Speaker 1: Life Audio on today's episode of Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2: I have great admiration for my parents' generation. Absolutely fought
Speaker 2: World War II, the Korean War. That certainly was a
Speaker 2: distinguished generation, and distinguished in particular by its patriotism. How
Speaker 2: did that generation produce the baby boomer generation characterized by
Speaker 2: so much narcissism, so much antipathy to America and its institutions,
Speaker 2: so much anger at the religion of their parents. Pretty
Speaker 2: much whatever most of those parents stood for, the kids overthrew.
Speaker 1: That's coming up on Timeless Wisdom with Denis Prager. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Timeless Wisdom with Denis Prager. Here thousands of hours
Speaker 1: of Dennis's lectures, courses in classic radio programs, and to
Speaker 1: purchase Dennisprager's Rational Bibles to Dennisprager dot.
Speaker 2: Com or not to be That is the question. Where
Speaker 2: was God? Isn't God supposed to be good?
Speaker 3: Needs to levels?
Speaker 4: Does God want us to suffer ten years?
Speaker 2: You're not fished yet?
Speaker 5: Why did you go there?
Speaker 2: Who are you?
Speaker 1: Ruce?
Speaker 2: I'm God Bingo Yazi?
Speaker 6: Is that your final answer?
Speaker 2: Our services?
Speaker 7: God?
Speaker 8: Bing ding dinging ding ding ding ding.
Speaker 9: Well, it was nice to meet you God. Thank you
Speaker 9: for the grand canyon and good luck.
Speaker 1: With the apocalypse.
Speaker 2: Alrighty, you're listening to the Dennis Prager Show. This is
Speaker 2: the Ultimate Issues hour. Each week at this time I
Speaker 2: devote an hour to some great question subject of life
Speaker 2: and something that has puzzled me pretty much my whole life.
Speaker 2: Is this we call the generation of World War Two.
Speaker 2: It has now become fashionable, at least, to call that
Speaker 2: generation the greatest generation. I I don't buy that. I
Speaker 2: have great admiration for my parents' generation absolutely fought World
Speaker 2: War II, the Korean War, and much of the Cold War,
Speaker 2: and the sacrifices made at home through the families that
Speaker 2: stayed back and then and the numbers of Americans who
Speaker 2: died abroad and and just just went under either a
Speaker 2: draft or a volunteer to go and fight either the
Speaker 2: Japanese fascists or the Nazis. Is it is? It's there
Speaker 2: was a lot of greatness in that generation. Absolutely, I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't say it's the greatest generation. Is it greater
Speaker 2: than the generation of George Washington and the founders of
Speaker 2: the country. That's an odd statement, but it certainly was
Speaker 2: a distinguished generation, and distinguished in particular by its patriotism.
Speaker 2: How did that generation produce the baby boomer generation, characterized
Speaker 2: by so much narcissism, so much antipathy to America and
Speaker 2: its institutions, so much anger at the religion of their parents.
Speaker 2: Pretty much whatever most of those parents stood for, the
Speaker 2: kids overthrew. How did the greatest generation produce a non
Speaker 2: great generation? I won't say the worst generation. That might
Speaker 2: be as hyperbolic as saying that the other one was
Speaker 2: the greatest. That's my question here, And of course there
Speaker 2: will be those who will say, oh, what are you kidding?
Speaker 2: This is the greatest generation, the generation of the sixties
Speaker 2: and seventies, idealistic, make love not war. This was question authority,
Speaker 2: give peace a chance. This was the greatest generation. Okay,
Speaker 2: if you believe that, then this may not and may
Speaker 2: not be relevant to you. But even well, actually, no,
Speaker 2: even if you do believe that, you have this question.
Speaker 2: How did Generation X produce Generation Y? Why didn't? Why
Speaker 2: didn't or forget because we have a generation X concept.
Speaker 2: Why did generation A not produce Generation A two? How
Speaker 2: did it produce Generation not A? How did that happen?
Speaker 2: How did the parents produce children with such different values?
Speaker 2: It isn't true in every case, and for those where
Speaker 2: it's not true, that's that you don't have to answer
Speaker 2: this question for your family, but you have to answer
Speaker 2: it for this country to many too many people. To
Speaker 2: min my parents, it is almost unrecognizable. The America that
Speaker 2: they see today is almost unrecognizable. Now you may say
Speaker 2: that it's better, after all, is much less racism, and
Speaker 2: they're always it's better. I fully acknowledge that, but in
Speaker 2: most ways I think it's worse. And with a generation
Speaker 2: amo out of his mind, a baby boomers, which with
Speaker 2: a very self referential view of the world, how did
Speaker 2: that happen? How did that happen? This was a generation
Speaker 2: that accepted the draft. Today you mentioned the word draft,
Speaker 2: the idea that you would be conscripted to fight for
Speaker 2: your country, and it is it is, I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's like showing a cross to Dracula. Just about everything.
Speaker 2: They were more religious the parents as a general rule.
Speaker 2: They were more patriotic the parents as a general rule,
Speaker 2: and and just you know, value after value seems to
Speaker 2: be different. And so that's the question. The answer, whatever
Speaker 2: side you're on, the answer applies to you. You may
Speaker 2: have the the the children's values, and what I'm about
Speaker 2: to say, you will want to hear, because then you
Speaker 2: will be able to answer, how do you pass on
Speaker 2: your values? And here is my fundamental answer, which which
Speaker 2: is was lost on most of that generation, and that
Speaker 2: is you must conscientiously deliberately pass on values or they
Speaker 2: are not passed on. Values are not passed on just
Speaker 2: because parents live them. There there arose a an income
Speaker 2: poop idea. Like so much of the age of stupidity,
Speaker 2: as I call it, that my generation ushered in the
Speaker 2: sixties and seventies, this knenk and poop idea was parents
Speaker 2: don't have to don't have to articulate values, let alone
Speaker 2: impose them on their children. They just have to embody
Speaker 2: them in their own lives. You be models to your children,
Speaker 2: and they will pick up on your modeling, and that's
Speaker 2: the value system that they will live by. Wrong rung.
Speaker 2: You have to articulate values, not just live them. And
Speaker 2: they and they weren't. They weren't articulated, and parents didn't
Speaker 2: know how to answer their kids when they'd come back
Speaker 2: from college, to which the parents often didn't go to college.
Speaker 2: Was the big subverter of the value system because already
Speaker 2: in place were those new values with a lot of professors.
Speaker 2: You know, nationalism stinks. Patriotism is a code word for fascism.
Speaker 2: Religion is for morons and produces produces uh evil like
Speaker 2: like uh the Inquisition, And that's that's what is taught.
Speaker 2: That was That's what the kids came home to the
Speaker 2: parents and said, what what do you mean? War is good?
Speaker 2: What are you talking about? War is good? War? War
Speaker 2: is the there is a tool of the industrial class,
Speaker 2: the military industrial complex. Dad. We're telling me war is good.
Speaker 2: Killing killing is good? Dad? What's wrong with you? I
Speaker 2: just took sociology four point six Dad, Dad, I'm getting
Speaker 2: a ba. What the hell do you know?
Speaker 10: Oh?
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe you know how you fought the Nazis. That's
Speaker 2: that's history, man, that's history. But war, Come on and
Speaker 2: make love, not wart that, Dad, What do you mean marriage?
Speaker 2: Come on, dad, that's old fashioned. Men and women are different. Ma. Ma,
Speaker 2: you were brainwashed by dad. You were brainwashed by a
Speaker 2: patriarchal system. Maw, you really believe that stuff. And that's
Speaker 2: I saw that. I heard these Nothing I have said
Speaker 2: was made up nothing. I heard those very arguments in
Speaker 2: my own home when friends would visit, and my own
Speaker 2: home from kids too, to their parents who would be visiting,
Speaker 2: And when I would visit other kids' homes, I heard
Speaker 2: this all the time. You live, these ridiculous values. You
Speaker 2: this last generation, and the parents didn't know how to answer. See,
Speaker 2: there is the belief among people with good values, and
Speaker 2: by and large the past generation had good values, that
Speaker 2: it's so obvious, it's so obvious that this is a
Speaker 2: good thing. It's so obvious America has been a largely
Speaker 2: good enterprise that we we're gonna have a bunch of
Speaker 2: kids grow up thinking America stinks, or in their language,
Speaker 2: America sucks. Going we're gonna have a generation that believes
Speaker 2: that we're gonna have a generation study textbooks written by
Speaker 2: people who think that the world would be better if
Speaker 2: there were no America, like Howard's in the most widely
Speaker 2: read historian of the of my generation, the baby Boomer generation.
Speaker 2: You think parents of the quote unquote greatest generation could
Speaker 2: ever have imagined that no, nothing, nothing that has happened,
Speaker 2: by and large is imaginable to them. So once again,
Speaker 2: here is the answer. You have to know what you
Speaker 2: stand for, and then you must articulate it to your children,
Speaker 2: to the next generation. What happened was American good values.
Speaker 2: Good American values were habit. They were not intellectually grounded.
Speaker 2: People didn't know what they stood for. They just knew
Speaker 2: it was good stuff, but they really didn't know how
Speaker 2: to articulate it. Their kids went to college. They couldn't
Speaker 2: answer them. And we have the America that we have today.
Speaker 2: You must articulate values and know what you believe. We
Speaker 2: return and I'll take your calls on the Ultimate Issues
Speaker 2: Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.
Speaker 1: This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2: It's a little different this Ultimate Issues Hour than many
Speaker 2: other Ultimate Issues hours. For as it says, how was
Speaker 2: this Ultimate Issues Hour different from all the whole other
Speaker 2: Ultimate Issues hours? At? In one way, it is, I'm asking.
Speaker 2: I think it is an Ultimate Issue it's just different.
Speaker 2: How did the past generation called the Greatest Generation produce
Speaker 2: a generation that has such different values than it? I'm
Speaker 2: putting that that's a neutral way. I think worse values.
Speaker 2: But even if you think they're better values, it's they're
Speaker 2: certainly different for that generation. The patriotism, fighting fighting for
Speaker 2: your country, fighting for freedom. I mean, so many things
Speaker 2: were so were so taken for granted. And that's my point.
Speaker 2: You can't take anything good for granted. You can't. You
Speaker 2: have to pass it on consciously and conscientiously. Let's take
Speaker 2: your theories on this. We have quite a few interesting ones. Alta, Loma, California,
Speaker 2: and Key Hi, Keith Dennis Praeger.
Speaker 3: How are you doing today?
Speaker 2: Okay? Thanks?
Speaker 7: Good.
Speaker 3: My theory was that the Greatest Generation is so called,
Speaker 3: suffered so much with World War Two and the Depression
Speaker 3: that I think a natural knee jerk reaction was to say,
Speaker 3: my kids aren't going to suffer that type of hardship
Speaker 3: or pain. Very intelligent, very the result to indulge those
Speaker 3: that generation unknowingly and unwittingly and didn't pass along the
Speaker 3: very things that made them grain. It's kind of hard
Speaker 3: to pass along hardship, but that does make for a
Speaker 3: better person. But the knee jerk reaction would be to
Speaker 3: go against that Grain.
Speaker 2: Caught all them. That's that's great, but let's let's I
Speaker 2: want to keep a listing. That's a good one. I'll
Speaker 2: read the list off later. Of the ones I agree
Speaker 2: with anyway, that one I do, I agree with I
Speaker 2: hadn't thought of that. We've suffered so much. You the
Speaker 2: baby boomers, you won't suffer. And that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: And people who don't and suffered don't know evil. And
Speaker 2: that is, of course the great problem with so many
Speaker 2: of the of my general They don't understand evil. You know,
Speaker 2: evil is is uh? Evil is not recycling, not not
Speaker 2: not the torture and and and and and mass murder,
Speaker 2: which they don't they don't, they don't know of. Alrighty,
Speaker 2: let's go to some more theories that you might have.
Speaker 2: Jim in Dallas, Jim Dennis Prager.
Speaker 7: High, how are you today?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 7: Uh, I don't know whether this is calls or effect,
Speaker 7: you know, one of those deals? Yes, and I have
Speaker 7: three of them, three causes. What would be doctor Spock
Speaker 7: on He's raising of children? Yeah, Playboy magazine, Yeah, and
Speaker 7: doctor Timothy Leary.
Speaker 2: All right, that's a very it's another interesting theory. And
Speaker 2: but he's right, which is which comes first, the chicken
Speaker 2: or the egg? But though those are pretty early, doctor
Speaker 2: Spock did have a real impact. That's true. We ought
Speaker 2: to do. We're going to have somebody who's written on
Speaker 2: that about the child rearing advice which was quite permissive.
Speaker 2: And that goes to another subject we will have as
Speaker 2: another ultimate issues hour, and that is the breakdown of authority.
Speaker 2: Authority has broken down, and that is the single biggest
Speaker 2: problem probably or the single biggest cause of our problems.
Speaker 2: The authority. I have talked about this, the authority of God,
Speaker 2: the authority of police, the authority of parents, the authority
Speaker 2: of teachers. They're the only authority is the self. I
Speaker 2: look to me on my own authority that came. That
Speaker 2: is my generation's belief that that, of course there are exceptions.
Speaker 2: There are millions of exceptions. But that has been been
Speaker 2: an innovation into American thought of my of my generation.
Speaker 2: Doctor Spock in that regard the permissive upbringing would be
Speaker 2: an example. Who did else? Did he? Playboy? Playboy, which
Speaker 2: started I think in nineteen I know in the fifties
Speaker 2: early fifties. What Playboy did was to dedertify pornography. It
Speaker 2: said it said that because the whole point was it's
Speaker 2: the it's the girl next door, and so gradually it
Speaker 2: made it. It made it because it wasn't a brown
Speaker 2: bag raunchy. It made it acceptable. I think that that's
Speaker 2: what would be argued, was the effect of Playboy that
Speaker 2: it's look, it's it's wholesome. It's like, it's wholesome nudity
Speaker 2: as opposed to dirty nudity. And I think that that
Speaker 2: and he would say that, Hugh Hefner, he would say, look,
Speaker 2: we differed from all the other stuff. There were magazines
Speaker 2: like that, you know, with undressed women in the past, moressive, yes,
Speaker 2: all right, and sexual permissiveness. Yeah, I think even more
Speaker 2: than exactly more than the looking at pictures that had
Speaker 2: always been since photography, from before photography. But it was
Speaker 2: the playboy philosophy. That's right, that's right, which he would
Speaker 2: say too, that was what really did it, not the pictures.
Speaker 2: There was the playboy philosophy, and that was embodied in
Speaker 2: my generation statement, make love not war. Making war is
Speaker 2: not noble. Making love that's noble. And then the third one,
Speaker 2: he said, Timothy Leary with the drugs, Well, yeah, this
Speaker 2: is all. What it all came down to was we
Speaker 2: don't need authority in any of these things. What was
Speaker 2: right and wrong in the past. The idea that mom
Speaker 2: and dad waited to have sex for marriage, I mean
Speaker 2: they did other things before marriage. Believe me, Mom and dad,
Speaker 2: and they were people who had pre barttle sex in
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties also, but by and large people waited
Speaker 2: for marriage and if they got pregnant at a shotgun wedding.
Speaker 2: And there was the belief that if you're going to
Speaker 2: have children, forget sex, if you're going to have children,
Speaker 2: you're going to be married first. That was the belief.
Speaker 2: But everything was overthrown because that wasn't taught as a value.
Speaker 2: Nothing was taught as a value. Just we love you
Speaker 2: and we're going to give you the best, the best house,
Speaker 2: the best everything. And then the kid watches TV. TV
Speaker 2: starts at that time, and everything is overthrown, virtually, virtually
Speaker 2: everything from the past. One eighth Praguer seven seven six.
Speaker 2: We go to a preschool teacher, Lauren in Los Angeles. Hello, Lauren,
Speaker 2: Dennis Prager, Hi, thank you.
Speaker 10: Very much for taking my call.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 10: I'm a preschool teacher and so often there's a bulletin
Speaker 10: board or a poster that says children learn what they live.
Speaker 8: Have you seen that?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 10: Okay, well it's a poster that they make me put
Speaker 10: up in my classroom. That irks me because it's not
Speaker 10: good enough for us to you know, show them what
Speaker 10: a good person is supposed to do. You have to
Speaker 10: tell them, oh, we don't do this, or we do
Speaker 10: do this. And when parents on that to school night,
Speaker 10: when I say, you know, hitting is not necessarily a
Speaker 10: bad thing, they go berserk because they think I'm teaching
Speaker 10: their children to be some sort of warrior. But what
Speaker 10: I'm teaching is if someone touches you the wrong way,
Speaker 10: or if someone you know threatens you physically with silence,
Speaker 10: you might have to hit somebody and run to the teacher.
Speaker 10: And you don't just have to stand there.
Speaker 2: I'm amazed you still have your job. It's all my
Speaker 2: that's sad. So is she That's that's sad. Oh the
Speaker 2: the There is a term that Trotsky the Bolshevik used,
Speaker 2: permanent revolution, and I've applied that to goodness. Goodness and
Speaker 2: good values need to be permanently taught as if it's
Speaker 2: the first generation learning it. I'll explain when we come back.
Speaker 1: This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2: All right, and everybody, Dennis Prager here. This is the
Speaker 2: Ultimate Issues hour, and I'm talking about how the what's
Speaker 2: called the greatest generation. I don't believe that that's the
Speaker 2: right term. There are many great generations in American history,
Speaker 2: but in many ways, it was a great generation raised
Speaker 2: a generation with such different values than it. And I'm
Speaker 2: putting that as neutrally as possible, because I think that
Speaker 2: the values are overwhelmingly worse values, not in every instance,
Speaker 2: but by and large. And how did that happen? And here,
Speaker 2: you know, we were talking about this, and I was
Speaker 2: saying to you that every generation has to see the
Speaker 2: next generation as the first in history. You can take
Speaker 2: nothing for granted, nothing in the raising of the next generation.
Speaker 2: I'm not just talking to parents, because I do believe
Speaker 2: with Hillary Clinton, it takes a village to raise a child.
Speaker 2: Conservatives absolutely must agree with that. The idea that just
Speaker 2: parents raise a child has never been true in history. Never.
Speaker 2: It's absurd unless you take your children to a desert island.
Speaker 2: Of course, society raises your child along with you. That's
Speaker 2: why you want good peers, and you want good neighbors,
Speaker 2: and you want good uncles, and you want good aunts.
Speaker 2: Drives me nuts, you know, there shouldn't be in Just
Speaker 2: because Hillary Clinton said something doesn't mean it's wrong. I
Speaker 2: don't have her values, but I have her theory. She's right,
Speaker 2: it does take a village to raise a child. We
Speaker 2: were all raised by villages. My parents' friends played a
Speaker 2: role in my life. My grandparents played a role in
Speaker 2: my life. My peers played an immense role in my life.
Speaker 2: God forbid, it's just parents. To be perfectly honest, you know,
Speaker 2: the parents are flawed human beings. We need a whole
Speaker 2: larger canvas from which to make ourselves, to paint ourselves.
Speaker 2: To use some artistic metaphor here, So society and parents
Speaker 2: have to look at the next generation as brand new,
Speaker 2: like it's the first in history. They are not born
Speaker 2: with any of our values none, and they don't come
Speaker 2: through osmosis. That's my point. If they came through osmosis,
Speaker 2: then my generation would have similar values to the quote
Speaker 2: unquote greatest generation. But it doesn't. It doesn't come through osmosis. Now,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of specific reasons for why this
Speaker 2: generation didn't adopt the values of its parents, but that's
Speaker 2: another one. Alrighty, Let's go to Philadelphia and Bill, Hello, Bill,
Speaker 2: Dennis Praeger, Thank you for calling.
Speaker 4: Hi, Dennis. It's an honor to talk to you, my
Speaker 4: I agree in part with what you're saying.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: I grew up in Levittown, which is like Levitown, Pennsylvania's
Speaker 4: like was every man's place to grow up in, and
Speaker 4: I thought the values were articulated perfectly. They were very simple.
Speaker 4: We all came, our parents were most of them were
Speaker 4: in the service, and they were all let's say, blue
Speaker 4: collar workers for the most part, steel workers, auto workers,
Speaker 4: things like that, and the message was simple, don't steal,
Speaker 4: don't cheat. And these were reinforced on a daily basis.
Speaker 4: And there were millions of kids in my neighborhood and
Speaker 4: we all heard the same thing every day. So I
Speaker 4: always ask myself what happened. I agree in part that
Speaker 4: they could have been articulated better, But I also think
Speaker 4: any other gentlemen's examples, the Playboy and so on, I
Speaker 4: think there was a failure in the institutions. For example,
Speaker 4: the message of Playboy couldn't have been spread if the
Speaker 4: courts didn't say it was great to propagate pornography, or
Speaker 4: it were not great that it was that was perfectly
Speaker 4: legal for thousands of years or for one hundred.
Speaker 2: Ironically, they didn't they there really are obscenity laws. It's
Speaker 2: just that they were they were denied as being factors.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you though, I think that Alan corrected me
Speaker 2: and correct and I agree with him. It wasn't the pictures.
Speaker 2: It was the philosophy. Yes, absolutely, the philosophy was he basically, yeah, yeah, the.
Speaker 4: Church has abandoned us. And then academia. You know, in
Speaker 4: my grandmother's generation, she wasn't very articulated or very articulate
Speaker 4: with her values. The church would pick up or the
Speaker 4: local school would take up. Yes, that started to change dramatically.
Speaker 2: Well, that's very good. That's part of my village. They did.
Speaker 2: A lot of the churches and synagogues saw themselves as
Speaker 2: social workers. The purpose of religion became to comfort, not
Speaker 2: to provide moral authority. That's that's worthy of its own
Speaker 2: that the change in religion, that's a great subject. And
Speaker 2: the schools, the schools became became daycare centers, essentially, not
Speaker 2: propagators of society's values. We return on the ultimate issues
Speaker 2: our Dennis Prager show.
Speaker 6: Hi Dennis, this is stand some ten apply New Jersey.
Speaker 6: I'm so sorry to hear about your accident. Please focus
Speaker 6: on your music, Please get some some cigar smoke around
Speaker 6: you to cheer you up, and have someone read Bilo
Speaker 6: to you, especially page five nine four.
Speaker 2: Sorry again, but ar up.
Speaker 6: Remember happiness is one hundred percent.
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Speaker 2: All right, my friends, welcome back the Ultimate Issues Hour
Speaker 2: and the Ultimate Issue that's one hour each week devoted
Speaker 2: to some great issue of life. How did a generation
Speaker 2: and I don't think there's a precedent for this in
Speaker 2: American history of a generation having such different values from
Speaker 2: its parents as the Baby Boomers from its parents. Whether
Speaker 2: you like the baby Boomer values or you like the parents' values,
Speaker 2: I think everybody can agree on that. There is there
Speaker 2: has never been a gulf like that. And I saw it,
Speaker 2: I lived it, I saw it. It was it was,
Speaker 2: It was astonishing to witness in the sixties and seventies
Speaker 2: you and in the micro and the macro, and in
Speaker 2: the views of America, in the views of sex, and
Speaker 2: the views of God, and the views of about religion,
Speaker 2: every area of life. It was a different universe. And
Speaker 2: how did that happen? And the last caller makes some
Speaker 2: very fine points because I have been saying and I
Speaker 2: saw I'm challenging myself here, Well, this is what happens
Speaker 2: when you don't articulate values and think that they just
Speaker 2: will continue. And I am right, that is what happens. However,
Speaker 2: it is totally understandable that they would have thought that
Speaker 2: these values will continue in the next generation, the baby
Speaker 2: boomer generation, because pause, that's how they continued them. Their
Speaker 2: parents were not great articulators of values either. So there
Speaker 2: must be something in addition to parental failure to communicate
Speaker 2: values to my generation, my Denis's generation. And the answer
Speaker 2: is institutional. They just changed the institution, the schools changed.
Speaker 2: And this was that which proves that the ideas are
Speaker 2: much earlier than the sixties. There was an incubation period.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, it was a Dewey was it
Speaker 2: was a forerunner of the of the educational breakdown that
Speaker 2: we that we now see a lot of these ideas
Speaker 2: were percolating from Europe and among the intellectuals, and then
Speaker 2: they then they trickle down to the rest. And so
Speaker 2: that's why I said earlier churches, which had been which
Speaker 2: had been the bulwark of values, became places to comfort you.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to tell you right from wrong. I'm
Speaker 2: just going to tell you that we love each other.
Speaker 2: God is love, We are love. We love each other.
Speaker 2: He loves us, We love him. You love me, I
Speaker 2: love you, You love me. And that's what's what it became.
Speaker 2: Live alrighty, let's go to Central Line, Michigan and Robert. Hello,
Speaker 2: Robert Dennis Prager, Hi, how you doing Okay?
Speaker 11: I remember in school being told by a teacher that
Speaker 11: leave it to Beaver and father knows best where the
Speaker 11: two sites examples he cited were unrealistic portrayals of American life,
Speaker 11: and that's why they were going to be taking them
Speaker 11: off the air. And I remember at the time thinking that, well,
Speaker 11: isn't that why we watched them to get something to
Speaker 11: strive for? Yeah, right, right, I can get reality by
Speaker 11: turning off the TV and walking down right.
Speaker 2: So desperate house reality, so desperate housewives that depicts real life.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, that's what we've got from leave it to
Speaker 2: Beaver to Desperate Housewives in one in one generation. Well
Speaker 2: said by friend. Thank you so much, Christina in Tucson, Arizona.
Speaker 2: Dennis Prager.
Speaker 12: Hi, Hi Dennis, it's Christina. Thanks for telling me contribute
Speaker 12: to your conversation.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 12: I think that the greatest change in our society after
Speaker 12: World War Two, one of them was moms choosing to
Speaker 12: stay in the workforce when the men came home. I
Speaker 12: know you mentioned already that parents might not be the crux,
Speaker 12: but I think that it was at least a contributor
Speaker 12: because the moms were then not at home to be
Speaker 12: an anchor, and with their divided loyalties then between a
Speaker 12: job and wanting to perform there and not being able
Speaker 12: to devote their school you know, creativity and energy.
Speaker 2: Right, and realizing that they could do a really good
Speaker 2: job that was translated into well there were no differences
Speaker 2: between the sexes.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and then they then have to trust more and
Speaker 12: more of their training to schools, after school programs.
Speaker 2: That's very good. That's very good.
Speaker 12: Let me point out a contemporary example. I don't know
Speaker 12: how many homeschooling families you know, but have you noticed
Speaker 12: how their children are different? No kidding, We get comments
Speaker 12: all the time. We have seven children.
Speaker 2: Yeah you know what you know, I'll tell you in
Speaker 2: one word, two words. It'll have to be how they're different.
Speaker 2: Not jaded, No, they're not.
Speaker 12: And they're polite, that's right. And it's because their moms
Speaker 12: are on them all day. Oh no, honey, don't hit
Speaker 12: Would you please say thank you? You need to pick
Speaker 12: that up. I'm not your maid. You know, those kind
Speaker 12: of training things that happen all day long. Yes, it,
Speaker 12: frankly are exhausting. But I really, in my heart feel
Speaker 12: like they're going to be even better citizens.
Speaker 2: I think they will. I agree with you, excellent folks.
Speaker 2: You're making such good points. They've they've broadened my own
Speaker 2: theories on this that there's another terrific idea from Akron
Speaker 2: Ohio Dan, Hello Dan, and Akron Dennis Praeger, Hello Dennis.
Speaker 13: I think one factor that didn't allow the Greatest generation
Speaker 13: to pass on its values was that their great weakness
Speaker 13: race was exploited by the left. And what brilliant the
Speaker 13: racist all their other values can be dismissed. Is racists
Speaker 13: you know, from a racist generation.
Speaker 2: Dan, do you smoke cigars? Yes, we should send them one.
Speaker 2: And that is that. That is a very very intelligent
Speaker 2: novel insight. I thank you so much. That's what that's right,
Speaker 2: that's what was done. How do you depict America's bad? Look,
Speaker 2: we were there was racism, which there was, that's happened
Speaker 2: with slavery, and then Jim Krolows is absolutely right and
Speaker 2: using that, well, then America must be awful. It's no
Speaker 2: better than anybody else. Look at the racism and that's
Speaker 2: what was used. That's exactly right. So nothing could be right,
Speaker 2: Nothing about it is right because after all, there was
Speaker 2: there was racism. No country in its history ever conquered
Speaker 2: racism so quickly as we have in the last generation.
Speaker 2: But it doesn't matter, apparently, what aight Prager seven seven six,
Speaker 2: The ultimate issues our Dennis Prager Show continues.
Speaker 1: This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Speaker 1: Now back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Dennis Prager Show. I'm gonna summarize
Speaker 2: some more points you folks I got. Look, I give
Speaker 2: you a hard time sometimes, so you know, I don't
Speaker 2: patronize you. I have learned as much this hour as
Speaker 2: I think I may have taught. Your claus have been
Speaker 2: superb and the points continue superb and uh Tom in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles says less was expected of us. I'm asking,
Speaker 2: how is it? This is the ultimate Issue's hour? The
Speaker 2: ultimate issue has been how did a generation produce a
Speaker 2: generation with opposite values as my parents' generation. I don't
Speaker 2: mean my parents personally, I share their values, but in general,
Speaker 2: how did a generation produce another the next generation with
Speaker 2: such different values? The Baby booms so different from all
Speaker 2: from basically all past generations of America? How did it?
Speaker 2: Not just the parents? And I've been speaking about the
Speaker 2: lack of articulation of these values. I'll tell you one
Speaker 2: of them. Everything you've all said has been excellent. The
Speaker 2: institutional breakdown is unbelievably important. I totally agree. But you
Speaker 2: see what has happened is we have not articulated them
Speaker 2: for so long. The value, for example, those of you
Speaker 2: who say you believe in Judeo Christian values, do you
Speaker 2: know what they are? I'll bet you couldn't articulate what
Speaker 2: they are? You believe in it? Values, and it's not
Speaker 2: your fault. I'm not blaming you. That's why I wrote
Speaker 2: a twenty four parts column a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2: Go to praegerradio dot com and look at the archives
Speaker 2: of my columns twenty four columns that year on what
Speaker 2: Judeo Christian values are. People don't know what they are
Speaker 2: and if an effect, That's what I do every day
Speaker 2: here is articulate values so that things, the challenges to them,
Speaker 2: can be answered anyway. Thom says less was expected of us,
Speaker 2: and we lived up to it. That's probably true, Tim
Speaker 2: and Seattle former teacher. Individualism created worse generation because made
Speaker 2: people selfish. The truth is America has thrived on individualism.
Speaker 2: My generation didn't have individualism. My generation. In fact, my
Speaker 2: generation had selfishness. Selfishness is not the same as individualism.
Speaker 2: They all wore the exact same genes and shirts, all
Speaker 2: the individualists of my generation. They looked identical. Wayne and
Speaker 2: Honolulu and this put down Alan for an ultimate issue.
Speaker 2: Wants to know how do I articulate values to my kids?
Speaker 2: He's twenty three years old. Diane mentions in Denver mentions
Speaker 2: birth control. Maureen in Portland speaks about the dropping of
Speaker 2: God from schools? Is that true? And Alan and Faydville,
Speaker 2: North Carolina the generation of values but no basic philosophy?
Speaker 2: All right until next Ultimate Issues hour. This is Dennis.
Speaker 1: Prager tomorrow on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prigger.
Speaker 2: Why is it that women tend to be more liberal
Speaker 2: in their politics than men?
Speaker 14: You were talking in the last segment. One of the
Speaker 14: comments that you made made me made me really think
Speaker 14: about something, and that was that, you know, generally women
Speaker 14: tend to look at things from the viewpoint of more
Speaker 14: individual and you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how does that affect me? How does it affect
Speaker 2: me and my family? Go ahead?
Speaker 14: Well, right, and growing up, you know, in a family
Speaker 14: that has both of those points of view, you know,
Speaker 14: you're gonna tend to absorb. I think you're going to
Speaker 14: tend to absorb the point of view of the people
Speaker 14: that raise you.
Speaker 9: That was calling because I think that a big part
Speaker 9: of what it comes down to is women are more
Speaker 9: emotional and are nurturers by nature, and so women have this,
Speaker 9: you know, kind of innate feeling that they need to
Speaker 9: take care of everyone, and so instead of looking to
Speaker 9: solve the actual problem that's making people unhappy to or
Speaker 9: deal with financial issues or whatnot. They think of its
Speaker 9: kind of that.
Speaker 12: Short term six.
Speaker 9: You know, like something's wrong, so let's go shopping and
Speaker 9: make us a happy. I think women tend to do
Speaker 9: that in a lot of aspects of life, and so
Speaker 9: when they see all these issues in society, that they
Speaker 9: think that they can go out and cure the world
Speaker 9: kind of instead of finding what the problem is.
Speaker 8: I'm a mother of five children, and I was raised
Speaker 8: in South Louiseum, which is always basically Democrat. My husband also,
Speaker 8: but when I registered, I registered at eighteen as a Republican,
Speaker 8: and all of our children are Republicans. But now I'm
Speaker 8: an accountant and my husband is an artist. That I
Speaker 8: was raised in a military family.
Speaker 2: That's right, Well, you're you're explaining your own, your own situation.
Speaker 2: I don't have to say a word.
Speaker 5: I think you know you'll five if my children of Republicans, well, listen,
Speaker 5: I will tell you this one thing that I've noticed.
Speaker 5: I'm a black conservativey in Georgia, and I was raised Democrats,
Speaker 5: and one thing I've noticed is that the black electorate
Speaker 5: tends to vote in a way that aligned with female thinking.
Speaker 5: That whole nurturing on an individual basis emoting versus thinking.
Speaker 2: And what percentage of blacks were raised by moms without dads.
Speaker 5: Well, arguably there's a there's a greater percentage of.
Speaker 2: Them that's right, mate, And who knows if that isn't related.
Speaker 2: A caller earlier exactly made this point.
Speaker 1: Absolutely join us tomorrow to hear more on Timeless Wisdom
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