Timeless Wisdom: What You Don't Learn in College

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Here thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs. Had to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to Dennisprager dot com.
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Speaker 2: Thank you, I always very elsone Alcolos, thank you, thank you, thank you well, thank you. I hope you feel this way after my speech. It's very easy to applaud before I'll see what happens afterwards. Rosemary, thank you for the kind words. You mean a lot to me, and so hearing such things, actually I'm ambivalent. On the one hand, hearing such things from such a wonderful person, it's very touching and moving. On the other hand, it's going to be very hard to live up to everything you just heard. So in a sense, I ask you to forget the reduction because I can't live up to it. So let's just work out the talk together. And I talk to the folks responsible for bringing me, and we worked out a subject which I think you'll find provocative. Are how many of you, although it's hard for me to see, I'm getting a sunburn here, actually, how many of you are students? Would you raise your hands? Okay? So a great, great number of you. This is those of you who are not students, who are older than students, or have you dropped out in first grade, whatever it might be. Those of you who are not students. This talk is dedicated to students, both college and for them matter. If there are any younger or certainly or graduate students. So I think you'll find it of interest if you're not a student. But I want the students to know it really is dedicated to you. I was a college student, I was a college teacher. I have a kids in college, so that this comes from my heart as well as my mind. I have a whole series of items I want to review with you and then take your questions and comments afterwards, because those are very important to me. I've heard me a lot, but I've never heard you, so I'm really interested in your reactions. In fact, some of them may make it to my radio show tomorrow quite possibly. In any event, the topic is what you don't learn at college. Now, lest this be perceived as anti college, which it could easily be perceived as such, let me just say I always believed in Mark Twain's famous dictum that I don't let school interfere with my education. So there has always been a part of me that has regarded life as a far greater teacher than school. There's no question about that. On the other hand, let me just say at the outset, I know that there are things that you can learn at college. I don't believe it is an entirely wasted time of one's life. Now, that's so sad that you're laughing, because but I understand why. It's really all a left handed compliment. There really are things, and to be perfectly honest, seriously, I thank my college experience for teaching me Russian. I could not have learned that on my own. It was something I needed a class for. I was blessed with a fine teacher at that time, and it became one of the most important parts of my life. By sheer faith God's will, whatever you ascribe it to, that I learned Russian in college was of immense value in my life. I later ended up in Russia and Soviet Union as it was then under communism many times, and it shaped much of my life, my outlook, my career. There were things that I learned in college of immense value. However, that is where college can excel it can teach you things that you can't learn on your own, like a language, like mathematics, like the sciences. If you have a good teacher, you are tremendously blessed in history and psychology and sociology. But know that blessings are far and few between. Most teachers don't teach well. This, by the way, is not at all a condemnation of teachers. Most everyone doesn't do their job well. That's just the way it is. Most of my colleagues in the media don't do their jobs well. Most talk show hosts I'm a talk show host, are awful. They yell a lot. They gear their programs to the lowest common denominator. I sometimes listen to it, and I'm almost embarrassed to say what my profession is afterwards, I or rather say and I'm a plumber. They do more good than most talk shows. But a good talk show can change your life. Psychologists, I'm a big believer in psychotherapy, Yet every single psychiatrist and psychologist I ever interviewed that I admired, said that the great majority of psychologists are incompetent. That's a very depressing statement, by the way, because people put their lives in the hands of incompetence. But does that make me anti psychotherapy? No, it makes me anti bad psychotherapy. I'm a religious person. I think a great number of the world's religious people do religion badly. There are in massive numbers of incompetence in religion. We were attacked on nine to eleven by religious people taught by religious scholars who told them that slaughtering innocent people sends you to heaven, where seventy two virgins may await you if you're a male lout of weights female terrorists has not been established yet theologically. So please understand when I tell you that most teachers don't know how to teach. I am not anti college or anti teacher or anti education. I am telling you the truth. How many stores do you go into when the clerk has no idea what you're talking about? Have you gone to a computer store lately? Just to give one example, I know so much more about computers than the average person at a computer store. It's depressing. I end up telling them which is the best printer? No, it is an experience I've had a number of times. They end up asking, oh, really, you've tried them all? You didn't try them all, how do you sell them if you didn't try them all. So the fact that you are blessed if you had a good teacher is a fact. It is just the way it is. You're blessed if you get a good, good lawyer, a good doctor, a good anything. I wish competition were the norm. I wish. I think in some rarefied areas, competence is the norm. I believe that the average pilot in the United States is competent, or so it has been my experience. I've never crashed, just to give you an example, and I've flown a lot, so I assume that they are competent. But by and large, in other areas of life it's not the case. So please understand put in perspective what I'm about to say. Okay, now, having said that and saying that there are things you certainly can learn here, there is a vast arena of life which is closed off to you while you're at college. That it is an extremely rare college and rare teacher that will ever open. What I offer to you as some of the things that college won't teach you, well, let's begin with let me tell you one thing that college doesn't teach you that or more particularly, high school didn't teach you. And this I just say because I need parents to hear this, I need students to hear this. This is one of the most subversive thoughts you can have in the United States. This is almost on the level of flag burning. What college you go to doesn't matter. I just want you to know that because given where you go, I don't think your parents are paying what they would be paying if they went to some other private colleges, for example, twenty thirty forty thousand dollars a year for the name. That's it for the name. With rare, rare exceptions, you get more than the name. But what college you go to doesn't matter. And I want to just tell you this because parents and students alike don't don't confront this fact, even though the parents in their hearts know what I said is true, and I will prove it to you. Whenever I talk to parents about this subject, I ask them the following question. In fact, I will ask them right now. I want all non students, those of you who are in the adult generation, not to insult college students as not being adults. But you know what I mean. I want you to raise your hand. I want you to think now of your most trusted doctor, person, your interness. I don't know your surgeon, your cardiologist, maybe it's your dermatologist. I don't know what particularly ails you. But think of your favorite doctor in terms of the one you most trust with your health. Raise your hand. If you know what college he or she went to? Well, we do have three. Wow, that is three more than I usually get. But after all, there is a very large number of people here. I don't know about seven hundred whatever it is, so about three out of half of you. So about one out of one hundred people know what college their doctor, the person they mostn't trust their lives do goes to. Now, why is that? If college is important, you would think before ever going to a doctor, you would find out what college you went through. Right, Hey, wait a minute, you speak well of this doctor, but where did he go? You mean he went to the University of Kansas. Forget it? I want a doctor went to Yale? Does anyone talk like that? Next? How many people know where their lawyer, the second most important human being in America? I'm sorry to say, how many know where their lawyer went to college? Okay? Let's see, we're back to the same three fascinating. Okay again, nobody knows. Nobody knows if I listened to you the most famous lawyers in the country. Do you think anybody knows if you think of OJ Simpson's dream team, right, this was a dream team. They were properly known as that of criminal defense lawyers. Anybody know where they went to college? I don't even remember it being listed. It doesn't matter what it is do when people date? When people date, does it matter what college the person they fall in love went to. Oh, so and so only went to a state college. Forget it, forget it. I want someone who went to an Ivy League college to date. Now, there were some people who do that. They are known as morons. No, no, it's very important, and there are What are you going to do? I can't speak for morons, but for the vast majority of human beings, what college the person that they fall in love with went to is of no concern whatsoever. What about friends? Your best friends? Are they chosen on the basis of what college they went to? Of course, not nothing in your life. No human is chosen for anything significant in your life on the basis of what college the person went to. It is rather what the person has done with his or her life. Okay, are there advantages to going to Yale over over a local commuter college. Yes, there are advantages in one way, in that that if you knock at the door of a law firm or of a graduate school and you have Yale as opposed to a commuter school, Yale will open more doors at that moment. In the long run of life, it is utterly irrelevant and can even be detrimental to your happiness because, and I know this from every summer I have an intern work with me, and they have been from all different places. I've now had about six different interns. I had two from Harvard, and I had some from commuter schools, and I had from in between and the Harvard. The two that were from Harvard actually when they were asked what college they went to, they would say, oh, I go to college in Massachusetts because they knew that the problems associated with the H word that it would They were so afraid that they would start thinking they were special, because that's what they're told as soon as they get into Harvard, You're very special, You're the elite few, and so on in the long term happiness of human beings. Do you think a Harvard grad is more happy than a University of Michigan grad. I strongly doubt it. In fact, there may be a big problem, and that is, you think you're so special at nineteen, and it turns out that at thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy the specialness you felt at nineteen doesn't really carry over. For four years, you think you're part of God's elite, and then real life impinges. Whereas if you go to El Camino College, you don't think you're part of God's elite. You are far more prepared for life because you know you have to prove yourself that just saying where you went and I didn't go I went to I went to a college that is absolutely analogous to this one. In fact, let me tell you fascinatingly, twenty years I am broadcasting. Twenty years. That's a long time. I have been asked on my radio show everything about myself, everything about my family, about my life, about my kids, about my income. No one has ever asked in twenty years, Hey Dennis, you know you talk about Iraq and Middle East, and you talk about raising children, and you talk about all these big subjects. Well, I'm just curious, what college did you go to?
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Speaker 3: Me?
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Speaker 2: You would think somebody would want to know. I have never been asked it. I have twenty two thousand emails. I haven't read them all. But of all those that I have read and I have answered, fifteen thousand personally over the course of five years. That's a lot. And let me tell you, no one has ever asked me what college did you go to? They don't care. It doesn't occur to them. For all they know. I didn't even go to college. In fact, for all I know, I didn't go to college either, now that I think of it, a very important, very important subject. I ended up at an Ivy League graduate school, but my undergraduate was Brooklyn College, which didn't exactly open up doors for me. You got Brooklyn College, Wow. Never got that when I would when I would do date a woman and you know, try some great new pickup line, saying that I went to Brooklyn College didn't seem to just floor prospective dates. In fact, I didn't mention it, so I know, and it was a very good lesson for me. I was just another person going to another college and if I would approve myself in life, it wasn't gonna be on a label of where I went. So I just wanted to start with that. And now to get to what college, whether it's Harvard or El Camino or anywhere else, what college doesn't teach you well. The biggest and most important problem, and this is very important, a very important problem, is you don't learn wisdom at college. You learn facts. By the way, if you learn facts, you're ahead of most people. If you really are given facts by your teacher and not just a politically politically correct lecture and politically correct readings, you have learned a lot. Facts are very important, but you don't learn wisdom. The difference between wisdom and knowledge is very simple to describe. My computer has more knowledge than I do, it has no wisdom. That is a very important thing. In fact, the phone book has more knowledge than any of you, any of us, but the phone book has no wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to discern life. I'm sorry, please take the baby out. I'll provide you with a recording of the lecture. Okay, thank you very much, and I really will. I really want. I feel bad for parents to take it, but it's not fair to seven hundred other people. Okay. Now, Wisdom is the ability to discern life, to understand life, to know how to live it. Wisdom is what matters. Knowledge is what happens, what there is. If you study biology, you learn about mitochondria and goulgie bodies and and and if it's if it's human, if it's human or animal, then you learn all about the organs of the body. But you're not wiser for it. It doesn't confer wisdom. Wisdom is what matters, how do I live my life? You don't get that. I'm not saying that no teacher ever imparts wisdom. I am saying that that is so rare. It is an extremely rare teacher that imparts wisdom. And frankly, and here I do have a criticism. I think there is very little wisdom at most colleges, at the vast majority of colleges. And that brings me to the second thing that you won't learn. And this is a very important and this is my own perspective. This is where this is a challenging thought to many of you, who for whom it will be perhaps the first time you hear this. I have to preface. This why I believe there is little wisdom at almost any college in America, or in the Western world for that matter. Many knowledgeable, many brilliant people, but not much wisdom. Here's an example of a lack of wisdom. When I was at college. I don't know what the current raining ideology on this is. You would know better than I. But when I was at college and graduate school, the raining wisdom was, this was the early seventies. The raining wisdom was that men and women are basically the same. That the reason men act differently from women, who act differently from men is because they're raised differently. Boys are given guns and soldiers and trucks, and girls are given dolls and other sweet playthings. And because of the sexist upbringing, that's why men and women, or even boys and girls act differently. And so there were professor after professor taught the trick is to raise your child with a non sexist upbringing. Give your daughter's trucks, give your boys dolls. Now I'm glad there's some degree of laughter here. It's an optimistic sign for me that at a college one would hear some laughter about this. This was an idea of such colossal silliness that it reminded me of George Orwell's famous comment George Rowell, one of the brilliant minds of the twentieth century, who said about certain ideas they were so stupid only an intellectual could believe them. Now I have to explain that it's a very important idea what Rowell said. Why does that mean an idea so stupid only an intellectual could believe them. Something has happened to the Western intellectual who lives at the university, in particular, that he or she believes patently absurd things. Let's take the idea that male and female are essentially the same except for the obvious physical characteristics, and that the reason that boys are different is because they're given trucks and tanks and machine guns and the girls are given dolls. Let's take that one. Is that true, Well, it's only true you don't have children, and b if you think theoretically, which is what happens at universities. They think theoretically rather than living life, because there is a danger to the college. The danger is that it's really a very enclosed, encapsulated community, almost hermetically sealed from the real world. In the real world, people know, boys and girls differ. I have a daughter and two sons. Let me tell you something. When a little girl goes into a toy store with almost no exceptions, she doesn't even know that there is a gun section. When a little boy goes into toys r us, he doesn't even know there was a doll section. If you said to a five year old boy, a ten year old boy, I will shoot you if you do not tell me where the dolls are, he would be shot because he doesn't know that there are dolls there, doesn't even know they're sold. The girl, meantime, doesn't know that the guns and the monsters who eat people are sold, or that the soldiers are sold. They gravitate to their own sections. The boys go where boys want. By the way, you don't have to buy a boy a gun. He will make guns out of everything in the house. I learned this with my older son. I bought because I went to college. I almost rejected everything I learned, but some of the things stuck. And one of the things that's stuck was that you can't give boys guns because it teaches bad lessons about violence and so on. So I bought that idea to my great everlasting shame, because it's another nonsense idea that is confined to intellectuals. Now, what happened my older boy, who is about as as sweet as boys come. That's his nature, or I take no credit for it, just that's his nature. Nevertheless, from the age of about four, was shooting everyone and everything all day long. But while was he shooting with I didn't allow any guns. Even water guns were not in the house, but it didn't matter. Broomsticks were great machine guns. In fact, anything long was a gun, for which reason we admire freud in our house. But that's a separate issue. I do believe in phallic symbols. Most colleges don't. Freud for some reason is not regarded with great respect any longer. I'm not sure why. But in any event, of course, it's phallic. There's no question anything long was grabbed by boys. They took it, and they would shoot with it. The final straw came when at dinner one night I saw him carving a gun out of rye bread, and he would shoot me with the crust. So I said, this is ridiculous. It's a lot cheaper to get him a gun and save all the bread and all the other things in the house. And so then I bought him any gun he wanted, and then everybody was happy anything he could shoot with. And parents have written to me from all over the country the same exact experiences. But if you go to college, you learn guns are bad. You learned that the boys and girls, or we did. I don't know if you do today. Boys and girls are basically the same. It's just a sexist society that has boys think this way and girls think that way, and so on. I'll tell you another example of the lack of wisdom that I perceived when I was at college the number of my professors who believe in Marxism. Now this may be incredible to you, because we're in a post Marxist age. Marxism has been utterly invalidated for the vast majority of humanity, and even even intellectuals don't even talk that way anymore. Yet when I was at college, that was all the rage. They were far more, far, far more professors at Columbia University, where I went to graduate school, who believed in Marxism than who believed in Judaism or Christianity. The ratio was probably ten to one in fact, I never met a professor who believed in Judaism or Christianity, not one I never had. I never met one, and say that one didn't exist. I never met one in my four years of undergraduate in two years of graduate work. But I met Marxists all the time, Neo Marxist, Marxist, Marxist Leninists, pure Marxist socialists. And Marxism was nonsense. Marxism was just a pack of beliefs without any empirical basis. That, for example, you went, pardon me for boring you, but this was this is the dogma of Marxism, that you go from feudalism to capitalism to socialism. It doesn't happen. It didn't happen, but it didn't matter. And the Marxist critiques of theater, Marxist critiques of art, Marxist everything. Well, here's my theory. How is it that so much silliness, even dangerous nonsense, is believed in academic In academia, I mean dangerous. The only people to believe in Stalin the greatest mass murderer in history were basically intellectuals. Most people thought Stalin was just a mass murderer, which in fact that's all he was, was a mass murderer. But intellectuals, they saw that he was at the vanguard of a socialist revolution which would sweep humanity anyway, How do people believe these things? And so much else that I could tell you? I could just spend the entire lecture telling you silly things believed by academics. How is that possible? How do academics believe that Israel and its enemies are morally equivalent? How is that possible? Israel is a democracy, like the United States, a liberal democracy. It is the only one in the Middle East except for Turkey, which was radically secularized. But in Turkey's not an Arab country anyway, How does that happen? Have The only place in America where you are taught that Israel and its enemies are morally equivalent is the university. The only place in America where you are taught that the United States is a force for bed in the world is the university. How is that? How do these things happen? Unwise? Things? Forget immorals, just unwise? And then I will tell you my theory. My theory is that the lack of wisdom among intellectuals and at the university emanates from the absence of God based thinking at the university. I believe that secularism is a blessing for government, but it's a curse for everything else, especially for understanding life. And I remember standing in the large square in the midst of Columbia University one day, just my brain frazzled by all the nonsense I thought I had been learning. And I give you my word, it dawned on me, like some epiphany from God. I remembered what I had said in religious school in first grade. Each day a verse from the Book of Proverbs wisdom begins with fear of God. And I realized, my God, this is a godless place, so there's not going to be any wisdom. And I do believe that secular people can be kind and loving and wonderful. Religious people can be despicable and mean and murderous, as we have seen. Obviously, I know that. But I'll tell you what I don't believe exists, and that is secular wisdom. When I think of wise people, they all were rooted in some religious tradition. I don't know how secularism can give you wisdom. I don't even know if there is no God, then everything is random. There is no order to life, there is no right and wrong. All is relative, there is no truth, All is relative, there is no order. Everything is chaos. That's why one of the most common words at the university today is deconstruction. What Shakespeare wrote and we don't know what Shakespeare meant. We deconstruct Shakespeare. He didn't mean anything. The text doesn't mean anything. There are many professors who say that the text means nothing. It means whatever you want it to mean. Now that's patent absurdity. But I understand why a secular world would come up with such an idea. And so I tell you, I am convinced that there is the most direct relationship between the absence of God at the American University and at the European University, and the absence of wisdom at these universities, and for that matter, the absence of moral clarity, which brings me to another thing. Therefore, that you won't learn. You get the world. You see the world. You are taught the world through secular eyes. You are never given an alternate vision of the world. Colleges claim to open minds, but as professor the late Professor Alan Bloom of University of Chicago said, that's not true. The university's close minds, they don't open them. And one clear example is you are given as dogmatic a secular view of life at any college you go to in America, as a Christian will be given at a fundamentalist seminary a dogmatic Christian view of life. If I told you that I studied my entire life at Christian schools, would you think that my mind were opened? You would say no, and by the way, you would be right. But if I tell you that I'd spent my entire life studying at secular schools, you would think my mind were open. But why is that? It is as dogmatic an insular a view of life to only study from a secular standpoint as it is to only study from a religious standpoint. I've had both. I am very fortunate I came equipped into secular college with a very strong religious background because I went through high school to religious high school. Excuse me. That equipped me to see the world differently. But I want you to understand, if you have gone from kindergarten through college here only to secular schools, you have been as given as insular as narrow an education as anyone at any religious school who only attended religious school. But here is the big difference. The religious schools are more honest than the colleges. Religious schools admit we are giving you one way to look at life through our religion, but colleges and universities do not admit that they are giving you one way to look at life. They claim they're opening your mind, that they are open and teach all viewpoints. No, there is almost no teacher who gives a Judeo Christian viewpoint on life at almost any college in the United States of America outside of a religious leaning college, even if you're an atheist. That should trouble you. This is I'm not even advocating that it is right, though I think it is right. I'm advocating that it doesn't happen. And you can't claim to open minds when you close them, which is what the universities are doing. I taught college, and when I taught college kids, I realized that the most basic religious ideas were utterly foreign to them. For example, how do you speak of good and evil if there is no moral transcendent source? How do you how do you know murder? Is wrong if there is no God who says thou shalt not murder. And I would look at the students and it was blank blank. They had never heard that challenge, one of the most basic philosophical challenges in life. How can there be an absolute morality, an objective good and evil if there is no God from whom objective morality emanates. I mean, you should study that. I don't care if you reject it, but intellectually I don't care. I care passionately in another way, but I want at least to be that it'd be confronted. But it's not confronted. So you don't know this when you go to an American college, but you are given a very narrow slice of life, a secular, narrow, secular viewpoint. Maybe it's valid, maybe it's not valid, but it's still narrow. And that is a problem for wisdom, It is a problem for morality, and it's a problem for your intellectual development. You have to grapple with the great questions that religion poses. Now, I know they teach religion colleges, but it's somewhat like teaching voodoo. And now let's have a course the history of Christianity. Or Judaism taught by somebody who doesn't believe in it. That's like me teaching witchcraft. I could teach it, but I don't believe in it. And no, but none of my students will. If anything, after the course, they're more convinced than ever that the religion is irrelevant. They were taught about something. It's like a museum. Let's visit the Museum of Judeo Christian religions. Museums don't change your views, they're just interesting to look at. In light of that, this religious secular aspect is extremely important to what I believe you don't get at university. In light of that, I'll tell you another thing that is inevitably lacking understanding how decisive for humanity religion is my teachers And I don't know if it's different today or not, but my teachers at college all believed in a secular realist viewpoint. Materialist means that only matter is real, Okay, So they would believe that everything is ultimately understood through for example, economics. Why do people murder because they're impoverished? Why is their crime because of poverty? Why is their terrorism because of the Gulf between the North and South and wealth, and people are just so angry at their economic situation. Economics became the primary determinant of human moral behavior. But lo and behold, that's also nonsense. Economics is far less powerful an as a motivator in people's lives than religion. But all the secular teachers had discounted religion. They believed it really was economics. It's still believed the whole much much not the whole. I can never say the whole, but much of the left, which finds its head orders at the university, actually believes that's not meant as a joke. That's where its headquarters are. Is the rights headquarters would be at at churches. It's and and for the religious right in any and in any event, or or at the Wall Street Journal, for the for the for the secular secular right. But here at the university. It is believed that the United States of America was attacked on nine to eleven in large measure because of the economic deprivation that is that is so endemic to the Islamic world, all the poverty. May I say, there is no truth to that statement. It is as close to entirely wrong as you can get it's not entirely wrong. Nothing is entirely wrong, all right, I mean I could. The Earth is flat is not entirely wrong. Look at this platform. Is this not flat? So, after all there is some truth to the earth is flat, but it's a large untruth. The the people who attacked us on nine to eleven were wealthy. The leading terrorist on Earth is wealthier than any of you in this room, probably wealthier than everyone in this auditorium put together. Osama bin Laden is a billionaire. It's a billionaire who ran it. And it is the sons of millionaires and upper class and upper middle class people from Saudi Arabia, one of the richest places in the world, who attacked us. And a couple of them where Egyptian and their parents were in the upper crust of Egypt. None of them had experienced poverty. None. Poverty has nothing to do with why we were attacked on nine to eleven. Religion has everything to do with it everything, But the secular intellectual can't acknowledge that because he has spent his life learning and teaching that religion is largely irrelevant. That religion is essentially like using leeches to draw blood. It's an ancient, archaic, anachronism that is no longer relevant to humanity, but it is relevant to humanity, and if you don't understand how it motivates people, you can't understand the world today. That is why so many again at the university. Whether you agree with President Bush on attacking Iraq or not is not my issue tonight today. To be precise, it won't be tonight either, but right now it is not my issue. Is only to tell you how many people discount him by saying it's economics. Once again, this has not left the intellectual world. Oh, it's for oil now, there's no truth about the oil thing. If we wanted oil, we would make deals with Saddam Hussein, not attack him. France makes deals with his oil for his oil. Russia makes deals for his oil, Japan makes deals for his We could make deals for his oil. In fact, the less oil from the Middle East, the better it is for American oil companies because then price of oil rises and they can drill more. American oil companies benefit when there is a lack of oil coming from the Middle East. It's when oil prices are cheap that the oil companies in America make less money. There's no truth to that issue, but it's believed because we can't imagine that there are other things that may motivate either our attackers or our defenders, like the president. That the President really is animated by a moral view of the world emanating from his Christianity is so foreign to the average professor's outlook and so scary that he rather believe it is just a matter of ego, finishing his father's job with Iraq, or a matter of money. As Barbara streishand one of America's great thinkers, said recently, all right, onto the micro things that you're not taught at college. You're not taught at college that it's important to marry. In fact, you're taught that it's not important to marry. That it's most important for you to figure out what career you will pursue, boy or girl, female or male student. But lo and behold, let me tell you, as one who has lived far more than college students have, and one who organizes singles events, massive singles events through my radio station, six hundred singles at a time, show up, paying thirty dollars each. I don't get that money. I just want to make that clear. But we do organize it through my radio station because I really believe that people should get married. It is best for them, and certainly it is best for society. Marriage is a dirty word at college. Career is a sanctified word at college. Now, career is fine. I'm not anti career. But and here is where we go back to my point number one, wisdom. Here's a word of wisdom. In the final analysis, for most people, marriage will be more determinant of their happiness than what they do for a living, especially women. Which is regarded as a sexist comment. It's regarded as sexist because I'm saying that certain ideas of life apply more to females than to males, or more to males than to females. Anytime you ever say there's a difference between men and women, you are taught not to think this is a problem. At college, you're not taught to think. You're taught to use labels to disc a idea that's sexist and the issue that's it. There's that way you're free from thinking. And I know that many students hearing what I just said, that this is particularly true for women, thought this is a sexist comment. You've been programmed. You are programmed not to think. You are programmed to have an ist response, sexist, racist, agist, homophobist even though it's homophobic. You are taught not to actually think through an issue, but to have a one line dismissal of a person's views. Having a talk show, I know I can't do that. If I just called people who disagreed with me by names, I would lose my show because I would be a boring and be regarded as a jerk. But you can't lose your job at college, which is part of the reasons that the reason that wisdom is not often taught here because there's no price paid for having dumb ideas. In fact, you get tenure. It's a very important point. It's a very important point. Dumb ideas in the business world your company goes bankrupt, dumb ideas in the college world, and if they're said articulately enough, you get paid a handsome salary and can't get fired. There's a very important distinction. That's why there are many dumb ideas here. There's no accounting for it. There's no accountability. You don't pay a price for it. Let's go back to marriage. I was in the heyday of feminism. When I went to college, the feminism landed like some medior out of the sky and squashed people. And while there were certainly valid elements to it, again, no doctrine is only invalid, they were valid elements, it did have a very strong bias towards career for women and a strong bias against feeling that they needed a man. One of the most common bumper sticker ideas of my time was a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle, which is a very funny line. By the way, I always enjoy that line. You need a man women like fish need bicycles. Well, the truth is that that's not true. Women need men and men need women. That is, if they want to grow up. Ah. That, however, is not something that you're supposed to do with college. Growing up is not part of the curriculum. Getting a degree is part of the curriculum, but growing up is not. I'm not even fault in college for this. The college can't do everything. But I just want you to know that you don't grow up at college. You grow up when you leave college. And that's why I suspect that a lot of people who never leave academic life. Who go from kindergarten, graduate school, and then to teach at college don't grow up. There are exceptions, but there are very few and far between, because how could you not If all you are is with students your whole life, how will you grow up? You grow up being a waiter for a year. I beg people after high school, I beg them to take a year off before college. Be a waiter, be a waitress, travel on some merchant marine ship, do anything, look at lime of beans, grow, but do something other than school. You've done it since you're four. Isn't it time to take a break. Isn't it time to actually live life? But people who go straight to PhD without ever taking time to live and experience life and then teach, having never experienced life, how could they impart wisdom about life when they've never touched life. They've only been in school. College is basically high school for older kids. That's really what it is. That's not a condemnation. That is what it is. So girls were told at college, young women, whatever verb you wish to whatever now and you wish to use, were taught, you don't need a man, you need a career now I'm not saying girls should not get prepared professionally. That's not my point at all. My point is you do need a man if you want to be happy and you want to grow up. Now, I'm sure a lot of people want to grow up, but a lot of people do want to be happy. And when I meet all these singles at the events that I make, and you should hear my shows on this issue. Women now in your forties call me up if you're single. Do you feel that you were given good advice about marriage at college from feminism? You should hear these highly professional women making six figure incomes writing me and calling me and telling me they were sold a bill of goods when they were at college. That career is everything and they could wait as long as they want because when they make a good career, they could pick any man they want as if they're men. But here's the real thing about life that you won't learn in women's studies, that you won't learn in sociology or psychology, that women's stock for marriage is greatest when they're youngest. That's a sad, unfair fact of life. That it's a hell of a lot easier to find a man at twenty five than at forty five. Okay, it's not fair, but that's life, that's wisdom, that's not theory. And so you ask, don't ask me, ask single women in their forties. Don't ask me, ask the women. Ask the women who come to the singles of anesa winners, good looking, successful income earners and alone and somehow or other make a AE hundred facts in marketing or in law or whatever they're doing. When they go home, back to their wonderful home that they have bought with their own income, and there's nobody there, it doesn't quite do what they were promised in college. College sells girls a bill of goods. It doesn't sell boys a bill of goods. Boys are thrilled with the nonsense. Girls are told you don't need commitment, and guys are going, hey, awesome, Yeah, that's my college. Guys love the nonsense that girls are taught commitment. No, you don't want commitment. You wanna do whatever you want, be free like men. I was just reading, just reading, justin Yesterday's New York Times, there's an article on all the sex columnists in the various college newspapers around the country, and they were talking about this young woman twenty years old was the sex columnist for the Yale Daily News. And she writes about everything, I mean everything, tips on no pun intended, tips on oral sex, everything, and she, you know everything, And how does she look at life? Well, frankly, there isn't any Yale man I've yet met who believes in commitment. So she's an expert on fillatio or I don't know, from practice or from theory. I don't know, and I'm not interested. No, no, no, in all seriousness because she is not autobiographical. But she's an expert on it. But she has no man in her life. Whoopee do. What a great thing to be an expert on. The guys are thrilled. The guys at Yale think this is the greatest thing since since lice bread that the girls are being taught to. Hey, you don't want to think of marriage and commitment. You just want to think a career, because you're really just men who happen to have breasts. That is what they're told, And men just happen to be women who don't have breasts. That is what is taught at college. You're all the same men and women are basically the same gender. Identity is just a patriarchal construct. So here you go. So come on, girls, get with it and act like guys and seek different partners as often as possible for a sexual rump. But the girls don't find it that brings happiness. Maybe at nineteen it's a lark, but by twenty five and thirty it's not a lark. The guys are still finding it a lark. My god, there are men in their seventies who find it a lark. Look at Hugh Hefner. So that's very important. That's why if guys don't marry, they don't grow up, because guys could act like that. I'm a guy, I know this. I'm writing a book on male sexual nature. We are boys. Unless we marry, we remain boys forever. Okay, that's just the way it is. And girls without commitment from somebody, somebody to love and make a life with life. For the vast majority of females, except for those of the Women's Studies department, do feel that it is not a full life. You're not taught this at college. You are taught the opposite. It's okay to look for a husband when you're twenty one. You know that I'm not saying you'll find I'm not saying you should marry at twenty three, but I am saying that. I'll tell you this that if a girl finds a great guy when she's twenty three and she throws him away because she's not finished pursuing her career, she's an idiot. She has committed happiness suicide. Probably, not definitely. Probably. And I only know this from women. I didn't make this up. This is in theory. I didn't read this in books at women's studies one oh one. I know this from real life women who did throw away men at twenty three because they thought that they will be forever available. Wonderful men. Wonderful men are available, but they tend to be married. That is a fact. That is what women say, and women are right. And there's a reason that the best men tend to be married. Because marriage makes men better, simple as that. And because the best men tend to believe in commitment, even though it does go against their non monogamous nature. A lot of what is good for us goes against our nature. Okay, so that you won't learn. And finally, two things you don't learn here. I don't mean at this specific place at here, being the US College. You don't learn at the US College that you are the biggest problem in your life. You learn that society is the biggest problem in your life, that economics is the biggest problem in your life. That if you are a black, racism is the biggest problem of your life. That if you're a woman, sexism is the biggest problem in your life. That if you're you're gay, homophobia is the biggest problem in your life, and so on down the line. But you never learn the truth that for the vast majority of people in this society, our biggest problems are us. You don't learn that, and that's why it's very unlikely you will lead a happy life if you don't understand that basic principle of life, that your biggest problem will always be you. That is the way it is. Oh sure there's racism and sexism and homophobia and all these other bad things in the world, but they are so largely insignificant to a life that is dedicated to getting ahead in this country that the biggest problem remains you. And every minute you waste thinking that the other things are bigger problems, that they are the big problems. You have wasted a minute where you could work on you. And and finally, finally, you are not taught here what it is to be an American. This is a major tragedy for you. It's a major tragedy for America. You aren't taught this in high school. You aren't taught this in elementary school. This is not at all unique to the university. But you are not taught what it is to be an American. Rootedness and American identity are not taught. Rather, multiculturalism is taught. Look where your ancestors are from. That's where you should find your identity instead of look to America and find your identity as an American. Indeed, the cultivation of non American Americans is almost an agenda at most of our high schools and colleges, because it is feared that if you are too American, you'll be a right wing fanatic. Indeed, the two are considered synonymous for many intellectuals. This is a tragedy because America needs in the land of people from so many countries. The motto of our country, the motto is a plutabus unim from many one. Our colleges and high schools have changed it from e plutabus plutabum, from many many, from many one. You can have many other identities. I have a very strong Jewish religious identity. Absolutely. I learned Hebrew, I speak it fluently. It is a very profoundly enriching part of my life. There's no question. But I am rooted as an American. This is critical. Being American doesn't mean you have no other identities, you have no other senses of importance. Of course you do. That's just fine. Mexican Americans can have a great sense of heritage from Mexico, a great love of Spanish, whatever it might be. Vietnamese Americans likewise, But you are an American. You are an American with everyone on you know how I learned this a great story. This was absolutely one of the great stories that ever happened to me. And as a subtle little thing. Twenty five years ago, yeah, I would say twenty five years ago. I was in Kenya in East Africa, just traveling. I love traveling. I've been to seventy two countries, most of them at least twice. I've been to all seven continents. I think travel is one of the great teachers. So I was in Kenyon. I was alone. Much of my travel was done alone, certainly all of it before I was married. And I was in Kenyon. I was standing in a street shop, window shopping. I was gonna say shoplifting, and I thought myself. And when I was brought to the police station anyway, window shopping, and all of a sudden, I saw in front of me, oh, at twenty feet in front of me, a little Kenyan girl and her mom, and she sent in English to her mother, Look mom, an American. And I thought she was pointing at me, but I realized by the angle of her hand that in fact, she was pointing to somebody behind me. Well, I looked at who was behind me, and all I could see was a black woman, And all of a sudden, I realized that the black woman that the girl was pointing at was not perceived as an African, or as African American, but as American. She could tell from her clothing or whatever else she could tell, a handbag, whatever, that that was an American Black. But to this Kenyan, and to virtually every African, black Americans are not Africans. They are Americans who are black who happened to be black. That is true, even though there is a large strand of angry alienated blacks in America, understandably but not I don't believe properly who are so alienated from the society that they say they've just happened to be Africans who are here, but not to Africans. There is a book written by Keith Richberg, one of the most important books printed in the last decade, which is probably why you don't know about it, because important books tend to be ignored, and this book is critical reading. It is called Out of America. Keith Richberg is a black American who is a major foreign correspondent for the Washington Post. He was posted in Africa, and he came back and wrote a book, and in the book he basically states as follows, American. Of course, my ancestors come from Africa. But it is so clear that I am an American. My values, my culture, everything that I hold dear is America. Not only that back in Africa, Keith Richberg, Out of America, I'm a beneficiary of European anti Semitism. If my great grandparents had it good in Europe in the end of the nineteenth century, early twentieth they'd have stayed there and they'd have ended up in chimneys, cast by the Nazis, cremated by the Nazis. But thanks to some anti Semitic pagrums, they came to America. And here I am one of the luckiest people in the world to actually be born and live in America. That's what happens. That is life that you're not given. That almost no student in America today is given a sense of rootedness and identification as American is a tragedy for them, because we all need a strong sense of bonding an identity, and as a tragedy for America, what are you given at colleges? The hyper sophisticated vision that to be rooted as an American is not healthy. Rather, one should be just a citizen of the world, and one therefore looks to the United Nations for one's values and not to the United States of America. That is what your average professor in the liberal arts actually believes. That the United Nations, where the genocidal regime of Soudan sits on the Human Rights Council, where the totalitarian butcher regime of Syria sits on the Security Council, that they somehow have a keener sense of right and wrong than to people from Texas. That is what is believed, and that is a tragedy because it just ain't.
01:02:21
Speaker 3: So.
01:02:22
Speaker 2: There are things you learn at college, learn them, But the biggest lessons of life are the ones that I hinted at today. Thank you very much, Thank you, thank you very much, thank you. All right. By the way, just a note before I go to you, and I guess we should should we put? Are we gonna have questions and answers? I mean, I know we'll have answers. Are we gonna have questions?
01:03:01
Speaker 3: Oh?
01:03:01
Speaker 2: There you are? Now there are people in the back and so on. So are is there a microphone? Or am I going to just repeat questions? Does anybody have an answer? All right, I'll repeat them if I can hear you quick word. By the way, I believe this is a personal ad. I admit it. I'll get it over with. It's the toughest. It's much easier for me to push others' ideas than my own things. First of all, I recorded today's talk. I record my talks, and I will make this available along with many of my other tapes. Some of the tapes are here from other such lectures like this. Go to my website at Dennis Prager dot com for any information about me or my writings or my books. Second documentary that I just produced has just come out in Israel. I think it's available here. I didn't look outside called Israel in the time of terror. With the shootings that have just happened in Virginia, we are even sensing more what it is like to be in ISRAELI for the last two years I went through the streets of Israel in the spring, just asking them what it is like. It is a gripping, gripping documentary and it's out there. Okay, Now, I'll be happy to take questions, comments and brief alternate speeches. Yes please, I'd just like to see that.
01:04:20
Speaker 4: Do you show as often as I can? And uh really, I'm I'm just thrilled to speak to you.
01:04:25
Speaker 2: Right, thank you.
01:04:28
Speaker 4: I know that you're one who contemplates human suffering. And uh, my question is about how religion figures ended. And I asked or I think it is an exodus Moses uh tells God that he's not a very good speaker, and God says, I know I made you, and he implies that he made blind people blind and deaf people death.
01:04:58
Speaker 3: HM.
01:05:00
Speaker 4: As one who contemplates human suffering so much, how D and who believes in the Judeo Christian God, how does it not makes you crazy?
01:05:14
Speaker 2: Uh?
01:05:15
Speaker 4: Knowing that there are people who are made to subborn into suffering, I'm not I'm not just talking about issues of human will. I mean they're born with some physical defect that makes them suffer.
01:05:29
Speaker 2: How do you reconcile that? D H. I'll repays a great question to D. I assume that everybody heard it, right, okay, very I'll I'll try to briefly summarize the question. And this is up my alley cause I love theology. It's my favorite subject. And the the question was about God and human suffering, which is of course the greatest question of all. That's an example, by the way, if you folks don't take a course if it's even offered on on it's called theodicy reconciling the existence of a good God with all the injustice in the world. You haven't covered the most important question. I mean, I know that, uh, you know, you know, studying Uh, I don't know. Uh. Lesbian poetry in Belgium may be important and I and I don't mean it as a mockery of lesbians at all. But that's the sort of course that is now given, which is fine, but it's a little obscure compared to reconciling God with human suffering. That's a rather immense issue. The immense issues need to be covered. Anyway, Moses is before God, and if you don't, if you went to a typical school, Moses is a figure in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, who is called by God to take the Israelites, an old name for Jews out of Egypt. Egypt is a country in northeastern Africa. Just getting carried away with myself. Don't take that stuff seriously. Anyway, God speaks to Moses, and Moses doesn't want the role to go back to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to let the Jews go, let the Israelites go, and he says, and he gives five different reasons God shouldn't choose him. He argues the whole time. One of his arguments is, hey, I don't even speak well that I know I made you right. So the question is how do you reconcile this belief in God with and all the suffering. Does God make people blind? Does God make people deformed? Does God give children cancer? I mean, are this is? This is fair? To summarize you this way? Okay. The notion that if you are sick now that God has made you that way is not what I learned from that verse. God is saying, I know I made you. You're making an argument that is not relevant to your ability to do your job. Also, Moses's speech impediment, which we don't know what it is, we just know he's speech impediment was very important because it enabled his brother Aaron to work with him, and it probably was important for another reason. I think there's a great lesson here that eloquence does not equal leadership, which is very important. We don't have the most eloquent president. Now, we did have the most eloquent president for eight years. And no, no, no, no, no, no no no. I just want to say. Some people will say that one is a better leader than the other. Fine, but I'm just saying I think there are great lessons to be learned that the greatest leader in the Bible, at least in the Hebrew Bible, in the Old Testament, is in fact someone who can't speak well, that there are lessons to be learned there. But the lesson to be learned is not that God wants children to have cancer or wants people to be blind. Maybe it is there are those who believe that whatever we have God wills. That's not my theology, although I can't say it's wrong in the final analysis without giving you another entire lecture. And I do have a lecture on God and suffering. But without giving that lecture, I can tell you, and this will not fall satisfy you, that there are some that that is the one arena where we cannot We don't have a perfect answer why God has made a world wherein some people are born with birth deformities. I cannot tell you. I do not know. I can tell you that there is a great counter response, though that is not mine, is of a rabbi called Milton Steinberg, who said, as follows, and I won't develop this because I want to take other questions. He said, Look, the believer in God has to account for one thing, unjust suffering. The atheist has to account for the existence of everything else. That to me is the most persuasive one sentence, two sentence answer I've ever heard of the issue, So yes, I have a problem visa VI good with the unjust suffering of individuals, but the existence of everything else seems to argue to me that there is a god. Also, you will notice people far more likely to ask why me when they're cursed than why me when they're blessed? Okay, thank you, thank you very much. Yes, please, I'm gonna try to I will take older folks, but I'm gonna try to take students if I see them, So don't be insulted if I a voyage you. Yes, when you're speaking about school parents, graduating or time invidual class? Was was I when I was talking about the lack of wat in schools? I'm sorry, you mean the lack of wisdom? You mean the lack of wisdom? Okay? When I was talking about the lack of wisdom at school? Was I talking more about the the requirements talking about to say? Oh, okay? Was I talking more about the actual requirements? And feel free to respond you don't have I don't have to have the last word. But the actual requirement required courses or in general, the absence of wisdom really both, certainly, the absence of required courses. I'll never forget who is the famous actress some of you, I'm sure will know who graduated from Princeton. Was it Jodie Foster? Yeah, I guess so, Yeah, I guess that was her then. Yeah. In any event, there was an article in the New York Times then because it became public knowledge what all her courses were. And somebody wrote an article that said, this is what she learned at Princeton. And you see, for example, all these courses on movies, and I thought, my god, compared to when I went to college, this sounds like a vacation. I would love to have seen movies for four credits, or actually forty credits, or you know, bowling for three credits. I mean, this was amazing to me. When I went to college, I had to study, I had to study three semesters of sciences, I had to study a foreign language, had to sixty of one hundred and twenty credits will required courses because the college believed that they knew what I should have to know to be an educated citizen. However, right after I graduated, with the sixties generations radical Revolution, the belief that professors knew better than students what students should know died, which always struck me as a statement of how little wisdom they believe they have. If an adult does not believe that he or she knows better than an eighteen year old what an eighteen year old should study, what the hell is the adult doing as a teacher. It is a statement of such incompetence. It is so self revealing that they know they have no wisdom. I am fifty, but I don't have a clue what I've learned in thirty years about what you should know at twenty. That is what schools are saying when they don't have required courses, that we learned nothing in all of our years as adults about what it is that an informed citizen should know. So the absence of required courses is an example of the absence of wisdom which pervades the other courses. Did you want to react or is that answer you? Yes? Of course there should be more requirements. My brother went to Columbia undergrad He had this famous, famous course at Colombia learning West. It was called Western CIV. But Jesse Jackson and other major thinkers went to Stanford and they and they chanted, hey, hey, ho ho Western Civ. Has got to go that offering students an acquired course in Western civilization is sexist, racist, and eurocentric. And so now you don't know what civilization you're a part of. And so you know, who's to say Beethoven is any better than anybody who made music in Asia or Africa or Latin America. I am perfectly prepared to say that Germans wrote the best music in human history, okay, and the Germans are the people who unleash the Holocaust. I am perfectly prepared to say something because it's true. Would I have preferred that the best music were written by Jewish Americans in Brooklyn so I could have some ethnic pride? I mean, the idea to me is so stupid that I can't even I can't even react. The best music happens to have been overwhelmingly, there are exceptions, overwhelmingly Austrians and Germans. That's the way it is. What am I going to do about it? So but if I have a quota on the number of Germans whose music I can hear because they were white Europeans, well then I have to drop either Bach or Beethoven or Heiden or Handle or Mozart. Right, Well, they happen to be the best, with great respect to Tchaikovsky, uh and uh and Debut c and the whole gang. But that's but that's the way it is. But that's not what is taught today. There's no best. If if you like, then that's your taste. That I happen to like bach Cantata's is purely subjective. This is just as good. That is what is taught at college. That's that's not a good thing. And by the way, what I just did is better than much of the music written in the twentieth century. Yes, a second, what I'm looking for students looking for the one second, I'll take any students, any students, okay, going once, going twice. Okay, you might be a student, but I'm just guessing that you're not. Okay, stand stand so at least some could hear you. Thank you to know what curious. I'll be happy to talk about my son in college. The question was would I share about what has happened in my own family? Do I pay for an elite college? Wh where does he go? I don't say the exact name, only for his privacy reasons. That's all. Uh, that's the only reason it is not a prestige, and it's not a non prestige. It's a it's a M, a middle level name. So if somebody heard it, they wouldn't go whoa. And on the other hand, they wouldn't go boy, he must be a dummy. Okay, so there is none of that. Ali uh, I'll I have a long answer to this. I'll try to make it shorter. And how did we PAIRHM and so on? Okay? First of all, in no order of importance, we did not raise any of our children to believe that grades were all important. We are a fluky family. We do not believe. I actually, first of all, I'm a fluke in that what I told you today, I actually believe. I mean I allowed you to understand. What I told you is about how I try to live. We never pressured our kids for scholastic excellence. Never where they went to college was of awesome non significance in our family. We did not go crazy on SATs. I'm not even sure I recall what he had. If he wanted to do well, he did well. I cared much more on preparing him for life to I believe that if you develop common sense, a good sense of self and strong character and very strong roots which he has as an American and as a Jew. That will he will do well in life no matter where he goes. I believe it will turn out that way. I'm very optimistic about him. But he did not do great in high school. Neither did I. As I'll just tell you, and I trust that your math is sophisticated enough to get the impact of this. I graduated in the top eighty percent of my class, that's the nice way of putting that. I was in the bottom twenty percent. And the reason was because I never did homework. I didn't. Instead, I learned music. I learned everything school didn't teach. I learned music. I read books, I read magazines, I went to museums, I learned. I taught myself how to read symphonic scores. I now conduct every year. I conduct an orchestra in southern California on the basis of self teaching score reading that I did in high school. When I didn't do homework, I would go to the New York Philharmonic Library. Now I'm a nut. I mean, most kids don't do this. When they don't do homework, they watch TV. So I always tell parents I don't care if a kid does homework, providing they're doing something good when they're not doing homework. If they're not doing homework and watching television, they better do homework. But if they're not doing homework and they're reading books, I much prefer that they read books anyway. So he's going to a good but not great college. It's very expensive. The reason that we're willing to do this is because he wanted it. We are blessed to be able to afford it. If we could not afford it, I would not go into hock to do it. As many parents do. They mortgage their homes, get a second mortgage to send their kids to a college when there's a free one down the road. I do not agree with that. But we're blessed, and so he's going to this college. He's going on the East Coast. He wanted to be. He wanted to see what the East Coast is life. Having been born and raised in Los Angeles. It's fine by me. I think that one winter there and he will yearn for southern California, or at least that's my hope. And here was the most important, the single most important factor. Last year he spent he did not graduate high school and go to college immediately. He deferred his admission for one year and spent last year studying at a religious school in Israel. That was the greatest year of his life. First, he was there during almost all of the terror, which was not easy for us. But that's a separate issue because I believe that in life you do what is right and you take risks for that, and we were not prepared. If he didn't want to go, I would never have forced him. In fact, I set to him in a very dramatic father son talk. I said, David, I cannot be the reason you go now. I may have been the reason that you went a year ago, that you would go a year ago, but with all the terror there, I cannot have it on my conscience that you're going because of me. If something God forbid happens to you, So it is now your decision. I will in no way be angry or anything if you decide immediately go to college. He chose to go. Thank God, nothing happened to him though he he heard. He actually heard because he was studying in Jerusalem to terror bombings, which is pretty intense for an eighteen year old to experience after your greatest problem is will the Dodgers win the Pennant? I mean, let's be honest, what are the awesome problems buying large for a Southern California youth through unless the family is in terrible trouble or something. So this was a powerful year. It got him in touch with God, It got him in touch with religion, got him in touch with the fact that there really is evil in the world. Old all the things that I most care about, I would strongly and I did. I say, taking a year off from high school before college to see the world is so important. Whatever you do. He did that that's not the only thing you can do. I certainly think a religious experience. I learned this partially in Thailand. In Thailand, which is a Buddhist country, it's very interesting, at least when I was there. I can't speak for now. When I was there again, this is about twenty years ago. I was there a few times and I saw young men I would say they were seventeen years old walking around in the beautiful orange robes of a Buddhist monk. And I asked one of these kids, basically kids, young boy or teenage boys walking around like monks. He said, well, for a year or two, I don't remember exactly. A lot of Thai young men off from school and from anything else they're doing to serve a year as a Buddhist monk, live like a monk would, and that prepares them for life. I think that's magnificent. I think what Mormons do when they send their youths on missions. I have studied the Mormon missions. A fair amouth is a very fascinating thing. It's a brilliant concept. Brilliant. I'll tell you why it's brilliant. Almost none of the Mormon missionaries and they're like eighteen nineteen years old. Think of this. You're eighteen nineteen. You grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, and now you're sent to Kazakhstan to make Mormon converts. Okay, you learn Kazakh or Russian and you become fluent in fact, do you know why so many international businesses go to Salt Lake City? Because so many Mormons are fluent in foreign languages because they have to be to be missionaries. And so I always ask people who went on missions, So, how many converts did you make in your two years in Uruguay? Zero. I don't think I have met a missionary who made more than two converts. So why does the church do it. They do it for the kids to have them grow up into responsible Mormons. We have no We have no way of making boys into men in American life. There is none. There is no bar Mitzvah in most of American life, and even for most Jews that bar mitzv was just a party. It's meaningless. But we have no missionaries like this. There is a way. The armed forces makes boys into men. It's a very powerful, powerful thing. That's why I'm always for a big military budget, even if we're at peace, because of the excellent effect that has on so many young Americans, especially males. Boys don't become men by getting older. Boys just become older boys when they get older. Something must make them into a man. Marriage makes boys into men. The army makes boys into men. A missionary for a Mormon makes a boy into a man, something that makes him think outside of himself. My boy came back a man after his year in Israel, where he didn't know who would be blown up the next day, and saw a real evil in life, and the Lakers became he'd sold me, he said, Dennis, Dennis, he calls me Dad. That's pretty funny. He didn't say, Dennis said Dad, I gotta tell you. Because we would talk on the phone. It was phenomenal. It was just fascinating, say Dad, it's so amazing. The most important thing to me with the Lakers when I left. Now they're not that important. And he still followed the finals from Israel on. You know that some godly hour, god forsaken hour, he would wake up in the morning to watch the Lakers in the finals. But somehow he knew something was far more important than the Lakers, massive issues of right and wrong, whether there is a God who governs the universe. That's what people need, and you don't get that at college. I don't blame college for that. You just don't get it. And so girls need it, boys need it. And so it's a long answer to how he was prepared and why I didn't care where he went because I knew he was prepared, and you know, and he finds it's fascinating. Now he's immersed in a secular world after being immersed in a religious world, and he realizes, you know, we talk very often where we're blessed with a beautiful relationship, and it is a blessing. We're both lucky. And you know, he just says, you know, I'm different from a lot of the students here. Though he's not a different, I'm better, or any sanctimonious nonsense, just I'm different. I realize he's also the only Angels fan at his university. That you know that that alone was a phenomenon. Let me take two more, because I always believe the lecturers should leave before the audience does. So, okay, let's go to you. Yes, please, yes, sir?
01:27:25
Speaker 4: Can you imagine any sequence of events that could goggle turnaround at.
01:27:30
Speaker 2: The way colleges operate? Can I imagine any sequence of events that could cause a turnaround on the way colleges operate? Yes? If alumni stop supplying funds to neolistic institutions, Princeton comes to mind. Princeton has sunk terribly in just the last ten twenty years, in my opinion. Just to give I'll give you two examples. Harvard essentially got rid of I think a man who is not a serious academic, who's not a serious thinker, Cornell West, but who was a very popular figure. They got rid of him, and Princeton immediately took him up. It's almost like we want glamour instead of content. More terrible as Peter Singer is at Princeton, he has made the university professor. That's the highest rank you could have. They brought him from Australia. He is a man who believes that parents should have a thirty day right to kill their child if they feel that it's sick enough. In other words, he believes in infanticide. I am not distorting, I am not being dramatic, and he has other crazed positions. He's the father of animal liberation, is the author of it. If Princeton alumni, most of whom do not share the view that parents have a thirty day money back slaughter guarantee for their child, would know this and not and stop funding this nihilism of Princeton that could have an effect. Money is very powerful talk if the government. If the government stopped funding universities, the government is just an endless fawcet for universities. And whether they're responsible American wise or more morality wise or educationally wise doesn't seem to be an issue. It's just do they do good research? And I believe that that's true for the sciences. But uh, those are the things. And if parents just said, you know what, I just don't see why I should spend thirty thousand dollars. I can't think of a really powerful reason. If parents started speaking like that, and you know, uh sent their kids to less prestigious but free colleges are freer, less expensive, these things could could have an effect, But right now, there is no reason for colleges not to charge exorbitant amounts. Uh to teach your kids that everything is relative. Finally, whereas you know you were up early. I'm sorry, Okay, forgive me.
01:30:03
Speaker 4: Yes, I'm a mathematician of German descent and a believer. Well, I ask you about something you said. Gables there in nineteen thirty one proved that nothing can be proven and that everything. So there's absolute realtivism and there are absolute thoughts.
01:30:26
Speaker 2: I'd like to comment, Uh, here's a mathematician of German descent who uh uh quotes Gato's theorem that nothing can be proved. But you say he proved that nothing could be proved. That strikes me as somewhat of a of a problem. None of did I did I hear you wrong, n what did do all that? Well? Okay, well yes, p yes, Well the it's the principle here is that if y, if you prove, you can't prove that, nothing can be proved because you have s defeated your proof since right, So that's like saying, you know, all generalities are false. Does that include that one? And so there there's always that problem. I will say this though, in the larger sense of what I think you're raising, there are leaps of faith that even the scientist makes. Everybody takes leaps of faith, not just the religious, but the religious are more intellectually honest in saying we are taking a leap of faith. That is why when I talk to many of my listeners are Christians, and they will tell me, ah, they read, they read some very powerful books and there are and they say, no, it's not that we have faith in Christ. It's not faith. It's provable. And I say, if it's provable, then there is no faith.
01:31:55
Speaker 3: No.
01:31:56
Speaker 2: I believe that Moses received the Ten Commandments through dine, divine revelation, but I don't believe for a second that I could prove it. If I could prove it, it's not faith. See here, both their secular and their religious make a mistake. Both have faith. Secular has faith. Science changes every day. Whatever you taught, then something new will show. Cosmology is my favorite, how everything changes. You know, the vast majority of the substance of the universe, we have no idea what it is. So how could a scientist claim objective knowledge? They have objective knowledge based on the data that they now have. That's all, and that's fine, But that's all it is. We all make leaps of faith. Even the atheist makes a leap of faith that murder is wrong. He doesn't really, in his heart believe that. I just happened to think it's wrong, right, There is some part of him that says, you know, it really is wrong, but not having a god to base it on. As a secular problem. Likewise, though religious people need to be humbled, we also have leaps of faith. That's okay, That is okay. I don't think God wanted us to be certain of his existence. God wanted us to believe in him. If God wanted us to be certain, he would have made it certain. But life would cease to be free if we were certain about God. When do you have greater freedom to speed in your car when you are certain the highway patrol is driving next to you, or when you are uncertain where the highway patrol is. If you were certain that God were hovered over you at every moment, you would have a lot less freedom to behave the way you do, and that God wanted it that way. He created a free species. Why did God create a free species that could torture and rape and murder? I don't know. I have a lot of questions to ask God. Why is salery not fattening? And cheesecake is that disturbs me a great deal? Why did he invent the mosquito? I don't know why he invented the mosquito. I have a whole series of questions I want to ask God. OK, say this finally. First, I am very grateful to El Camino College for having me. This is a it's a it's a rare college that invites somebody to tell you what your college isn't studying, which is in teaching, which shows how good a place it is that it would have somebody say this. I want to say that to you. Secondly, if you are not familiar with my work, I do hope you'll visit my website, Dennisprager dot com. I also hope that if you can between nine and noon, you can somehow check out my radio show on k r LA eight seventy. Until next time. Thank you so much for having me.
01:35:02
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you, n now, thank you, thank you, thank you.
01:35:26
Speaker 1: This has been timeless wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit Dennisprager dot com for thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses in classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles