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Tape 9,1 Beginning of 1988
Prager says that he had problem saying KABC, his favorite station, was THE voice of Southern California. It seemed arrogant. DP seemed happy hosting Religion on the Line, joking frequently with the clergy - priest, minister and rabbi. A caller disagreed with Prager that you couldn't raise children with two religions. Iwanas - kids attended a group of Baptist Christians. Lee said she found sarcasm in Prager's voice and she resented. Lee was raised Jewish but she thinks this ecumenism is beautiful. Her grandkids call themselves Jewish Christians. My eldest grandson is getting bar mitzvah lessons. They also go to church. It is beautiful. DP: It may be beautiful but it is not Jewish or Christian. The clergy said that the kids were not living up to either religion. Lee: How can this world be peaceful if one little family…? Each clergy argued for the integrity of their individual religions. DP: Where is the children's community? If a Jew loses a member of his family, everyone comes to visit. Probably the same with Christians… My child is a creature of 4000 years of Jewish tradition, not 20. Christians have 2000 years of history. If they go to Belgium, they will have a church to attend. These kids will lack the passion that comes from loving an authentic religion. They are getting a mutt, instead of a thoroughbred. Caller: Does man have a sinful nature? FATHER: Human nature was created by God to be good, but the Fall confused man. ORTHODOX FATHER: Similar. REVEREND COKEL: Of course man has a sinful nature. RABBI: Dennis, correct me if I am wrong, but you firmly believe that man is inherently evil. DENNIS: God forbid. I have never said that or even thought it. I believe that we are born with tendencies towards good and evil, and that it is easier to do evil. I spend my time knocking the idea that people are basically good. It is easier to cheat on your tests, taxes, spouse, etc… People are happier when they do good, which the most powerful argument for the presence of some innate human goodness. But there is also a predisposition to its opposite. I think Beethoven is finer than Led Zeppelin, though Zeppelin is more popular. It is easier. There is a predisposition towards primitive beat. You have to develop your love of Beethoven. You have to develop your goodness. Kids grow up selfish. Regarding THE FALL… Adam and Eve, said DP, ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. They imbibed the knowledge of evil. The first thing they knew afterwards was nakedness, sex… Playboy is unholy nakedness and it is most tempting.
DP tackled the subject of US vs. Soviet Union moral differences. I get depressed when I hear the usual, "They have their problems and we have our problems. Who are we to say that we are superior?" This contrasts one of the freeest nations in the world with one of the more totalitarian. Prager hates the war against TRUTH, the perspective which says that all things are relative to the observer. What about the example raised by Allen Bloom in his book THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND. If you were in the British Imperial government in India in the 19th Century, and the Hindus wanted to burn widows with their dead husband. Would you order it stopped? You could argue that from the Hindu perspective, burning widows is right, and from our perspective it is wrong. This is true, but does this mean that the two perspectives are equally morally true. If I say two and two is five and you say four, one of those views is right. There are truths. There is legitimacy to this view in domestic squabbles. Often, in personal disputes, truth is in the middle. This relativism is part of the reason I distrust secularism, though I do want secular governments. Alice brought up the Marxist government of Ethiopia which sent away Israelis in the country who were teaching natives how to farm in the desert. DP: People don't care. So long as a regime speaks of progress, socialism, equality and the key words that turn on the media and intelligentsia of the 20th Century, it does not matter what they do. Especially what they would do to Israelis. What counts is that they overthrew a monarchy, which to the contemporary mind is retrograde, and they supplanted it with all the words that turn on many. That they have induced much of Ethiopia's suffering, is of apparent irrelevance to the world. The Soviet Union supplies Ethiopia with arms. But does not give it famine aid. The US gives most of the aid. Mr. Botha brings reforms to South Africa to the extent that the New York Times featured last week, that the majority of shoppers in Johannesburg, the richest city in the country, are black. That blacks now live in ritzy white areas. That for all intents and purposes, apartheid is dying. But if Gorbachev lets one journal of 100 handwritten copies circulate, the man is a moral giant. Aside from Nazism, Prager was unaware of times when between communism and an opponent, the opponent was morally worse. Communism is worse when it is not forced in by the outside. By and large, Eastern Europe tends to have more freedom than indigenous communist revolutions such as in North Korea, Albania, and Cuba. There is more freedom in Poland than Cuba. If Dupchick in Czechoslovakia had been allowed to continue his reforms (1968?), than you would've had the end of communism. That there are people within communist parties who think it loathsome, is certain. I don't think you can reform communism any more than you could reform nazism. Once you allow people freedom, you overthrow communism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Communism has to be overthrown. If Solidarity (1982) had been allowed to continue, it would've meant the end of communism in Poland. And they knew that, so with the threat of Soviet tanks…Solidarity had to be crushed. It is possible for a decent human to believe in communism or nazism, grow up through the ranks, then change his mind. But they can't gain power. As soon as Pol Pot loosened his grip, he lost power. Daniel Ortega is another Castro, another autocrat, who happens to wear nicer glasses. I don't think that Allende in Chile is of the same ilk as Ortega. Rather, underneath him there would've been a swelling of totalitarianism which he would not have necessarily wanted at first, but it would've developed anyway. I don't reflect on the what could've beens of history. There is an old yiddish saying, If my grandma had wheels, she'd be a trolley cart. A caller quoted Stendahl - You can acquire anything alone except character. DP: That makes the case for marriage. That is what I say to single men who claim they have everything they need without getting marriage. EXCEPT GROWTH. This society does not develop character and growth. Intimate human interaction brings out character. You have to answer for what you do, when you are with someone. You can't retreat into your idiosyncrasies. You are monitored. If you are only accountable to yourself, then anything goes. You are not accountable. You can live like a slob. You act how you want. You answer to no one. But do you want to die having led a pleasant life? Full and pleasant life ain't the same. Somebody is monitoring you. What are you doing? You have to answer. Like music, where you only do solos. It is not the same thing as a quartet or orchestra. Imagine making your own music with no one else. We live in an age that prefers pleasure to depth.
Prager describes himself as the only person in the secular media who makes the case for religion. He finds it remarkable how religion is confined in the media to its own specific area. The celebration of New Years is shallow. I am proud to receive the Atheists United newsletter, as I have often invited the head of the organization to RELIGION ON THE LINE. I look forward to exchanging ideas with the finest debaters of opposite viewpoints to mine. In the Atheists United newsletter, because they don't observe religious holidays, they will have winter solstice festivals. They will honor something in nature. Why celebrate something outside of religion. ON KTLA, I had a show about holiday depression. Psychologists and others agree that many get depressed during the holidays. I made the point to these secular psychologists that the religious were less likely to get depressed because they had something to celebrate, be it Chanukkah or Christmas. But if you have nothing to celebrate, how can you be happy on command? Why celebrate the winter solstice? What in it warms the cockles of your heart? Why celebrate a New Year when it has no religious meaning? This show is not dedicated to bringing you to a certain religious truth. You can't call a number and everything will be dandy. I want you to rationally critique your values. What keeps me sane is the Sabbath, when I do no writing, and accomplish nothing. I don't think America is richer because Sunday is another day you can shop, and seven day a week shopping helps me a Jew, because I keep Sabbath. As one clergyman said, with all his meeting with folks on their deathbeds, he has never met anyone who wished that they had spent more time at the office. The trick in life is to know what you will look back on with joy. A caller wondered if his show was a form of brainwashing. Prager pled guilty. The only way to counter the big lie is with the big truth. I believe that there is objective moral truth. Even if the Soviets said a billion times over that the Atlantic Ocean is really a desert, I would still think it an ocean. Even if the Soviets refer to the Afghan People's Republic, it does not make it any more a Republic than Hitler's Germany. So somebody has to counter with that that is a lie. And that is my role. The people who take the hardest line in America on drunk driving and violent crime are usually the hawks wanting to fight communism. It is the people who are most liberal on the Soviets who are most liberal on criminals. I often say that the biggest problem in America is violent crime. There is evil in America, but it pales in comparison to the Soviet Union. Our evil is individual and their evil is institutional. The system in America is beautiful and we screw it up. The system in the Soviets is evil, and some rise above it. I don't think that there are political prisoners in the US. Some talk show host in the 1930s could've said, look at segregation in the south and American racism. Don't talk about Hitler and Nazism. We've got our own problems.
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