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Prager puts moral issues at the front

Gary Lycan: The Orange County Register

12/17/95

People are always telling Dennis Prager what a difference he makes in their lives. As a KABC/790 AM talk show host (noon-3 p.m. weekdays), he is neither America's sweetheart nor America's nightmare (one guess whom we're talking about here). So maybe he is America's conscience?

Prager, 47, always has said he has two basic roles: one, to help people think more clearly; and two, to influence people with his values, or to put it another way, to see good conquer evil.

His issues _ ethics, values, morality _ have earned him respectable ratings (No. 15 in the recent 10 a.m.-3 p.m. ratings), and a new book, "Think A Second Time" (ReganBooks; $23) in which he writes essays on 43 subjects. He'll be in Orange County on Wednesday, at a 6:30 p.m. book signing at Brentano's in South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa.

"I've been writing this book over the course of 10 years," Prager said. "I have honed an ability to say things as concisely as possible. If there aren't two or three really good ideas per page, I feel I have failed my reader. Considering I would buy a book for only one good idea, I feel people are getting a bargain."

Divided into three parts _ ethics of daily life, politics and theology _ Prager writes in a reasoned manner about topics such as capital punishment, post-'60s liberalism, religious tolerance, paying children for grades, and even whether a good man can attend a striptease show.

The answer to the latter question, by the way, is yes.

"One chapter challenges the religious conservative who tends to equate the unholy with the immoral. Yes, a good man can attend a striptease show. He can also occasionally drink, gamble or overspend. My own father was deeply religious and a man of great integrity, and a regular purchaser of Playboy," Prager said.

One of his radio conversations with a single woman is transcribed in the book. "She was a 38-year-old successful woman, her clock is ticking, she can't find a husband, and she says `Dennis, don't I have a right to have a child?' I said, `Yes, you do have a right, but now let me ask you: Does the child have a right to come into the world with a mother and father?'

"I believe the child's right to (have) a mother and father supersedes the right to have a mother bring a child into the world. She had not thought of it that way because since the '60s there has been an obsession with asking only `What are my rights?' as if they are not in conflict with a greater good," he said.

Bottom line, Prager believes "people who wrestle with their (human) nature are more likely to be good people. My nature wants me to do X, my conscience wants me to do Y, rather than relying on one's nature to do the right thing. It is natural to steal and to rape, but it's wrong."

Down the road, he wants to co-write a book similar to one he did 20 years ago called "The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism."

"It might be titled something like `Ten Questions About America.' The essential message: It is who you are that counts, not your ancestry. Ethnicity, blood, race, ancestry are everything in almost every society in the world. But America is an idea, not a geographic entity."

One final thought on TV talk shows (his was canceled last season): "The eye is a very superficial organ compared to the ear. The intelligence appreciated on radio is called a talking head and derisively dismissed on television."