Author: Ryan Santrella

There are very few things conservatives, liberals and leftists agree on. But if they are irreligious, they all agree that religious Americans are more irrational than irreligious Americans.
It is a secular axiom that secularism and secular people are rooted in reason, whereas religion and the religious are rooted in irrationality.
This is what almost every college professor believes and what almost every student in America is taught. Among the intelligentsia, it is an unquestioned fact. It helps explain why, after their first or second year at college, many children return to their religious homes alienated from, and frequently contemptuous of, the religion of their parents — and often of the parents themselves.
At the time in their lives when most people are the most easily indoctrinated — approximately ages 18 to 22 — young Americans hear only one message: If you want to be a rational person, you must abandon religion and embrace secularism. Most young Americans are never exposed to a countervailing view at any time in their college life. (That’s why you should expose your college-aged child, grandchild, niece or nephew to this column.)
Yet, this alleged axiom is not only completely false, it’s backwards. The truth is that today the secular have a virtual monopoly on irrational beliefs.
One proof is that colleges have become the most irrational institutions in the country. Not coincidentally, they are also the most secular institutions in our society. In fact, the former is a result of the latter.
One could provide examples in every area of life. Here are but a few.
Only secular people believe “men give birth.”
Only secular people believe that males — providing, of course, that they say they are females — should be allowed to compete in women’s sports.
Only secular people believe that a young girl who says she is a boy or a young boy who says he is a girl should be given puberty-blocking hormones.
Only secular people believe that girls who say they are boys should have their healthy breasts surgically cut off.
Only secular people believe it is good to have men in drag dance (often provocatively) in front of 5-year-olds.
Only secular people agree with Disney dropping use of the words “boys and girls” at Disneyland and Disneyworld.
Only secular people believe that “to be colorblind is to be racist.” That is what is taught at nearly all secular (and religious-in-name-only) colleges in America today.
Only secular people believe fewer police, fewer prosecutions and lower prison sentences (or no prison time at all) lead to less crime.
Far more secular Americans than religious Americans believed that the Cleveland Indians and Washington Redskins needed to change their names because “Indians” and “Redskins” were racist — despite the fact that most Native Americans didn’t even think so.

Who was more likely to support keeping children out of schools for two years; forcibly masking 2-year olds on airplanes; and firing unvaccinated police officers, airplane pilots and members of the military — secular or religious Americans?

How many Western supporters of Josef Stalin — the tyrant who murdered about 30 million people — were irreligious, and how many were religious?
Stanford University, a thoroughly secular institution, just released an “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative.” It informs all Stanford faculty and students of “harmful” words they should avoid and the words that should replace them.
Some examples:
Stanford asks its students and faculty not to call themselves “American.” Rather, they should call themselves a “U.S. citizen.” Why? Because citizens of other countries in North America and South America might be offended.
Is that rational?
Stanford asks its faculty and students not to use the term “blind study.” Why? Because it “unintentionally perpetuates that disability is somehow abnormal or negative, furthering an ableist culture.” Instead, Stanford faculty and students should say, “masked study.”
Two questions: Is Stanford’s claim that being blind is not a disability rational or irrational? And what percentage of those who make this claim are secular?
The list of irrational (and immoral) things secular people believe — and religious people do not believe — is very long. As a quote attributed to G.K. Chesterton puts it: “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.”
Yet, many people believe that the religious, not the secular, are the irrational people in our time. That, ironically, is just another irrational belief held by the secular. And, of course, it is self-serving — just as is the belief that more people have been killed by religious people (meaning, essentially, Christians) than by secular people. Yet, that, too, is irrational — and false. In the last century alone, 100 million people were murdered by secular — and anti-religious — regimes.
Yes, religious people have some irrational, or at least non-rational, beliefs.
But two points need to be made in this regard:
One is that the religious beliefs that most people call “irrational” are not irrational; they are unprovable. For example, the beliefs that there is a transcendent Creator and that this Creator is the source of our rights are not irrational; they are unprovable. Atheism — the belief that everything came from nothing — is considerably more irrational than theism.
The other point is that human beings are programmed to believe in the non-rational. Love is often non-rational — love of our children, romantic love, love of music and art, love of a pet; our willingness to engage in self-sacrifice for another is often non-rational — from the sacrifices children make for parents and parents for children to the sacrifices made by non-Jewish rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust.
What good religion does is provide its adherents with a moral, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually deep way to express the non-rational. Therefore, they can remain rational everywhere outside of religion. The secular, having no religion within which to innocuously express the non-rational, often end up doing so elsewhere in life.
So only the religious believe “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth,” but they do not believe men give birth. Meanwhile the irreligious don’t believe “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth,” but only they believe men give birth.

This column was originally posted on Townhall.com.

“A person’s moral sense of right and wrong, viewed as acting as a guide to one’s behavior” — the dictionary definition of “conscience.”
Whenever I make the common-sense argument that people need to hold themselves accountable to a morality-giving, morality-judging God — specifically, the God of the Bible, and more specifically, the God of the Ten Commandments — a flood of incredulous, frequently mocking, responses immediately appears in the comments section and on atheist and left-wing websites.
The gist of the God-is-morally-unnecessary argument is this:
“Unlike Prager and other religious people, I don’t need God to tell me murder is wrong. My conscience tells me that. I don’t need to answer to any god; I answer to my conscience.”
This response is held most widely among the best educated — i.e., the people most likely to reject the existence of God and the necessity of both God and the Bible for either a moral order or for attaining wisdom (without which a moral order is impossible).
That the great majority of secular people believe the conscience is all that people need to act morally is one more example of the low intellectual level secularism has produced. Other examples include “men give birth,” “sex is nonbinary,” “Western civilization is no better than any other civilization,” “color-blind is racist” and “people are basically good” (the truly foolish doctrine that people must affirm if they rely on the conscience to produce moral behavior).
But no secular idiocy is greater than the belief that the conscience can replace God, the Bible and Judeo-Christian values as a producer of moral behavior.
The reality is that most people’s consciences are, to say the least, easily manipulated. It is hard to imagine any aspect of human life more malleable than the conscience. It is as malleable as putty. And as sturdy. In fact, the malleability of the conscience alone makes the case for God- and Bible-based morality.
If the conscience were morally effective, what evildoer or supporter of evil would sleep well at night? Yet, people who commit evil, whether for personal reasons (such as murderers, thieves and rapists) or for ideological reasons (such as Nazis, communists and Islamist terrorists) sleep as soundly as anyone else. Raskolnikov, the murderer-protagonist in Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” is an exception — but only because he is a fictional character.
Virtually every individual who has committed or supported evil has had a clear conscience. That’s why “I answer to my conscience” is both intellectually and morally meaningless. Every monster and every moral fool “answers” to his conscience. And his conscience tells him he is just fine — especially today, in the age of self-esteem.
It is far truer to say that one’s feelings and behavior produce the conscience than the conscience produces one’s feelings and behavior. Overwhelmingly, people do either what they want to do and then tell their conscience that what they did was right, or their feelings decide what is right and they simply label those feelings “conscience.”
Here’s another way of proving that the conscience is largely useless in directing right behavior: People on the opposite side of every moral issue are equally convinced they are listening to their conscience. You cannot name an issue wherein this is not the case. This is true for extreme examples such as World War II German soldiers and their Nazi leaders — and the Allied troops and leaders who fought the Nazis; the Western spies who gave the secrets to the atom bomb to Josef Stalin, the second greatest mass murderer in history (Mao was first) — and the anti-communists who opposed Stalin; and the Japanese soldiers who used Korean “comfort women” (women whom they regularly gang raped) and who performed hideous medical experiments on Chinese civilians — and the Allied troops and leaders who fought the Japanese in World War II. The list is endless.
But you don’t need such extreme examples. Americans who believe the human fetus has a right to live (unless its death is necessary to save the life of the mother — something that almost never happens thanks to modern medicine) and those who do not believe the human fetus has any right to live (unless the mother wants it to) are both equally convinced their consciences dictate their views on abortion. Americans who believe it is moral to surgically remove the healthy breasts of any girl or young woman who says she is a boy have a completely clear conscience, as do those who think this act constitutes immoral mutilation.
Given the moral unreliability of the conscience, the word essentially means what one feels is right or wrong. In other words, in most people conscience is a euphemism for feelings, another word for the “heart.”
So then, given the general uselessness of the “conscience,” how is one to be morally guided?
History argues for a combination of God (the God of the Bible) and reason. God without reason often results in fanaticism, and the evil to which that usually leads. And reason without God ends with moral chaos as embodied in the university. Indeed, irony of ironies, reason without God ends with the death of reason. Unless, of course, you believe “men give birth” is rational.

This column was originally posted on Townhall.com.

My last column, “Why Many Conservatives Won’t Be with Their Children or Grandchildren This Christmas,” dealt with the issue of parents whose left-wing adult children have cut off all contact with their parents because the parents are on the Right — children who will not even allow their parents to have contact with their grandchildren.
One would think that any person with a functioning conscience and a normal human heart would feel for these parents. As I wrote in the column, if the roles were reversed — that is, if a right-wing child severed all contact with his or her parents because the parents were on the Left, I would feel awful for those parents and condemn any conservative child who did such a thing.
Here are three of the many typical comments from conservative parents and grandparents (from Townhall.com):
Vermonter: “Sadly this is a nationwide trend. Neither of my college educated children have contact with me anymore. Yes it’s painful, especially regarding my grandson. I have apologized for offending them, to no avail…”
Dmckinleyp: “Dennis, this is so timely. Things were bad enough between me and my two daughters, first after I volunteered for the Tea Party and then when I supported Trump. Then my daughter and her husband — who was raised by Leftists working for the federal government — had a baby. She wrote me a farewell email saying she never wanted any contact with me again. I will never see my lovely granddaughter. I am sending her presents and hoping to proceed without confrontation, but prayer is about all I have left.”
GS69: “Yep. I’m in that boat. My youngest daughter — a graduate of Evergreen State College in Washington(!) and my sister, who went to Harvard and volunteered for John Kerry years ago, stopped talking to me when I voted for Trump…”
The column was apparently forwarded to many leftists and discussed on various left-wing websites.
Even though I believe that the further left one goes, the more likely one is to be mean, I admit to having been surprised at the cruelty, even sadism, that characterizes left-wing reactions to my column.
I assumed that the dominant left-wing responses would be either that I exaggerated how widespread this problem is or that many conservative children act the same way.
My assumptions were wrong.
Nearly every one of the many left-wing responses I read — both on right-wing and left-wing sites — supported the left-wing children who deprive their parents of contact with them and with the grandchildren.
Here are some typical left-wing responses (from a conservative site, American Greatness):
yung god money stax: “… conservatives are whiny, mean little people and their kids don’t want to listen to their racist, homophobic, sexist bs any more or let their kids be around that crap.”
Dennis Prager’s butthole: “This might be the dumbest article I’ve ever read anywhere.”
Loona Chan: “I’m sorry Mr. Prager, you cannot claim after 6 years of Trump being the leader of the Republican Party that ‘meanness’ is not a central component of the current Republican project. Republicans now make being as offensive and disregarding of other’s humanity paramount to their political rhetoric… When a parent on facebook ‘jokes’ about inflicting violence and even killing trans people and their children or grandchildren happen to be gay or trans, I think it is perfectly reasonable to no longer want to associate with that person…”
Austin Tucker the_dster694: “There is not an ounce of tolerance in conservative circles.
“Tolerate the intolerance is what you’re asking, and we won’t.”
BartonsInk4: “I’m pretty sure I speak for all of the children who’ve cut off their parents when I say:
“1. We don’t f—ing miss you. At all.
“2. We should have done this years ago.”
Of the nearly 1,000 comments on American Greatness, most of them are like the ones quoted here.
Then there are left-wing websites. I’ll cite two examples.
The first is the feminist site, Wonkette, which headlined:
“Won’t Someone Think Of All The Bigots Who Won’t Be Invited To Christmas This Year?”
The article goes on to say:
“People who vote Republican right now … (hold) views that are hurtful to actual human beings, who may or may not be their children, their grandchildren or friends thereof… it is quite easy to imagine that conservatives would freeze out any relative, parent or not, who belonged to one of the various groups they are currently mad at. We know for sure they have a tendency to throw their LGBTQIA+ children out on the streets…
“…apparently ‘parents’ are the only people God demands conservatives be nice to…
“…conservatives who just go around believing everything Tucker Carlson and Dennis Prager tell them are frequently very angry and thus perhaps not the world’s best dinner guests at Christmas or any other time…
“It seems highly unlikely that the parents being frozen out of Christmas dinners are those who ‘just happen’ to vote Republican, but rather those who insist upon torturing their relatives with QAnon conspiracies…”
Then there is an atheist website called OnlySky, which in its own words, “explores the human experience from a secular point of view.”
Its headline read: “Conservatives are upset their kids don’t want to spend Christmas with them: Dennis Prager believes we’re all obligated to spend the holidays with parents who embrace right-wing cruelty”
The author fully defends left-wing children who break off contact with their parents and prohibit the parents from seeing their grandchildren. For example:
“If you care about your health, then people who reject vaccines and spread conspiracy theories about COVID … are literally putting lives at risk. All of that’s before we get into banning books, denying election results, whitewashing history, denying science, demanding more guns in more hands in more places, and believing whatever other lies FOX hosts shove into their heads…
“Why invite people with dangerous views into your home voluntarily? That’s especially true if you have kids. Parents want to protect their children, and that may mean protecting them from their grandparents’ cuckoo bananas beliefs.”
The author of the piece is identified as “the founder of FriendlyAtheist.com, a YouTube creator, podcast co-host, and author of multiple books about atheism.”
If you have a woke child who talks to you, give him or her a hug.

This column was originally posted on Townhall.com.

In a recent Fireside Chat — my weekly podcast for PragerU, half of which is dedicated to my taking questions from (mostly) young people around the world — a young man in his 20s asked how he was supposed to figure out who is telling the truth and who isn’t. He was undoubtedly speaking for millions of his peers. Given the opposing positions one encounters on almost every issue, how is one supposed to figure out which position is right, and which one may not only be wrong, but a lie?
In addition to obvious suggestions — such as finding individuals and institutions whom you trust, studying both sides of issues, learning as much as possible and using common sense — I offered what may be the single most important indicator of who is more likely to be lying.
It is not a perfect indicator of who is telling the truth — there is no perfect indicator — but it comes close.
With rare exceptions, the party that calls for censorship is lying. People who tell the truth can deal with dissent and different opinions. In fact, truth-tellers welcome debate.
If this theory is correct — and I cannot imagine a valid argument against it — it means that in virtually every instance of a Left-Right difference, the Left is lying.
There is no important area of left-right difference in which the Left — not liberals; the Left — does not call for shutting down dissent.
Take the university. Everyone knows how difficult it is for a visiting speaker to offer non-left-wing views on a college campus. Conservative speakers are often either not allowed to appear in the first place, canceled after being invited or shouted down while speaking.
That is an almost perfect indicator that the leftist ideas that dominate campuses are false.
Now let’s take another example, an area that until very recently one might have said is the very home of truth — science, specifically medical science.
The left-wing California State Assembly recently passed a bill, signed into law by California’s left-wing governor and approved by the state’s left-wing medical establishment, that any California physician who spreads “medical misinformation” or “disinformation” could lose his or her medical license.
Now, why was this law passed? Was there, for the first time in California history, some outbreak of doctors “misinforming” their patients about medical matters, thereby causing them harm?
Of course not.
The law was passed to stifle all medical dissent on issues related to COVID-19.
So now, any physicians who suggest that patients in the early stages of COVID-19 might benefit from taking hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin (both along with zinc) could lose their medical license. Even if these drugs were completely useless in preventing serious illness or death in COVID-19 patients — and many reputable doctors around the world believe they are indeed effective — these drugs are among the safest medications in the world. Both are on the World Health Organization’s list of the most essential drugs in the world. There was no scientific or moral justification for threatening the licenses of doctors who prescribed them for COVID-19.
There are, however, two primary explanations for the medical establishment’s ban on doctors prescribing or merely speaking well of these two therapeutics. One is that former President Donald Trump promoted hydroxychloroquine as a potential lifesaver, and if he promoted anything, the Left opposed it — even if it could save lives. The other is that if these therapeutics were acknowledged to work, the vaccinations would be rendered largely unnecessary and Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson would lose a great deal of money. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health and state medical boards essentially work for Big Pharma.
Based on the rule that those who censor are almost always lying, we must come to the frightening conclusion that the American medical establishment has been lying to us. That includes the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the Association of Children’s Hospitals along with the American Association of Pediatricians. The latter two advocate, almost alone in the world, “affirmative” transgender care, such as puberty blockers in minors and mastectomies on perfectly healthy girls who say they are boys.
In its suppression of scientific dissent, the American medical establishment mimics the medieval Church’s treatment of Galileo.
The Left — in medicine, Big Tech, the mainstream media and in schools from kindergarten through graduate school — not only censors anyone who denies that “men give birth,” but smears their reputations, labeling them as haters, bigots, “anti-science” and inducers of teen suicide.
Truth is a liberal value, and it is a conservative value. It has never been a left-wing value. From Vladimir Lenin and the Communist Party to the contemporary university, the Left has always suppressed dissent.
And for good reason. If dissent is allowed, the Left loses its power.
And the Left knows it. Colleges know that one conservative speaker can undo four years of indoctrination in 90 minutes. And the medical establishment knows that a few dissenting physicians can undo its entire credibility.
That was my response to the young person who wanted to know which side is lying: the one that censors and suppresses dissent.
The Left.

This column was originally posted on Townhall.com.

Let’s begin with an indisputable fact. What Kanye West, aka Ye, is saying about Jews is antisemitic. Why? Because “the Jews run everything” is pure libel. That’s why Jews are not paranoid in being deeply troubled by such sentiments. If widely believed, they will almost inevitably lead to persecution of Jews.
Now, let’s turn to the matter of Candace Owens. For the few who do not know who she is, Candace is a brilliant and charismatic black woman with a very large following. The Left hates her because she is a black conservative and, even worse, a supporter of former President Donald Trump. In the eyes of the Left, including the current president of the United States, Trump supporters (often referred to as “MAGA people”) are either out-and-out fascists or “semi-fascists.”
Owens started BLEXIT, “a movement to encourage black people to leave far-left, progressive policies behind.” She believes the Democratic Party has used blacks to gain and retain power, not to help them. By virtually every metric, Trump did more to help black America than the entire Democratic Party in living memory, not to mention non-living memory. The Democrats began as the pro-slavery party and morphed after the Civil War into the pro-Jim Crow party and the home of white racists. Later, with its social policies, the Democratic Party was instrumental in breaking down the black family, which, prior to Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” consisted overwhelmingly of a mother, father and children living in the same home. To be precise, in 1960, 78% of black children lived in an intact home. Today, nearly three-quarters of black children do not.
In her attempt to lead blacks away from the Democrats, Owens befriended Kanye West, the best-known black rapper in the country. And indeed, Ye, as he is now known, became a Trump supporter.
Needless to say, the Democrats and the rest of the Left hate Candace. Democrats loathe every black individual who isn’t a Democrat, but blacks who convince other blacks to leave the Democratic Party are held in special contempt. And as with all those whom leftists hate, they do not debate, they smear.
In addition to “racist,” “homophobe,” “Islamophobe,” “xenophobe,” “transphobe,” “fascist” and “sexist,” “antisemite” is often used to smear opponents of the Left. For example, almost any time a non-Jew attacks George Soros, a man with no Jewish identity who is among the most destructive people ever to live in America, the attack is labeled “antisemitic.”
Even I have been labeled an “antisemite.” And I am a Jew who has devoted much of his life to the Jewish people. I may have brought more Jews to Judaism than any living Jew; co-authored with Rabbi Joseph Telushkin the most widely read English-language introduction to Judaism (“The Nine Questions People Ask about Judaism”) and a history and explanation of antisemitism (“Why the Jews?”); introduced hundreds of thousands of Christians to Judaism; taken thousands of Christians to Israel; wrote three volumes of a five-volume commentary on the Torah (“The Rational Bible”); and made (for PragerU) the most widely viewed pro-Israel video ever made. Yet, to cite one example, a left-wing writer at the University of Wyoming labeled me an antisemite when I went there to give a lecture.
Candace Owens has now been charged with antisemitism — for defending and not condemning her friend Kanye West after his antisemitic outbursts. Ideally, she would have. She could have said something like what Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres said about President Ronald Reagan when, during the Cold War, in a show of support for West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Reagan visited Bitburg, a World War II German military cemetery where 49 Nazi Waffen-SS soldiers were buried. Peres said, “When a friend makes a mistake, he remains a friend, but the mistake remains a mistake.”
I wish she had said something to that effect, and I hope she will, especially since Ye keeps upping the antisemitic ante.
But is Candace Owens antisemitic? It is sad that the question even needs to be answered. Here are some relevant facts.
She spent two years on the road with Turning Point USA as a staunch defender of Israel on college campuses. She flew to Israel to attend the opening of the American embassy in Jerusalem. She worked for Prager University, run by three committed Jews (I am one of them). Her longest and closest friend is a Jew. She and her British husband are donors to The Conservative Friends of Israel in the United Kingdom. Her father-in-law is the vice chairman of the Counsel for Christians and Jews. In the last five years, she has spoken at Jewish Community Centers four times. She has worked for the last few years for the Daily Wire, co-founded by Ben Shapiro, a yarmulke-wearing Orthodox Jew.
Will any of this be acknowledged by those who attack Candace? I have long argued for the existence of what I call “moral bank accounts.” Every one of us has a moral bank account: The good we do makes deposits into the account, while the bad we do makes withdrawals. Candace Owens’ moral bank account on matters important to Jews has long been in the black.
I have discussed Candace Owens because America needs this brave woman, and because the greatest threats to American Jews and Israel today come from the Left, threats that receive much less attention. How many of those who have rightly condemned Kanye West have spoken out about the Israel-hatred that prevails on most American campuses and frequently overflows into antisemitism? At the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law last month, student groups passed a resolution banning any pro-Israel speaker from speaking there. For the first time in modern American history, many Jewish students fear wearing a yarmulke or a Star of David on campus.
One final note to anyone inclined to subscribe to Kanye West’s sentiments:
Antisemitism destroys non-Jews, their societies and the antisemites themselves. Or, to put it another way, antisemitism leads to suicide as well as homicide. It is an immutable historical rule. After Spain expelled its Jews in 1492, that major world power went into a 500-year decline. If the world had heeded this lesson, it would not have dismissed the Nazis as primarily the Jews’ problem, and it would have confronted Hitler. It didn’t until it was too late. As a result, 50 million people, 44 million of them non-Jews, were slaughtered, and the lives of tens of millions of others were ruined. Germany, too, was destroyed. All because of antisemitism.

This column was originally posted on Townhall.com.

I am writing this column in Burlington, Vermont. It is my seventh city in eight days. From my hometown of Los Angeles, I flew to Orlando, followed by Atlanta, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago and now Burlington.
My Salem radio talk-show host colleagues and I went from city to city in “battleground” states to speak on the forthcoming elections — specifically about how vital it is for the survival of America that the Left and its political party be defeated. (I went to Chicago and Burlington for other reasons.)
Two reflections: one from Philadelphia and the other from Chicago:
In Philadelphia, prior to the evening event, I did what I do in virtually every city in which I speak: smoked a cigar at a local cigar lounge. I would not be surprised if I have visited more cigar bars than anyone outside the cigar industry.
I then took an Uber to the venue.
My driver was a black man, and as I almost always do with strangers, I engaged in conversation with him.
He turned out to be particularly inquisitive about me and why I was headed to the Fuge, a major event venue in the Philly area.
“Why are you headed to the Fuge?” he asked.
“I am going to give a speech,” I answered.
“What is your line of work?”
“I give speeches.”
“About what?”
I should note here that, most of the time when I tell a stranger I give speeches or write books, the person does not ask, “About what?” While I have become used to this lack of curiosity, I am still amazed whenever it happens. If I said I was the manager of a Major League Baseball team, wouldn’t most Americans ask me, “Which team?”
So, I was impressed — and admittedly a bit apprehensive — at my driver’s curiosity. Should I reveal my political and ideological preferences and risk a tense drive? He was, after all, a black man, and the vast majority of American-born (as opposed to Caribbean-born and African-born) blacks are Democrats.
As I consider lying a sin, I had to tell the truth. So, I answered in a way that was true but not necessarily revealing of my political ideology and abstract enough to perhaps end his line of inquiry.
“About the collapse of Western civilization,” I said.
“Oh, man, do I ever agree with you! This wokeness, this censorship of speech is destroying us.”
He went on and on about the woke threat to America and the West so eloquently, I thought about inviting him to speak alongside me and my colleagues.
As that wasn’t realistic, I did the next best thing.
“The evening is sold out,” I told him, “But I can certainly get you in. And if you come, I will introduce you to 1,200 people, and I promise you a standing ovation!”
He thought about it, and finally agreed to come, was given a front-row seat, and, just as I predicted, when I told the audience about him, the spotlight was shone on him, and virtually all 1,200 people rose and gave him a standing ovation.
In fact, they gave him two.
Some reflections:
On generalizations:
Many people oppose generalizations. “You’re generalizing,” is a common objection to an argument using a generalization. The objecting person assumes that charge alone defeats the generalizer’s argument.
There are three key points to be made about generalizations:
First, if you cannot make any generalizations, you cannot think clearly. When you make a valid generalization, it means that you can see a pattern in life.
Therefore, second, the only question that a generalization should provoke is, “Is the generalization valid?”
And third, any time you make a generalization, you must be prepared to back it up with examples and/or facts.
My assuming that a black man — in Philadelphia, no less — was a Democrat was completely valid.
On outliers:
That my black Uber driver turned out to be a conservative meant not that my generalization was wrong, but that I had encountered an outlier. And as I have written in the past, while not every outlier does good, virtually all good is achieved by outliers. Conversely, virtually all bad is done by the herd.
One final observation: As I have often said on the radio, if you are a black man or woman and feeling unloved, I have a suggestion: Just attend any conservative event.

This column was originally posted on Townhall.com.

“Since at least the World War II generation, most parents who held conservative values either did not think they had to teach their children those values or simply did not know how to do so. Most still don’t. If asked to define conservative values, most conservatives will be tongue-tied.”
That’s what I wrote in Part I in explaining why I am writing “Explaining Conservativism.”
I discussed the preeminent value of conservativism — freedom, and the preeminent freedom — of speech.
In Part II, I will discuss an equally important conservative value, which derives from the word itself.
Conservativism conserves.
Conservativism attempts to conserve the best of the past — the best art, literature and music, the best standards, values and wisdom. Conservativism then passes the best of everything to every succeeding generation.
The Left — meaning progressives, not necessarily liberals — loathes the fact that conservativism preserves the past. That is why “change” is one of the most cherished words in the Left’s vocabulary. There is nothing more threatening or, perhaps more important, boring, to a leftist than preserving the past. “New” and “change” provide leftists meaning and excitement.
As one involved in the music world (I periodically conduct orchestras), I have always been struck by how important it is to orchestra CEOs, music professors and especially music critics that as much “new” music be played as possible. If a conductor prefers to program the classics, he is deemed a reactionary, while conductors who regularly program new music are heroes in the music world.
Music critics rarely discuss the question that preoccupies conservatives: Is this new piece of music good, let alone nearly as good as the classics? What matters to music critics is that the music is new — and, these days, that it was composed by a nonwhite person, ideally a woman.
Conservatives ask whether new music is good enough to warrant being played. They are preoccupied with excellence, not with newness or “change.”
This difference between conservatives and leftists/progressives applies to virtually every realm of life.
It explains the decision of the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of English to remove a large mural of Shakespeare and replace it with a mural of a gay female poet of color. No one in his or her right mind thinks that this poet is the equal of Shakespeare. But the members of the Penn English Department are not concerned with literary excellence. Shakespeare’s picture wasn’t replaced because his writing was surpassed. He was replaced because he was male, white and straight. And most of all, he was replaced because he was old. He is an “old (or dead) white European male,” in the words of the Left.
Change and newness are so vital to leftists that a progressive who cared first and foremost about excellence would cease to be a progressive.
Why are “new” and “change” intrinsic to leftism?
One reason, as noted, is excitement. Excitement is important to human beings because it provides an adrenalin rush and because it seems to be an antidote to boredom. When your child complains that he or she is bored, your child is really saying, “I want some excitement.” It is difficult to overstate how important boredom is in shaping human conduct. As I have long argued, S+A=B: Secularism plus affluence equals boredom. And boredom, in the contemporary world, leads to leftism. Leftism is an endless search for exciting causes such as saving the world from alleged extinction; fighting “racism” and “white supremacy” in a largely nonracist America; combating “fascism” in what was — for more than 200 years, until the Left changed it — the freest country in the world; trying to force society to accept a brand-new definition of human sexual identity — namely that, contrary to all of recorded history, it is nonbinary. All these exciting causes are led by the affluent and secular. In other words, the bored.
A second reason for the Left’s love of the new and love of change is that if traditional standards of excellence are preserved, the talentless will fail. Just as the cultural Left fought to award every young person a trophy whether or not his or her team actually won, the Left declares every piece of junk “art.”
The conservative wants to pass on to every generation the best that human beings have created. Depriving young people of the greatest art, literature, music and ideas is a form of child abuse. The result has been generations of ignorant and foolish people, many of whom are actively working toward the opposite of what the “progressive” label suggests: taking society backward.
I would wager a serious sum of money that most American college students could not spell “Beethoven,” let alone recognize any of his music; has never heard of Dostoevsky; and would not recognize a single sculpture or painting by Michelangelo. Instead, they learn about “preferred pronouns.”
For these reasons, the end of conservativism must lead to the end of Western civilization. When you don’t conserve the ideas and art, the religious moral values, and even the nuclear family that made Western civilization the most advanced civilization — materially, morally, scientifically and artistically — ever devised, you will no longer have that civilization. You will have morally confused, emotionally broken, lonely and angry young people — who will eventually wreak havoc on all that is good and worthy of surviving.
We conservatives want to conserve the beautiful, the profound and the wise.
What does the Left wish to conserve? The answer is: nothing. That’s why everything the Left touches it destroys. The less you conserve, the more you destroy.

This column was originally posted on Townhall.com.

There are a number of reasons many young people shy away from conservatism.
The most obvious is that they have been exposed only to left-wing values — from elementary school through graduate school, in the movies, on television, on social media and now even at Disneyland.
Less obvious but equally significant is that they have never been properly exposed to conservative values. Since at least the World War II generation, most parents who held conservative values either did not think they had to teach their children those values or simply did not know how to do so. Most still don’t. If asked to define conservative values, most conservatives will be tongue-tied.
In light of this, I present here, and in subsequent columns, a list of conservatism’s defining characteristics.
We will begin with the most important conservative value — liberty.
Conservatives believe in individual liberty (there is no liberty other than individual liberty). It has been the primary value of the American experiment. While many countries include the word “liberty” in their national mottoes and national anthems, no country has so emphasized liberty as has America.
That is why:
–The French designers of the Statue of Liberty gave the statue to America.
–The iconic symbol of America is the Liberty Bell.
–The one inscription on the Liberty Bell is a verse about liberty from the Book of Leviticus: “And you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.”
–Americans sing of their country as “the land of the free” and “sweet land of liberty.”
–Until recently, every America schoolchild knew by heart Patrick Henry’s cry, “Give me liberty, or give me death!”
–Chinese young people who protested the Communist takeover of Hong Kong waved the American flag.
And that is why America’s founders were adamant that the state — the national government — be as small, as limited, as possible. The bigger the government, the smaller the liberty. Big government and big liberty are mutually exclusive.
Moreover, liberty is not the only victim of big government. Human life is also a victim. Every genocide of the 20th century, the century of genocide, was committed by big government. Without big government, one hundred million people would not and could not have been slaughtered, and a billion more would not and could not have been enslaved. (There was one exception: the Hutu genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda, which was tribal in nature. Tribal culture, like left-wing culture, emphasizes the group over the individual.)
In order to limit the size and power of the national government, the founders delegated most governmental powers to the states. They did so in the Constitution by specifying what powers the national government had and by asserting that all other powers be delegated to the states. In addition, they increased the power of the states by having presidential elections decided by the states — the Electoral College — rather than by the popular national vote, and by how they structured the Senate, one of the two branches of Congress. They gave every state equal representation in the Senate, no matter how small the population of the state.
The Left’s opposition to the Electoral College and to the Senate makes perfect sense. It is the power inherent in big government, not liberty, that animates the Left. The defining characteristic of every left-wing party and movement in the world has always been an ever bigger and therefore more powerful government.
Liberty is a liberal value as well as a conservative value, but it has never been a left-wing value. Liberty cannot be a left-wing value because the more liberty individuals have, the less power the government has. Conversely, the weaker the state, the weaker the Left.
This especially holds true for the greatest of all liberties — free speech.
Free speech is a fundamental conservative value, and it has been a fundamental liberal value. But it has never been a left-wing value. For that reason, everywhere the Left is dominant — government, media, universities — it stifles dissent. The reason is simple: no left-wing movement can survive an open exchange of ideas. Leftist ideologies are emotion- and power-based, not reason- or morality-based. So, leftists cannot allow honest debate. They do not argue with opponents; they suppress them.
For the first time in American history, freedom of speech is seriously threatened — indeed it has already been seriously curtailed. With the ascent of the Left, the inevitable suppression of free speech is taking place.
That liberals — who have always valued liberty and free speech — vote for the great suppressor of liberty, the Left, is the tragedy of our time. The reason they do so is that liberals forgot what they stand for; they only remember what they believe they stand against: conservatives.
So, the next time a liberal or left-wing friend or relative asks you what conservatives stand for, say “liberty” — especially free speech. And explain that is why you fear and oppose big government — because big government and individual liberty cannot coexist.

This column was originally posted on Townhall.com.

As most Americans now realize, America is experiencing a societal breakdown. This should be obvious to anyone, even those facilitating this breakdown as they openly acknowledge they seek to break down American society.
This is a society that teaches its youngest citizens a suicidal lie: that America was founded in 1619, that it was built on slavery and that even today it is systemically racist. At the same time, it does not teach the fundamental moral fact that every culture practiced slavery — Arab, Muslim, African, Asian, Native American — and usually more viciously (e.g., Arab slave masters routinely castrated black slaves so that they could not reproduce) than in America.
This is a society that robs its youngest of sexual innocence. Teachers — nearly all of them women, the sex that society has always regarded as the natural guardians of sexual innocence — now routinely sexualize young people with discussions of sexual behavior and by having drag queens perform for them.
This is a society that has taken as a given that there are more than two sexes; that has Jewish and Christian clergy sign emails with “preferred pronouns”; that will praise the Disney Corporation for dropping all references to “boys and girls” from its theme park announcements.
This is a society in which refusing to say that men give birth can lead to social banning and the loss of one’s job and income.
This is a society that encourages violent crime. It elects prosecutors who allow violent criminals to avoid having to pay bail. Its elites advocate defunding police. It keeps raising the dollar amount of stolen goods that constitutes a felony. In short, America is now a society in which the dominant message to would-be criminals is that crime pays.
This is a society in which fewer and fewer young people are marrying, fewer are having children, and more and are having children without being married, usually without a father in the life of the child.
This all began with the demise of moral authority — and moral, social and intellectual chaos is the inevitable result.
Prior to the 1960s, America had moral authority — God, country, parents, the Bible, teachers, police, and clergy.
Not one of them is a normative authority today.
Starting in the 1960s, each one was overthrown. The ’60s motto “Never trust anyone over 30” perfectly embodied this — given that every one of these was older than 30. Soon, teachers were called by their first names and frequently talked back to, even cursed; on college campuses, “America” was often spelled “Amerika,” and the flag is now declared a symbol of white supremacy; police were referred to as “pigs”; clergy were rendered irrelevant; the American motto, “In God we trust,” was ignored or mocked; and the Bible went from the dominant book in American life to the trash heap of history.
Most important, parental authority rapidly declined.
Moral stability — in other words, civilization — is dependent on parental authority. Once that breaks down, all the others mentioned here also break down.
If you look at the two tablets of the Ten Commandments, you will notice that each tablet has five commandments. The first five are laws between man and God, while the second five commandments govern behavior toward fellow human beings (do not murder, steal, etc.). The first four “rest” on the Fifth; and the second four “rest” on the Tenth.
Taking the second tablet first, the four commandments that precede the Tenth depend on obedience to the Tenth Commandment. When people murder, commit adultery, steal or offer false testimony, it is almost always because they “covet” what their neighbor has — his property, his animals, his spouse.
Likewise, the first four commandments regarding God as the One Moral Authority rest on people obeying the Fifth Commandment: “Honor your father and mother.”
Parental moral authority is the vehicle to divine moral authority. That is why the Fifth Commandment, to honor one’s parents, is the only human-to-human commandment on the first tablet. It is also the only one of the Ten Commandments that promises a reward — “that your days on the land will be lengthened” and “so that it goes well with you.” You will have a long-lived civilization and things will go well with you when parents have moral authority.
Beginning in the ’60s, parents stopped telling their children what to do and instead began asking them to do things. Parents became much more interested in being loved by their children than in being honored by their children. Children stopped fearing parents, and parents began fearing their children. Parents became much more interested in their children’s feelings than in their behavior.
Today, elementary schools and high schools work to diminish all parental authority. The most obvious example is hiding from parents that their 10-year-old says he or she is not their biological sex. And should a parent tell his or her 10-year-old, “This is not so, you were born a boy and you are a boy” or “You were born a girl and you are a girl,” those parents run the risk of having the child taken away from them, not to mention severe condemnation from doctors, psychotherapists and social workers.
One result of the breakdown of parental authority is that we probably have more child-parent alienation than at any time in American history. There are millions of parents whose adult child will not talk to them — many of them because of the way the parent voted (if the parent voted for former President Donald Trump, not if the parent voted for Hillary Clinton or President Joe Biden).
The bottom line is this: when parents don’t rule the home, chaos will rule society. And chaos always breeds tyranny. So, the choice is stark — either we have strong parents, or we will have a strong state.

This column was originally posted on Townhall.com.