Timeless Wisdom: What You Don't Learn in College

On Today's Show: In this thought-provoking lecture, Dennis Prager breaks down the essential ideas and life skills often missing from today’s college education. He offers insights and timeless principles designed to help young adults think clearly, build character, and navigate the real world with confidence.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:21):
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.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
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

(01:03):
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

(01:24):
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,

(01:47):
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

(02:09):
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

(02:30):
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

(02:55):
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.

(03:16):
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

(03:41):
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

(04:03):
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

(04:24):
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

(04:48):
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

(05:09):
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,

(05:35):
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

(05:57):
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

(06:19):
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

(06:41):
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

(07:02):
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,

(07:25):
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

(07:46):
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

(08:07):
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

(08:28):
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

(08:51):
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

(09:13):
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,

(09:35):
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

(09:57):
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

(10:19):
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,

(10:40):
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

(11:01):
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

(11:22):
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

(11:45):
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

(12:07):
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

(12:29):
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,

(12:53):
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,

(13:16):
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

(13:37):
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

(13:59):
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

(14:21):
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

(14:43):
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,

(15:05):
I'm just curious, what college did you go to?

Speaker 3 (15:07):
Me?

Speaker 2 (15:08):
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

(15:31):
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.

(15:52):
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

(16:15):
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,

(16:37):
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,

(16:57):
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

(17:18):
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.

(17:39):
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,

(18:03):
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?

(18:25):
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

(18:49):
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,

(19:11):
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

(19:33):
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,

(19:54):
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

(20:16):
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

(20:41):
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

(21:03):
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

(21:23):
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

(21:46):
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

(22:08):
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

(22:30):
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

(22:52):
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

(23:14):
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.

(23:37):
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

(24:00):
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

(24:22):
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

(24:44):
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

(25:07):
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

(25:31):
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

(25:57):
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,

(26:20):
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

(26:43):
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

(27:04):
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

(27:26):
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

(27:49):
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.

(28:13):
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

(28:33):
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

(28:55):
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.

(29:19):
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.

(29:41):
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

(30:04):
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

(30:25):
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

(30:48):
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

(31:10):
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

(31:31):
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

(31:53):
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

(32:14):
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

(32:35):
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

(32:55):
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,

(33:17):
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.

(33:38):
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

(33:59):
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,

(34:23):
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

(34:46):
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.

(35:09):
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,

(35:31):
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,

(35:54):
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

(36:15):
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

(36:37):
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

(37:02):
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.

(37:24):
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

(37:45):
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

(38:06):
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

(38:27):
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

(38:48):
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,

(39:08):
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

(39:29):
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

(39:51):
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,

(40:12):
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

(40:34):
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

(40:56):
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

(41:16):
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.

(41:40):
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

(42:02):
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

(42:22):
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

(42:47):
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

(43:09):
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

(43:30):
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.

(43:50):
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

(44:12):
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,

(44:35):
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

(44:55):
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

(45:17):
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,

(45:43):
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

(46:06):
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,

(46:29):
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

(46:52):
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

(47:12):
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

(47:34):
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

(47:57):
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

(48:17):
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

(48:40):
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

(49:02):
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

(49:23):
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

(49:44):
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,

(50:09):
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,

(50:31):
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

(50:52):
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

(51:13):
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

(51:34):
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,

(51:56):
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,

(52:19):
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.

(52:40):
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

(53:03):
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,

(53:24):
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.

(53:46):
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

(54:07):
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

(54:30):
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

(54:51):
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

(55:12):
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

(55:33):
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

(55:57):
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

(56:21):
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

(56:46):
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

(57:08):
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.

(57:32):
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.

(57:55):
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.

(58:16):
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

(58:39):
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,

(59:03):
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

(59:28):
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

(59:52):
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,

(01:00:14):
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

(01:00:34):
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.

(01:00:57):
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

(01:01:20):
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,

(01:01:42):
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

(01:02:06):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:02:21):
So.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
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

(01:02:45):
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?

Speaker 3 (01:03:01):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
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,

(01:03:25):
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

(01:03:46):
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

(01:04:08):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:04:20):
Do you show as often as I can? And uh really,
I'm I'm just thrilled to speak to you.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
Right, thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:04:28):
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

(01:04:48):
God says, I know I made you, and he implies
that he made blind people blind and deaf people death.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
HM.

Speaker 4 (01:05:00):
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?

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):
Uh?

Speaker 4 (01:05:15):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
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

(01:05:49):
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.

(01:06:14):
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

(01:06:37):
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

(01:07:02):
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

(01:07:26):
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

(01:07:49):
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

(01:08:12):
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,

(01:08:36):
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

(01:08:58):
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

(01:09:19):
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

(01:09:43):
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.

(01:10:08):
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

(01:10:30):
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

(01:11:01):
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?

(01:11:23):
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

(01:11:43):
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,

(01:12:07):
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

(01:12:28):
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

(01:12:49):
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

(01:13:10):
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.

(01:13:34):
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

(01:13:55):
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

(01:14:16):
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

(01:14:38):
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

(01:15:02):
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

(01:15:24):
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

(01:15:45):
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,

(01:16:06):
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

(01:16:48):
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.

(01:17:09):
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

(01:17:33):
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.

(01:17:54):
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

(01:18:16):
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,

(01:18:39):
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,

(01:19:03):
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

(01:19:24):
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

(01:19:46):
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,

(01:20:07):
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

(01:20:27):
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.

(01:20:47):
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

(01:21:11):
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

(01:21:33):
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

(01:21:55):
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

(01:22:16):
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

(01:22:37):
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

(01:23:00):
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

(01:23:22):
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

(01:23:43):
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,

(01:24:05):
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

(01:24:25):
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

(01:24:46):
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,

(01:25:09):
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

(01:25:31):
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,

(01:25:53):
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

(01:26:15):
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

(01:26:38):
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,

(01:27:01):
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?

Speaker 4 (01:27:25):
Can you imagine any sequence of events that could goggle
turnaround at.

Speaker 2 (01:27:30):
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

(01:27:54):
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

(01:28:15):
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

(01:28:36):
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

(01:28:58):
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

(01:29:22):
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

(01:29:42):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:30:03):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:30:26):
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,

(01:30:50):
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

(01:31:10):
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

(01:31:34):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:31:55):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:31:56):
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

(01:32:19):
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

(01:32:42):
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

(01:33:03):
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

(01:33:24):
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

(01:33:47):
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

(01:34:08):
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

(01:34:28):
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

(01:34:51):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:35:02):
Thank you, thank you, n now, thank you, thank you,
thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:35:26):
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