the same politics is because they live in a world where they have to

00:41:21.400 prepare their car, then they have to go out and execute it, and they have to drive their car,

00:41:26.120 and it's a real meritocracy, because someone's going to get the checkered flag, and someone's

00:41:30.680 going to come in last. And they have a sort of collective mindset. Just like you know,

00:41:35.960 most people who run a small business have a sort of mindset. They want less regulation,

00:41:42.040 and lower taxes, and breaks, and they tend to be Republicans. So what are we finding on school

00:41:48.840 campuses? Well, school, who is attracted to be a professor? Who's attracted to be a school teacher?

00:41:56.600 It really is a little slice of socialism here in the United States. We're basically saying,

00:42:03.480 you get a job, you don't get paid that much, but you can never get fired, you'll get tenure,

00:42:09.480 it'll be an easy life, you'll never really have to hang your neck out or your shingle out,

00:42:15.720 there's no chance you're going to go bankrupt, there's no chance you're going to be at the top,

00:42:20.200 and there's no chance you're going to be at the bottom. You'll just sort of have a job forever.

00:42:24.520 So those are the people who are attracted to the profession. Nobody I know who's an entrepreneur

00:42:31.800 is attracted to be a school teacher. Maybe later on, after they've sold their third company and have,

00:42:38.200 you know, more money than they can, than they can count, they want to go back in and teach some

00:42:43.720 business classes or something like that. But you're attracting people who have a little bit

00:42:49.240 of a socialist bent or leaning just from the beginning versus folks who want to go into the

00:42:56.040 military or folks who want to start their own small business. Now, how long would it take for those people

00:43:04.840 to start indoctrinating your kids? I don't want to use a word that's that strong, but it's essentially

00:43:11.080 getting them to sort of think the way you think. I use this example. What if all teachers were

00:43:19.560 vegetarians? They said vegetarian. How long before your kid came home for Thanksgiving and said meat was

00:43:26.360 murder? It would be impossible for them not to sort of have that through osmosis or beyond

00:43:35.080 sort of push that agenda to your kids. So it's going to go this way. It has to go this way because

00:43:43.560 the campuses are inhabited with people who naturally lean toward that and lean away from the entrepreneurial

00:43:52.840 spirit. Then once the kids graduate, they end up at the New York Times and now the New York Times is the

00:44:00.440 New York Times. So this shall continue, in my opinion, because at its fiber, that's what it's based on.

00:44:10.920 I was talking to a group of Canadian dissident academics yesterday, and one of them, Janice Fiamengo,

00:44:17.320 she's a former feminist, a former English professor, and who abandoned her leftist ideology a number of

00:44:25.080 years ago and has become a very vocal and articulate critic of leftist activism in academia. She pointed

00:44:31.800 out something quite interesting that's a bit different in terms of its causal pathway, let's say,

00:44:36.840 in the universities. You know, back in the 60s, women's studies was established, and women's studies

00:44:43.880 putatively was about women, but perhaps it was mostly about critique of male dominance. And so then

00:44:50.280 perhaps it was particularly about critique of dominance. And that idea got a toehold in the

00:44:55.800 universities and started out with women's studies but spread to the whole grievance studies industry,

00:45:00.760 and that's more or less taken over the administration and, you know, pushed its tentacles out into the

00:45:08.440 rest of the faculties as well. Literature, English literature in particular, the humanities more

00:45:13.320 generally, the social sciences to some degree, and now increasingly biology and physics. It's not so much a

00:45:19.000 temperamental argument, you know, as a structural argument that we set up an institution that was

00:45:24.600 based on, what would you say, resentment and hatred, at least to some degree, and then that generalized

00:45:30.840 across the disciplines. Well, yes, I agree fully with that. I just want to go back to the question

00:45:38.680 you posed about power. You made, you offered a throwaway line, which I thought was utterly correct

00:45:45.480 and insightful, that when the left talks about power, it's confession rather than accusation alone.

00:45:53.160 That is, and here is a massive disadvantage to people who are conservative.

00:46:01.960 I'll use myself as an example only because I speak for many in this way. I have been asked to run for

00:46:08.200 office all of my public life, and I actually once did file to run for senator of California, and then I

00:46:15.320 woke up sober, and I don't even drink, but it was a moment of non-sobriety. In any event, I have always

00:46:26.440 said on the radio, I am infinitely more interested in influence than power. I have no interest in having power.

00:46:34.280 How to distinguish them. How to distinguish them? Yes, because I can only, influencing you is not

00:46:43.080 the same as having power over you. I cannot tell you that you must keep your store closed and go out

00:46:50.680 of business because of a virus. I have no desire to have that power, and I resent those who do.

00:46:56.760 And if you used your influence, how would that differ from the expression of power?

00:47:01.240 Well, power is coercive. Influence is not. Everybody wants to.

00:47:05.720 Okay. Well, let's expound on that a little bit, because this does get to this question. See,

00:47:09.320 I'm staggered by the idea that a very large minority of the population now appears to believe that the

00:47:17.400 guiding spirit of human civilization is the arbitrary expression of power, rather than something like

00:47:22.600 influence or cooperation or negotiation. The left cannot influence. That's why they don't debate us.

00:47:29.880 I have had the number of leftists who have accepted invitations to my radio show in 35 years,

00:47:35.720 can be counted on the digits of your hands and feet. I even had Howard Zinn came onto my show.

00:47:42.440 I have said I will pay $1,000 to any New York Times columnist, other than Bret Stephens, who comes on

00:47:49.960 anyway, to come onto my show. I will travel anywhere to debate them, but it doesn't happen. I'll pay $10,000

00:48:00.280 to have any black leader debate Larry Elder. They'll never do it. They don't debate.

00:48:07.720 Because they're crappy at influence. They're great at power. And that's what they know. Power.

00:48:14.760 And so they would say, well, you call it influence because that puts you in the moral high ground,

00:48:23.800 but you're a privileged person. You're white. You have access to a huge media empire. You can say

00:48:31.080 what you want, and you can talk to millions of people. You call that influence, but we call it

00:48:36.200 power. And part of it is because you didn't deserve what you have. And that's a consequence of your

00:48:41.720 privilege. I mean, this isn't something I believe. So how do you explain Oprah Winfrey?

00:48:58.280 I'm sorry. Are we still on? Well, because Jordan had to switch between the person that was

00:49:06.520 trying to punch holes in your point and then back to himself. So I don't think Jordan knew

00:49:12.600 how to reply in terms of should I reply as myself or the naysayer that is talking about

00:49:18.440 Well, yeah, I couldn't come up with an argument from the perspective I was trying to put forward. I

00:49:23.800 mean, I think Oprah Winfrey was successful because she's credible and remarkable. That's my hypothesis.

00:49:30.120 But OK, so so she's a token. How about that? She's a token. Yes, she's a token. So it's the the the

00:49:39.080 number of black influencers in our society is Don Lemon a token. I mean, it's it becomes an absurdity

00:49:46.840 after a certain period of time. Anyway, that's it's a non sequitur. Whether or not I have an advantage

00:49:54.360 being white is a non sequitur to the to the issue of I don't want power over other people.

00:50:01.880 We conservatives want to be left alone. The left does not want to be left alone and they don't want

00:50:08.440 to leave you alone. I want to leave you alone, except for the most obvious things you can't murder,

00:50:13.640 you can't steal, etc. But by and large, we want to leave others alone. I know they will raise abortion,

00:50:19.880 but if they don't acknowledge that abortion is at least a moral issue and there is an issue whether

00:50:25.640 it should be banned, I fully acknowledge that. But there is no issue about whether it is a moral

00:50:30.760 issue. They deny that it's even a moral issue that that the human fetus is is is worth less,

00:50:38.680 literally worth less than a hamster. There are laws protecting hamsters. There were no laws protecting

00:50:44.280 the human fetus. I mean, it's so but but other than that, they can't come up. We don't we don't want to

00:50:49.560 intervene in your life like they want to intervene in ours. That is why the masks issue became one

00:50:55.800 political. You would think it's just science. By the way, if we did follow the science,

00:50:59.880 the New England Journal of Medicine last year, which nobody bothers quoting, did say that they

00:51:05.080 were essentially worthless outdoors and they weren't worth much indoors either. Then they went and said,

00:51:10.840 oh, of course, we weren't saying people shouldn't do it, but they didn't take away their original

00:51:15.080 case. They want the mask issue is in large measure what conservatives think it is power,

00:51:22.680 not science. Well, I think we fortunately, in a in a bizarre way, just live through this experiment

00:51:33.240 called COVID-19. You pretty much could divide the country into red states and blue states. So if you just

00:51:41.480 sort of looked at it as a as an experiment, let's just see if we can remove the politics of sorts from

00:51:51.640 it and even the disease itself or any knowledge we have of it, of personal people who died or people

00:51:58.360 who got it or whatever it is, if you it's if you just sort of looked at it more as a metaphor,

00:52:03.480 you take the country, you take the blue states and how they reacted. Dennis and I are in California,

00:52:12.200 or you could have Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan. She was telling the blue states were telling you,

00:52:18.920 don't go boating. California arrested a guy who was paddle boarding alone in the Pacific Ocean. I mean,

00:52:26.440 the footage is breathtaking. It's literally a guy on a surfboard with a paddle standing alone,

00:52:34.360 nobody within yards, maybe miles of him, and a boat pulls up and they literally arrest the guy

00:52:41.800 on the beach, which obviously is much more dangerous than whatever it is he was doing alone.

00:52:46.440 But if you just said, let's just do a little mind, let's have a little experiment.

00:52:51.080 This disease showed up. How did the right-leaning states act and how did the left-leaning states act?

00:53:00.680 Well, that's all you need to know. I mean, it doesn't need to be a virus. It's the left snapped

00:53:07.480 into action and started doing what they wanted to do, which is control. California's Gavin Newsom

00:53:15.320 and Mayor Garcetti. They all jumped into control because that's what they wanted to do. It's almost

00:53:23.800 like we all had those friends. Do you guys know if there's any data on death rates between red and

00:53:30.440 blue states? Any reliable data? Because that'd be quite interesting. Yeah, there is reliable data.

00:53:36.680 And you may recall that when Texas dropped all of its mandates, the president of the United States

00:53:43.800 said it was Neanderthal thinking and there was absolutely no spike in cases or deaths in Texas.

00:53:50.120 Nobody talks about it now because the president said something incredibly stupid,

00:53:55.000 but typically of the left. They dismissed all freedom-loving policies with regards to this

00:54:03.400 particular disease. We should have followed what Sweden did. I never thought in my life that I would

00:54:08.680 use Sweden as my moral model in Western society, but the world is not fully predictable.

00:54:15.480 But I think we have our answer as to which side wants more control because the outcome ended up being the

00:54:23.560 same or in many cases better for the red states. So it had really nothing to do with science and it

00:54:32.600 really didn't have anything to do with data. It's just the left saw it as an opportunity to do what

00:54:39.560 they want to do, what they're inclined to do, which is control. And the right is the argument that Dennis

00:54:46.280 made, tried some things, but they were trying to refrain from the sort of totalitarity of what the

00:54:56.520 left was doing, which is total control. So it was a little experiment. We just went through it.

00:55:01.560 We got the results. And I, I think it's, it's, it's pretty self-evident at this point.

00:55:09.320 It is.

00:55:11.480 All right. So let's go back to the movie, if you don't mind. We took a large detour and it was

00:55:15.640 worthwhile, but you, you tell us about, tell us about no safe spaces first, and then tell us about,

00:55:21.400 you know, your, your attempts to get it distributed or the attempts to get it distributed.

00:55:26.360 Well, I'll, I'll, I'll start with the, the movie and then Dennis will go on to the, uh,

00:55:33.720 attempts to be distributed. Um, Oh, I actually wanted it to reverse.

00:55:38.040 Okay.

00:55:38.520 But that's fine. Either way. Uh, you know, Dennis and I are, are very different. We have very

00:55:48.360 different backgrounds, but we do have common sense in common. And I have found more and more,

00:55:56.440 and I'm assuming you guys feel the same way, which is just finding someone with common sense

00:56:02.520 seems to trump all the other characteristics that we're constantly talking about, about, you know,

00:56:08.360 where, what region you're born in or who your team is or what color your skin is. Uh, Dennis and I

00:56:15.080 always had common sense in common and we struck up a great friendship. We've done many speaking

00:56:21.800 engagements. We've always had a great time in each other's company. And so when the producers came to

00:56:27.880 us with this idea, uh, I immediately jumped at it just cause it's selfishly seemed like we could spend

00:56:33.560 a lot of time together talking about a subject that we're both pretty passionate about, which is

00:56:39.400 free speech. And since the time we made this movie, I, I, I, I feel like things have gotten much worse.

00:56:47.160 I think the movie was a bit ahead of its time in terms of what it is, the subject matter. And now I

00:56:56.280 feel like in just the three or four years since we started this free speech issue has gone into

00:57:03.720 overdrive. Go ahead, Dennis. Yeah. A word on the movie and then a word on the distribution.

00:57:11.160 I I've said from the beginning and I, um, I I'm neither arrogant nor humble. Uh,

00:57:17.080 I, I, I, I just pretty much try to see myself in life objectively. Uh, and I, so I have said, uh,

00:57:27.880 this is a great movie and it's not a great movie cause I'm in it might be a great movie cause Adam

00:57:33.160 is in it, but the truth is it's a great movie. And Adam and I happen to be the quote unquote stars,

00:57:39.960 but that's not the point of the movie. Uh, I have watched this about five times. I have the attention

00:57:45.960 span of a child. And so for something to keep me riveted five times, uh, speaks, um, uh, immensely

00:57:53.320 about it. It is, it is, it truly is an important movie. It's more important today, even than when

00:57:57.960 it was made about free speech and it's gotten movies within the movies. And anyway, people should see it.

00:58:04.760 I should, I'd like to point out too, just, just as an advertisement of sorts, there's a Canadian

00:58:10.920 equivalent to that movie called better left unsaid that has faced the same sort of distribution

00:58:15.080 problems that you guys have faced. And it focuses on issues that are more germane to Canada,

00:58:19.480 although also relevant to the U S and so, um, well, they deserve a note. They deserve a mention.

00:58:26.360 So I'm glad you pointed out. I happen to think that things are worse in Canada than in the U S.

00:58:31.880 Uh, but, uh, that's an interesting discussion for either another time or later on today.

00:58:36.760 So what was your impetus for making, I'm in the movie. Let me just talk about the distribution.

00:58:41.640 Yes. Yes. Netflix refused to distribute it, uh, uh, to, to stream it, which is incredible

00:58:49.000 given how popular the movie is. Okay. So make a case for that. Like why? Okay. So Netflix should

00:58:55.080 have been incentivized as, as far as you're concerned by the fact that the movie was economically

00:58:59.400 successful. And there are other streaming agencies too online that are fairly powerful. So Amazon,

00:59:04.760 et cetera, have you had any interest from any of the streaming agencies?

00:59:09.000 Yeah. Well, it's interesting. I don't know the, I'll look up the Amazon question. I know that the

00:59:13.800 Walmart doesn't sell it in its stores. They, they have the same thing. Uh, all you need really in,

00:59:20.520 in at Netflix or Walmart or any of these is one or two people who are woke, uh, to tell, uh,

00:59:27.720 you know, we can't do this. We're going to get a bad name. Uh, and then, you know, what,

00:59:32.360 what is it to Netflix not to listen to somebody who says, Oh, Dennis Prager. We know, we know for

00:59:37.240 a fact that it was my name. That was the trigger, which is an interesting thing, uh, which I,

00:59:43.000 one day will be fascinating to discuss. Uh, because whenever my name is, is raised, uh,

00:59:49.080 as this bugaboo, I always say, well, can you say anything in 35 years of broadcasting 10 books,

00:59:55.880 literally 1000 columns on the internet, plus tens of thousands of hours of the radio recorded say

01:00:03.560 one thing that I have ever said that strikes you as extreme. And so there's never an example.

01:00:10.200 There's literally never the New York times did a piece on me. They couldn't find one sentence.

01:00:14.840 Uh, they, they made up something. In fact, they says that Prager suggested, and I always tell people,

01:00:21.080 if they don't say said, don't believe the line suggested is the New York times, not what I said.

01:00:28.280 And then they had no quotes, but anyway, I've had the same experience, Dennis, you know,

01:00:32.920 I have, I know that I can't find a thing you've ever said that is an ennobling.

01:00:41.160 I love your work. I wrote the preface. I wrote the introduction to your biography.

01:00:45.880 I had, uh, I had this experience as well. And then I have another thought, which is,

01:00:53.480 uh, I got into a lot of trouble and I got out of favor with critics because, um, it was widely

01:01:01.800 said that Adam Carolla said women weren't funny. Now this is perfect. And you guys have experienced

01:01:08.760 a version of this. I did an interview years ago and the person said at the end,

01:01:14.520 who's funnier men or women. And I said, well, I think men are, I think it's based on them trying

01:01:23.080 to have sex essentially. So they had to exercise that muscle a little bit, but I know many female

01:01:30.600 comedians that are funnier than anybody, any guy ever went to high school with that then turned

01:01:36.520 into Adam Carolla said women weren't funny. And then they just ran with it. And that's up there

01:01:44.120 with that.

01:01:44.680 Well, look, it's, it's pretty, pretty credible what you say, because my sense is, is that

01:01:49.640 there's been a couple of things I've said that have been blown up in the press, you know, and they were

01:01:55.960 exaggerations of the sort that you're describing taken out of context.

01:02:00.040 I think that in the current climate, if you've ever said anything reprehensible

01:02:04.040 on public record, that you will be slaughtered for it. And so if you haven't been slaughtered for

01:02:09.000 it, the probability that you haven't said anything reprehensible is pretty damn high.

01:02:13.800 Because people are combing over the utterances of people like you trying to find a smoking pistol.

01:02:21.000 I don't know if you can comb over things to find a smoking pistol, but I will tell you another

01:02:26.280 institution that's sort of been ruined. And I think Jordan was sort of getting to it,

01:02:32.760 and it sort of gets back to the oboe or the cello player for the New York Philharmonic.

01:02:39.880 How do you say that one film is definitively better than the other film?

01:02:46.520 You know, it is subjective and, or objective and, and, or subjective, sorry. But you are,

01:02:55.240 you know, so a lot of the answers is sort of make a better film and you'll get in,

01:03:00.360 you'll get onto Netflix or make a better film and you'll get into the Sundance Film Festival. So

01:03:07.240 I've had five films all turned down from the, from the Sundance Film Festival.

01:03:12.520 Now, Jordan, the way Jordan's mind is working is you're thinking, well, how, but how do you know?

01:03:19.000 I mean, they could have just...

01:03:19.800 No, I'm thinking, why don't you organize your own damn conservative film festival?

01:03:23.640 Well, that too, but it could have been, but the, the, the, the academic in you is thinking,

01:03:30.120 how do we define that? And, and as we spoke about earlier, when the guy hits 40 home runs in a

01:03:36.360 season, that's definable. And, uh, when the guy drains 14 three-pointers in a playoff game,

01:03:42.920 that's pretty definable, but how do we do it with documentaries? And there's an...

01:03:47.400 Well, you could, you could make the case with your film that, I mean, it, it had a reasonable

01:03:51.800 success. I, I hope I've got this right. It had reasonable success at the box office. I mean,

01:03:56.760 it had enough success at the box office, so it should have been economically interesting

01:04:00.520 for a place like Netflix or Walmart. Uh, agreed. So another system that's sort of been corrupted

01:04:08.440 is you used to be able to go on to the website, Rotten Tomatoes, and literally check the score

01:04:15.960 of the film. And it's not an exact science, but you, your film gets a score and my film gets a score

01:04:22.840 and her film gets a score and it's pretty good. Now, if you look at No Safe Spaces, uh, the critics,

01:04:30.360 have it under 50%, somewhere 46%, and the audience has it at 99%. And I would argue we're, we now must

01:04:41.320 remove the critics from the equation because the critics are so left and so woke that there's

01:04:49.640 nothing, you know, Dennis Prager could make Gone with the Wind tomorrow and it would get under 50%

01:04:56.120 on Rotten Tomatoes. So they've screwed up their own, they've corrupted their own system or sort of

01:05:02.360 polluted their own system. You must now go with the audience because there's two scores. There's the

01:05:08.920 critics score and then there's what the people thought. And we now have to throw out the critics.

01:05:14.200 And by the way, it's a two way street. One of the, you know, films that would be an Oscar nominated

01:05:21.400 film that started, started a young gay black man who was struggling with his sexual, that'll be 96%

01:05:28.680 with the critics and 65% with the people. Well, you know, that's a testable hypothesis. You could

01:05:34.200 rank order films by discrepancy between critics and audience and then rate them according to their

01:05:38.840 political, uh, affiliation. And you'd have the answer right there. You could probably, you know,

01:05:43.640 a good statistician could do that in a day, be a very interesting thing to do.

01:05:47.400 Because you might be right. A loud statistician could do it in a day.

01:05:50.920 Yeah. Yeah. You're right. That's a great point, Jordan.

01:05:54.280 Yeah. It's very simple. It's very simple.

01:05:55.880 It's not only what the theme of the film is, it's, does it have Dennis Prager's name on it?

01:06:04.360 Take a look at the arc of Clint Eastwood directed films and watch how they shrank in the eyes of the

01:06:11.560 critics over the years, since he spoke to the, um, famously spoke to the bar, the empty bar stool

01:06:18.760 at the, at the convention. I know his film about the, that featured the car and, and the Asian

01:06:25.160 family next door, which I really liked. I mean, that's got slammed for racism. Yeah. Grant Torino,

01:06:30.600 even by some of the actors that were in it, who I thought were extremely ungrateful,

01:06:34.120 that my personal opinion, I thought that was a remarkably non-racist film. I mean,

01:06:41.720 Eastwood was played a character who was, you know, a standard conservative of the Archie

01:06:45.880 Bunker type essentially. But as he got to know his neighbors, he placed his allegiance to them

01:06:52.520 over that of his own family, who he saw as becoming morally corrupt. How in the world that's a racist

01:06:57.720 film is absolutely beyond me. But Jordan, I think you're not factoring in

01:07:04.920 there's two factors. There is, what is the film? And then who directed the film?

01:07:11.400 Yes. Yes. Yes.

01:07:12.360 So if that, if that film was directed by Mark Ruffalo, there would be no, no issues. He's

01:07:18.440 a progressive actor, Dennis. I know you don't know any actors. You pick the actor that's on,

01:07:24.920 you know, George Clooney. If George Clooney directed

01:07:28.200 Gran Torino, it'd be 15 points higher, percentage points higher with the critics. That's, that's my

01:07:34.920 assertion. And I've studied it.

01:07:36.440 Well, it'd be fun to do the statistical analysis. Maybe somebody listening could whip that up,

01:07:40.360 because a good graduate student in psychology could do that very quickly. Maybe I'll have my,

01:07:44.440 one of my people do that. That would be fun. So why were you motivated, you guys, to do No Safe

01:07:50.120 Spaces? And what exactly is it examining? It's examining free speech, which alone,

01:07:58.360 I mean, first of all, everybody involved in it, all the directors, the writers, the producers,

01:08:04.360 were fantastic people. People I really admire and adore. And originally,

01:08:13.320 it was with me. And then very early on, they said, would you like to do with Adam Carolla? And

01:08:21.800 I don't know if your viewers are able to perceive this, but we, we really do adore each other.

01:08:30.120 And respect each other. And so the thought of doing this with Adam was

01:08:36.120 I was excited and it turned out that I had every reason to be excited. It's a great chemistry that

01:08:43.400 we have. Just to hear Adam describe how different our backgrounds is, is worth the price of admission,

01:08:50.120 which he does most of the time when we go public. Adam, why don't you give a brief

01:08:55.320 review of how different our backgrounds are?

01:08:57.720 Adam Carolla Well, first, our similarities. We're, we're both over six foot and that's where it ends.

01:09:06.280 Uh, Dennis is, you know, a New York, he's an East Coast guy. I grew up in North Hollywood,

01:09:12.280 California. Dennis is a scholar. I was put on academic probation at a junior college.

01:09:19.880 Dennis likes symphonies. I like prog rock. He likes gefilte fish. I like Philly cheesesteaks.

01:09:28.280 Where does it end, Dennis?

01:09:29.400 Dennis Well, what about, about the religious difference?

01:09:32.520 Oh yes. He's a very religious Jew. I'm essentially atheist slash pagan. So there's a, again,

01:09:44.040 but you know, the thing that, the thing I always find about, uh, Dennis is an intellectual honesty and

01:09:51.960 a pursuit of truth. And again, he's not interested in converting people. He's interested in having a,

01:09:58.760 a dialogue with people. And, and I don't know what, I don't know what happened to that process.

01:10:05.320 It feels.

01:10:06.040 Well, I know what happened to it. I mean, let's, let's examine that for a minute or two. Okay.

01:10:10.840 So first of all, to have a dialogue, you have to assume there are two people involved at minimum,

01:10:16.760 right? Dialogue. And that there's a logos involved, that there's a logic there that operates within

01:10:23.000 each individual and between them. And that they are of the sort that can be brought to a different

01:10:29.960 standpoint, a different understanding by the mutual exchange of verbal information. And so

01:10:36.280 you have to believe that there's an individual on both sides who has something unique to contribute

01:10:41.000 and who can learn as a consequence of rational negotiation. And that that dialogical process

01:10:46.200 is the means to that. And if you don't believe that there's an individual, you believe that there's

01:10:50.360 group identity and you don't believe that there's negotiation and goodwill in, in, in that verbal

01:10:56.680 exchange, you only believe there's an exchange of power. There's no dialogue. And so that's why,

01:11:02.280 at least nominally, why the leftists that you described, the radicals, won't debate with you.

01:11:06.600 I mean, there's no debate. You see, it isn't, the people on, the liberals and the conservatives

01:11:12.520 think that free speech exists. The radical critics don't. It isn't about whether or not there should be,

01:11:20.440 that free speech should be allowed. It's deeper than that. It's whether or not there is such

01:11:25.320 a thing as free speech. Like, you know, when the, when the critical race theorists and so forth say

01:11:31.080 that this is a, that they're offering a fundamental critique of Western civilization,

01:11:36.120 I think the idea that it's Western, as I said, is, is somewhat in error, but that it's a fundamental

01:11:41.960 critique, they mean that. They mean all the way to the bottom. And so one of the ideas that's being

01:11:47.160 criticized is the idea of individuals, the idea that we can have dialogue, that there is logic,

01:11:52.520 that there is a logos that operates between people. That's all on the table. And that's

01:11:58.280 why there's no reason for debate. Besides, you don't have anything to say, Adam. You're just an

01:12:02.840 expression of your group. And if you don't know that, that's just your ignorance or perhaps your

01:12:08.600 malevolence or your self-serving power, something like that. I mean, this really is a fundamental

01:12:13.320 critique.

01:12:14.280 Adam is a representative of construction workers.

01:12:18.440 That's right. I'm a hard hat. Yeah, I, you're right. You know, I think there is a

01:12:25.400 circling back to Israel and the trials and tribulations. I think we sort of make a mistake

01:12:34.680 and we've run into this abroad with a lot of foreign policy is we assume they want what we want.

01:12:42.120 You know what I mean? Like everyone wants to live in peace. Everyone wants freedom. Everyone wants

01:12:46.760 harmony. And all we have to do is string together the right words in the right order. And we could

01:12:53.480 express that to them. So we sort of treat it as if you're having an argument with your wife and she

01:13:01.560 just doesn't understand that you really care about her and love her. And so you will put that down

01:13:08.360 on a greeting card and we will somehow write this ship or repair this. But if she wants you dead,

01:13:15.880 then what is it that you could say to her that would ever remedy that?

01:13:20.680 Well, we could modify that slightly because I think you could say that it might be the case that

01:13:27.640 the values that are put forward as central in the West explicitly are the most essential human

01:13:34.040 values and that that's universal, but that a dedicated minority in any place can put the boots

01:13:39.720 to that pretty damn rapidly. And so when the foreign policy idea is, well, there is a desire

01:13:45.960 for freedom that's part and parcel of the human spirit, fair enough. But how much opposition does

01:13:51.320 that have to run into before it's impossible? And the answer might be, and I think it could well be,

01:13:55.960 that it doesn't have to run into that much opposition to be in jeopardy. Like a committed minority,

01:14:01.320 even a committed small minority can have a disproportionate effect. I think there's evidence

01:14:07.000 supporting that proposition. If I may, I want to comment on, as you did, on what Adam said.

01:14:15.800 I was a student at the two institutes at the School of International Affairs in graduate school

01:14:21.240 at Columbia, the Russian Institute and the Middle East Institute. I did Hebrew, Arabic, and Russian. So

01:14:26.760 I want you to know that Adam's analysis of the Middle East was more cogent than all of my professors

01:14:37.240 in the Middle East Institute at Columbia. He hit it, the bullseye, the staggering error of the naive

01:14:48.040 that everybody wants the same thing. And that's why, for example, I was taught the nonsense,

01:14:55.640 and I talked about this on Fox News two weeks ago, and it sort of went viral, that the battle

01:15:01.880 in the Middle East, I always knew, was not about land. If Israel were the size of Manhattan, they

01:15:07.000 would want to destroy it. No, it's not about land. No, no, no. But every single professor at Columbia

01:15:12.760 said it was land. The New York Times says it's land. They all say it's land. You know it, I know it,

01:15:19.800 and Adam knows it. It's that one side wants the other side dead. That's it. And that's because of

01:15:26.440 religion. Because for traditional Islam, there is no room for Jewish or Christian, for that matter,

01:15:34.040 hegemony in the middle of the Middle East. Period. End of issue. They want Israel dead. There was nothing

01:15:40.600 Israel. Israel withdrew from Gaza, and all they got was Hamas. Let me ask you a quick question about

01:15:47.400 that. Do you see any hope? I mean, Israel has been negotiating somewhat more successfully with

01:15:53.640 many countries in the Middle East now than, say, 15 years ago. Is that true or not? Yes,

01:15:59.240 in large measure, thanks to the man that is reviled by the left, Donald Trump.

01:16:03.720 Okay, so you do think it's true. Why would you attribute it to Trump?

01:16:08.200 Because Trump said, I don't give a hoot about the Palestinian radicals. They are not the central

01:16:15.240 issue in the Middle East. And as soon as the rest of the Arab countries saw that America was strong

01:16:20.440 and not bowing to the most radical elements of Islamic life, they said, you know what? Israel's not

01:16:27.000 all that bad, frankly, and we would like to do business with it. Okay, so I'm going to ask a meta

01:16:32.520 question here. Why do you guys think that that conflict got dragged into this conversation?

01:16:38.200 I mean, the reason I'm asking that is because, I mean, that conflict, everyone in the world,

01:16:42.440 their eyes are focused on it in a way that isn't true of any other conflict. And it's certainly not

01:16:48.680 a consequence of the number of people who are involved. There's something magical about that

01:16:53.560 conflict, and that pertains to your statement that it's not about land, it's about religion.

01:16:58.840 And maybe it's about even more than religion. Who knows? Perhaps not. But, you know, what was the,

01:17:04.280 what was, you think, that called forth that conflict into this conversation?

01:17:07.720 Adam correctly raised it. When he was talking about the gulf between liberal and left, he gave,

01:17:12.840 he, to his credit, raised the Middle East as an example. Liberals were always pro-Israel. The left was

01:17:19.800 always anti-Israel. And, and, and that's, if you can't see the moral clarity of the Middle East issue,

01:17:28.120 Hamas primitives versus a modern liberal democracy called Israel, there's something wrong with your

01:17:34.360 moral compass. So why do you think the radical left is pro-Palestine, particularly? Why did they pick that?

01:17:42.120 I don't know anything about the region, but I do sort of know what animates people. My feeling is,

01:17:50.280 and as, as someone who grew up with a mother who was sort of this way, and a grandmother who

01:17:57.880 dabbled in communism a little bit, they want to push back against everything that is. So it's,

01:18:08.920 it's more of an anarchist approach than it is, here's my plan. And they always, no one can really

01:18:16.280 say that out loud, but it's, it's more, it's sort of like defund the police.

01:18:21.240 So it's part of, it's part of revolution in a sense.

01:18:23.960 Yeah, it's just burn it all.

01:18:24.680 It's an extension of revolution.

01:18:26.680 It's basically, one house has a well-groomed lawn and a white picket fence, and the other one has a

01:18:34.200 sofa rotting on the lawn, and a guy smoking weed stand on the porch, and I only have one Molotov

01:18:40.600 cocktail. What direction do I throw it? It's always going to go toward the house with the white picket

01:18:46.680 fence, if these people are lighting the Molotov cocktail.

01:18:49.320 Yeah, well, one of the, one of the things I have noticed about when, in my discussion with well-meaning

01:18:53.640 people who tilt more to the left, say than you guys, is that they are genuine, generally,

01:19:00.120 relatively unwilling to consider the role of dark emotions in political motivation, right?

01:19:08.760 They tend to think things like, well, the people on the radical left, their heart's in the right

01:19:13.000 place, but their, you know, their means are wrong. But what they're trying to do is to stand up for

01:19:17.640 the oppressed, however badly they're doing it. And I think, well, I had this experience,

01:19:21.720 you can tell me what you think of this, but it really, it really, I just re-encountered it.

01:19:25.880 I was looking at the discussion I had with Slavoj Zizek a few years ago about Marxism,

01:19:31.400 putatively. That isn't really what the conversation ended up being about. But

01:19:35.080 I offered a 15-minute critique of the Communist Manifesto at the beginning.

01:19:39.400 And at one point, I described it to the audience as a call to bloody, violent revolution,

01:19:45.880 which is what it was. And there were a lot of people in the audience, a disproportionate number

01:19:51.640 for my audiences, who had come to see Zizek kick the slats out from underneath me. And so there were

01:19:56.920 a lot of people who were very far left in the audience. And when I said, call to bloody, violent

01:20:02.040 revolution, a good fifth of the audience cheered and laughed. And it stopped me in my tracks,

01:20:09.320 because it was quite chilling. You know, I heard the mob in that moment. And, you know,

01:20:16.200 it was a Freudian moment. Freud noted that people often laughed at things that had deep psychological

01:20:21.720 significance, and also that you could express your true feelings when you were hidden in a crowd.

01:20:27.400 Well, the true feelings were, well, the Communist Manifesto, who the hell cares about its rationality

01:20:32.760 and its justification? It's like, it's a call for a violent revolution. And ha-ha, hooray,

01:20:39.080 let's do it. And I thought, yeah, you bastards, you revealed yourself in that laugh, in that chilling,

01:20:44.120 awful, unconscious, willfully blind, malevolent glee at the notion of the picket fence burning down.

01:20:55.160 And the question is, well, what's generating that malevolence? And the surface story is, well,

01:20:59.720 you got that through ill-got means. And so the right thing to do is to take it back.

01:21:06.440 And that goes along with the claim that power is the fundamental motivation. What I can't

01:21:10.680 understand is how the hell those of us who don't believe that have been so weak, let's say,

01:21:17.080 that we allowed the educational institutions to be overtaken by the people who are propounding

01:21:21.320 that preposterous doctrine. It's like, what the hell's wrong with us? Conservatives and liberals alike.

01:21:27.720 What did we do wrong? Well, they know what they're doing in that they know everyone's Achilles' heel,

01:21:36.520 is a claim of power, especially power that's ill-gotten. You know, your dad's rich, now you're

01:21:43.960 rich. Yeah, yeah. And then your grandfather was a landowner. Right. And then race, right? So why do

01:21:50.600 you think they weave race into every single subject? It gets the other side to shut it up.

01:21:56.120 Yes.

01:21:57.000 And you don't have to prove your point. You just call everyone a racist and we can move forward.

01:22:03.640 Well, yeah, you put them on their heels right away, right? Because if you're yelling about systemic

01:22:08.120 racism and I object to it, I'm instantly a racist. It's so convenient. But that still doesn't excuse

01:22:14.440 our weakness in the face of that. Now, Dennis, you put your finger on something. You know, you said

01:22:19.400 the thing about conservatives is they like to be left alone. Well, so maybe that makes conservatives

01:22:25.240 particularly weak in the face. That's correct. You see, we have fulfilled lives outside of power.

01:22:32.360 I am fulfilled in so many arenas, having nothing to do with political power or running the board of

01:22:42.280 education in my local district. I am fulfilled by my religion. As you heard, I'm religious. I am

01:22:49.000 fulfilled. I love America. I love my Judaism. I love my family. I love my friends. I have synagogue

01:22:59.160 every week, one that I helped found. I mean, my life is so rich, not to mention my music, but theirs isn't.

01:23:08.680 Their richness derives from political activism. That is their raison d'etre. And as Adam pointed out,

01:23:19.320 the term I use is chaos.

01:23:22.120 Okay. So let me bug you about that for a minute. So I have some sympathy with your argument. I

01:23:29.000 think there's empirical data, if I remember correctly, showing that the most unhappy people

01:23:33.800 are left-leaning men. Right. Okay. So, but we'll leave that to the side.

01:23:38.280 Really? Not left-leaning? I think it's a tie.

01:23:43.080 So I can't remember the data well enough to cite it with perfect accuracy. So, but look,

01:23:49.640 so there's young people, they go off to university and they're looking for this sense of involvement that

01:23:54.280 you just described. Okay. Now, the leftist propagandists who are teaching them, let's say,

01:24:01.400 are appealing to that and offering them a kind of romantic adventure. Now, that matches their

01:24:08.680 developmental need at that point. That should be the point at which they're richly encultured by an intact

01:24:15.000 myth, something like that. Well, the fact that that isn't being provided in a credible manner

01:24:21.560 is what lays young people open to this kind of propaganda. So it still takes me back to the

01:24:26.680 failure of liberalism. Right. Forgive me, Adam, for just speaking again. I just need to say,

01:24:34.200 I have warned about this. I began lecturing at the age of 21. I have a very odd life.

01:24:39.320 And I remember telling audiences in my twenties, you speaking to my parents' generation, the World War II

01:24:47.080 generation. Your motto was, let's give the next generation everything we didn't have,

01:24:53.800 and specifically material, wealth, education, and peace. And the problem is, you didn't give us

01:25:04.680 what you did have. I knew this in my twenties. My parents did give it to me. It's not my parents.

01:25:12.200 But the World War II generation did not give their children Americanism or Christianity

01:25:19.800 in any coherent manner, and we are living the consequences.

01:25:24.680 Okay, so justify that. Why would you point to Christianity, for example?

01:25:29.720 It's a dominant, look, I'm a Jew, but it's a dominant religion of the West, and certainly of the

01:25:33.480 United States. If Christianity, look, Christianity failed in Europe, and we got Nazism, fascism, and

01:25:39.240 communism. What's going to happen in America when Christianity fails?

01:25:43.400 Yeah, well, you know, I've been talking to some of the people associated with the

01:25:47.320 rational atheist movement, and what I'm seeing there is some realization that whatever comes up to

01:25:53.160 replace the religion that they decried is going to be a hell of a lot worse than the religion that

01:25:57.240 they decried. It makes me think, too, you know, that there really is a... Go ahead, Adam.

01:26:01.960 What we get is wearing masks outdoors and copious amounts of hand sanitizing, even when it's

01:26:09.800 unnecessary. I mean, that is what COVID has taught us, that this is the new religion. It transcends

01:26:17.000 science in many cases. Guys, I've got to jump off because I have to begin my podcast, but I thank you so

01:26:27.080 much for having me, Jordan. Adam, it's a pleasure talking to you. And I hope we can have you on my

01:26:32.600 show sooner than later, because I always enjoy speaking to you, and I'll leave it in the very

01:26:37.960 capable hands of Dennis Prager now. I'd like that, so let's arrange that, okay? I'd like to do that.

01:26:43.640 Please, please. Okay, see you, Adam.

01:26:45.560 All right, thanks, Adam. Thanks. So let's go down the religious route a little bit, and we still,

01:26:52.120 you know, we still haven't talked about the censorship that No Safe Spaces has faced. I

01:26:57.080 mean, we touched on it a little bit with Netflix and Walmart. Well, that's the dominant arena,

01:27:03.560 and obviously it's completely ignored by the mainstream media, which review nonsense,

01:27:09.080 and this is not a nonsense film. Look, the most important answer to all of this is for your copious

01:27:16.040 number of viewers to actually watch it. It's available online at so many vehicles, No Safe Spaces.

01:27:22.040 Just, you know, Salem Now. I know my syndicator has it, SalemNow.com or NoSafeSpaces.com. It's easy to find.

01:27:32.200 We have to... There are conservative films that I watch out of duty. This one is not out of duty. This

01:27:41.880 is out of pleasure. It is quite powerful. So the only answer is to succeed without them.

01:27:51.880 But what they have done to the film is not economically or certainly not morally justifiable.

01:27:59.560 And it gives you an idea, although I think you have an idea, of what we're living through today.

01:28:08.440 Well, it's funny that a movie about free speech is having a hard time finding distribution. I mean,

01:28:14.280 in fact, you could probably, you could hardly hope for a better outcome in some very, you know,

01:28:20.360 perverse sense. Just out of curiosity, have you just, what would happen if you just placed it on YouTube?

01:28:31.000 What would happen if we just, that's an interesting, I don't know the answer. I would have to ask the

01:28:35.000 producers. I only know the content more than that. You mean just free, just free, free.

01:28:42.920 Well, it wouldn't just be free because you could monetize it through ads. Now that's not a tremendous

01:28:47.320 way of generating revenue, but it might be a way of, it would also be interesting to see what would

01:28:51.640 happen. Well, look, the truth is, I mean, they have, they're very honorable, these guys. I haven't

01:28:56.840 gotten a penny, just for the record. I didn't do this for money to begin with. I would have been happy to

01:29:01.400 make money. I'm not anti-money, but I didn't do it for money. I did it because I believe so strongly

01:29:06.920 in the message and the greatness of the film. But their first thing was to repay the people who did

01:29:14.040 invest in the film. And that's, I know that's one economic constraint. It can't be shaken so easily.

01:29:20.600 That's right. It was an expensive, as people will see, it is really well done. But we're living,

01:29:28.600 I mean, Jordan, we're just living in a different world. I'll give you a great example. You'll find

01:29:35.080 this fascinating. I was on Bill Maher's program. I know you've been, I was on a year and a half ago,

01:29:41.880 right before the lockdowns. I never say, by the way, COVID, I would say lockdown.

01:29:47.400 And I was on October, actually, the lockdowns began in February or March. So he was talking about

01:29:56.040 how much Donald Trump lies. And I said, you know, as much as you think he lies, it doesn't compare

01:30:01.800 to left-wing lies. He says, really? Like what? And this is, by the way, you could see this,

01:30:06.280 anyone could see this on YouTube, my appearance on his show. So I said, well, for example,

01:30:13.800 that America is systemically racist. It is one of the greatest lies in the history of the world.

01:30:18.120 In fact, in my view, I think it's not a lie. I think it's an anti-truth. Because lies just slip

01:30:25.160 by, right? An anti-truth is a lie that's so egregious that it's the opposite of what's true.

01:30:31.320 I love it. I will cite you. And I will always cite you. I will never claim that I made up that term.

01:30:36.760 That's great. So, in fact, you will like that. What I have said and written,

01:30:41.000 I taught Jewish history at Brooklyn College, and I've written books on Jewish history.

01:30:46.680 So I have said that this is the greatest national libel since the blood libel. The medieval blood

01:30:56.200 libel, for those of your reviewers who don't know, is when Christians accused Jews in the Middle Ages

01:31:03.400 of killing Christian children to use their blood to bake matzah for Passover, which was equally evil

01:31:10.920 and absurd. Massive numbers of Jews were tortured to death as a result, and all of the Jews of England

01:31:16.920 were expelled from the whole country as a result of that libel. The second greatest national libel,

01:31:24.600 in my opinion, is that America is systemically racist. America is the greatest attempt at non-racial,

01:31:31.880 multi-ethnic, multi-racial country in the history of the world, and one of the...

01:31:38.200 Okay, but you don't deny the existence of racism or prejudice, obviously.

01:31:42.120 Okay, so why do you have such trouble with the term systemic?

01:31:47.240 Because systemic is sort of like when Barack Obama said it's in the DNA.

01:31:53.480 Systemic means that the system is geared to hurting blacks. The system is not...

01:31:58.600 Right, so it's the central tendency. The claim is systemic means central tendency.

01:32:02.600 Yes, exactly. It's built in. That's an anti-truth, to use your term.

01:32:09.960 Okay, so let me ask you a question from the side here for a sec, okay? I was looking at your work on

01:32:14.680 the Torah. I've been thinking about this idea. So the idea of systemic racism is the idea that the

01:32:20.120 central animating principle of the United States is prejudicial and racist to the point of enslavement.

01:32:28.840 That's the claim. And it's an analog of the claim that power is the fundamental motivation for

01:32:36.200 human interaction, at least under capitalist conditions, let's say. But I think it's even deeper

01:32:41.880 than that. And so now you've studied the Torah in depths, and I've been thinking... And you also

01:32:48.760 claim that the Torah is the Word of God. I've got that right, yes. Okay, now...

01:32:55.160 The Bible is the ultimate author, yes.

01:32:56.600 Okay, so I'm thinking of... The Bible is actually a set of stories that was told across a very long

01:33:01.800 period of time, and they were looped together for reasons that we don't exactly understand. I'm not

01:33:07.800 speaking as a religious person here, precisely. But there's a voice there that's part of the central

01:33:14.440 tendency of civilization. And it's not a voice that speaks of power.

01:33:21.960 That's right.

01:33:22.760 Okay, what does it speak of, as far as you're concerned?

01:33:27.160 Good and evil. It speaks about a just God who wants us to be good. It's almost to the point of

01:33:37.080 sounding corny. Well, every profound truth is corny, you know? I mean...

01:33:42.840 Oh, that's... I'll live with that. That's right. That's why I'm...

01:33:46.920 Okay, so what does good... What is the good that's represented in that book? How would you define it?

01:33:51.880 Because you wouldn't define it as power-seeking.

01:33:55.240 No, of course not. In fact, it's almost anti-power. Remember, I know you know this,

01:34:02.520 but God did not want the Israelites to have a king. Ironically, that was the gift of theocracy.

01:34:11.240 I'm not for theocracy in the modern age, but to be intellectually honest, the idea that God is the

01:34:17.400 ruler means that no man is the ruler. Yes, well, that's a very interesting...

01:34:22.280 More freedom and less power. Well, that's a very interesting issue, too, because I've been thinking

01:34:27.720 a lot about that psychologically, is that one of the advantages to parsing off the idea of

01:34:33.880 ultimate sovereignty into an abstract domain, which is what a religious claim does, especially

01:34:39.400 when it's attributed to a God that's even outside of nature, is that the central core of sovereignty can

01:34:45.960 no longer ever be identified with a single individual. That's right.

01:34:49.880 We have no idea how necessary... I've been thinking about the analogy there with a parliamentary or

01:34:55.640 with a constitutional monarchy, you know, because the Queen of Canada, the Queen of England, etc.,

01:35:03.240 she bears a tremendous amount of symbolic weight. And your president also bears that weight. And that's

01:35:09.560 actually a problem with the system, I think. Because the president has to bear the symbolic weight,

01:35:15.960 there's a tendency for him to become elevated beyond other mortals. I mean, you saw that sort

01:35:21.400 of thing happening in Rome with the deification of the emperors. And it seems to me, if you don't

01:35:27.560 parse off the idea of ultimate sovereignty into an abstract domain, you risk confusing it with

01:35:32.920 proximal leaders, or perhaps proximal ideas. Well, you know me somewhat, but I don't expect

01:35:42.120 you to know me well. And I can just tell you, I have often said on my radio show, which is now more

01:35:48.520 than 35 years, that the overriding message of all 35 years has been to teach people the consequences of

01:35:57.000 secularism, the deleterious consequences of secularism. Secularism is good for government,

01:36:04.920 and it stinks for everything else. And what you just raised was one of an, not infinite, but an

01:36:12.920 extremely large number of examples. We are living now through, leftism is a product of secularism.

01:36:19.880 And there was moral chaos. Dostoevsky was right. I mean, it's just a fact. You know,

01:36:27.160 where there was no God, all is permitted. We are living through it now. When you have

01:36:32.280 tens of thousands of medical people saying that if you demonstrate against racism, it's healthy,

01:36:40.120 after telling us to wear masks when we walk with our dog outdoors. I mean, the corruption of every

01:36:47.080 of every institution in this society has resulted. When there is no God, there is not only no good

01:36:54.520 and evil, but there is no math. That even I didn't predict. The Oregon Education Department

01:37:00.280 has announced there will no longer be only one right answer in math. Did you know about that,

01:37:05.720 Jordan? I've seen that sort of thing, you know, percolating. I didn't know it had become-

01:37:10.120 Yes, it is specific. The OED, Oregon Education Department, has announced this,

01:37:15.800 that that is the policy heretofore, or not heretofore, from here on.

01:37:22.280 Yeah, you know, there's a reason that Christ was a carpenter, you know. He got his measurements right.

01:37:26.920 Uh-huh. That's cute.

01:37:30.040 Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, it's more than cute, right? Because to build a house, you have to

01:37:34.200 tell the truth. Otherwise, it falls down, and you need to build it on a firm foundation.

01:37:39.000 Well, we don't have it. The foundation is being eroded. Oh, yeah. So, I was telling you about the

01:37:44.520 Bill Maher show. So, he said, so, he said, oh, the lies, the lies, the lies. I said, it doesn't

01:37:51.880 compare to the left-wing lies. That's when we got sidetracked, which is good, on America being

01:37:58.600 systemically racist. And I'll tell you another one, Bill, that men menstruate. And you gotta watch

01:38:07.160 this. It's actually, as I said, it's on YouTube. And he started laughing at me, and so did the whole

01:38:14.280 audience, that I would make up something so preposterous and ascribe it to the left. This is

01:38:21.320 October of 2019 that leftists, his audience, and he were laughing at the idea that anybody would say

01:38:33.560 men menstruate. Now, if you deny men menstruate, you are a hater, and you will be removed from public life.

01:38:44.680 I have another question for you about your religious writing. I'm going to talk to a number

01:38:49.080 of Islamic intellectuals in the next month. It's something I've been thinking about doing for

01:38:55.480 a long time, but I've been hesitant to for a variety of reasons, not least my ignorance of Islam.

01:39:02.200 You write about the Torah as the revealed word of God. And so, you know, I have a tremendous amount

01:39:11.160 of respect for biblical writings, and I've done my best to approach them in a humble and open attitude,

01:39:17.240 trying to understand what's there, assuming that there is something there, or the stories wouldn't

01:39:22.040 have lasted as long as they have lasted and guided the development of our entire civilization.

01:39:28.200 But there are plenty of claims to revealed truth. And so, there's obviously tension and

01:39:34.600 conflict between Islam and Christianity and Judaism, and they're all predicated on the idea of revealed

01:39:39.880 truth. And I mean, when you make a claim for revealed truth, how do you distinguish it from

01:39:47.160 other claims of revealed truth? Or how do you adjudicate between the claims? Because the way we

01:39:52.120 adjudicate between the claims is through war. That's not all that helpful at the present time.

01:39:58.360 You adjudicate, in this regard, I think you adjudicate using common sense. You would,

01:40:06.440 by their fruit, you shall know. That's from the New Testament, and I'm a big fan of that phrase and

01:40:13.320 that verse. So, the Torah, and I do isolate the first five books, as is the traditional Jewish view,

01:40:21.960 is that those are primus inter paris, the first among equals. And that is what gave us everything.

01:40:29.640 Let's put it this way. No Torah, no Bible, no Christianity, no Islam. So, in a sense,

01:40:38.120 I got a better case for the Torah's divinity than anything else, because everything else is predicated

01:40:45.160 on the divinity of the Torah. Muhammad fasted on Yom Kippur.

01:40:51.960 Okay. So, then you make a case, in some sense, I would say an implicit case, that

01:40:57.320 anti-Semitism, for example, is a marker of deviation from the path of the Torah,

01:41:03.480 but the path that runs, what, from the Torah through Christianity and through Islam as well?

01:41:08.920 I mean, because your point is, it's the fundamental text out of which these other systems grew.

01:41:15.480 Anti-Semitism is ultimately the hatred of the Jews for bringing and judging God into the world.

01:41:22.200 People don't want to be judged.

01:41:26.840 Well, that's understandable, you know, that people, although the problem is, is if you dispense with

01:41:31.160 judgment, you also dispense with value, and you dispense with…

01:41:34.040 Right. It's a big problem.

01:41:35.320 Right.

01:41:35.720 That's why I've been very annoyed…

01:41:38.040 Yeah, it's a big problem.

01:41:39.240 It is. I've been very… I tell my Christian friends that you don't get a more pro-Christian,

01:41:44.680 non-Christian than me in contemporary life, but I tell them, you blew it with just talking about God

01:41:51.240 as love. It's not…

01:41:52.760 Yeah, well, you know, Carl Jung said something interesting about that, you know, because the

01:41:56.600 Christ that's presented in the Gospels is a figure, I suppose, particularly characterized

01:42:02.840 for his mercy. But in the Book of Revelation, he comes back as a judge, and virtually everyone

01:42:10.920 fails the judgment. And Jung's comment was, any ideal is a judge.

01:42:16.600 Right.

01:42:17.560 And so, if you don't tell the whole story of the… So, the question is, do we need ideals? And,

01:42:22.120 you know, I would say, to some degree, part of the critique of the radical left is that ideals

01:42:27.560 themselves are discriminatory. And there's actually truth in that. Ideals are discriminatory.

01:42:33.480 That's correct.

01:42:34.040 The question is whether they're arbitrarily discriminatory. And if you say yes, then,

01:42:39.080 well, what do you strive for? And I guess the answer is for everyone to be equal.

01:42:43.080 All right. So, that's their discriminatory ideal. It means it discriminates against excellence.

01:42:51.560 Listen, the same crackpot, the head of classical music at the New York Times made a list. This is

01:42:58.040 years… This is like 20, 15 years ago. And only because I follow music do I even know this. He made

01:43:06.280 a list of the 10 greatest composers. And he didn't have Handel in it. Of course,

01:43:12.680 composed the Messiah. He didn't have Haydn in it, the father of the symphony and the string quartet.

01:43:17.640 And he didn't have Schubert in it. And he said, oh, well, you know why? He said… But he did have

01:43:23.720 Bartok in it, and he had Debussy in it, who were fine, but they're not in the top 10. I don't think

01:43:30.120 anybody could rationally argue that they are. But in any event, he said, why? He said, I just can't

01:43:36.200 have that many Austrian-Germans on the list. So, it wasn't the list of the best composers.

01:43:43.560 That's what… All of this is… It's anti-standards. That's…

01:43:48.600 Well, look, there's an attack on meritocracy, on the idea of meritocracy, right? So, I mean,

01:43:53.560 I've wondered, well, is that actually an attack on the idea of merit? And I would say yes,

01:43:58.440 it is, in fact, an attack on the idea of merit. I never really… Look, you know, you said something.

01:44:04.200 It was a throwaway line. You caught me on one of mine. I'll catch you on one of yours.

01:44:07.880 That anti-Semitism is rooted in people's

01:44:11.640 irritation at the idea of a judgmental God being brought into existence. I mean, that's a hell of a

01:44:17.240 claim. So, I mean, do you believe that that is the fundamental explanation?

01:44:23.480 Yes. There are a lot of non-Jewish analysts. Edward Flannery, a major Catholic writer,

01:44:30.280 and Ernest von den Haag, one of the greatest, clearest thinkers of the last century, they wrote

01:44:36.520 about this. The Jews introduced this God into history, and they've never been forgiven for it.

01:44:42.920 Also, this… I'll tell you another reason for anti-Semitism is people believe the Jews are chosen.

01:44:50.200 See, this is a very… Everybody acknowledges that Jewish chosenness is a reason for anti-Semitism.

01:44:56.520 However, as I pointed out, Jews are two-tenths of one percent of the world. Who gives a damn if

01:45:02.440 two-tenths of one percent of the world thinks they're chosen? The Chinese think they're the center

01:45:06.760 of the world. Well, chosen and successful might be very…

01:45:11.000 Ah, thank you. That's correct. That's exactly right. So, deep down, people don't laugh when Jews

01:45:17.240 say they're chosen. They don't believe that Japan gets the sun before the rest of humanity,

01:45:22.760 even though they are the land of the rising sun, and as the sun is on their flag. But nobody cares

01:45:27.800 if the Japanese think they get the sun first. But they do care if the Jews think they're chosen.

01:45:33.240 So, there's been a tremendous amount of resentment of the fact that maybe they are. But of course,

01:45:39.080 chosen never meant better. Never. By the way, one other thing that this is…

01:45:43.240 Yeah, well, you've got to ask yourself, do you really want to be chosen by God?

01:45:47.720 Well, as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof said, wanted to choose somebody else once…

01:45:53.080 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:45:53.960 …whose have not benefited from chosenness given…

01:45:58.200 Well, you know, you might say they benefited and suffered disproportionately.

01:46:02.280 All right, that's fair. Yes.

01:46:03.800 Yeah, and I don't know for sure if that's a fate that people would choose if they had the option.

01:46:08.440 That is exactly correct.

01:46:11.640 Okay, so let's go back to this revelation thing, because I'm going to have these discussions,

01:46:16.840 and I need some guidance. And so, we've got… Now, you made a claim, you know,

01:46:20.920 that the Torah is the source of Christianity and Islam, and Judaism, obviously, as well.

01:46:26.360 And so, because it's the source… Well, then, what should be the attitude of

01:46:32.520 other people of the book towards Jews and towards the Torah?

01:46:38.440 Well, among Christians, there's a schizophrenic view.

01:46:45.080 For many in the church until the modern period, the Jews were a living rebuke.

01:46:53.160 As one… I don't remember which Christian thinker said that the Jews crucified Christ

01:46:58.680 in every generation just by their continued existence.

01:47:01.880 Christians. So, there's been an animosity in Christendom because the Jews rejected their own.

01:47:12.520 Jesus was Jewish. The apostles were Jewish. The claims were made on the basis of the Jewish Bible.

01:47:17.480 And do you think that's distinct from a sort of intrinsic tribalism? Do you think there's more to it

01:47:22.520 than… I mean, we're tribal in a very deep sense.

01:47:25.960 Well, this transcended tribalism because it certainly wasn't ethnic. It was ideological. It was theological.

01:47:36.600 Jesus comes to the Jews, and the very people that he came to were the ones who said,

01:47:40.520 he's not God, and he's not Messiah. So, this created a fair amount of resentment.

01:47:47.240 And American Christians were an anomaly, and I love them for it. American Christians said they were the

01:47:56.760 second chosen people. The Jews were the first, and we Americans are the second, which I believe, by the way.

01:48:02.440 Okay, so let me ask you another question. This is a horrible question, and I've been dying to

01:48:08.760 think it through for a long time. So, there's a line of Christian thinking, I would say.

01:48:18.440 And Northrop Frye, I think, a Canadian critic who wrote some great books on the Bible. You might be

01:48:24.520 familiar with Frye. He wrote Words with Power, and there's a second volume, which I can't bring to mind at the

01:48:31.240 moment. But he thought about the Torah as the story of the sequential rise and failure of the state.

01:48:43.560 And that the New Testament was a consequence of the emergence of the idea that salvation was to be

01:48:49.960 found through the individual and not through the state. And that seemed to me to be parallel with the

01:48:57.640 tension in the Old Testament between dogma and the prophets. So, is it the case?

01:49:09.000 Is there a difference between Judaism and Christianity with regards to the degree to

01:49:14.200 which the state is seen as the primary mode of redemption? And is that tangled up with the conflict in Israel?

01:49:23.160 Well, there are a lot of issues that are tangled in one. First of all,

01:49:26.760 you should know that salvation plays a minimal role in Judaism. And I know Biblical Hebrew very well,

01:49:34.040 and I cannot think of even the term salvation.

01:49:38.440 Yeah, it seems to be more like the Promised Land.

01:49:41.960 Well, Judaism is earthbound. There's a belief, a tremendous belief in the afterlife, but it plays

01:49:50.120 minimal role in the Torah because as soon as you start focusing on the afterlife, the fear is that

01:49:56.600 you won't focus on this life. And Judaism is extremely this life focused. Secondly, this is a very

01:50:04.200 important point. It is actually my biggest single reason for my adoration of the Torah and Judaism.

01:50:11.080 It's the only religion that divides the world between good and evil and not between believer and

01:50:16.520 non-believer.

01:50:17.160 Right, right. So that seems to me from a psychological perspective as a move

01:50:23.800 towards a further abstraction.

01:50:26.280 Well, it's not a psychological issue. It's a moral issue.

01:50:30.200 That's fine.

01:50:30.840 In our view, God does not divide the world between Jew and non-Jew or believer and non-believer,

01:50:35.880 but between good people and bad people.

01:50:37.720 God sends good non-Jews to heaven and bad Jews to hell.

01:50:50.600 That's why Jews welcome converts but never sought them, because you don't have to be a Jew to be

01:50:55.640 saved. But you do have to be a Muslim and you do have to be a Christian.

01:50:59.400 Okay, so that's one example of, I think that's one example of the operation of the idea of salvation,

01:51:09.800 the implicit idea of salvation anyways, that there's a reward for proper moral behavior at

01:51:14.680 the individual level.

01:51:15.640 That's right. I think it's in my way to heaven.

01:51:19.240 Okay, what do you think about my other proposition is that one of the things that distinguishes

01:51:23.400 Christianity from Judaism is the relative role, the relative importance of the role of the state.

01:51:29.000 Now, you describe Judaism as earthbound, and I actually think that's one of its great advantages,

01:51:33.560 because Judaism does celebrate life in a rich and quite remarkable way, and glorifies earthly life.

01:51:41.480 And there are certainly strains of Christianity where that wasn't the case at all.

01:51:45.640 But then there is this emphasis, there seems to be a continued emphasis on the idea of the land

01:51:51.560 and the state. And then I said there's Fry's notion that the Torah is a sequential story of the

01:51:58.360 rise and failure of the state as the entity of salvation or redemption, and then the emergence

01:52:04.520 of the ideal. It's foreshadowed in some sense by the prophetic tradition. And you know, Christians

01:52:09.560 read that, of course, as Christ being first and foremost among the prophets. I mean, obviously also

01:52:15.240 the Son of God, but a continuation of that prophetic tradition. But the transformation seems to be

01:52:20.360 something like a more radical or explicit emphasis on the individual as the locale of the redemptive

01:52:26.760 battle. I mean, I might be wrong about this. That's why I'm asking.

01:52:31.640 The state, there is no state, so to speak. There are the prophets, and there are the priests. That's

01:52:40.600 where power resided. One had moral power, one had cult power, if you will, cultic. I don't mean cult

01:52:48.040 in a bad sense, but the cultic concept. And that was pretty much it. That's why, as I said,

01:52:54.440 the king arose against God's wishes. So it's not exactly a big state-centered religion if you don't

01:53:04.920 even want a king. Moses says that you shall appoint policemen and judges in Exodus. That's important.

01:53:17.720 You have to have a, it is, Judaism is not state-centered. It's law-centered. That's the interest.

01:53:24.440 All right. Well, let's look at Exodus, though. I mean, and so, Exodus, Moses leads the Jews out of

01:53:32.360 tyranny and then into this interregnum, which is a very interesting development, I think, because the

01:53:39.880 escape from tyranny isn't followed by redemption or salvation. It's followed by an even more chaotic

01:53:45.720 state that's even more dismal in some sense, which I think is unbelievably brilliant, right? Because

01:53:51.000 we tend to think a state of tyranny will dissolve and everything will be happy as a consequence. But

01:53:56.600 the Exodus story says, no, no matter how bad the tyranny, there's going to be an interregnum in the

01:54:02.040 desert where everyone loses faith. And then there's a journey toward the promised land. So that structures

01:54:07.480 the narrative. And it's the promised, it's the, it's this idea of the promised land that,

01:54:12.200 that, well, that I'm trying to focus on and understand. I mean, you, you characterize Judaism

01:54:17.720 just now as, as, as law, partly law and partly the cultic tradition, the priestly tradition.

01:54:24.200 But there is this, I mean, the story of Exodus, as you well know, is an absolutely central biblical

01:54:30.680 narrative. And it's a stunningly powerful story, but it does involve, it frames life as a journey

01:54:37.480 towards the promised land. And that, in that story, that being an actual land. And it seems to me that

01:54:43.960 part of the Christian transformation, I do think it has its roots in the Jewish, Jewish prophetic

01:54:48.520 tradition, is this change in emphasis. I mean, I was convinced by Fry's arguments, which weren't

01:54:53.480 anti-Semitic, by the way, in any sense.

01:54:55.960 I don't sound to me at all like that. It's not a way in which Jews understood themselves.

01:55:03.080 Let me put it to you that way. The promised land is where the, the law will be

01:55:11.720 put to use and a holy land with a holy people. This will be God's locus. I view the Jews as God's

01:55:22.760 third attempt at making a good world. The first was conscience. That didn't work. The second

01:55:29.080 was Noah and giving him basic laws. That didn't work. And then picking a people and giving them

01:55:36.040 the role to be a model. And, uh, that hasn't worked out too well either. Listen, uh, I would

01:55:42.840 love to continue. Can you give me a five minute break and I will continue?

01:55:46.040 Absolutely.

01:55:46.680 Okay, fine. All right.

01:55:47.720 So, um, I, I wanted to ask you further. So I'm hosting these discussions, as I mentioned,

01:55:59.720 with a more liberal Muslim scholar and a more conservative Muslim scholar, and I'm woefully

01:56:05.160 unprepared for it because what the hell do I know? But it seems to me that to whatever degree it's

01:56:11.640 possible that all of branches might be offered when they can be. And so that's partly why I was

01:56:17.880 curious about the, the, this issue of revealed truth. I mean, what do we do when we have complete,

01:56:23.640 competing claims to revealed truth and, and apart from war, because war in some sense is about

01:56:30.840 axioms that can't be given up. And, and that war is just not an option for us in the sense,

01:56:37.320 not an option like it was because the con the possibility of a gated cap.

01:56:41.960 I have thought about this a great deal. So I have a, I have a quick answer, but it's,

01:56:47.160 it took me decades to develop. And that is, if my criterion is not, is your religion true or mine true?

01:56:58.040 Uh, my criterion, I have two. One is what type of people do you produce? Uh, nothing else interests me.

01:57:07.800 Uh, if, if atheists produced, uh, uh, kind and wise people, I would give atheism much more seriousness

01:57:16.760 than I now do. Uh, but the, so my, my criterion is one, what type of people do you produce? And two,

01:57:28.040 do you bring people to the, the God of the 10 commandments? That's it. If your religion affirms

01:57:36.360 that God gave the 10 commandments, uh, I am a fan of your religion. If your religion does not affirm

01:57:44.760 that, then it may be beautiful. Uh, I have, I don't disqualify that possibility, but it is not,

01:57:53.320 it is not divine revelation given that. Remember when we say divine, we're talking about the God,

01:58:00.040 the Jews introduced to the world. You can't hijack our term. And so you can make up your own God, but

01:58:08.520 the God that was brought into the world is the God of the old Testament, specifically the God of the

01:58:14.520 Torah, specifically the God of creation, Exodus, and 10 commandments. If you affirm those, then you

01:58:20.680 you are a kindred religion to mine and have an essential truth to it. I don't believe in Jesus

01:58:27.560 Christ, but I do believe that Christians who bring the world to the God of the

01:58:33.400 Torah and the, to the 10 commandments. Are you doing God's work?

01:58:38.920 So, okay. So then that, that begs a broader question. I mean, we're not currently,

01:58:44.200 uh, there's no current major religious dispute that's worldwide between Christians and Buddhists,

01:58:53.640 let's say. And so where does that leave non, where does that leave religious believers who,

01:59:01.880 who aren't allied with the central book of the West, broadly speaking?

01:59:06.040 I don't, I don't have an issue. Uh, remember, since I believe God judges people by their ethics,

01:59:15.000 uh, I don't care if you're Buddhist, if you're, if, if Buddhism is created in you a good person

01:59:21.240 and, and giving you wisdom. I see. So you're using adherence to the,

01:59:24.440 to the 10 commandments as a, as a, as an explicit description of what constitutes ethical good,

01:59:31.160 essentially. Right. Yes, it is. But I admit, I fully acknowledge,

01:59:35.000 Buddhists are not, uh, teaching the 10 commandments as such. I, I understand that. Certainly, you know,

01:59:40.760 not a Sabbath day. By the way, not all Christians are teaching the Sabbath day either. Uh, 50% of the,

01:59:47.480 of the, uh, Catholic priests and Protestant ministers I've, I've asked, do you believe

01:59:52.440 Christians are duty bound to the observe the Sabbath have said no. So what do you think about,

01:59:57.960 Christ was asked in, in, this is outlined in the New Testament, which of the commandments he thought was

02:00:03.800 first and foremost, which is an interesting question, right? Because it presumes, it posits

02:00:09.560 that there's a central ethic that manifests itself across the 10 rules that's still implicit.

02:00:16.280 And Christ had an answer to that. Right. Love God and love man.

02:00:20.680 Yes. Which is, you know, quite an answer. And what was the, what was the comment? And no one dared ask

02:00:25.320 him any more questions after that, which I think is quite comical. Um, and, and it's one of those

02:00:30.920 little markers that makes you think that something was really going on. Um, it's because the story is

02:00:36.040 so interesting, but I mean, in, in, in, in Buddhism, is there an implicit array of, is there an implicit

02:00:44.360 ethic that matches the ethic that's implicit in the, in the 10 commandments? And of course,

02:00:49.080 there are many more commandments than 10.

02:00:51.320 I happen to have studied Buddhism in England under a Buddhist professor, Trevor Ling.

02:00:57.000 And my take, and I'm not an expert in any way, but I have some understanding, I think, of Buddhism.

02:01:04.600 This is not its question. It's question is ultimately, uh, how to avoid suffering, uh, in this world,

02:01:16.520 and, uh, to, uh, reach, uh, the light or, or, or whatever nirvana would be, uh, would be translated,

02:01:25.560 bhuta, whichever term you use, Sanskrit or otherwise. So for example, uh,

02:01:32.040 he said, and by the way, it changed my life. Uh, when he said it in class, it was in England.

02:01:39.960 He said, uh, the Buddhism teaches that all pain in life comes from, uh, what is it? Desires and

02:01:51.720 expectations that are not fulfilled or even not, not, not fulfilled just from desires and expectations.

02:01:59.080 It changed my life because from that day to this, and I've written a book on happiness,

02:02:04.920 and I wrote a chapter on this. I have no expectations and it is one of the reasons I'm happy.

02:02:10.440 Everything. Therefore, if I wake up tomorrow without an aneurysm, I think I'm the luckiest

02:02:15.320 guy in the world. So, uh, I adopted the first book.

02:02:19.400 And do you think that's equivalent in some sense to like subverting your will to the will of God?

02:02:24.200 Is that the same idea? No, no, no. Nothing to do with God. Zero to do with God. As far as I'm

02:02:29.800 concerned, pure luck. If I'm hit by a drunk driver tomorrow, uh, or not, is it matter?

02:02:35.800 No, sorry, sorry. That is, sorry. That isn't what I meant, Dennis. I must have phrased the question

02:02:39.400 improperly. Is the, the Buddhist idea that desire, expectation is the cause of suffering,

02:02:48.360 is that analogous to the idea that in Judaism and Christianity that people give up their own

02:02:53.880 egotistical will and follow the will of God? It's an interesting read. I don't know because,

02:03:03.960 let's see, uh, I'll tell you why, at least for Judaism. I can't speak for Christians.

02:03:08.840 In, uh, and this was the second part, which I rejected. I accepted dropping expectations. It was,

02:03:17.240 it was to me, brilliant. Uh, I utterly rejected dropping desires. Uh, I desire a family. I desire

02:03:26.840 a cure for cancer. I, I, the, the list of desires I have is endless. And, and certainly Judaism would

02:03:35.960 never want me to drop desires. Uh, well, and Buddha, I mean, Buddha reached Nirvana, but then

02:03:42.760 in some sense came back to bring the population along with him. I mean, he had desires. So

02:03:47.880 I wonder if it's more a matter of like desires that are ego predicated or desires that are an

02:03:53.080 expression of arbitrary power, let's say. Well, that's a great question to ask a Buddhist. I will

02:03:59.560 tell you this. Uh, I had a, I did, I was blessed my first 10 years of radio. One of my shows was,

02:04:06.120 uh, was as the moderator of a, uh, of three clergy, uh, a priest, minister, rabbi, different ones each

02:04:13.400 week. And after five years, I did it for 10 years. I invited Buddhists and Muslims and Mormons and every

02:04:20.600 religion on earth. I asked the Buddhist one night. So I want to understand if I have

02:04:28.200 a correct read of Buddhism and its ideal, he was a monk. So I knew I couldn't ask him about a wife

02:04:36.760 or children. But so I said, uh, if your brother died, would the ideal Buddhist response be no sadness?

02:04:48.440 And he said, that is correct. The ideal Buddhist response would be things live and things die.

02:04:54.440 And that, that detachment. Yes. And then that begs the question, well,

02:05:01.080 do you remain inactive in the face of suffering? And it would seem to me that, that, that you do.

02:05:07.400 Right. But then that begs the question of why Buddha didn't just stay in nirvana when he had the

02:05:11.640 opportunity. It's an excellent question. So listen, uh, I'm, uh, I'm, I'm okay with inconsistency.

02:05:22.600 Yeah. Yeah. Look, fair enough. And we're not going to iron all this out, but, but so let's,

02:05:27.400 if you don't mind, maybe we could go back to this Islamic issue. So, um, what do you see as a pathway?

02:05:36.120 I know you don't know the answer to this, but no one does, but you've thought about these things a lot.

02:05:41.320 And, you know, you're a profoundly religious person and like, what's the proper attitude towards peace?

02:05:50.280 If I'm having a dialogue with these Islamic scholars, I mean, I have lots of people who view my

02:05:55.480 YouTube videos and read my books in the Islamic world. And I'm happy about that. I'm pleased about

02:06:02.040 that. And, you know, many of them were annoyed, for example, when I talked to Ayaan Hirzi Ali,

02:06:07.400 and they said, well, you should talk to some other Muslims. I thought, well, I know that. And so I've

02:06:11.320 decided to go ahead and do that. I mean, what, what, what needs to change? Do you think

02:06:19.560 within each of us, perhaps in order for these, the conflict that keeps raging centered in the

02:06:25.800 Middle East to start to moderate itself? How do we open the door to that?

02:06:32.440 I gave my answer earlier. The day, look, here's a rhetorical question. If the Israelis announced,

02:06:40.920 we are disarming, no more army, no more weapons, what would happen the next day? And if the

02:06:49.320 Palestinians said, we are disarming, no more fighting, no more terror, no more rockets,

02:06:55.000 nothing, what would happen the next day? In the first case, there would be the genocide of the

02:06:59.240 Jews of Israel. In the second case, there would be peace. So why don't you ask that question of

02:07:05.160 these people? What would happen if both sides announced that they are completely disarming?

02:07:13.000 What would happen the next day? Do they really believe that there was genocide against the

02:07:19.400 Palestinians? I think there were eight times as many Palestinians today as when Israel was founded.

02:07:23.960 This is the worst attempt at genocide in the history of genocide. I mean, it is as ludicrous

02:07:29.320 as it is evil to charge Israel with genocide. It would be the first time in history, as I said at my

02:07:35.800 Oxford Union debate on this very issue of Hamas in Israel, I said it'd be the first time in history

02:07:42.440 that in a battle between a dictatorship or a tyranny and a free state, the free state was the one that

02:07:49.000 wanted war. And the tyranny wanted peace. I mean, we're expected to believe nonsense.

02:07:58.680 And I am...

02:07:59.400 So do you believe that this is baked into Islamic faith?

02:08:06.600 Yes, I think it is.

02:08:08.360 Yes, I think it is.

02:08:10.040 Okay, so what is it that's baked in?

02:08:12.200 Exactly.

02:08:12.760 I'll tell you, Ibn Khaldun, the greatest Arab writer who ever lived, I think it was the 14th century,

02:08:18.520 in the Qubb al-Qaddimah, the introduction to history, he wrote. And again, he's considered the

02:08:25.480 greatest writer, not only the greatest Arab writer in history, according to A.J. P. Taylor,

02:08:34.120 the great British historian. He was the greatest historian who ever lived. That was Taylor's take.

02:08:40.280 It was a little romantic, but it doesn't matter. He's got a great reputation. And he wrote in the

02:08:45.240 Muqaddimah, the introduction to history, that unlike Jews and Christians, the superiority of Islam

02:08:53.800 can be seen in the fact that they were prepared to kill people to convert.

02:09:03.320 That's baked in.

02:09:04.200 Well, so then, where exactly does this leave us, let's say, on the road to peace? So if I said,

02:09:10.920 I'm going to talk to these guys, and I don't know what will come out of that,

02:09:14.840 maybe we could have a conversation with you and them.

02:09:18.920 I would love it. I've dialogued with Muslims.

02:09:21.880 I know, I know. I'm not questioning your intentions.

02:09:24.200 I would love it. And listen, the bigger question to me is not, is it baked in? Is Islam reformable?

02:09:32.920 And this Lord, was it the Lord Acton? No, no, no, another, may have been Lord Acton.

02:09:42.360 The British viceroy in Egypt in the 19th century said, Islam reformed is Islam no longer.

02:09:49.480 See, that's not true with Christianity, which obviously did go through a reformation,

02:09:54.200 Christian, and stayed Christian, although I don't know if Catholics would fully agree with that.

02:10:00.360 But nevertheless, that-

02:10:04.280 Yes, well, but we also don't know if that meant the dissolution of Christianity over the long run.

02:10:09.160 That's correct. That is a very fair question.

02:10:12.760 I don't have an answer. It may well be that if Christianity really does survive,

02:10:22.440 it will be African Christians who make it possible.

02:10:26.440 Well, or Chinese Christians, since it's growing faster there than ancient Rome.

02:10:31.320 Yes, it's very peculiar. So who knows, right? But all right, well, look, Dennis, I think that's

02:10:37.240 probably a reasonable place to stop.

02:10:40.040 Can I just make a plug for two things? No Safe Spaces, the movie that we began with,

02:10:46.920 and my rational Bible, which is written with atheists in mind as I write it. It is complete,

02:10:53.560 it is the use of reason to explain the five books of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible.

02:10:59.640 And Deuteronomy, the third volume is coming out this year, but Genesis and Exodus are out.

02:11:05.960 And I-

02:11:06.920 Maybe we could have a discussion at some point just about Exodus. I would like that.

02:11:11.480 That would be nirvana to me.

02:11:14.920 All right, well, let's schedule it in, and we'll do that, because I need the preparation. Like I said,

02:11:20.520 I want to do a lecture series on Exodus in the fall. So, all right, well, anything else, Dennis?

02:11:27.800 People should only know how much I admire you. I know you're self-conscious about that. You don't

02:11:33.320 have to say a word, but I cite you often as one of the handful of truth and goodness seekers I know.

02:11:43.320 Thank you. That's a weak thank you for that compliment. I much appreciate it.

02:11:53.000 It's all right. Thank you.

02:11:54.760 Till we meet again. Thanks again.

02:11:56.680 Be well.

02:11:57.560 All right.

02:12:13.320 Thank you.

190. No Safe Spaces？｜ Prager and Carolla

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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

190. No Safe Spaces？ ｜ Prager and Carolla

Summary

Transcript

190. No Safe Spaces？｜ Prager and Carolla