Dennis Prager Biography Condensed My Dennis Prager Story AI Summary
Where Am I Lying?
I asked Grok to point out where I might be deceptive in the following essay. Grok said:
* The quoted statements are verifiable, as Ford provides specific sources (e.g., podcast episodes, lectures). Prager’s public persona—marked by bold, definitive assertions—aligns with Ford’s portrayal, and critiques like Gottfried’s corroborate the view of Prager as intellectually shallow in some contexts. However, Ford’s framing risks deception by selectively highlighting Prager’s most grandiose claims without acknowledging instances where Prager qualifies his views or engages with complexity (e.g., in debates or longer writings). This selective presentation paints Prager as more reckless than he may consistently be. No outright lie is evident, but the omission of counterexamples could mislead readers about the breadth of Prager’s approach.
* Ford’s narrative is subjective but plausible, given Prager’s polarizing Covid stance, which drew criticism for minimizing risks (e.g., PragerU videos questioning lockdowns). His shift from admiration to critique mirrors a common arc of disillusionment with public figures. However, Ford’s emphasis on his own “desperation” and Prager’s “quasi-religious” hold over him may exaggerate Prager’s influence to dramatize the story. In his earlier work (e.g., “My Dennis Prager Story”), Ford admitted to grandiose tendencies and a need for validation, suggesting he might amplify his personal stakes for effect. There’s no evidence he’s lying about his experience, but the heightened emotional framing could deceive readers into overestimating Prager’s cult-like impact on followers generally.
* Prager’s Covid skepticism is well-documented, as he publicly questioned mask mandates and lockdowns, aligning with conservative talking points. Ford’s examples are grounded in real statements, and his critique of their oversimplification is supported by scientific consensus at the time (e.g., CDC’s 2020 mask guidance). However, Ford’s portrayal risks deception by implying Prager’s views were uniquely harmful without comparing them to similar conservative voices (e.g., Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson), which dilutes the specificity of the critique. Additionally, Ford doesn’t acknowledge Prager’s audience context—conservatives skeptical of government overreach—potentially exaggerating the claims’ recklessness. No lies are apparent, but the selective focus could mislead by overstating Prager’s singularity or intent.
* The guru framework is a subjective lens, but Ford applies it consistently, tying Prager’s style to documented traits (e.g., confidence, simplification). His analysis of Prager’s delivery is grounded in observable traits, as Prager’s slow, deliberate speech is a hallmark of his media presence. However, Ford’s application of the term “guru” risks deception by implying a cult-like intent that may not fully align with Prager’s role as a commentator. Prager’s influence, while significant, operates within mainstream conservatism, not a fringe movement. Ford’s failure to distinguish Prager from other charismatic pundits (e.g., Jordan Peterson, as Ford himself noted elsewhere) weakens the claim’s precision. No lie exists, but the loaded term “guru” could mislead readers into viewing Prager as more manipulative than evidence fully supports.
* Ford quotes philosopher Paul Gottfried’s 2020 statement: “[Dennis Prager is] an intellectual vulgarian of a kind I have rarely encountered… He has said such ridiculous things about history, fascism, democracy, that it is hard for me to bestow any respect on his intellectual accomplishments.” Ford uses this to bolster his argument that Prager’s intellectual credibility is questionable.
Evaluation: The quote appears accurate, as Gottfried, a paleoconservative scholar, has publicly criticized Prager’s historical and political assertions (e.g., in American Greatness articles). Ford’s use of it is fair, as it aligns with his thesis. However, presenting Gottfried’s view as a definitive indictment risks deception by not noting Gottfried’s own ideological bias (paleoconservatism vs. Prager’s neoconservatism), which could frame their disagreement as personal or factional rather than purely intellectual. Ford doesn’t lie, but the lack of context might mislead readers about the critique’s objectivity.
Prager’s Books and Broader Influence
Ford argues that Prager’s books, like The Rational Bible series, are “harmless” on their own but dangerous for “desperate” followers swayed by his charisma, leading them down a “wrong path” of oversimplified thinking. He ties this to Prager’s broader influence via PragerU, which he claims promotes polarizing narratives.
Potential Deception: This claim is speculative, as Ford provides no evidence (e.g., studies, follower testimonials) that Prager’s books or PragerU content directly harm vulnerable readers. While PragerU’s videos are known for concise, conservative framing, Ford’s assertion of harm relies on his personal disillusionment rather than data. His use of “desperate” followers echoes his own self-description but may not generalize. This borders on deceptive exaggeration, as it implies a causal link without substantiation. No outright lie is present, but the claim’s weight exceeds the evidence.
Where Is Ford Lying or Being Deceptive?
Ford doesn’t appear to lie outright, as his claims about Prager’s statements, style, and influence are grounded in verifiable sources (e.g., podcasts, videos, Gottfried’s quote). However, he engages in deception through:
Selective Framing: Ford highlights Prager’s most grandiose or polarizing claims (e.g., Covid, Torah) without acknowledging instances of nuance, exaggerating Prager’s recklessness.
Exaggerated Personal Narrative: His portrayal of Prager’s “quasi-religious” hold over him and other “desperate” followers dramatizes the guru dynamic, potentially misleading readers about Prager’s broader impact.
Unsubstantiated Harm: Claiming Prager’s books and PragerU lead followers down a “wrong path” lacks evidence, relying on speculation and Ford’s own experience, which borders on deceptive exaggeration.
Loaded Terminology: Using “guru” and “epistemic corruption” implies manipulative intent that may overstate Prager’s role as a mainstream commentator, misleading readers about his influence’s scope.
Conclusion
Ford’s essay is a mix of factual critique and subjective interpretation, with no clear lies but several deceptive elements. His selective focus, dramatic narrative, and unsubstantiated claims about harm inflate Prager’s flaws, potentially misleading readers about the scale and intent of Prager’s influence.
My Dennis Prager Journey
At my lowest, Dennis Prager’s presentation of ethical monotheism gave me a reason to live. When I was confined to bed by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome between 1988 and 1994, my largely virtual Dennis Prager connection gave me strength. When I had nothing, I most needed God, and I felt that Dennis Prager channeled God. As I didn’t get on with my dad and I didn’t have many friends, I held on for a hero.
What Christine Emba wrote in the Washington Post July 10, 2023 matches my experience: “[T]he community that comes with joining a fandom can feel like a buffer against an increasingly atomized world.”
When I moved to Los Angeles in 1994, my friends for the first three years were all connected to Dennis Prager.
“I have used Jordan Peterson to turn a boy into a man. I used him to turn this guy without a strong father figure into someone who, yes, makes his bed and stands up straight and now is successful.” The books, she said, “do provide a structure that was clearly missing.”
Like Jordan Peterson and other gurus, Prager weaves a “tapestry of meaning that covers everything.” For the desperate soul such as my former self, this tapestry might be the one thing that you rely on. Lost and lonely, you might imagine Dennis guiding you to safety just as the old sheriff Ed Tom Bell said about his dad in the 2007 movie No Country For Old Men: “In the dream, I knew that he was goin’ on ahead and he was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there, he would be there.”
That’s how I felt about Dennis Prager from 1988 to 1996.
His teachings gave me energy, purpose and community. I felt inspired by his charm, empathy, virtue, clarity, humor, and happiness. He was a good egg.
Until I went to UCLA in 1988 and discovered Dennis Prager on KABC radio, I had high regard for my father. After discovering Dennis Prager, I didn’t. I came to view my dad as psychologically damaged and I dismissed his teachings. I wouldn’t listen to my dad any more and we drifted out of touch. My pursuit of Pragerism caused people around me great pain. And I didn’t care.
I preferred my virtual father to my real father.
When I was bedridden with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I spent thousands of dollars, almost all of my savings, not on getting well, but on sending Prager tapes to my friends, many of whom didn’t listen to them. They laughed at me. They thought I had lost my mind.
In 1990, I wrote to Prager to tell him what his teachings had done for me. He wrote back: “I receive many letters, but few have touched me as much as yours. Get better. You are needed in the fight for good values.”
Between 1990 to 1994, I shared Dennis Prager’s lecture tapes with everyone I could. At the time, I was Prager’s biggest customer (according to a secretary in his office). In 1992, my new friend, Michal, got a letter from Dennis Prager. He wrote: “Anyone who is a friend of Luke Ford’s is a friend of mine.”
I was desperate to be Prager’s number one fan.
Friday, Jan. 28, 1994 in Tampa Bay, I met Dennis Prager for the first time. The next day, we spoke privately for ten minutes. Dennis said it gave him great comfort that if anything happened to him, I was there to carry on his battle for good values.
May 15, 2010, I was walking around Loma Linda University with a professor friend and talking about Dennis Prager.
“I wish he ran for president,” I said. “I wish he ran America. I wish he ran the universe.”
My friend was taken aback. “The universe?”
I felt like an idiot.
From the beginning, I saw that Prager, like everyone, had blind spots. When my highest priority was connection with people who loved Dennis Prager (1989 to 1996), I largely kept quiet because nobody wanted to hear my criticism. Loyalty to Dennis united us and I needed my friends.
When I realized in late 1997 that I had to move on, I began writing about Dennis’s radio show on my blog, sometimes critically. As a result, I lost all of my friends in Los Angeles, and many of those who didn’t care about Dennis saw me as an object lesson in fandom gone wrong.
By contrast, I saw myself as a heroic truth-seeker.
Lost and lonely, in May of 1998, shortly after I suffered a panic attack coming out of surgery for a broken wrist, I dropped a thousand dollars on a psychic to try to repair my imaginary friendship with Dennis Prager.
Shockingly, it didn’t work.
I was the subject of a Jewish Journal cover story Aug. 3, 2007:
“He was neither a pupil nor a friend,” Prager said in a brief interview. “I think I appealed to something good in him at some point, and I hope I did. But I don’t know.”
The Voice
The first thing that captured me with Dennis Prager was his voice. It sounded like the voice of God.
Gurus like Dennis have a distinct speaking style.
Grok says:
Vocal features like pitch, speed, volume, and intonation influence perceptions of speaker confidence and persuasion, which are central to the “guru” archetype.
The concept of a “guru tone” is discussed in a Reddit thread on r/DecodingTheGurus titled “Is there a ‘guru tone of voice’?” (2022). Users describe a deliberate, slow, enunciated style with rhythmic pauses, rises, and falls in tone, often associated with figures like Tim Ferriss, Andrew Huberman, or Sam Harris. Specific observations include:
Cadence and Pauses: Gurus like Peterson or Harris use a measured cadence with strategic pauses, creating a hypnotic or trance-like effect. This aligns with the Reddit user’s comment: “Lots of rises and falls in tone that can come off as soothing to the brain.”
Deliberate Enunciation: Slow, syllable-by-syllable speech (e.g., Huberman’s style) enhances perceived authority but can feel contrived, as noted: “Pronouncing every syllable to the point of it becoming annoying.”
The Guru
“Guru” is a Sanskrit term for a “mentor, guide, expert, or master.” (Wikipedia)
On July 18, 2023, anthropologist Chris Kavanagh, co-host of the podcast Decoding the Gurus (DTG), defined a guru as “someone who has special insight they provide to their followers through mastery of a particular technique.”
Grok says:
Dennis Prager isn’t a “guru” in the traditional spiritual or mystical sense—like a meditative sage or religious guide—but he’s often seen as a thought leader or intellectual figure in conservative circles. If we’re typing him as a “guru,” he’d be more of a cultural-political guru, blending moral commentary with a focus on Judeo-Christian values and American exceptionalism.
The Benefits & Dangers Of Parasocial Relationships
Grok says:
Forming parasocial ties—one-sided relationships where individuals feel a connection to public figures like Dennis Prager or Jordan Peterson—can have both benefits and dangers. These ties often develop through consistent exposure to their content, such as podcasts, videos, or books, fostering a sense of familiarity and trust.
Benefits
Inspiration and Guidance: Figures like Prager and Peterson often provide frameworks for personal growth, moral clarity, or navigating complex issues. Peterson’s emphasis on responsibility and meaning can motivate individuals to improve their lives, while Prager’s focus on traditional values may offer a sense of stability.
Intellectual Stimulation: Their content often encourages critical thinking about cultural, psychological, or political issues, prompting followers to explore new ideas or refine their beliefs.
Emotional Support: Parasocial ties can provide comfort or validation, particularly for those lacking strong real-world relationships, as these figures seem accessible and relatable.
Dangers
Idealization and Projection: Parasocial ties can lead to idolizing these figures, ignoring their flaws or biases. Prager’s selective historical narratives or Peterson’s controversial stances (e.g., on gender issues) may be overlooked, skewing followers’ perceptions.
Emotional Vulnerability: The one-sided nature of these ties can foster dependency, where individuals seek validation from figures who don’t know them, potentially neglecting real-world relationships or professional help.
Polarization and Division: Both figures often critique opposing ideologies sharply, which can deepen followers’ mistrust of “out-groups” (e.g., progressives or institutions), fueling anger or alienation.
Summary Decoding
Grok says:
Prager’s built on a foundation of moral clarity and cultural preservation. He frames life as a battle between good and evil, rooted in what he calls “Judeo-Christian values”—think Ten Commandments over relativism. He’s obsessed with the idea that Western civilization, especially America, is a fragile gift that’s eroding under secularism, leftism, and political correctness. His pitch: if you don’t grasp these basics, society’s toast.
Method
He’s a simplifier. Complex issues—gender, race, economics—get boiled down to binary choices or first-principles logic. It’s not about nuance; it’s about conviction. His PragerU videos, five-minute hits of digestible talking points, are the perfect artifact: snappy, authoritative, designed to stick. On air, he’s calm, avuncular, less firebrand than, say, a Rush Limbaugh—more like your stern uncle who’s sure he’s right.
Motivation
What’s driving him? Part of it’s ideological—he genuinely seems to believe liberalism is a moral rot eating at civilization. Part of it’s personal—he’s said happiness comes from purpose, and his purpose is this crusade. Self-advancement? Sure, he’s built a brand, but it feels secondary to the mission.
Decoding the Man
Strengths: He’s consistent. You know where he stands—God, family, liberty—and he’s got a knack for making people feel grounded in a chaotic world. His clarity cuts through noise.
Blind Spots: The flip side is rigidity. Nuance gets sacrificed for the narrative.
Audience: He’s a guru for the anxious conservative—someone who feels the culture’s slipping away and wants a playbook to fight back.
The sharpest analysis I’ve heard about Dennis Prager came in 2020 when philosopher Paul Gottfried said: “[Dennis Prager is] an intellectual vulgarian of a kind I have rarely encountered in this world. He has said such ridiculous things about history, fascism, democracy, that it is hard for me to bestow any respect on his intellectual accomplishments.”
What are corrupt epistemics?
Google AI says:
Epistemic corruption refers to a situation where a knowledge system loses its integrity, often due to external influences that prioritize specific agendas over the pursuit of truth, leading to the manipulation or distortion of information; examples include: pharmaceutical companies funding research to promote their…drugs, political actors cherry-picking data to support their narrative, or academic institutions prioritizing publication metrics over rigorous research methods; essentially, when the system is “corrupted” by prioritizing interests other than the accurate production of knowledge.
Dennis says many things that feel profound. For example, consider his insight that “the bigger the government, the smaller the people.”
It sounds deep, but upon analysis it falls apart.
For example, if America’s defense budget were halved, would American citizens grow? If so, how?
If we spent half as much money on police and prisons, would we expand?
If we stopped paying out Social Security and Medicare and allowed millions to die decades early, would Americans get bigger?
If we didn’t take care of the handicapped, would it build us up?
If we spent half as much on education or on health or on disability payments or on public infrastructure, would Americans expand? If we spent money to have safer roads and bridges and more pleasant public transportation, would Americans shrivel? If we spent billions of dollars on cleaner air and water and safer food, would we diminish? If we had socialized medicine, would it hurt our souls?
Public restrooms in the United States are nasty, brutish and rare. If they were clean and plentiful, would Americans become smaller? How does the American enlarge through a desperate search for a toilet?
According to Wikipedia on Apr. 20, 2023, the following governments were the smallest governments (in ascending spending order): Somalia, Turkmenistan, Haiti, Venezuela, Sudan, Iran, Equatorial Guinea, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Yemen, Guinea, Nigeria, Guatemala.
How many Americans wish their country operated more like these countries? How many Americans think that citizens of these countries are so much bigger and more impressive than Americans?
The only countries that have distinctly lower government spending than the US that Americans might like are Singapore, Taiwan, Costa Rica, Ireland, and Peru. How many Americans would consider these countries dramatically superior to their own?
Here are countries that spend more on government as a percentage of GDP than the United States, listed in ascending order of government spending as a percentage of GDP: Norway, Latvia, Cyprus, Estonia, Malta, Canada, Maldives, Montenegro, New Zealand, Brazil, Luxembourg, Serbia, Japan, Poland, Slovakia, Netherlands, Vanuatu, Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Croatia, Portugal, Tonga, Iceland, Slovenia, Sweden, Spain, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, France.
According to the 2023 World Happiness Report, the ten happiest countries are, in descending order: Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Israel, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and New Zealand. All of them have bigger governments than the United States.
Aug. 2, 2022, Dennis Prager’s Youtube cohost Julie Hartman inadvertently gave a devastating rebuttal to his claim about big government: “I was driving up to Starbucks and I thought that the road is paved and I don’t have to worry about getting shot, I can go to a Starbucks and I don’t have to worry that my drink is contaminated, every step we take, we are so lucky.”
Was Julie diminished by driving on a paved road in a safe neighborhood to a clean store with nice drinks?
As a conservative who wants free markets and a smaller government, I love the sound of Prager’s maxim, but it doesn’t stand up to examination.
When Dennis Prager manipulates knowledge for personal, professional, and monetary gain, he hurts people, and the kind of people who follow a guru like Dennis are vulnerable. A normal person does not become obsessed with a Dennis Prager or a Jordan Peterson. Only those with a hole in their soul seek this type of mentor to lay a quilt of meaning over the universe.
I’ve often noted the good things Prager has said. This essay, however, focuses on the bad. For example, by dismissing vaccines as harmful despite evidence of their efficacy, he misled listeners, potentially costing lives (a 2022 study estimated that vaccine hesitancy, fueled by bad information, contributed to 319,000 preventable COVID-19 deaths in the U.S.). His political hyperbole distorts reality, sows discontent, and fuels needless hatred (Pew, 2020).
The easiest way to detect if a guru is a charlatan is to inquire if their every pronouncement seeks attention and aggrandizement. By contrast, those who optimize for truth don’t optimize for clicks and dollars.
Grok: “A guru’s focus on self-promotion over substance is a red flag. Truth-seekers prioritize clarity and evidence, not attention or profit. Are they selling spectacle or sharing insight?”
Dennis Prager may believe with all of his heart in his divine mission to uplift society, but his overconfidence and corrupt thinking harm the very people he seeks to guide.
Distorting Reality
Here are some bad things Prager has said repeatedly:
* “During the [Covid] pandemic, I said I want my grandchildren to know that Pappy fought the lockdowns, that Pappy did not get vaccinated. I will be proud that they know I have called out the evil of the American medical establishment.” (June 26, 2023)
Supporters might argue Prager’s vaccine skepticism reflects legitimate distrust in institutions, given early pandemic uncertainties. However, his reliance on unverified VAERS data over replicated studies shows a reckless disregard for the truth.
While the American medical establishment was not always right during the Covid years, its general advice to socially distance before we had vaccines, and then to get the shot once it was available, saved about a million American lives.
What’s good for the guru’s career such as the contrarian take is sometimes deadly for his audience.
* “Psychotherapy is usually useless because it deals with feelings and not behavior… There’s no such thing as I can’t control myself… Grow up is another radical notion in our not-grow-up society.” Dec. 11, 2023
Google AI says:
Yes, psychotherapy is a well-established and effective treatment for a wide range of mental health conditions…
Psychotherapy can help reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression, trauma, and other mental health conditions.
It can improve coping skills, enhance relationships, and promote personal growth.
It can also help individuals develop healthier thought patterns and behaviors…
Studies have shown that around 75% of patients who receive psychotherapy experience significant improvement in their symptoms.
Fueling Anger
* Dennis: “We are obligated to fight [the left] like they did on Normandy Beach.” (Oct. 31, 2022)
If you take this seriously, you will have many unnecessary fights. By contrast, a more productive approach would be to understand why different people experience life differently and therefore have different political views.
If you told a normal person, “You need to fight the left like the Allies fought the Nazis on Normandy Beach,” they would think you were nuts. Increasing the importance of politics in your life is not going to benefit most people. They would be better off devoting themselves to their family, friends, community, and vocation ala George Bailey.
Some lives may improve by fighting over politics as though it were WWII, but no lives that I know. The people I do know well have often benefited from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, which says: “We have stopped fighting anybody or anything.”
* April 3, 2023, Dennis said on his radio show: “Rampant evil is what the Left has engaged in… Twenty years ago at least, I said there was a civil war in this country. If this is not obvious to you, bad news is not something you want to handle psychologically. The Left and the Right have nothing in common. Florida and California at this time have nothing in common. They might as well be different countries on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain. Whenever I went from California to Florida, I felt like I did when I went from Western Europe to Eastern Europe under communism.”
Most people most of the time have higher priorities than politics. For the normal person, traveling between California and Florida is not a trauma.
* In an April 4, 2023 column, Dennis wrote:
Communism — or if you will, left-wing fascism and totalitarianism — is coming to America…
Our medical schools are embracing Soviet-like science…
Students at elite law schools such as Stanford and Yale behave as if they were members of Komsomol, the Soviet Communist Youth League. On the rare occasions that conservative speakers come to their campuses to give a lecture, students heckle, shout and curse at them, disrupting their ability to speak in ways reminiscent of the Hitler Youth in 1930s Germany.
The greatest of all freedoms, that of speech, is disappearing.
Our justice department, about half of our judges and our security agencies are well on their way to becoming what the Soviet Ministry of Justice, Soviet security agencies and Soviet judges were: tools of the ruling party.
Our mainstream media, with few exceptions, are as uncommitted to truth as were the organs of the Soviet Communist Party, Pravda and Izvestia.
All of Prager's stated concerns about America have occurred in hundreds of non-Nazi, non-communist nations. Every nation, for example, has restricted speech. Every nation has had institutions decline. All medical schools have gone in false directions at times. Justice has never been separate from politics. Hundreds of nations have had speakers heckled. None of these conditions are uniquely fascist or communist or nazi.
If free speech is disappearing in America, then where is it flourishing? In reality, the United States in 2025 retains more free speech protections than almost any nation that has ever existed.
After reading Prager’s column, I happened to watch a video called "35 Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Tools" by Dr. Dawn Elise-Snipes who said: "The first and most basic tool…is to create safety."
A radio host such as Prager telling his listeners that communism is coming to America does not help people feel an appropriate level of safety. Enraging an audience might be good for ratings but it is bad for souls.
Outside of a few cities, life for most Prager listeners is fairly safe and comparatively free. Inculcating gratitude might be a wiser path for a man intent on doing good. There are situations in life where rage is more adaptive than gratitude, such as when you are fighting for your life, but they are few and far between.
* In few people is the benefit and the damage of Prager’s approach more clear than with his 20-something mentee Julie Hartman, who said December 19, 2022: “I fear that I am going to see the demise and the downfall of the United States.”
Dennis: “If we keep going down this road, there will be two United States.”
Julie: “If we descend into a civil war or if China comes for us…”
Dennis: “The left has been working to destroy this country for a century.”
Under the headline “Hastening the End,” Mark O’Connell wrote in the New York Review of Books April 20, 2023 issue:
[T]here is something undeniably self-flattering in the idea of an imminent apocalypse, in that it places us—our generation, our time—at the very center of the meaning of things, as the ultimate protagonists of history.
And this is related to the somewhat grandiose appeal of the end of the world as a subject. …if you’re writing a book about the end of the world you can be confident that there is nothing more pressing to consider, and thereby be assured of your own intellectual seriousness.
By proclaiming that America is on the road to fascism or communism, Dennis Prager asserts “there is nothing more pressing to consider.”
Some people look outside their window and see trees of green, skies of blue, and think, what a wonderful world. Dennis Prager looks outside his window and when he wants to maximize attention for his ideas, he imagines dead people stacking up by the millions.
How do you get the most attention for your ideas? By expressing gratitude or by saying the end is nigh?
The Attention Economy
Grok says:
Perverse incentives for those making a living dispensing wisdom and punditry arise when the pursuit of financial, social, or personal rewards distorts their output, prioritizing external gains over truth or nuance. Here are the key ones:
Sensationalism for Attention: The need to stand out in a crowded media landscape incentivizes exaggerated, polarizing, or inflammatory takes. Outrage drives clicks, views, and engagement on platforms like X, where viral posts can boost visibility and revenue but often sacrifice depth or accuracy.
Audience Capture: Pundits risk becoming echo chambers for their followers’ beliefs to maintain loyalty and income (e.g., subscriptions, sponsorships). Deviating from expected narratives can lead to backlash or lost support, locking them into rigid ideological positions.
Polarization Payoff: Divisive rhetoric often generates more engagement than nuanced discussion. Pundits are incentivized to amplify tribalism or vilify opponents, as X data shows contentious posts get higher retweets and likes, reinforcing cycles of conflict.
Is there any guru who does not constantly stress the importance of himself and his teachings? Grok says: “Most gurus, by nature of their role, tend to emphasize their own teachings or presence—it’s kind of baked into the gig… The guru game often attracts folks who thrive on being the center of attention, and followers tend to prop that up. Even the humble ones can get trapped in the cycle of reverence.”
Is there any pundit for whom self-advancement is not their primary theme? Grok says:
Pundits, much like gurus, often thrive on building their own brand—it’s practically the job description in today’s media landscape. Most pundits are playing the game—ratings, clicks, clout. The system rewards self-promotion.
Is there any commentator who notes that election outcomes won’t noticeably affect 99% of Americans 99% of the time (unless you love following politics)? Does any guru say that your primary purpose, meaning, excitement, and morality in life should come from your family (and if you have space after that, from your friends, community, and pursuits)? If people get their purpose, meaning, excitement, and morality in life from the people they love, they have no need for gurus except for fun and for rare needs.
Grok says:
If someone’s already got purpose, meaning, excitement, and morality locked in through the people they love—family, friends, partners—then yeah, gurus start looking like optional extras. Why lean on some lofty teacher when the messy, real connections in your life are already doing the heavy lifting? It’s like having a full fridge at home—sure, a restaurant’s nice for a change of pace, but you don’t need it.
Gurus might still sneak in for entertainment, like you said—something to chew on when you’re bored—or for those odd moments when life throws a curveball your loved ones can’t quite hit. A rare need, maybe, like troubleshooting a specific crisis or craving a fresh perspective. But if your core’s covered by the people around you, the guru’s pitch starts sounding redundant. “Find yourself!” they say—meanwhile, you’re already found in the laughter at the dinner table or the late-night talks with someone who gets you.
It tracks with how humans have rolled for millennia—tribes, families, communities were the glue before spiritual middlemen started selling enlightenment. Gurus thrive when people feel unmoored; if you’re anchored by love, their stock drops. Makes you wonder: maybe the best “teaching” isn’t taught—it’s lived.
Though Prager is famous in part for his emphasis on happiness, when his radio show went daily in 1993, I consistently came away from it more angry than I was before listening. It took me decades to understand why. It turned out that Prager was following the formula for success in right-wing talk radio: tell the listener that he is a victim of nefarious elites and that the host is fighting for him.
Grok says:
Dennis Prager’s radio show is built around big ideas—happiness, morality, fighting cultural decline—and he’s got a knack for framing them in a way that hooks you, especially if you’re already nodding along to his worldview. But the flip side? His style and content can stir up a hornet’s nest of emotions, even for fans. Let’s unpack why you’re walking away riled up and unhappy despite agreeing with him.
Prager’s Vibe
Prager’s all about clarity—good vs. evil, right vs. wrong—and he hammers it home with a calm, teacherly tone. He’s not a screamer like some hosts, but his show thrives on tension: the Left’s ruining America, values are crumbling, happiness is under siege. He’s selling happiness as a duty (“You owe it to yourself and God”), yet the bulk of his airtime dissects what’s broken. That’s a recipe for agitation, even if you buy the premise.
Why It Hits You
Threat Focus: Agreeing with him doesn’t shield you from the stress of his topics—cultural rot, political hypocrisy, moral decay. Hearing constant alarm bells, even from “your side,” can spike cortisol.
Emotional Whiplash: He toggles between optimism (“Happiness is a choice!”) and indignation (“The Left hates you!”). That swing—hope to anger—can leave you unsettled, not uplifted. It’s like a pep talk in a war zone.
Action Gap: If you’re aligned with him, you might feel powerless—raging at the same villains but stuck listening, not fixing. That frustration festers. Prager’s not wrong to you, but the world still feels off-kilter.
Irony’s thick here: he preaches happiness but serves it with a side of outrage. If you’re wired to internalize that (and plenty are), the takeaway’s less “life’s good” and more “life’s a fight.”
Most pundits are not gurus and they don’t seek parasocial relationships with their listeners. Rush Limbaugh, for example, focused on entertaining his audience. Dennis Prager, however, believes he has a mission to teach people right from wrong, which just so happens to be the most important mission in the world.
Torah as the Answer to Everything
For Dennis Prager, his understanding of Torah and his common sense are his primary techniques for laying a quilt of meaning over the world.
June 19, 2023, Julie Hartman said to Dennis: “You and the Torah are such a winning combination. The Torah is so wise and you are so wise.”
Oct. 3, 2022, Dennis said to Julie: “Early on, I said to myself, wow, your instincts are identical to the Torah’s. And it blew my mind. My natural mode of thinking was the Torah’s mode of thinking. If you take those five books seriously, you will think clearly about everything.”
Julie: “And you will be so much happier.”
Dennis: “You can testify to that.”
Julie: “Society will run better. Your life will run better.”
Dennis: “I know it is the answer to everything. That’s why it is frustrating that it is not out there more. This is the answer to evil. To unhappiness.”
If Prager’s instincts are the Torah’s instincts, as Dennis says, and if God gave the Torah, as Dennis says, then Prager’s instincts and God’s instincts are essentially one.
I’d feel confident too if I believed that my instincts matched God’s instincts.
Prager’s assertion that Torah is “the answer to everything” diverges from mainstream Judaic thought, which sees Torah as a guide, not a panacea.
Orthodox Jews are the Jewish group that takes Torah most seriously. They are also the Jewish group that take Prager least seriously.
Grok says:
Despite his background, Prager’s influence within Orthodox Judaism appears minimal. Orthodox Rabbi Marc B. Shapiro, a historian, has stated that Prager is not quoted by Orthodox figures, does not speak in Orthodox synagogues (except for one instance at a West Coast convention by the Orthodox Union), and does not write for Orthodox publications. While he has inspired some individuals to become Orthodox, Torah scholars are not enthusiastic about his teachings.
Prager’s current religious identity is not aligned with strict Orthodoxy, a point reinforced by multiple sources. For instance, discussions on The Yeshiva World forum note that he does not keep Shabbos, a key Orthodox practice, leading some to question the appropriateness of his work for modern Orthodox audiences. In the same forum, Prager himself comments, “It is true that I am not MO [Modern Orthodox]. But that is hardly the whole story,” suggesting he acknowledges this distinction but implies there is more to his religious engagement. This is further supported by Mishpacha Magazine, which states, “Dennis Prager’s values are not ours, and neither is his book,” indicating a perceived misalignment with Orthodox values.
“I’m a primary text guy,” one Orthodox rabbi said to me. “I primarily study the texts of Judaism. Dennis Prager is a secondary text guy. He primarily reads about the Torah.”
The Books
Dennis Prager’s books include:
* The Rational Bible: Numbers: God and Man in the Wilderness (2024)
* The Rational Bible: Deuteronomy: God, Blessings, and Curses (2022)
* The Rational Bible: Genesis (2019)
* The Rational Bible: Exodus (2018)
* The Ten Commandments: Still the Best Moral Code (2015)
* Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph (2012)
* Happiness Is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual (1998)
* Think a Second Time (1995)
* Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism (1982) co-written with Rabbi Joseph Telushkin
* The Nine Questions People Ask about Judaism (1976) co-written with Rabbi Joseph Telushkin
On their own, these noble sounding books don’t hurt anyone, but for the desperate man, even the most innocuous stimulus can lead you down a wrong track.
Grok says:
Dennis Prager’s books, such as The Rational Bible or Happiness Is a Serious Problem can resonate deeply with readers seeking purpose or clarity. His writing is accessible, rooted in traditional values, and presented with a charismatic certainty that makes complex issues feel manageable. For someone feeling lost or desperate, this can be powerfully comforting, offering a sense of structure and meaning.
However, the potential “wrong path” lies in how Prager’s work can be interpreted or weaponized by vulnerable readers. His clear-cut worldview—often emphasizing binary distinctions between good and evil, tradition and progressivism—can foster an overly simplistic or polarized perspective. For a desperate individual, this might amplify tendencies toward rigidity, tribalism, or an us-versus-them mentality.
Context matters: a balanced reader might find value in Prager’s insights, while someone in a fragile state could cling to his ideas as a lifeline, risking an ideological spiral.
‘One Of America’s Most Original Thinkers’
In his 2012 book, Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph, Dennis calls himself “one of America’s most original thinkers.”
Grok says:
The phrase “most original” is awkward because it implies a superlative degree of uniqueness, yet he qualifies it with “one of,” which dilutes the assertion and makes it sound self-aggrandizing yet vague. It’s a rhetorical flourish that invites skepticism, as originality is subjective and hard to quantify, especially in a crowded field of political and cultural commentators.
A truly original thinker might let their ideas speak for themselves rather than preemptively claiming the mantle. Prager’s work synthesizes and distills established conservative thought rather than breaking new ground. His advocacy for American exceptionalism, limited government, and traditional morality aligns closely with thinkers like Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, and Norman Podhoretz.
His critiques of leftism and secularism resemble Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (1987) or Samuel Huntington’s work on cultural decline, though Prager’s style is less academic and more accessible.
The Rational Bible series, while presented as a fresh commentary, often reiterates interpretations from rabbinic sources or evangelical scholarship, with Prager’s personal reflections as the primary addition.
He popularizes complex philosophical and theological concepts through simple, relatable frameworks, like his “clarity over agreement” mantra.
Roughly 80–90% of Prager’s core ideas appear to be repackaged from conservative, religious, and classical liberal traditions, with 10–20% novelty in his accessible style, media innovation (PragerU), and specific framings (e.g., the “American Trinity”).
2. What is Prager’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?
Prager’s USP is his ability to distill complex conservative and religious ideas into clear, accessible, and emotionally resonant messages for a broad audience. Key elements include:
Clarity and Simplicity: Prager prioritizes straightforward communication, often using aphorisms or binary frameworks (e.g., good vs. evil, clarity vs. confusion) to make abstract concepts digestible. His slogan “clarity over agreement” encapsulates this.
Personal Authenticity: His conversational, avuncular style—honed on his long-running radio show—creates a sense of trust and relatability, positioning him as a mentor-like figure rather than an aloof intellectual.
This USP makes Prager a go-to figure for conservatives seeking clear, confident responses to cultural and political challenges, particularly in education and media.
His strength lies in synthesis and communication. He takes ideas from thinkers like Alexis de Tocqueville, Kirk, or C.S. Lewis, simplifies them, and delivers them to a mass audience via radio, books, and PragerU. For example, his video “Why Socialism Never Works” (PragerU) condenses arguments from Friedrich Hayek and Thomas Sowell into a five-minute format.
Prager’s contributions are derivative. He’s like Rush Limbaugh or Mark Levin—popularizers who amplify and repackage ideas for mass consumption.
Dennis Prager’s self-description in his 1996 book Think a Second Time as “one of the most brilliant and compelling voices in America today” and “a fixture in intellectual communities nationwide” is strikingly self-aggrandizing and awkward, especially when paired with his later claim in Still the Best Hope (2012) as “one of America’s most original thinkers.” This pattern of self-praise offers insight into his personal brand, rhetorical strategy, and potential insecurities.
Prager’s effusive self-description is a deliberate branding choice, common among media personalities seeking to establish authority in a competitive landscape. In 1996, Prager was transitioning from a relatively niche figure (known for his work on Judaism and conservative commentary) to a broader public persona via his radio show. The hyperbolic language serves several purposes:
Establishing Credibility: By calling himself a “theologian and philosopher” and a “brilliant” voice, Prager positions himself as an intellectual heavyweight, appealing to audiences who value authority and expertise. This is especially relevant in conservative circles, where trust in traditional institutions (media, academia) was eroding in the 1990s due to perceived liberal bias.
Differentiating in a Crowded Market: The talk-radio landscape of the 1990s was dominated by figures like Rush Limbaugh and Larry King. Prager’s self-praise helps him stand out as a unique blend of intellectual depth and accessible commentary, distinct from more bombastic or populist peers.
Memorability: Bold claims stick in readers’ minds, even if they provoke skepticism. The awkwardness of the phrasing ensures it’s noticed, sparking curiosity or debate.
It also suggests Prager is acutely aware of needing to assert his relevance, possibly reflecting the pressure of transitioning from niche intellectual circles to mainstream media.
By presenting himself as a “compelling” and “brilliant” voice, he mirrors the certainty he advocates in his arguments about Judeo-Christian values and American exceptionalism. It’s consistent with his persona as a defender of truth against relativism.
Overcompensation: The superlative language (“most brilliant,” “fixture in intellectual communities”) feels defensive, as if Prager is preemptively countering doubts about his intellectual credentials. Unlike academics with PhDs or philosophers with formal training, Prager’s background (a BA from Brooklyn College and some graduate work at Columbia) is modest for someone claiming such stature. The fawning may mask anxiety about being taken seriously in elite intellectual circles.
Cultural Context: In the 1990s, conservative intellectuals often felt marginalized by a liberal-dominated academy and media. Prager’s self-praise could be a defiant assertion of legitimacy in a cultural environment he perceives as hostile to his values.
This duality—confidence mixed with potential insecurity—humanizes Prager but also highlights a tension in his public image: he wants to be seen as both a populist everyman and an intellectual titan, which can feel contradictory.
For his conservative, often religious audience, the bold self-description reinforces Prager’s role as a champion against secular liberalism. Fans may see the fawning as earned confidence, especially if they distrust mainstream gatekeepers (academia, media) who might dismiss him.
The claim of being a “fixture in intellectual communities nationwide” is particularly questionable, as Prager’s influence in 1996 was more regional (via his Los Angeles-based radio show) and tied to conservative and Jewish circles rather than broad academic or philosophical networks. This exaggeration may have been aspirational, aiming to will his intellectual stature into existence.
Prager’s belief in American exceptionalism (Still the Best Hope) mirrors his personal exceptionalism. Just as he argues America’s values are uniquely virtuous, he positions himself as a uniquely insightful voice, suggesting a worldview where moral and intellectual hierarchies are clear and defensible.
Need for Validation: The fawning may stem from a need for external validation, common among public figures who thrive on audience approval.
In May 2023, Dennis spoke at Dr. Robert Malone’s Wine Country Conversations event.
Reading aloud from Prager’s introduction to himself, a woman announces: “He is considered one of the most influential thinkers, writers and speakers in America… He is an expert on communism, the Middle East, and the left.”
Grok says:
By aligning with Malone, Prager taps into a growing conservative subculture that values “outsider” voices challenging mainstream science, media, and politics… Their collaboration underscores a shared strategy: leveraging controversy, distrust of institutions, and bold claims to galvanize supporters. However, the lack of academic engagement (per Google Scholar) and the awkwardness of such introductions suggest a disconnect between their self-image and scholarly impact, highlighting the tension between populist appeal and intellectual credibility.
Both Prager and Malone exhibit a pattern of self-elevation, framing themselves as underappreciated geniuses wronged by elites. Their shared platform reflects a mutual appeal to audiences who feel alienated by institutional gatekeepers. Prager’s introduction as a top thinker mirrors Malone’s “MRNA inventor” narrative, suggesting a psychological need for validation in the face of mainstream dismissal.
Dec. 4, 2023, Dennis said to Julie: “I’m a big deal in American public life, intellectual life, media life.”
According to the 2023 Talkers Magazine, Prager ranks #40 among talk show hosts, behind Chad Benson, Mandy Connell, Doug Stephan, Todd Starnes, Harry Hurley and Larry O’Connor.
Jan. 1, 2024, Dennis said to Julie: “I have almost perfect pitch when it comes to logic, so it drives me crazy when I am talking to someone or I am reading something and they made a colossal error in common sense or logic.”
This self-assessment exemplifies Prager’s overconfidence, dismissing the complexity of logical reasoning as a personal gift rather than as a discipline honed through rigorous study.
Oct. 23, 2023, Dennis said to Julie: “Only recently have I realized how rational I am and how atypical that is among human beings.”
Grok says:
By claiming near-infallible logic, Prager elevates his arguments above debate, implying that disagreements stem from others’ flaws.
Prager’s frustration (“drives me crazy”) when encountering illogical arguments reveals an emotional investment in his self-image as a logical arbiter. This mirrors his hyperbolic rhetoric where perceived threats to his worldview (e.g., leftism, secularism) are framed as existential crises.
The phrase “colossal error in common sense or logic” dismisses opponents as fundamentally flawed, aligning with his polarizing style.
Julie Hartman, a younger co-host and PragerU contributor, often plays a deferential role, amplifying Prager’s authority.
According to the book, 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology:
Contrary to Dennis Prager, psychological studies that overturn our common sense are sometimes right. Indeed, one of our primary goals in this book is to encourage you to mistrust your common sense when evaluating psychological claims. As a general rule, you should consult research evidence, not your intuitions, when deciding whether a scientific claim is correct. Research suggests that snap judgments are often helpful in sizing up people and in forecasting our likes and dislikes, but they can be wildly inaccurate when it comes to gauging the accuracy of psychological theories or assertions.
The Cosmic Struggle
Chris Kavanagh’s Twitter timeline contains sharp observations about gurus like Dennis Prager:
* “[Gurus present] themselves as vital figures in a cosmic struggle with doomsday and the fall of the West just moments away… unless people watch them on Rumble, contribute to them on Locals, watch their new episode. They are obsessed with this image of being intellectual renegades fighting the entrenched powers.”
* “Bret and Malone’s anti-vaccine advocacy will have led to needless injury and death. All of it is in service to feeding their insatiable egos and unwarranted conviction that they are once-in-a-generation heroes saving the world. They are indulgent fantasists.”
* “Being anti-public health/vaccines is now an identity characteristic of the right and contrarian sets. That none of their dystopian predictions came true (hi Australia…) has zero impact on their ability to doom monger again. There’s a reason they all defend Alex Jones.”
* “I guess it was only a matter of time before the anti-glasses grift became a thing? This community is so hellbent on having a contrarian opinion on every incredible scientific invention.”
* “Here’s some of the warning signs.
1. Portrays criticism as haters making illegitimate attacks.
2. Over-hypes studies with significant limitations.
3. Uses strategic disclaimers.
4. Promotes supplements with limited evidence.”
July 18, 2023, Chris Kavanagh says: “The through-line [for gurus] is the ability to deal with the unseen world… They ground their expertise not in the ability to manipulate esoteric forces or to commune with the ancient masters, but with their secular knowledge.”
Gurus like Prager thrive on charisma and grievance, framing themselves as cosmic warriors against a corrupt establishment.
DTG co-host Matthew Browne, a psychologist, adds: “How to lay meaning over the world and provide guidance for your life. We coined the term secular guru. They cloak themselves in a different garb. People still have the same urge to find meaning in the world. They want guidance for their dilemmas. For the gurus, the modern ones like the old-fashioned ones, there are strong motivations to lean into this role — you get recognition, attention, respect and ultimately financial resources.
“To be a good guru, you need to be a performer. You need to be charismatic. You have to put on a good show, [have] preternatural levels of self-confidence and self-assurance, that ability to project authority and wisdom and send people the message that you have the capacity for unique insights. You’re connected to forces beyond their ken and they need to listen to you.”
“They lean into woo. They’re into strange diets.”
“Like Jordan Peterson, they see the mystical influence of the word of God everywhere. The scientific grounding is a rationalization. The appeal to the heart is in the old-fashioned sense of revealed truth, but they frame it as informed by logic, science, philosophy and these secular things.”
Kavanagh: “When you have institutionalized religions, you often do have a competition between…orthodox interpreters and these more dramatic practitioners. Within the tradition, you have this constant push and pull between figures who lean more towards idiosyncratic, charismatic interpretations and those who lean more towards orthodox textual dogma.”
In a May 16, 2018 article, author Jonathan Kirsch wrote to Dennis Prager:
I recall one broadcast during which a Protestant minister on the panel asked you what Jewish denomination you belonged to, and the rabbi on the panel jokingly said: “Dennis belongs to a branch of Judaism called ‘Pragerism.’”
In 2003, Dennis said: “My brother frequently says to me, ‘You are a religious party of one.'”
You could say the same thing about Jordan Peterson’s Christianity.
Kavanagh: “You look at modern religion and you see charismatic individuals who perform guru roles and you have serious priests and theologians. Gurus inhabit all societies and all areas, including traditional religion, New Age religion, non-doctrinal religions, and secular societies. It is a recurrent social role.”
Browne: “The secular gurus we look at seem to operate in the shadow of the institutions, the mainstream media, the blue church of the academy, and they don’t draw their epistemic and moral authority from orthodox consensus literature but rather with reference not to their spiritual powers nor their connection with God, but with their polymathic powers, their unique intellectual capabilities.”
Kavanagh: “Public intellectual might seem a close fit [to guru] but public intellectuals profess specialist knowledge consistent with a broader academic scientific or technological field of knowledge. The secular gurus are polymathic and iconoclastic. They position their insights as unique, broad-ranging and controversial, go against traditional theories from established disciplines. Almost by definition, [gurus are] antagonistic to established institutions and academic fields that may have birthed them. And when they reference a particular expertise, it is used as a justification for spreading their ideas widely. They’re not constrained as most public intellectuals are who will say, ‘I don’t know enough to comment.'”
Browne: “They don’t stand on the shoulders of giants. They are the giants.”
Kavanagh: “People claiming to have revolutionary insights to transform a field dramatically outstrip the number of people who do that. When someone revolutionizes a field, they don’t have to tell you. History records it. If someone declares themselves a revolutionary figure but they haven’t had any impact on the field and their primary output is a podcast where they talk about culture wars, [they’re] likely to only be known in history as a conspiracy theorist.”
On a separate 2023 show, Browne noted two common problems with gurus: “One, professing to have this unique insight that everyone else is wrong, I am telling you how it is on a wide variety of topics, becoming supposedly an expert overnight, or as someone like Brett Weinstein would claim, using his unique evolutionary biology perspective to solve every puzzle, and never admitting being wrong.”
Prager’s Rapport With Other Gurus
A good way of judging someone is by noticing his friends and colleagues.
Dennis Prager is at ease with other low-rent gurus such as Malcolm Gladwell, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin. By contrast, a man who optimized for truth would be uncomfortable in this company.
July 17, 2023, Dennis said to Julie Hartman: “You know how much I respect Ben Shapiro.”
On what basis would one respect Ben Shapiro? Because of his ability to make a career out of glib partisan punditry?
According to PragerU, “The Rubin Report [is] a talk show about big ideas and free speech. The show has been heralded for its politically incorrect and honest approach.”
By contrast, Decoding the Gurus titled their Rubin episode: “A Pointless Partisan Pundit.” They added: “The riddle of Dave Rubin is not so much a deep rabbit hole as a minor depression in the ground.”
PragerU features a long interview with James Lindsay about critical race theory.
Sep. 9, 2017, Dennis interviewed Bret Weinstein.
Nov. 13, 2019, Dennis interviewed Scott Adams about his new book Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America.
In a video uploaded Oct. 11, 2021, Dennis Prager interviewed Gad Saad about his book The Parasitic Mind.
Saad was the topic of the August 20, 2021 episode of Decoding the Gurus:
Gad is worried about parasitic brain worms that are influencing people’s politics, though this affliction seems to correlate pretty strongly with all the liberal political views that Gad dislikes… Get ready for a string of anecdotes in which Gad destroys postmodern ideologues with facts and logic, embarrasses pigeon brained academics, and teaches his soccer coach the true meaning of freedom…
October 2, 2021, PragerU posted: “Watch our new short documentary with JP Sears and others at PragerU.com/restricted.”
Oct. 23, 2020, DTG released an episode on J.P. Sears: “Get Ultra Spiritual, Resist the Government, and Promote Coronavirus Conspiracies”
Apr. 21, 2023, Jordan Peter released a video called “The Rise of US Totalitarianism.” It featured Dennis Prager.
Malcolm Gladwell
On his Feb. 10, 2011 show, Dennis called Malcolm Gladwell “an original thinker.”
Dennis recognizes in the huckster a kindred spirit. They met on the air Feb. 18, 2014, when Malcolm was promoting his new book — David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants.
Dennis: “Your mind, I have a certain identification with it. You look at something and you find patterns. That’s the way my mind works.”
Malcolm: “I think that people in the position we’re in, doing the job we’re doing, that’s our value? Most people are information-rich and theory-poor. They don’t have the time or the inclination to make sense of [life], to put patterns together.”
Dennis: “But without patterns, you don’t understand life.”
Malcolm: “Yeah.”
Dennis: “It’s something you can train yourself to do, but it is also a gift. They asked Schubert, how did you come up with all these melodies? And he said, ‘They just come into my brain.'”
“Thanks to you, I got to love the [story of] David and Goliath even more. It gives tremendous substance to the story in the Bible. All these little details, you make sense of.”
“Just for that story alone, you have to read [his book] David and Goliath. It begins with a brilliant analysis of why the story is so telling in its details.”
Malcolm: “Why are we so constantly fooled by things that don’t matter?”
Dennis: “That’s why I resonate with this theme of yours. At a very early age, I came to a conclusion I have never wavered from — the staggering exaggerated importance given to brains and raw intelligence. I realized in high school that the ones with the finest brains were often the most confused, the least capable of dealing with life kids in the grade. I have learned from my listeners, who come from all walks of life, more than I learned from my professors at Columbia.”
Malcolm: “Yeah. That does not surprise me. You talk to people in the business world, I’m always curious about hiring, and the good ones, that’s all they talk about. They hire character.”
Dennis: “I’m getting the chills. I raised my kids with that theme. I told them, ‘I don’t care about your grades. I care about your character.’ And they got crappy grades. Character is king.”
“I feel like a kindred spirit with you.”
“Malcolm Gladwell teaches what isn’t taught. He has an original mind. It is a joy to read him.”
Philosopher John Gray wrote on Nov. 21, 2013 in The New Republic about Gladwell's book David and Goliath:
There is nothing remotely challenging, for most of Gladwell’s readers, in this story; it is the sort of uplift in which they already believe. The dominant narrative for the last three centuries has been one in which the power of elites and rulers is progressively overcome by the moral force of the common man and woman who sticks up for what is right. Far from being a forbidden truth, this is what everyone thinks. Here we can glimpse one of the secrets of Gladwell’s success. Pretending to present daringly counterintuitive views to his readers, he actually strengthens the hold on them of a view of things that they have long taken for granted. This is, perhaps, the essence of the genre that Gladwell has pioneered: while reinforcing beliefs that everyone avows, he evokes in the reader a satisfying sensation of intellectual non-conformity…
Speaking to a time that prides itself on optimism and secretly suspects that nothing works, his books are analgesics for those who seek temporary relief from abiding anxiety. There is more of reality and wisdom in a Chinese fortune cookie than can be found anywhere in Gladwell’s pages. But then, it is not reality or wisdom that his readers are looking for.
Who do you suspect has more of a handle on Malcolm Gladwell? Gray or Prager?
In 2022, a thread on the DTG Reddit decried Gladwell’s influence, and much of the analysis would also apply to gurus such as Prager:
[H]ere’s this simple trick that will solve this hugely multi-variate and chaotic societal problem! Oh, here’s how everything you thought you knew about this historical event is wrong! Oh, here’s one simple analogistic explanation that reduces complex human behavior into a predictive rule!
[H]e shares many of the stylistic problems that other gurus do: creating overly reductive models and then mistaking his models for the part of the world they are supposed to describe; falling for his sophistry… The level of hot takery is unparalleled.
Another post: "There is something SO compelling (edit: misleadingly so) about people who are good with analogies… As annoying as people like Weinstein E, Gladwell and Jordan Peterson are, they are good at reasoning by analogy."
Prager is great with analogies.
July 21, 2015, Dennis Prager wrote a column: “1938 and 2015: Only the Names Are Different.”
Julie Hartman said to Dennis on July 31, 2023: “You are good at coming up with analogies.”
Dennis: “That’s the way I think. I hear an idea and I picture an analogy.”
Douglas Murray
May 25, 2023, Dennis called Douglas Murray his “favorite English thinker.” I largely agree with Douglas Murray and Dennis Prager, but only a fool thinks of these guys as great thinkers. They’re great talkers, but will their long-form conversations from the Relief Factor Pain-Free studio save Western Civilization? Count me skeptical.
Reddit user Koreanoir posted a compelling critique of Murray’s 2022 book The War on the West:
The book reads like a disorganized, amphetamine-driven rampage through a big folder of bookmarked webpages labeled “Woke Stuff”. Murray’s approach is to breathlessly recount one anecdote after another, usually dedicating just a paragraph or two to each, and then sneer at the people in the center of it, all the while complaining that criticisms of “The West” lack sufficient nuance and balance…
Douglas Murray made two PragerU videos. On May 5, 2022, Dennis did a show “The War on the West: Dennis Prager with Douglas Murray.” On Oct. 15, 2020, Dennis hosted Murray for a fireside chat.
Polemicists of a feather flock together.
The John Yoo Line
Statistician Andrew Gelman wrote September 12, 2012:
[A]cademia has what might be called the John Yoo line: the point at which nothing you write gets taken seriously, and so you might as well become a hack because you have no scholarly reputation remaining.
John Yoo, of course, became a hack because, I assume, he had nothing left to lose. In contrast, historian Niall Ferguson has reportedly been moved to hackery because he has so much to gain.
Galaxy Bains
I quote from DTG’s Gurometer developed by psychologist Matt Browne and cognitive anthropologist Chris Kavanagh who started their podcast in 2020.
1. Galaxy-brainness is an ironic descriptor of someone who presents ideas that appear to be too profound for an average mind to comprehend, but are in truth reasonably trivial if not nonsensical. Gurus often present themselves as fonts of wisdom, and it is an all-encompassing kind of knowledge that tends to span multiple disciplines and topics.
Apr. 14, 2025, Grok says:
Rating: 3/5. Prager’s confidence in addressing diverse topics suggests some galaxy-brain tendencies, but his arguments stay within a conservative ideological framework, lacking the jargon-heavy, pseudo-scientific flair of peak galaxy-brainness.
Matt Browne said Sep. 21, 2022: “Galaxy-brainness is… is the magic key. A meta epistemology that allows you figure everything out.”
Browne said July 18, 2023: “They present ideas that are too profound for the average mind to comprehend. This is different from Einstein talking about quantum mechanics and general relativity, this is stuff like Deepak Chopra linking quantum mechanics to special waves of consciousness. It is superficially intellectually rarefied but upon closer examination, it makes little sense. One indicator is when a figure links together these disparate concepts saying that all you need to know to understand the differences between men and women is that men hunt and women gather, all you need to know is that men have two modes, a symbiotic mode and a parasitic mode. There is this linking of concepts that are appealing superficially but don’t have much to it underneath. Jordan Peterson linked the social behavior of lobsters to understanding male behavior and their dominance hierarchies. Bret Weinstein used evolutionary theory to explain why the Nazis invaded Russia in Operation Barbarossa. There are heaps more stuff you can draw from the world of woo linking secret talismans and ancient civilizations to aliens to balancing your shakras. You don’t restrict yourself to providing information and insight on a certain topic. You’re stepping back and linking things from all over the shop to create this tapestry of meaning that covers everything.”
Kavanagh: “There tends to be a dismissal of restriction [of the guru’s] expertise. People suggesting you stay in your lane are doing so to chain you down. There’s an exaggeration of their competence and an overestimation of how many paradigms you can run at once.”
Browne: “Jordan Peterson claimed he was an expert on climate science. He had read [200] books… There are these easy claims to polymathic abilities but often it is little more than learning a few buzzwords and rattling them off in quick succession.”
“A lot of big advances do involve a linking together of disparate fields. [Gurus present] false versions of the real thing. The real thing is hard to come by and happens rarely and operates within an established paradigm and gets help from colleagues, most of whom recognize what they have achieved when they achieve it.”
Kavanagh: “There’s an output that is not just long-form podcasts.”
May 31, 2022, Browne said: “Why we cover secular gurus…rather than straight up religious cult leaders is that [religious gurus are] boring. Predictable. There’s nothing to talk about with Reverend Moon.”
Here are some examples of Prager’s galaxy claims:
* “I have been right on virtually every issue that I have differed with the majority on in my life.” (Dec. 12, 2022 show)
* “I know from years of experience with home-schooled kids that overwhelmingly they turn out happier, finer, kinder and more intelligent…” (April 4, 2023)
* “If truth is allowed out, there is no left.” (Dec. 12, 2022)
The left is an evolutionary adaptation to selection pressure, and like the right, it is still around because it has out-competed alternatives at times in transmitting genes. In some circumstances, a xenophobic police state is the best way to survive, and at other times, communal sharing and innovative family structures is more adaptive. Sometimes your group is best off doing the same old provincial thing and other times they are better off doing lefty things like globalism.
* “I wanted the answers. I wasn’t given them. What is the Jewish role in the world? In 14 years in yeshiva, I never learned the Jewish role in the world.” (2010)
I suspect he was given answers but he didn’t like them. If Jewish schools were doing a solid job, what need would there be for mavericks like Prager? If rabbis were doing a good job, where would he get his importance? For a guru to develop a large following, he must discredit the establishment.
* “The great lack in young Americans’ lives is religion. It is the direct cause, not only cause, of all the depression, lost sense of identity…” (April 5, 2023)
* “I have come to entertain the possibility of a devil. It has been so diabolic what I have experienced the past three years. It is hard to explain on rational grounds the madness that has taken over.” (March 27, 2023)
What happened to people like Jordan Peterson and Dennis Prager?
Matt: “They take actions that are in their best interest — more clicks, more attention, more positive feedback [from a particular audience]. You resolve your beliefs about a particular topic with your broader worldview.” (March 25, 2024 Mini Decoding: The Descent of Jordan Peterson.)
Chris: “We all engage in motivated reasoning but we don’t all [have a] belief in a malevolent power animating every position [we] don’t like… The conspiratorial worldview has encompassed everything.”
Matt: “Demon-infested millennial religious worldview [and conspiracies] go together. There’s clearly been a descent. Jordan is not alone among our gurus to have this journey. Would he have been like this if he had not become a celebrity?”
Chris: “He appears to be a grandiose narcissist. He always saw himself as a revolutionary thinker with big ideas. He sought out a public profile. He wanted to be a commentator. He wanted to establish a religion, buy a church and give sermons. That’s not normal behavior. When you add to that his obsessions and wrestling with his religious devotion or lack of religious belief, that creates a heady stew. The partisan political ecosystem encourages him to give more takes and to have a financially rewarding pundit position. He’s now Alex Jones in a suit.”
* Dennis: “[Climate change] is the single best way for [Biden] and the left to overthrow Western civilization as we know it and destroy the economies of the Western world.” (April 14, 2023)
* “When the government tells businesses what to do, that is one of the true signposts of incipient fascism.” (April 14, 2023)
Dennis said Oct. 16, 2023: “The left cheapened the word Nazi and, yes, fascist.”
Pot. Kettle. Black.
* “The left has been working to destroy this country for a century.” (Dec. 19, 2022)
* “Big lies inevitably lead to violence and can even destroy civilizations.” (Dec. 6, 2022)
* “The news media in the West pose a far greater danger to Western civilization than Russia does.” (July 14, 2017)
* “I think meat is the healthiest food there is. I got that from Jordan Peterson.” (Jan. 30, 2023)
Why take health advice from Jordan Peterson?
Jordan got this meat idea from his daughter Mikhaila.
* June 19, 2023, Dennis said: “The left crushes everything it touches.”
Almost every institution in America is dominated by the left and yet they function well enough that the United States remains the most powerful country on earth.
The left dominates public education, and for all its flaws, American public education is about the best in the world.
* June 19, 2023, Dennis said: “There is no answer to — what does the left stand for? It only stands against… All they want to do is destroy. The conservative wishes to conserve.”
The Wikipedia entry on the left-right political spectrum noted:
The left-wing is characterized by… “equality, fraternity, rights, progress, reform and internationalism” while the right-wing is characterized by “authority, hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, reaction and nationalism.”
* Dennis decried affirmative action on his Youtube show June 19, 2023: “Society will suffer because merit will no longer be the reason for any position. It says to the ones who work hard, don’t bother working hard because we’re no longer choosing by merit. It says to the minority, there’s no reason to work hard, you’re going to get ahead just because of your gender or race.”
Selective affirmative action (and all affirmative action is selective) reduces but does not eliminate rewards for merit and hard work. There’s never been a society in history where merit was 100% determinative.
* Oct. 30, 2007, Dennis wrote about the threat of Islamo-Fascism.
Paul Gottfried wrote Nov. 21, 2007 that Islamo-Fascism is a ridiculous term:
The problem with this misnaming of one’s enemies is that it creates inaccurate pictures of what is going on right now.
Bin Laden is not a stand-in for Benito Mussolini, or for Hitler. He is an international terrorist, who must be combated for the most part through coordinated police actions and the selective use of military forces…
More often than not, historical parallels, and particularly for people with obvious obsessions, are something we should not engage in.
Paul Gottfried wrote Dec. 17, 2017:
Perhaps one of the most ludicrous examples of the conservative movement’s recent attempt at being sophisticated was an exchange of equally uninformed views by talk show host Dennis Prager and Dinesh D’Souza, on the subject of the fascist worldview. The question was whether one could prove that fascism was a leftist ideology by examining the thought of Mussolini’s court philosopher Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944)… one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century…
Hey, but that’s no big deal for such priests of the GOP church as Prager and D’Souza. They zoom to the heart of Gentile’s neo-Hegelian worldview in thirty seconds and state with absolute certainty that he was a “leftist.” We have to assume that Prager, D’Souza and the rest of their crowd know this intuitively, inasmuch they give no indication of having ever read a word of Gentile’s thought, perhaps outside of a few phrases that they extracted from his Doctrine of Fascism. Their judgment also clashes with that of almost all scholars of Gentile’s work…
* Dennis: “One of the deepest disappointments in my life has been Jews’ opposition to wars against evil. I had always assumed that, as the victims of so much evil throughout history, and as heirs to the great moral teachings of the Bible and Judaism, Jews, of all people, would support fighting on behalf of victims of the greatest evils.” (Oct. 14, 2014)
Most people, most of the time, are mostly interested in themselves and their families.
* If America abandons Israel, “that is the end of America as we know it.” (May 27, 2023)
* July 26, 2022, Dennis wrote: "The average 12-year-old student at a yeshiva has more wisdom than almost any student at Harvard or most other universities."
The great thing about making wisdom claims is that they cannot be falsified. There’s no objective test for wisdom.
* One man who worked with Dennis for years on the radio found himself going home every day thinking about things Dennis said. Then he noticed that Dennis didn’t understand many of the articles he was reading on air. Dennis just used the news to unleash his Pragerisms. In the course of a few months, the man went from fascinated with Dennis to disgusted with Dennis.
* Jan. 15, 2024, Dennis said: “Hitler was left-wing in that he believed in socialism. Nazism was National Socialism. Very few people know that. It was not left-wing in another sense – the left divided the world by class. Hitler divided the world by race. Race is not a left-wing or a right-wing value. It’s not right to say that he was right-wing. He hated capitalism.”
Dennis Prager is on a similar trajectory to James Lindsay and Jordan Peterson. Mar. 21, 2024, Jordan released a discussion with the streamer Destiny. Chris Kavanagh summarized part of Jordan’s performance: “Peterson thinks it’s completely unknown if the Nazis were left or right=wing. He had a study planned that could have resolved it but the damn woke mob stole his professorship before he could do it. So now it’s a completely open question.”
Historian Mikael Nilsson notes:
This is simply untrue. There are quite literally THOUSANDS of such studies. Every historian that has ever written on the topic has done such analysis. There is no doubt among the experts as whether National Socialism was right-wing or left-wing. It was extremely right-wing. The question is: How is it possible that an intelligent person as JBP does not know this? The answer is likely to be that he has so indoctrinated himself into believing this very thing that he THINKS that what he is saying is true. It is no secret that JBP thinks that he is part of an intellectual elite, and his rather grandiose self-image no doubt contributes to him being unable to process and integrate facts that go against his already strongly held views on the topic. JBP also shows that he does not understand history or how historians work. The reason I say this is because he suggests that the correct way to determine whether Nazism was right-wing or left-wing would be to present key issues to people today and poll them on whether they think the issues right-wing or left-wing (I’ll ignore the halfwit suggestion to let AI decide it). But this anachronistic way of going about it would produce a result that is completely irrelevant. Because what people today think of this has absolutely no bearing on where on the political spectrum the Nazis resided in the 1920s and 1930s. JBP lacks even the most basic understanding of history. Politics changes over time and political views in one time and culture are not the same as in another time and in another place. The issue has to be situated in its own time and place in order to be understood at all. One example of how political views can change sides on the political spectrum is that if one polls the beliefs that big pharma is evil, the CIA/FBI is conspiring to subvert the will of the people, skepticism of large media corps, Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories etc., you would find most of the adherents on the right-wing. But if you had done the same poll in the 1990s the result would have been THE EXACT OPPOSITE, because 30 years ago these were views almost exclusively held by LEFT-wingers.
Cultishness
2. Cultishness: …[G]urus tend to act in a manipulative fashion with their followers and potential allies. This often takes the form of excessive flattery, such as intimations that their followers are more perceptive, more morally worthy, and more interested in the pursuit of truth than outsiders. A guru will often put some effort into signalling a close and personal relationship with their followers — essentially encouraging the development of parasocial ideation.
Grok says:
Rating: 4/5. Prager’s strong in-group/out-group framing and flattery of followers align closely with cultish dynamics, though he stops short of the intense control seen in true cults.
July 18, 2023, Kavanagh said: “Parasocial relationships are unavoidable when consuming someone’s content, but there are people who cultivate and make use of those relationships. Gurus strongly cultivate them by using excessive flattery, often referencing how their followers are like close friends to them, and then presenting themselves as wounded and vulnerable and in need of protection. It’s an interesting paradox because you have them as the all-conquering polymathic genius, but they’re in need of protection.”
* On his Jan. 30, 2023 show with Julie Hartman, Dennis said: “There are many people who hate my guts, and it has no effect on me, but it does tell me about them. If you hate me, it doesn’t tell me anything about me, it tells me everything about you. I know that I aim to do good and I do good. Many people who have happier marriages because of my male-female hour. There are many happy people because of my happiness book, lectures and radio hour. Many people have reconciled with their parents because they heard me. How many leftists who hate my guts can say that? Zero. How many people are kinder because they were influenced by a leftist? Zero. It’s not possible to become woke and to become kind.”
Most teachers, social workers, and psychology professionals are on the left. Do they not influence anyone to become kinder?
Dec. 25, 2023, Dennis said to Julie: “It’s not possible to be a grateful leftist. In American universities, you get a BA in ingratitude, a Masters in ingratitude and a PhD in ingratitude.”
* June 26, 2023, Julie said to Dennis: “Do you mind if I go into Jane Eyre?”
Dennis: “If you told me you have the Bronx phonebook, I’d be interested in your insight.”
Why?
Later in the show, Dennis assures Julie, “You are a very desirable woman.”
* Julie said to him July 3, 2023: “It is my life vocation to help save this country. Until the day I die, I want to fight for this country.”
Dennis: “You might be able to [save America]. That’s how highly I think of you.”
On their Nov. 7, 2022 Youtube show, Julie said: "I grew up thinking doctors, alongside teachers, were the most morally upstanding people… For a time, I didn't believe that doctors were wreaking that much havoc. I thought, maybe they truly believe the Covid vaccine is effective. Maybe they truly believe that lockdowns are effective. I look around now in our society and think who can I trust?"
Dennis: "My heart breaks for your generation. I trusted every institution when I was growing up."
Julie: "I don't trust any."
Dennis: "You're right not to…"
Julie: "What about the Department of Homeland Security working alongside Silicon Valley to suppress "misinformation"?
"What scares me is that so many of my friends totally trust these institutions and don't know how corrupt they are… When they take many doses of the Covid vaccine and something happens to their health, they're not going to be happy."
"One thing that amazes me is how little people know about what is truly going on in this country… They laugh at me."
Dennis: "It's one of my mottos – we know what they don't know."
Julie: "They laugh at me like I was on QAnon… Some of my more peripheral friends have this false notion that I've been radicalized. They truly believe that the things that I just mentioned to you, which are 100% true and shouldn't even be deemed right-wing beliefs because they are facts, they believe those things are conspiracy theories. They believe I have gone on to QAnon, whatever that is. They think I go on these crazy right-wing sites and come up with these conspiracy theories. There are bad things going on and they think it is just made up. I get the sense that a lot of them want to distance themselves from me because they think I'm nuts."
Grok says:
Julie Hartman’s declaration, “I want to fight for this country,” reflects a fervent, almost messianic commitment to conservative ideals, framing America as under existential threat (e.g., from progressive policies, institutional corruption). This aligns with Prager’s apocalyptic rhetoric in Could It Happen Here? It Is Happening Here (2023), which you’ve critiqued as hyperbolic and attention-seeking.
Prager’s response reinforces his mentor-like role, elevating Hartman as a chosen successor to his mission. This mirrors his grandiose self-perception by proxy, positioning Hartman as a future leader while basking in her reflected glory. It also suggests a cult-of-personality dynamic, where Prager anoints disciples.
Prager’s motto, “we know what they don’t know,” reinforces an elitist, conspiratorial stance, positioning him and Hartman as enlightened against a deceived majority.
Here are some examples of Dennis Prager’s cultish tendencies:
* Sheldon Teitelbaum wrote for the Jewish Journal Mar. 14, 1986:
[Michael] Harris [Bardin’s assistant from 1961-71], however, argues that, “Dennis was simply there at a time when Shlomo was most vulnerable. He saw the end coming and he needed to pitch somebody.”
“Under Dennis’s directorship,” says Chotiner, “Brandeis was a swinging door. We were picking 200 members one year and losing 150 the next.” Chotiner is not alone in his contention that Prager lacked intellectual depth. His critics argue that he was basically a “three-speech man,” and the membership grew tired of hearing the same speeches time after time. Others grew weary of what they claim were repeated bouts of vindictive, almost paranoid behavior by Prager. But there are also those among Prager’s detractors who did not share this view. Says Dr. Goodhill, “Dennis was a brilliant man. He was also very courageous — there was never anything bashful about him. I think that’s what bothered the older people on the board was the strong and rather major dominance at the institute that Dennis wanted and did exercise. We accepted that in Shlomo because it took that kind of personality to get things going. And Dennis did have to be a one-man show!”
Unfortunately for the institute, strife and dissension within the board over Prager’s leadership resulted in a brief but traumatic conflict, between 1979 and 1981, over the actual decision-making process at Brandeis-Bardin, which some called “elitist” and “undemocratic.”
David Margolis wrote in the Jewish Journal in December 1992:
The voice as it comes out of the radio is big – deep, resonant, combative, sure of itself. The man behind the voice is also big – 6 feet 4 inches tall, a hefty 250 pounds, full of energy and sure of his ideas and his mission: to make old-fashioned ethics the central organizing factor of American public life and of every private life his voice can reach…
Perhaps somewhat uncomfortable with his lack of academic credentials, Prager notes that he co-wrote (with Rabbi Joseph Telushkin) Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism as a kind of substitute Master’s thesis. With a touch of the salesman, Prager calls the book, which has been translated into Russian, Spanish, Persian and Japanese, the “most widely used introduction to Judaism in the world.”
The seven years of Prager’s tenure in Simi Valley, however, were filled with conflict between himself and the Brandeis board, whom he accuses of treating him “miserably.” At Brandeis, Prager says now, not without bitterness, “I learned that many Jews are uncomfortable with paying another Jew to do something Jewish.”
Even his critics acknowledge that Prager succeeded in exciting many young people about Jewish observance and bringing them into the Jewish community. But that enterprise had its downside as well. He developed “followers,” explains one BBI insider during those years, but he turned off many people by leaving no room for “intelligent disagreement. His bullying antagonized a lot of people.”
It is a complaint about Prager’s style that clings to him even today…
“To the liberals, God is tolerance,” he sniffs, suggesting that in the end, pure tolerance can lead people to accept virtually anything.
To illustrate his own conviction, he recounts a conversation he had with his 9-year-old son David. During the April 1992 L.A. riots, he says, as they watched the looting together on television, he asked if the boy would loot if he knew he would not get caught or punished. The father was pleased when the boy said he would not, not merely because it’s “wrong” but because “God said not to.”
Using a sentimental anecdote as support for a complex philosophical notion is a device sure to raise the cry of “simple-mindedness” from Prager’s critics, who don’t take him or his ideas nearly as seriously as Prager thinks they should.
There is no lack of quick dismissals of Prager – most of them, predictably, from liberals. “You shouldn’t treat him as a serious thinker,” cautions a professor. “His ideas are superficial and simplistic and can be easily demolished,” says another academic. “He’s popular because people are looking for easy answers,” opines an L.A. community activist. “His philosophy is oatmeal,” carps a local writer. “A low-rent mind,” says a rabbi. “Intellectually wooden,” says a sometime radio listener. “An intellectual bully,” says a former fan. “Tiresome and repetitive,” says another…
Prager defends himself with some irritation against the accusation of simplistic thinking. “My views are very nuanced. I once wrote ‘No act is ever wrong.'”
…His quarterly newsletter, Ultimate Issues, which he writes himself, has a circulation of 9,000 opinion-makers around the country – more, Prager boasts, than just about any other Jewish publication “that you have to pay for.”
…The master of talk radio has also negotiated for a TV talk show, shopping around a pilot for possible use in several areas, with the potential for a national hookup in the future. (One problem, say some Prager watchers, is that Prager’s large physical presence, talkiness and love of being the center of attention may work against television’s need, even in a talk-show setting, for motion and a bit of drama.)
All these operations – plus a brisk business in transcripts and tapes of his courses and lectures on everything from the excesses of the American Civil Liberties Union to “Why I Send My Child to a Jewish Day School” – keep eight secretaries and researchers busy in Prager’s large suite of offices in Culver City. A dynamo of energy and ambition intent on changing society’s values, Prager has become a one-man cottage industry.
…But he makes one important exception to traditional categories of morality, an exception that mightily disturbs some right-wing Jews and Christians who otherwise agree with him: He accepts and justifies “non-coercive” sex between unmarried adults.
Inventing his own category of permission within the traditional morality he espouses, Prager insists on the moral propriety of sex between unmarried adults “so long as there is no element of unkindness, dishonesty, or anything unethical – so long as it does not harm others.”
Many ethicists and moralists, including the traditional Jewish authorities who provide his underpinning on other matters, would reject this separate distinction for unmarried sex, Prager acknowledges, especially since sex is an arena in which people can injure others emotionally even when they are, or try to be, totally honest.
But Prager (married to his second wife, Fran, and the father of a son, a stepdaughter and a newly adopted infant) compares the issue to the Jewish law that forbids asking a storekeeper the price of his wares if one has no intention of making a purchase. “You can’t raise the hopes of a storekeeper for no reason,” he explains. “Similarly, if you know you won’t commit to a woman, you have to say to her, as you would to a storekeeper, ‘I’m going to take a little time to look at your merchandise, but I’m not going to buy it here.’ If you level this way, you can tell a woman, ‘This is recreation, but I will not commit to you.’ An adult woman has to be in charge of her own life, too.”
While moralists, not to mention feminists, may be horrified at the comparison, the sentiments and the possibilities for emotional abuse that such a philosophy suggests, especially by a teacher, administrator or celebrity, Prager insists that he sees sex between unmarried adults as an issue, not of morality but of holiness. “I take holiness extremely seriously,” he says reassuringly. “But whereas I want always want to be ethical, there are moments of unholiness when, for the sake of my own sanity, I have allowed the lower side of myself to express itself.”
He makes this confession, if that is what it is, simply to represent himself accurately, he says. Prager the moralist, even when he is preaching what others might argue is immoral, always remains in control. “I am a fanatic on the issue of truth,” he says. “I don’t want people to ever be able to say, ‘He said one thing but he did another.’ I want my life to be all of one piece.”
After Dennis was fired by Brandeis-Bardin in 1983, he was never invited back to speak.
* Jun. 28, 2011, Dennis said about the Brandeis-Bardin Institute: “Individuals make and break the world… Do you know how many organizations I’ve seen that were great because its leader was great and then the leader died or retired and the place became nothing? It just shriveled up and died.
“I know of what I speak on a personal level where the leader leaves and the people thought that what was great about the institutions was its policies, its methodologies. Doesn’t matter who led it. Then when good leaders left, the methodologies were useless.”
On the other hand, on Mar. 23, 2010, Dennis said: “Leaders don’t make America, Americans make America… I don’t want leaders to shape America.”
“God was entirely opposed to having a king. The Israelites asked for a king. Instead, He just wanted the prophets to tell people what is right and wrong and let them lead their own lives.”
“I don’t want leaders. I have a leader — God. We lead ourselves in America. The very notion that leaders will lead us is left-wing.”
So when is Dennis for leadership and when is Dennis against leadership? It’s hard to avoid thinking that Dennis loves leadership when it allows him and those like him to assert themselves above others and he doesn’t like leadership when it allows others to assert themselves above him and his.
The notion that it is the left rather than the right who valorizes leaders might be the opposite of reality. In his 2015 book, Key Concepts in Politics and International Relations, Andrew Heywood wrote:
Its principal supporters have been on the political right, influenced by a general belief in natural inequality and a broadly pessimistic view of the masses. In its extreme form this was reflected in the fascist ‘leader principle’, which holds that there is a single, supreme leader who alone is capable of leading the masses to their destiny…
Liberals and socialists, on the other hand, have usually warned that leaders should not be trusted.
Contrary to Prager’s claims about having no interest in power, at age 15, Dennis was talking to his best friend Joseph Telushkin about what he would do in the U.S. Senate one day. Contrary to his claim of having no desire for the spotlight, Dennis often flew across the country for two minutes on the Sean Hannity Show.
Why would Dennis lust for power from a young age? Because that’s the way to get girls and Dennis from an early age was all about getting girls. An article entitled, “Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature,” said in 2007:
Men strive to attain political power, consciously or unconsciously, in order to have reproductive access to a larger number of women. Reproductive access to women is the goal, political office but one means. To ask why the President of the United States would have a sexual encounter with a young woman is like asking why someone who worked very hard to earn a large sum of money would then spend it.
By the mid 1970s, Dennis Prager was getting asked when he was going to run for political office.
Since the 1980s, Dennis has said that he would only run for president.
July 31, 2009, Dennis was asked why he didn’t run for president. He replied: “Number one, I have no personal desire to run for public office. I have however an idealistic desire because…I am certain that I can articulate conservative values better than almost anyone in the Republican party… It is very distressing to me that the finest values do not have the finest spokesmen. That is what draws me to the idea of running for any public office.”
Dec. 14, 2009, Dennis said: “When I see some of these people on TV, there’s no doubt in my mind, I’m sorry if this sounds self-serving, that I would have a more entertaining, let alone more intelligent TV show, than the vast majority of those who have them today, but I don’t come with the correct perspective.”
On Prager’s radio show, Dec. 21, 2009, a man calls. “I’m the one who always pulls you aside and tells you you should be president of the United States.”
Dennis: “I agree with you right now. It’s the first time. I don’t know what I’ve said in the past, but I agree with you, only because the Republicans don’t have somebody who can articulate American values well enough right now, or at least I don’t know who he is. It’s something I’ll talk to my listeners about. It’s been in my mind.”
In a 2010 appearance at Stephen S. Wise temple, Dennis said to interviewer David Woznica: “I have zero desire to have any power over anybody. You know this is a fact because even on the tiny tiny scale of my running Brandeis-Bardin, all I wanted was terrific other people and to share power. I just wanted to make sure that the values were what I thought the values should be.”
* Striving to keep people in the dark is a culty move that Prager makes regularly on his radio show. Conservative rabbi Arthur Blecher wrote: “Some rabbis take pains to keep people in the dark about Jewish traditions of Heaven and Hell. For example, a popular guide to Jewish belief, Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, tells readers that the “notion of hell where sinners suffer eternally is foreign to Judaism and entered the Western world’s religious consciousness through the New Testament.” Its authors…have chosen their words carefully.”
* Dennis said he wished Charles Murray didn’t write The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. He thought it best that people not know such things.
* Dennis: “I don’t have an age, so I don’t talk about it much because it is not relevant to any part of my life. I prefer that people just think of me as Dennis.” (May 1, 2023)
* At the May 2019 PragerU Summit, Dennis told Jordan Peterson: “When I hear you read your book, the passion comes from you just want to help people lead a better life. It’s overwhelming. Everybody knows you’re bright but I know you’re good.”
* May 7, 2021, Dennis told Jordan: “I can’t find a thing you have ever said that isn’t ennobling. I love your work. I wrote the introduction to your biography.”
Introducing Jordan in May of 2019, Dennis Prager said: “I never met Jordan Peterson in person, but I said to him when we met right before lunch something that is said to me by so many people when they meet me for the first time, ‘I feel like I know you.'”
* On their Youtube show June 12, 2023, Julie said to Dennis: “This man thought of us as friends. And that is what we want to impart to viewers. We don’t want to be just talk show hosts. We want to be in people’s lives.”
Dennis: “We play the role of being their friends. It’s not playing, it is real.”
* On his Dec. 5, 2022 Youtube show, Dennis said: “My wife and I so love Epoch Times, we not only spend our own money, we send them money. These are important and good guys.”
Dennis often talks about good guys vs. bad guys. A more sophisticated approach would be to notice the good and bad things that the same people and institutions do regularly. In general, the world isn’t divided into good guys and bad guys as much as it is divided into distinct situations confronting distinct people with distinct gifts.
* “I was voted president of my class from first grade to the end of high school,” said Dennis in a 2005 lecture on Deut. 30. “I have a presence.”
* “Every leftist is a child.” (July 10, 2023)
Anti-establishment
3. Anti-establishment(arianism): It is necessary that the orthodoxy, the establishment, the mainstream media, and the expert-consensus are always wrong, or at least blinkered and limited, and are generally incapable of grappling with the real issues. …Thus, the guru is highly motivated to undertake epistemic sabotage; to disparage authoritative and institutional sources of knowledge.
Grok says:
Rating: 4/5. Prager’s critique of mainstream institutions is a core theme, though his partial reliance on establishment trappings tempers the score slightly.
Chris Kavanagh said July 18, 2023: “[Gurus set themselves up] as an alternative source of epistemic authority. You can see this explicitly in that they often set up alternative institutions, usually like ones orbit around them.”
See Prager University and Prager Force.
Kavanagh: “Like Jordan Peterson creating the Jordan Peterson Academy. There’s the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship that Jordan Peterson and other figures are promoting as an alternative to the World Economic Forum and the UN.”
Browne: “They are up front in their contempt for corrupt, compromised institutions and they are also up front about the alternatives they are providing. They often speak explicitly about wanting to connect directly with young men…to educate them in the real science, in the real knowledge. It’s almost a logical necessity. If you want to be guru, you can’t just be a normal public intellectual, a normal philosopher, because you will be one of thousands and you will say things that are boring to most people. To be an influencer, to attract attention online, you need to take the contrarian stance.”
* Sep. 29, 2020, Dennis said about the death of George Floyd: “The chances are miniscule that the knee on the side of the neck caused him to die.”
Dennis knew better than those who performed the autopsy.
* “If Lori Lightfoot is teaching at Harvard, Harvard is not particularly impressive.” (June 26, 2023)
Yes, if one mediocre person teaches at Harvard, the whole institution is discredited.
* Oct. 21, 2020, Prager posted to Facebook: “Voter fraud. It’s for real.”
The evidence is overwhelming that voter fraud is not a significant problem in American politics.
* Mar. 28, 2012: “I am certain that my school would’ve asked to medicate me under the same rules we have today. And I don’t know that I’d be the same person I am today if I had been medicated.”
* Dennis felt out-of-step with authority everywhere he went. He was unhappy at home. He was unhappy at school. He was unhappy at university. At Brandeis-Bardin, he fought with his board. He was unhappy in two marriages that ended in divorce. At KABC, he struggled with management. He felt in no-man’s-land in Jewish life, not fitting into Orthodox, Conservative or Reform Judaism.
Feeling distinctive is a big part of being Dennis. Greatness is a burden. He was Harry Potter before there was Harry Potter.
Bret Weinstein has a similar psychology. He said: “Humanity is depending on everybody who has a position from which to see what is taking place and to grapple with what it might mean, to describe it so the public understands where their interests are, it is depending on us to do what needs to be done if we are to have a chance of delivering a planet to our children and our grandchildren that is worthy of them, if we are of deliver a system that allows them to lead meaningful healthful lives, we have to speak up.”
Matt Browne: “Bret is carrying the cross. He is one of those people who understand what is going on and is the one who needs to step up. He wouldn’t want anyone else to carry that cross because it is dangerous out there.”
Chris Kavanagh: “It’s a huge burden. What’s impressive with Bret is how sincere he sounds with this being a serious issue that he’s thought hard about, he’s coming at it with a heavy heart, but he’s got truths that the world needs to deal with. It’s such an earnest delivery. The future of the planet is at stake.”
Bret: “I call the force that we’re up against Goliath just so I remember what the battle is. Goliath made a terrible mistake and made it most egregiously during Covid, and it took all of the competent courageous people, and it shoved them out of the institutions where they were hanging on, and created the dream team to fight a historic battle against a terrible evil.”
Matt: “He’s very good at it. The tenor of his voice. He never blatantly says that I am the one who understands what is going on, I am the one that everyone needs to listen to, and I’m almost Christlike in bearing this burden because it is so difficult.”
Chris: “Bret is saying that him and his friends, no longer the IDW (Intellectual Dark Web) because they weren’t brave enough, but his new anti-vax colleagues are the most insightful, bravest, smartest people, anybody who has lost a job because of their polemical anti-vax rhetoric are the dream team of intellectuals, people like Steve Kirsch, Robert Malone, Peter McCullough, Del Bigtree, all these anti-vaxx loons. Joe Rogan. These people who have repeatedly shown themselves to be incredibly credulous and incapable of looking at things critically, but Bret regards them as the dream team.”
* In the Spring of 2020, Dennis had Covid minimalist Michael Fumento on his show five times. Dennis Prager’s website Pragertopia.com noted on Feb. 25: “The Left fears everything…” Mar. 2: “Fumento sees…this is a media-generated panic…”
* In his Mar. 31, 2020 column, Prager wrote: “Virtually every opinion piece in The New York Times, The Washington Post and every other mainstream, i.e., left-wing, journal share two characteristics: a sense of foreboding (millions will die) and an unshakeable conviction that to prevent mass death, the world’s economy must be shut down.”
* April 28, 2020, Dennis wrote: “People will argue that a temporary police state has been justified because of the allegedly unique threat to life posed by the new coronavirus. I do not believe the data will bear that out. Regardless, let us at least agree that we are closer to a police state than ever in American history.”
* April 28, 2020, Dennis said: “The lockdown is the greatest mistake in the history of humanity.”
David Simon responded: “Never mind the burning of the library at Alexandria, European colonialism, the 1914 alliances that provoked the Great War, the Weimar left and center failing to unite against Hitler…”
Former U.S. Representative Joe Walsh: “I worked for the same conservative media co. @DennisPrager works for. Prager is no dummy. He can’t believe this. But this is what sucks about conservative media. You get rewarded for being outlandish, for enraging your audience. I did it at times too. It’s wrong. It’s dishonest.”
Frank Luntz: “Galaxy Brain stuff from the University of Prager.”
Jonah Goldberg: “Let’s assume it’s a mistake. The biggest in human history? The reparations on Germany after WWI? Sending Lenin back to Russia? Carve out for slavery in the US Constitution? The Fire of Alexandria? Canceling Firefly?”
Dennis wrote in his Genesis commentary: blockquote>It is often tempting…to use drama or exaggeration to make a point. It may work the first time and even on subsequent occasions. But once a person acquires a reputation for exaggeration or melodrama, his credibility is lost.
True.
On Oct. 18, 2021, Dennis said on his show: "I'm broadcasting from my home because I'm not going into the station as I have COVID. I was tested positive last week and I have been steadily improving. At no point was I in danger of hospitalization. I have received monoclonal antibodies, that's Regeneron. I have, of course, for years — a year and a half, not years — been taking hydroxychloroquine from the beginning, with zinc. I've taken z-pack, azithromycin, as the Zelenko protocol would have it. I have taken ivermectin. I have done what a person should do if one is not going to get vaccinated.
"It is infinitely preferable to have natural immunity than vaccine immunity and that is what I have hoped for the entire time. Hence, so, I have engaged with strangers, constantly hugging them, taking photos with them knowing that I was making myself very susceptible to getting COVID, which is, indeed, as bizarre as it sounded, what I wanted, in the hope that I would achieve natural immunity and be taken care of by therapeutics. That is exactly what has happened. It should have happened to the great majority of Americans.
"The number of deaths in this country owing to COVID is a scandal which one day will be clear to Americans. The opposition of therapeutics on the part of the CDC is owing to the corruption of the belief in the value of vaccine and only vaccine. Whether it is because of all the money that goes into the CDC from the pharmaceutical companies or a simple unquestioning faith in vaccines, or both, only God knows. So, I have walked the walk on this matter and here I am."
According to the FDA on September 3, 2021: "The FDA has not authorized or approved ivermectin for use in preventing or treating COVID-19 in humans or animals. Ivermectin is approved for human use to treat infections caused by some parasitic worms and head lice and skin conditions like rosacea. Currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19."
…if these therapeutics [ivermectin and hydroxychlroquine] 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…
In its suppression of scientific dissent, the American medical establishment mimics the medieval Church’s treatment of Galileo.
On Nov. 9, 2021, Dennis wrote his weekly column on why natural immunity to Covid is better than vaccine immunity.
Nor does the study warn that getting the vaccine may also induce harmful consequences. To its everlasting shame, that is a taboo subject in America’s medical community despite the fact that the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists over 700,000 cases of suspected injury and more than 17,000 otherwise unexpected deaths temporally associated with COVID-19 vaccines.
Anyone can make a report that they had a negative reaction to the Covid vaccine. That's hardly a convincing argument about the dangers of vaccines. And we have no evidence that Covid vaccines have killed anyone. Reuters noted April 2, 2021:
Of the 145 million COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the United States from Dec. 14, 2020 through March 29, 2021, “VAERS received 2,509 reports of death (0.0017%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine.” Having reviewed “available clinical information including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records,” the CDC found “no evidence that vaccination contributed to patient deaths”.
Why do smart people such as Prager promote bogus supplements and disdain evidence-based medicines such as vaccines? Medical doctor and author Jonathan Howard at ScienceBasedMedicine.org told the June 23, 2023 edition of Decoding the Gurus: “You have to be smart to come up with some conspiracy theories. A lot of it has to do with a psychological need to feel different. If everyone else says A, you have to say B… Nothing is more boring than saying you should vaccinate your children. No one patted me on the back and said, ‘Wow, you are such a brave independent thinker for doing that.’ I didn’t get spoken to by Gwyneth Paltrow. I didn’t become a mini celebrity. I don’t have an online store or an online course. It’s a satisfaction in thinking that you are smarter than everybody else. You can monetize that. And none of these people have any real world responsibility for the consequences of their words… People with no real world responsibility should be very careful about lecturing people with real world responsibility… We had to deal with the pandemic in real time. We had to make decisions on incomplete information… They feel comfortable commenting on every aspect of the pandemic — on masks, on vaccines, on lockdowns, on mandates, on steroids, on Remdesivir, on every aspect of the pandemic. Childhood speech development patterns due to masks, they’re experts on that now.”
With his love for Bible-based morality, Dennis Prager might have pointed out that social distancing is a tactic endorsed by the Torah. Notes Wikipedia:
Although the term “social distancing” was not introduced until the 21st century, social-distancing measures date back to at least the 5th century BC. The Bible contains one of the earliest known references to the practice in the Book of Leviticus 13:46: “And the leper in whom the plague is… he shall dwell alone; [outside] the camp shall his habitation be.”
So where do public health officials get the right to shut us down? Prager might have learned from Michael Lewis's superb 2021 book, The Premonition: A Pandemic Story:
If there is the faintest possibility of a catastrophic disease, you should treat it as being a lot more likely than it seems. If your differential diagnosis leads to a list of ten possibilities, for instance, and the tenth and least likely thing on the list is Ebola, you should treat the patient as if she has Ebola, because the consequences of not doing so can be calamitous.
The prestigious Nature magazine published Feb. 18, 2021: "The average years of life lost per [Covid] death is 16 years."
What is the true Covid death toll? The Economist magazine, using academic estimates that the true Covid death toll is multiples of the official death toll, as of May 11, 2023, estimates the true worldwide death toll at between 17 and 29.9 million.
…that question — “What is the price?” — was avoided by virtually every political leader in the world as well as the vast majority of epidemiologists and physicians, journalists and editors, college presidents, deans, professors and K-12 teachers.
They never asked, “What is the price?” with regard to locking down businesses, schools and, in many cases, entire countries.
That is why so many political leaders, teachers, college presidents, doctors, epidemiologists and other scientists turned out to be fools.
The handful of scientists — and, of course, the even smaller number of academics or people in the mainstream media — who questioned the lockdowns were labeled purveyors of “misinformation” and “disinformation,” the terms used by the Left to describe all dissent….
Fools, led by universities — Harvard shut down in early March 2020, when there were 51 confirmed cases COVID-19 in the entire state of Massachusetts — and followed by virtually every teachers union, ruined countless young Americans’ lives.
This happened because teachers unions are led by fools and because virtually every public health authority is a fool. And because the overwhelming majority of American parents put their faith in fools — and thereby injured their own children.
On his Dec. 12, 2022 show with Julie Hartman, Dennis said: "How do they [Julie's peers] decide what is true? By [expert] consensus. A consensus of scientists say that we have to stop all carbon emissions by X year. So they take a vote on what is true. The consensus was that masks had to go on two-year-olds [during Covid]. Now that is regarded as child abuse, which is how I regarded it during the time. I have been right on virtually every issue that I have differed with the majority on in my life."
Julie: "Especially on ivermechtin and hydroxychloroquine."
Dennis: "And lockdowns. I said the greatest international mistake in history. All you need to do is think and read."
"All these revelations are coming out about Twitter suppressing conservatives. My favorite insight of [2022] — how do I know who's telling the truth? Whoever is suppressing speech is lying. We [conservatives] don't suppress speech." Holocaust deniers are true evil but I am not for suppressing their free speech. If truth is allowed out, there is no left. And Twitter proved it."
Julie: "We've lost our ability to think clearly. I had a friend who was going to get vaccinated [against Covid] for the fourth or fifth time and I said to her please do not do this. There's all this evidence coming out that the vaccine causes harmful effects in young people… I sent her all these studies including Naomi Wolf on Substack that your wife Sue sent to me… My friend couldn't see what was happening. She bought whatever excuse the Danish government is saying. A government isn't going to admit that we forced this vaccine on you citizens and now I feel bad about that it is harmful. "
Dennis: "Does your friend know about all the scientists who are now speaking about myocarditis in young people?"
April 24, 2023, Dennis said: "[The Covid] vaccine was never properly tested."
October 3, 2022, Dennis said: "The lockdowns only did harm. Will they acknowledge that the vaccines did a lot of harm?"
Oct. 24, 2022, Dennis said that Covid vaccines for people under 50 do more harm than good.
Feb. 15, 2022, Dennis wrote: "In September 2021, for the 15th consecutive year (except for 2020), I led Jewish High Holiday Services for about 400 people — no masks required, and no vaccination necessary. Other synagogues could have done the same thing — but nearly all rabbis and synagogue boards were too scared and too obedient to do so. And of course, the same holds true for most churches, whether Catholic, Protestant or Mormon. Too scared. And too obedient to irrational dictates."
You're A Scientist? So What?
Then there was the American medical community’s opposition to therapeutics, dismissing hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin (both used with zinc) as frauds despite the testimony of numerous physicians that they saved COVID-19 patients’ lives when used appropriately.
Justin Peters wrote for Slate Nov. 8, 2021:
Why Are Right-Wing Radio Hosts Still Being Such Jerks About COVID?
On Monday, Nov. 1, Dennis Prager began his popular radio show with a very strange boast. “I rarely say, ‘I did the following.’ It’s not my style,” the 73-year-old conservative host and YouTube culture war impresario said. “But I believe I am responsible for the CDC announcing the following: that if you have natural immunity you are less immune than if you have the vaccine.”
Prager was referring to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, released on Friday, Oct. 29, which found, basically, that the immunity conferred by full vaccination with an mRNA COVID vaccine is more effective than the “natural immunity” gained by having had and recovered from COVID-19. Good news, right? Ha! If you welcomed the CDC’s findings, you are almost certainly not in Dennis Prager’s target demographic.
The CDC’s conclusions are broadly in line with the scientific consensus on the efficacy of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. And they directly contradict Prager’s contention, voiced over and again on his long-running, nationally syndicated show, that natural immunity to COVID-19 is superior to vaccinated immunity. To Prager, the CDC’s latest findings did not mean that he, Prager, was wrong—they meant that the liberal, corrupt health agency had ginned up a bogus study in order to cloud the debate and specifically silence his voice.
“All I did was open up to you, my audience,” Prager said, referring to his advocacy for natural immunity. “I had no idea that I would shake up the nest to the extent that I did.” Assuring his audience that he had done “a lot of homework on COVID,” and highlighting an Israeli study from August (even though it has not yet been peer reviewed and had certain limitations that ought to make any prudent person think twice before citing it as definitive), Prager weaved a fantastical counternarrative as a way of underscoring his central point: that the CDC study in question was a dirty, rotten lie. “To some of you, it is stunning to say the CDC is lying,” said Prager. “To me, it is like saying the sun shines brightly when there are no clouds.”
Huh? Why would the CDC rush out a false study—co-authored by more than 50 people—just to neutralize a random right-wing radio host? Why would Prager presume calumny and conspiracy in the agency’s motives? These fair questions naturally beget another fair question: Why are so many right-wing talk show hosts still being such dicks about COVID measures?
…“I took ivermectin for the last year and a half as a prophylactic, believing, and I put my actions where my mouth was, believing that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and zinc, et cetera, over the course of time, that it would prevent COVID from being seriously injurious to me,” Prager said on that Nov. 1 show, railing against those fools in the media who dared to characterize ivermectin as a mere “horse dewormer.” As per the irrationalist imperative to willfully confuse correlation with causation, the host presented his victorious bout with COVID as clear evidence both of the merits of Dr. Prager’s Curative Elixirs and of the superfluity of the various vaccines. By ostensibly proving that his ivermectin use was what prevented him from dying from COVID, Prager hoped to demonstrate that he was once again privy to the “real truth” that the liberal establishment is determined to suppress…
“It’s impossible, virtually impossible, to live in a right-wing bubble,” Prager said on his program on Wednesday, in a statement that is so un-self-aware as to be almost entirely self-aware. Prager surely understands how right-wing media works, even as he also surely understands that he can never, ever publicly admit it.
This cynical strategy, enervating enough in normal times, is especially frustrating in the midst of an ongoing public health crisis in which lots and lots of people are still dying in part thanks to the endemic misinformation being spread by dummies on the radio…
Even Prager is not explicitly anti-vaccine. He does not say that the vaccines don’t work, or that they are actively harmful to those who take them. Instead, he disparages them via a boatload of logical fallacies that he presents as plain common sense. “I have never once told any of you or anyone not to take the vaccine; it is not my province to tell you what to do. But it is my province to tell you the truth, and the truth is that natural immunity is stronger,” said Prager on Nov. 1. “Alex Berenson wrote about this. He’s the guy who was with the New York Times until he started telling the truth.”
As always with right-wing anti–virtue signaling, deflection is the point here. Prager and his peers’ goal writ large is to get their audiences so hot and bothered about federal government overreach and the scurrilous rascals in the elitist media that those audiences do not stop to think critically about what these hosts are actually selling. When Prager threw his show to commercial break, his announcer reported that The Dennis Prager Show was broadcasting “live from the Relief Factor Pain-Free Studio.” The ad gave away the game.
As historian Rick Perlstein observed in his seminal Baffler essay “The Long Con,” and as anyone can observe by watching or listening to more than 20 minutes of conservative broadcast content, right-wing media is and has long been underwritten by billions of dollars of advertising for dubious curatives. While lots of reputable news sources also have some questionable advertisers, the practice is particularly pervasive on the right…
“The strategic alliance of snake-oil vendors and conservative true believers points up evidence of another successful long march, of tactics designed to corral fleeceable multitudes all in one place,” wrote Perlstein. “One weird trick”–style remedies, in a very real sense, pay the salaries of hosts such as Prager; these hosts are incentivized to tout them just as their audiences are conditioned to trust them. The vaccines threaten the framework of burnished shit that supports and sustains these sorts of programs…
On Monday, Prager led off his show by blasting the city of Los Angeles for a new ordinance that would require patrons to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test in order to dine inside a restaurant, get a haircut, or engage in certain other indoor activities. Prager warned of “the communist hell that all communists create, and will in the United States if allowed,” and bemoaned “the love of power and the hypochondriacal fear, the maniacal fear that pervades the left about [COVID] and global warming.” Then, he threw the show to a commercial for Relief Factor, in which he spoke glowingly about the supplement’s “100 percent drug free ingredients, each helping your body deal with inflammation.”
When Prager came back, he was at it again about natural immunity and the CDC—“who I believe are professional liars,” he clarified. By sowing doubt over the vaccines and crying foul over mandates, Prager and his peers are running through the tribal script of right-wing infotainment, otherizing every idea and institution that could plausibly be considered “liberal.” But in a very real sense, they just don’t want the liberals’ miracle drugs, because they already have plenty of their own.
In their DTG July 2023 live hangout, the hosts received this question: “Is there a way back for any of these guys?”
Browne: “I noticed Bret is still doing the ivermectin thing, still doubling and tripling and quadrupling down on that. He passed the point of no return on that a while ago. For someone like Brett, it’s impossible. If he admits he was wrong about that, he’s got to understand that he didn’t understand the available scientific evidence at the time. Two, he’s got to admit that he promoted dangerous health advice to a lot of people that they should take ivermectin instead of vaccines. Ultimately, he’s got to accept that he’s not a scientific genius. With a personality like that, his entire profile, his entire career, is based on this.”
Kavanagh: “There’s always a possibility that somebody could see the error of their ways and highlight the ways they’ve gone wrong, but it’s almost psychologically impossible for the people we cover because of the narcissism.”
Browne: “With the people we cover, the analogy is to having a personality disorder. If you have one, it is difficult to undo. They are permanent once they develop. With the gurus, they have the beliefs that they have as a function of their personality.”
A 2011 academic paper “Ears Wide Shut: Epistemological Populism, Argutainment and Canadian Conservative Talk Radio” made points that apply to Prager’s shows:
* What is the epistemology of AOL [Adler On Line, hosted by Charles Adler] and how does it function? Broadly, it is a perspective which we call epistemological populism since it borrows heavily from the rhetorical patterns of political discourses of populism to valorize the knowledge of “the common people,” which they possess by virtue of their proximity to everyday life, as distinguished from the rarefied knowledge of elites which reflects their alienation from everyday life and the common sense it produces. Epistemological populism is established through a variety of rhetorical techniques and assumptions: the assertion that individual opinions based upon firsthand experience are much more reliable as a form of knowledge than those generated by theories and academic studies; the valorization of specific types of experience as particularly reliable sources of legitimate knowledge and the extension of this knowledge authority to unrelated issues; the privileging of emotional intensity as an indicator of the reliability of opinions; the use of populist-inflected discourse to dismiss other types of knowledge as elitist and therefore illegitimate; and finally, the appeal to “common sense” as a discussion-ending trump card.
* What people want in commercial terms (as evidenced by market share) and what people need in political terms (alternative perspectives which cut through the morass of mainstream media) is represented as ultimately the same thing: a provocative and entertaining style of debate, defined as highly emotional and passionate, strongly opinionated, simple and brief and very confrontational.
* The populist genius of talk radio may very well lie in its ability to portray the logic of commercialism (treating political talk as an entertainment commodity) as a politically virtuous invigoration of democracy. According to this logic, the discipline imposed by the need to entertain also keeps political speech honest, accessible and authentic and counteracts the mainstream media’s counterproductive pursuit of diversity, balance, objectivity, moderation. In this view, “giving the people what they want” does not lead to the decline of public discourse but instead to its invigoration and democratic rebirth by welcoming in the values and priorities of ordinary Canadians. Market logic, the logic of commercial culture, is recast as an instrument of political democratization, the means by which the people are put back in charge of the public sphere…
Grievance-mongering
4. Grievance-mongering: Gurus… rely on narratives of grievance pertaining to themselves and their potential followers in order to drive engagement. After all, a worldview in which all is essentially fair and just is not one that will encourage people to search for alternative ways in which to view the world.
Grok says:
Rating: 4/5. Grievance is central to Prager’s appeal, though his personal victimhood narratives are less pronounced than his collective ones.
July 18, 2023, Chris Kavanagh said: “Their critics are all operating in bad faith. You know all of a [guru’s] enemies because they constantly mention them. They regard the media, institutions, politicians to be targeted against them and to unfairly represent them. They see themselves as heroic figures fighting back against bad faith criticism who are trying to shut them down. This explains why they lack mainstream success. They have a ready-made narrative. It will never be enough success.”
Browne: “It’s striking how some of our gurus seem to be obsessed with the number of likes and retweets they are getting and they are absolutely certain that nefarious forces out there are throttling them, suppressing them, and preventing the word from getting out. On Twitter, they looked to Elon Musk for a long. ‘When Elon Musk gets in, I’ll be free of these suppressive forces.’ That psychological disorder doesn’t go away just when Elon Musk buys Twitter.”
“Cults have a sense of grievance with the broader society. Everyone is out to get them. It is us versus them, and that mentality fosters toxic in-group vs. out-group dynamics, and puts the guru in a heroic role standing up to all of these forces… [Conspiracy theories] are a way for them to feel special and to feel better about their own lives.”
Kavanagh: “Gurus often establish strong in-group and out-group categories. Their followers and supporters are the good moral wise people, and the out-group are malicious critics who just want to tear everyone down. This serves with a host of other behavioral patterns to emotionally manipulate followers to get them to protect the guru and to launch attacks at people who might criticize the guru.”
In 2019, Dennis and Adam Carolla released a documentary called No Safe Spaces which “follows Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager as they explore the challenges to the First Amendment and freedom of thought faced in America today.”
Michael Conklin, professor of Business Law, gave this review in the 80th edition of the Pepperdine Law Review in 2019:
One major problem with the film is that it does not have a well-defined theme. Even the title illustrates this point. While much of the film could be summarized as “a warning of current free-speech suppression trends,” safe spaces are only tangentially related to free speech suppression. The creation of safe spaces on college campuses as a place for students to be protected from speech they perceive as offensive may be a bad idea, but it does not violate the First Amendment.
At one point in the film, Carolla lectures on the dangers of a welfare state. Elsewhere, there is an entire segment on how “white privilege” is not an accurate term. No attempt was made to relate these two issues with the other topics in the film…
The film does not contain in-depth discussions of nuanced First Amendment issues, which is to be expected by a popular-level documentary. But even some basic free-speech principles are presented in a highly misleading manner. At one point, free speech is described as people being able to say “whatever they want” without restrictions… Public and private censorship is conflated throughout the film…
There is even an anecdote provided where after a kid says something “stupid,” his friends tell him to “shut up,” to which the kid responds, “Hey, it’s a free country, man. There’s freedom of speech here.” Prager considers this anecdote and responds, “He’s right!” But this is incorrect. Freedom of speech does not protect someone from having his friends tell him to “shut up…
The film could have embodied a more bipartisan tone by presenting examples of people being censored for their liberal views, instead of focusing almost primarily on the censorship of conservative views.
In 2019, PragerU sued Youtube for speech suppression and lost.
On August 8, 2019, John Samples wrote for the libertarian Cato Institute:
Dennis Prager recently made a case for government management of social media in the Wall Street Journal. Prager is a conservative so it might seem odd to find him plumping for government control of private businesses. But he is a part of a new conservatism that rejects the older tradition of laissez‐faire that informed the right. What could justify Big Government regulation for tech companies? Prager argues that the companies have a legal obligation to moderate their platforms without political bias. He thinks they are biased and thus fail to meet their obligation. But the companies have no such obligation and to be charitable, it is far from clear that they are biased against conservative content…
The law also empowers the platforms to restrict content that is “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.” Prager notices the obscenity part, but somehow misses the words “otherwise objectionable.” If YouTube decided Prager’s videos were neither violent nor obscene but were “otherwise objectionable,” the company could restrict access to them. In other words, the law empowers YouTube to be biased against Prager if they wish. And Prager thinks they do have it in for him and other conservatives. As you might have guessed by now, there is lot less to this claim than meets the eye.
Consider what Prager himself tells us: YouTube now hosts 320 Prager University videos that get a billion views a year. Indeed, a new video goes up every week. Not exactly the Gulag is it? He complains that 56 of those 320 videos are on YouTube’s “restricted list” which means (according to Prager) “any home, institution or individual using a filter to block pornography and violence cannot see those videos. Nor can any school or library.” In other words, YouTube has “restricted access” to materials on its site its managers consider “otherwise objectionable.”
Was YouTube biased against Prager and other conservatives? Prager himself notes leftwing sites also ended up on the restricted list. But that’s different, he says, because their videos are violent or obscene while his are not. Prager fails to mention that videos from The History Channel are restricted at twice the rate of his films. Hardly a bastion of left‐wing vulgarity, The History Channel’s videos often discuss historical atrocities and totalitarian regimes. While these clips may be educational, Google seems to believe that the 1.5% of YouTube users who voluntarily opt‐in to restricted mode wish to avoid even educational discussions of atrocity. Dennis Prager’s video about the Ten Commandments is restricted for similar discussions of the Nazi’s Godless regime.
It is far from unreasonable to allow parents to decide how their children are taught about such horrors. A reasonable conservative might even applaud such support for the family. Who gets to decide whether left=wing videos or historical documentaries are different than Prager’s videos? The law says YouTube gets to decide.
On Feb. 26, 2020, Reuters reported:
Google persuaded a federal appeals court on Wednesday to reject claims that YouTube illegally censors conservative content.
In a 3-0 decision that could apply to platforms such as Facebook, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle found that YouTube was not a public forum subject to First Amendment scrutiny by judges.
It upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit against Google and YouTube by Prager University, a conservative nonprofit run by radio talk show host Dennis Prager.
PragerU claimed that YouTube’s opposition to its political views led it to tag dozens of videos on such topics as abortion, gun rights, Islam and terrorism for its “Restricted Mode” setting, and block third parties from advertising on the videos.
Writing for the appeals court, however, Circuit Judge Margaret McKeown said YouTube was a private forum despite its “ubiquity” and public accessibility, and hosting videos did not make it a “state actor” for purposes of the First Amendment.
McKeown also dismissed PragerU’s false advertising claim, saying YouTube’s “braggadocio” about its commitment to free speech –such as “everyone deserves to have a voice, and [the] world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories” — were merely opinions.
* “All the Left’s charges against me are lies.” (Apr. 26, 2022)
* May 1, 2023, Prager's Youtube cohost Julie Hartman said: "There are some people on the Right who are government conspiracy theorists. They think there is an apparatus to create chaos and tear down the United States. I don't think those people are totally nuts because all of this seems too coordinated to be coincidence."
Dennis: "The desire is to bring down this country."
* Dennis: “For the first time in its history, freedom is under assault [in America]… The dismissal of humans based on the color of their skin. It is the opposite of liberalism to say that color matters. The Ku Klux Klan said color matters. The Nazis said color matters. And now the Left says color matters.” (Aug. 22, 2023)
Skin color didn’t matter much to the Nazis who murdered six million whites in the Holocaust as well as millions of white non-Jews while simultaneously allying with the Arabs and Japanese.
* “The only difference between the American Left and communist totalitarianism is opportunity. All leftists want to control speech and eventually thought.” (Jan. 31, 2023)
* “California is not the Soviet Union, but it is moving towards the Soviet Union… It’s quite possible that society as we know will end.” (May 25, 2023)
Instead of juicing up paranoia, hysteria and needless hatred, Dennis could instead use his talents to promote understanding. He could explain that left and right politics are evolutionary adaptations that enabled our ancestors to pass on their genes. In some circumstances, a left-wing approach of welcoming strangers was more adaptive. In other circumstances, a right-wing approach of fear of strangers was more adaptive. In some situations, a traditional hierarchical approach to organizing the community was more adaptive, while in other situations, a more democratic approach was more adaptive. At times, organizing life in a new way was more adaptive, and at other times, following the old ways worked best. Notes the 2013 book Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences:
[T]he political left has been associated with support for equality and tolerance of departures from tradition, while the right is more supportive of authority, hierarchy, and order… [T]he right has been associated with religious and social orthodoxy, the just, and the good, while the left has been associated with the opposite.
* “Jewishly, it’s been a lonely journey.” (2010)
Why has it been a lonely journey for about the most booked speaker in Jewish life? Because Dennis chose that. He was that desperate to feel special.
As Matthew Browne said about gurus like Dennis Prager: “[P]rofessing to have this unique insight that everyone else is wrong, I am telling you how it is on a wide variety of topics.”
How do you fit in when everyone else is wrong?
On a Patreon video called “The Confluence of the Gurosphere” released June 16, 2023, Chris Kavanagh said: “Jordan Peterson is fundamentally a deeply religious person but not in the sense he actually wants to attend mass. Nothing so mundane as that. It has to be more cosmic. He has to be grappling with the big ideas. Jonathan Pageau says he took Jordan to a [religious] service and Jordan was bored out of his mind and didn’t like it. I can imagine him bored at a priest because he understands the cosmic mysteries better. It’s not the mundane daily aspects of life [that interests him], although he will wax lyrical to other people about how they need to find religious communities and stop putting themselves first but he’s not about that. He’s about having big ideas.”
* In 1997, Dennis Prager wrote in his journal The Prager Perspective:
By the end of January [1997], the Jewish Journal had published my one essay on homosexuality and rabbis, and then published an editor’s rebuttal, a statement on the low moral level of my ideas signed by 16 rabbis, seven letters attacking my decency, and one letter agreeing with me…
Most Jews, myself included, were appalled at the hate-filled descriptions of the late Yitzhak Rabin that emanated from parts of the Jewish right. In what way do the hate-filled descriptions of me by these rabbis and all the other nine letters you published against me differ?
Apr. 26, 2010, Dennis said:
When Disney took over ABC, it decided that the only thing that mattered were ratings. And so they put in a general manager at the station who said, ‘None of this high-quality talk stuff. We’ve got to go down in the gutter.’
It was a very bad period. I thought I’d be let go because I wasn’t prepared to do everything this woman wanted me to talk about. It was a very tense time.
In his 2004 lecture on Deuteronomy 12, Dennis said:
What does God want me to do? I try that all the time. I don’t succeed all the time. I ask myself before every show, what does God want me to do?
I was torn. It was an issue for a time. This is what God wants me to use the microphone for and this is what my employers’ want me to use the microphone for. Employers in the secular media want ratings.
I didn’t talk about the O.J. Simpson trial and I had an only-LA show one of the two prime stations in LA (KABC). I talked about the verdict.
I kept saying to myself, ‘Dennis, God didn’t give you the gift of speech to talk about Kato Kaelin.’
It was the end of my TV career because I wouldn’t do stuff they asked.
* Feb. 1, 2011, Dennis wrote: "Through the use of public opprobrium, laws, and lawsuits, Americans today are less free than at any time since the abolition of slavery…"
* Aug. 27, 2013, Dennis wrote: “[I]f there is a real fascist threat to America, it comes from the left, whose appetite for state power is essentially unlimited.”
* Dec. 5, 2006, Dennis wrote: “It is not I, but Keith Ellison, who has engaged in disuniting the country. He can still help reunite it by simply bringing both books to his ceremonial swearing-in. Had he originally announced that he would do that, I would have written a different column — filled with praise of him. And there would be a lot less cursing and anger in America.”
Self-aggrandisement and narcissism
5. Self-aggrandisement and narcissism: It is almost impossible to be a guru without having a sense of grandiosity and inflated idea of one’s self-importance.
Grok says:
Rating: 3/5. Prager’s self-assurance and mission-driven persona show moderate narcissistic traits, but he’s less flamboyantly self-aggrandizing than classic gurus.
Chris Kavanagh said July 18, 2023: “They prefer positive attention but any attention will do. One indicator of this is that you will see gurus with massive audiences and best-selling books but they are often stating how many people watch their talks, how many downloads things get, that suggests a pathological attention to that detail. It reflects that they are enamored with their ideas, bad at assessing them objectively, believing that they were gifted with special insight from an early age which was often misdiagnosed as learning disabilities. They have a special way of viewing the world and they are special people.”
Browne: “You almost have to have an overblown sense of self-confidence to inhabit this role, to put on a toga and stand up on top of a mountain and broadcast to everyone that you have heard the word of God requires a self-belief that most people don’t have.”
In 2009, Dennis Prager created Prager University, a website offering five minute videos making the conservative argument on dozens of issues ranging from happiness to the war in Vietnam.
Dennis often talks on his radio show about how many views his Youtube videos get (frequently when fundraising for Prager University), but when you look at the statistics for individual videos, you see that for weeks they get very few views and then for a couple of days they get hundreds of thousands of views and then just as suddenly, the views stop coming. This indicates that most of those views were bought, such as through advertising that auto-plays the video in people’s Facebook and Twitter feed.
How do you spot fake Youtube views? You can Google "how can you tell if youtube views are fake."
Dennis said Aug. 25, 2014: "We teach what isn't taught. I'm asking you to help us help America. I feel like a doctor or scientist who has discovered a cure for major cancers and the only the only issue is lack of funds to market it. We can cure so much of what is wrong by changing minds five minutes at a time. I don't know anything that is doing this as effectively… Ten million hits just this year. I don't know anyone doing this."
Aug. 26, 2014, Dennis said: "It is not unreasonable to assume that 30 million people have seen our videos just this year."
Aug. 29, 2014, Dennis said: "This is the last day of fundraising for Prager University. At every level, it means a lot to us making these videos. We have become the biggest disseminator of non-left-wing video in the world. It means a lot to have your backing, psychologically."
I wonder how donors to Prager University feel about their money going to buying fake views and subverting Youtube's terms of service
PragerUniversity.com offers many opportunities to donate including this: “Marketing Sponsorship: $5,000.”
Marketing = buying views.
Prager and Julie Hartman condemn this sort of thing for other people. In an Apr. 3, 2023 video with Dennis Prager, she said: "Certainly among people my age, people buy likes and followers on Instagram. It's obvious. They have thousands of followers but only three comments on their post. They know that it is obvious to the rest of the world that they buy followers, but they still do it because they are showing that they are playing the game."
Dennis: "So the issue is winning. It doesn't matter at what and it doesn't matter how you got there."
On the March 27, 2023 show, Dennis said: "I have a dignity problem [with asking people to like and subscribe]."
Here are some other examples of Prager’s self-aggrandizement:
* Dec. 5, 2022, Dennis explained why he wrote his Rational Bible commentary: “Somebody has to explain these Biblical texts or they will go further and further into oblivion.”
I’m skeptical that Dennis, who autographs Bibles when asked, has the ability to save the Bible from oblivion.
Julie Hartman: “It has revolutionized my life.”
Dennis: “If all I did was affect you, it was worth writing.”
Dennis has used that line on thousands of people.
Julie: “When I was done reading it, I went from seeing the world in a secular way to seeing the world in a religious way. When I walk down the street and look around me, I feel more connected to life. I appreciate the every day more.”
* May 9, 2023, Dennis wrote: “I believe that I have brought more people to belief in God, to taking the Bible seriously, to Jews embracing Judaism, and to others embracing Christianity than perhaps any other living Jew or Christian.”
Given the poor epistemic quality of Prager’s reasoning, I wonder about the quality of these conversions. It reminds me of the Christian evangelists around my father who’d boast about the hundreds of people they had baptized. Everyone they saw was just fodder for Christ.
* “I have never been hurt by a friend… I have built-in antennae for who to trust. I have perfect pitch.” (Sept. 26, 2013)
Anyone who says they’ve never been hurt by a friend is not telling the truth. If Prager believes what he is saying, he is deluded. If he doesn’t believe it, he’s lying.
* Feb. 13, 2023, Dennis said: "I've never had a female friend."
Friendship with the opposite sex is for mere mortals. For a self-described highly sexed man like Dennis Prager, it is not on.
* “I have never been envious of another human being in my life.” (Jan. 16, 2023)
Only mere mortals experience envy.
* Aug. 2, 2022, Dennis said: “I didn’t think they [parents] loved me when I was a kid… I didn’t fly once with my parents. I didn’t want to do much with my family. What I did was develop antibodies. I was vaccinated against emotional problems.”
Unlike mere mortals, Dennis Prager was vaccinated against emotional problems.
Aug. 29, 2012: “That’s the reason I became something, because my parents said at an early age, ‘You’re on your own. Have a great life.’ And I’ve had a great life. And it wasn’t easy.”
Prager’s charm, epistemic sabotage and river of pseudo-profound nonsense also helped him become something. I suspect he’s overstating when he claims his parents said to him, literally or figuratively, “You’re on your own. Have a great life.”
* “I would say that the Jewish identity of Jews… is overwhelmingly ethnic. They were born and raised in a Jewish world and they are Jewish only for this reason. Few have gone through the soul searching of asking “Why am I a Jew?” If I am Jewish, I said, I want to be Jewish because I chose to, not because I was raised in it. That’s why I studied all these other religions. I wanted to come to Judaism on my own.” (Spring/Summer 1986 edition of Ultimate Issues)
Dennis couldn’t be just another Jew in Judaism. He had to do it his way.
* Dennis wrote Apr. 18, 2012 in the Jewish Journal:
That [the Holocaust] was my first encounter with massive evil, and I was never again to be the same person. I became obsessed with good and evil — specifically why people engage in evil, and how to fight them. That obsession has never left me. The only change that occurred did so later, in high school, when I broadened my preoccupation to include why people do good and how to make good people.
Prager’s obsession with good and evil only goes as far as his starring role in this cosmic drama. Answers about why people commit evil and why people do good that don’t play to his vision of himself as the moral leader don’t rate with Dennis. For example, people with below-average IQs have a below-average capacity for empathy and hence a below-average capacity for decency, but Dennis has no interest in this obvious explanation for much of good and evil.
* “I am the last person in the world who walks around with a victim mentality.” (Apr. 15, 2011)
Only mere mortals feel like victims.
On the other hand, when it comes to the Brandeis-Bardin Institute, Prager has not stinted in explaining how often he was victimized by a cruel and unfeeling board of directors.
In a 2010 interview at Stephen S. Wise temple, Dennis said: “I don’t care about Jewish culture. That’s why the board at Brandeis[-Bardin Institute] got angry at me. They were very into Jewish culture. I was very into Judaism.”
In September of 1983, Prager abruptly left the Brandeis Bardin Institute. He wrote: “While the membership and I loved each other, the heads of the board of directors and I did not. Indeed, I left BBI largely because the president/chairman of the board [William Chotiner] made life miserable for me. I occasionally reflect on where my life would be today had he and others of the lay leadership treated me differently.” (1998 Prager CD)
* June 21, 2022, Dennis said to his Youtube cohost Julie Hartman: “At a very early age, aside from wanting to do good and to influence people to do good, I wanted to understand life. I had this ambition that I would live a long life and would understand at least as well as anybody whoever lived. One of the reasons I thought I had a chance, I have no prejudices. There was no dogma I had to meet. I confronted life straight on. I didn’t have to prove anything because I am an American, a Jew, a male, a white. Nothing mattered except what is true. I never read anything with an agenda other than is it true and will it make a good world. I wasn’t burdened by [psychological] problems in my thought such as anger at men or anger at women… There was no Dennis for Dennis.”
* Sep. 28, 2012, Dennis said: “I have the training of a rabbi but I never sought ordination.”
* Sep. 15, 2010, Dennis said: “The last time I felt physically unsafe, I was in my early 30s in the Soviet Union trying to escape on a train at midnight to Romania and with me were documents that the Soviets would not have been happy that I took out.”
Only mere mortals feel unsafe.
* Apr. 20, 2011: “It took until the Reagan administration to realize that if I didn’t fight, I was going to lose this country.”
If Prager didn’t fight, America was going to be lost.
* Dennis Prager wrote June 10, 2008:
The day the O.J. Simpson verdict was announced, I said to my then-teenage son, “David, please forgive me. I am handing over to you a worse America than my father handed over to me.”
With the important exception of racial discrimination — which was already dying a natural death when I was young — it is difficult to come up with an important area in which America is significantly better than when I was a boy. But I can think of many in which its quality of life has deteriorated.
What kind of man apologizes for not being able to change the direction of a country of 300 million people?
* June 2, 2022: “Reagan changed me with one sentence. ‘Government is not the solution, it’s the problem.’ That is what made me a Republican. Everything resides on small government. In the 20th Century, 100 million civilians were murdered. Who murdered them? In every case but Rwanda, big government.”
In the Mishna, Rabbi Chanina, the deputy High Priest, said: "Pray for the welfare of the government (lit., monarchy), for if not for its fear, a person would swallow his fellow live." Big government sometimes kills people but just as often saves people. In the absence of big government, we return to the state of nature where life tends to be "nasty, brutish and short."
For problems such as crime, pollution, and roads, most countries have found that government is the best solution. What countries that don't have government provided police, parks and passports should America emulate?
According to Prager Force: “Are you tired of the woke mob infiltrating our schools and workplaces? Join our community of free-thinking high school, college students, and young professionals! Together, we use digital media to change minds, promote American values, and build meaningful connections with thousands of other patriots around the world!”
Cassandra Complex
6. Cassandra complex: Gurus like to claim prescience among their many talents. Their heightened insight gives them a superior ability to predict the future, and they will enjoy dwelling on those instances in which they made a purportedly correct prediction (obviously not mentioning or acknowledging the times when they got it wrong).
Grok says:
Rating: 4/5. Prager’s apocalyptic warnings fit the Cassandra mold well, though he’s less focused on touting specific fulfilled prophecies.
July 18, 2023, Kavanagh said: “They have a ready-made narrative for why their success is less than it could have been.”
Browne: “It’s striking how some of our gurus are obsessed with the number of likes and retweets they are getting. They are absolutely certain that some nefarious forces out there are throttling them and suppressing them, and preventing their word from getting out. On Twitter, they looked to Elon Musk for a long time. When Elon Musk gets in, I’ll be free of these suppressive forces. Of course the psychological disorder doesn’t go away when Elon Musk buys Twitter.”
“Cassandra complex is not a good sign. Cults often have a doomsday scenario. The world is going to end shortly. You have to join the cult to be one of the saved. Conspiracy theories have a similar property. This is the emotional hook for getting the guru game on… That the mainstream institutions are blundering on towards certain doom. Listen to me. I’ve got my finger on the pulse. This is what is broken. Catastrophe is upon us unless we do X.”
Kavanagh: “Join their Patreon.”
“Believing that they have a superior ability to detect where a corrupt society is heading and making claims that they correctly predicted things and have a long history of accurate predictions.”
Dennis Prager’s track record in making predictions is average. For example, circa 1990, he predicted Bob Dole would never be the Republican nominee because of critical remarks he made about Israel. May 3, 2011, he wrote a column about Donald Trump’s F-bombs and how they disqualified him from the presidency. In the Spring of 2020, he repeatedly stated that concern about Covid was overblown and that it wouldn’t kill many people.
Kavanagh: “Conspiracy mongering. It forms a tight connection with the narcissism and the grievance mongering. Everything can be explained through your conspiracy framework… There’s a hyper-active pattern recognition and a circular, self-sealing logic. If the mainstream gives evidence that lends even a little bit of credence to your idea, that vindicates you. If they deny it, that shows it, because they’re repressing the truth. If there is evidence missing, or contradictory evidence, that just shows how good the conspiracy is at concealing the truth.”
Browne: “The conspiracism is the crazy glue that holds the whole mad box of spiders together.”
Sep. 21, 2022, Matt Browne said: “Even when it is not the individuals ranting and raving about the coming apocalypse, the whole philosophy of the sensemaking movement is based on the presumption that we are going to blow ourselves up unless we listen to them and do the Game B thing as quickly as possible… It’s not being a Cassandra to say that global warming is serious and we need to do some things. It’s not being a Cassandra to say that the risk of nuclear weapons is small but real and over a long enough period of time, they’re probably going to go off and so we should be concerned. The Cassandra complex comes in when they say it is imminent and you have to do the thing they say you should do to avoid catastrophe when their thing is some bespoke thing they’ve just invented and not renewable energy.”
In other words, it is not a Cassandra complex when you side with the warnings of experts.
Here are some examples of Prager’s Cassandra complex:
* June 6, 2017, Prager wrote:
One would think that Jonah Goldberg, of all people, would understand this. He is the author of what I consider to be a modern classic, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Change.
His book leads to one conclusion: We are fighting fascism. How is that not a civil war? When you fight fascism, you are not merely fighting a “culture war.”
That Dennis Prager considers the book Liberal Fascism a modern classic reveals his willingness to believe anything if it fits his agenda.
Paul Gottfried wrote in his 2021 book Antifascism: The Course of a Crusade:
Republican talk show host Dennis Prager has produced commentaries on the fascist peril for his Prager University… Dennis Prager’s blanket statement: “if there is a real fascist threat to America, it comes from the left whose appetite for state power is essentially unlimited.” Were fascists the only past political actors who craved “state power”? If this were the case, all political leaders who displayed an appetite for unlimited power throughout history would have to be classified as fascists.
Equally questionable is the notion that governments become fascist when they reach a certain tipping point in their acquisition of power or in their appropriation of GNP from the private sector. Although we may agree that giving the state unlimited power is detrimental to freedom, this is not the same as saying that to do so is to become fascist. The postwar Labour government in England nationalized industries on a scale that went beyond anything that was tried in fascist Italy between 1922 and 1943. Between 1945 and 1951 the Labour government of Clement Attlee nationalized one-fifth of the British economy, yet this did not mean that England by 1951 had become more of a fascist state than Italy was in 1930. In England, the growth of state power proceeded from leftist, egalitarian, and at least implicitly internationalist premises; in Fascist Italy, the state appealed to hierarchy and revolutionary nationalist principles as it claimed to speak for all Italians.
* “Joe Biden and the Democrats… Why do these people want to destroy the economy?” (May 15, 2023)
In their 2014 book The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media and the New Incivility, academics Jeffrey M. Berry and Sarah Sobieraj write about people like Dennis Prager:
* Outrage discourse involves efforts to provoke emotional responses (e.g., anger, fear, moral indignation) from the audience through the use of overgeneralizations, sensationalism, misleading or patently inaccurate information, ad hominem attacks, and belittling ridicule of opponents. Outrage sidesteps the messy nuances of complex political issues in favor of melodrama, misrepresentative exaggeration, mockery, and hyperbolic forecasts of impending doom…
[The genre] is generally personality centered, with a given program, column, or blog defined by a dominant charismatic voice… While many of these programs and blogs include other voices such as those of guests, callers, and commenters, these voices take a backseat to the host, whose charm, emotional sensibilities, and worldview define the content…
The genre is also recognizably reactive. Its point of entry into the political world is through response. The episodes, blog posts, and columns rarely introduce breaking news or political information. Instead they reinterpret, reframe, and unpack news from the headlines, political speeches, or claims made by other outrage hosts. This reactivity is closely linked to another attribute, ideological selectivity. Like news programs, producers in the realm of opinion are not expected to address all major political developments but can instead choose to explore what they see as most compelling. However, while conventional commentary might focus on what issues of the day seem most pressing, of particular interest to their audience, or in greatest need of in-depth examination, outrage commentary filters content selections through the lens of ideological coherence and superiority. The preferred focus is stories in which hosts can position themselves or their political compatriots in the role of the hero or can taint enemies, opponents, or policies they dislike as dangerous, inept, or immoral. This often means the emerging content provides additional space for the discussion of issues that concern their audiences. However, because of the approach used in outrage venues, the ensuing attention offers something more akin to the captivating distortions of a funhouse mirror than to the discriminating insights of a microscope. In this arena, issues of import to fans are used for maximum emotional impact, such that tiny niche issues are reshaped into scandals and significant developments that are less ideologically resonant are dismissed as trivial or ignored.
Outrage is also engaging. It is easy see why audiences might find their favorite columnists, bloggers, or hosts more entertaining than a conventional commentator. In outrage there is performance. There are jokes. There is drama. There is conflict. There is fervor. There is even comfort, as audiences find their worldviews honored. Adding to this level of engagement is the sense of inclusion offered to those in the viewing, listening, and reading… [O]utrage venues serve as political churches. The faithful attend, hear their values rearticulated in compelling ways, and leave feeling validated and virtuous for having participated. For those seeking to understand the genre, recognizing the various writers and speakers as part of a densely connected web is vital, as outrage is marked by internal intertextuality, with personalities from outrage venues constantly referring to one another…
* Conservative voices in the Outrage Industry are even more apt to condemn conventional news media… all outrage hosts—left or right—need their audience to accept their view of current affairs as valuable. Discrediting other accounts helps privilege their own. Thus, hosts’ genuine frustration with conventional reporting merges with a need for loyal fans to make critique of mainstream news a mainstay of the genre.
* Being analytical, being thorough, being thoughtful all play poorly on these cable and radio shows. Shows rarely mix in anything more than superficial analysis, leaning heavily instead on venting, caustic criticism, and laying into the other side. A few hosts, like liberal Thom Hartmann and conservative Hugh Hewitt make a conspicuous effort to demonstrate more intellect than the competition, but their failure to crack the top echelon of radio may be interpreted as a warning rather than a strategy to emulate. Despite all the compliments that Hewitt, a law professor, gets for being a thinking-man’s conservative, he’s heard on only 120 stations. By comparison, Sean Hannity is heard on
500. The highest ranked hosts are harsh in their rhetoric and uncompromising in their contempt for those who don’t agree with them.Hosts and bloggers try to gain a competitive advantage through the volume and unique expression of outrage. It is the way that principals try to stand out. As Holland Cooke puts it, cable and talk radio is all about “Notice me! Notice me!” Cooke adds, “There is an outsized, deliberate overstating to rise above the competitive cacophony.”
* In addition to offering social connections through pseudo-friendships with charismatic hosts, outrage-based programs also dissolve the fear of social isolation by connecting fans to like-minded others in an imagined community. In this social space, fans fit in, are valued, and understood… Some hosts build a sense of community more concretely through the construction of special events, online spaces, and meet-up groups. Virtual connections play a particularly big role… The [Sean Hannity] concert… is not about the performances but about sharing a group experience undergirded by common conservative values.
* So, while political conversations with neighbors, friends, and colleagues are fraught with the risk of social rejection, the comfort zones provided by the shows we studied present no such risk, and in fact, offer imagined and in some cases tangible social connections. Communities build around many “media friends,” but being part of the group in the outrage context is unique. Participants have not only shared affinities but also shared aversions, and unlike video gaming communities, Justin Bieber’s “beliebers,” or sports fans, these loyalties are actively constructed as a reflection of personal attributes such as morality, intelligence, and character rather than more idiosyncratic tastes and preferences.
* Outrage-based programs reassure and embolden the audience members rather than leaving them fearful. They do this in a variety of ways, but most notably by valorizing their audience, celebrating their strong character, and allowing the audience to position themselves in the role of the victor—capable of handily dominating naysayers in imaginary political jousts.
The hosts function as supportive cheerleaders for and defenders of the values that fans hold dear. Our respondents sound almost elated as they describe how it feels to hear their favorite host talk about the issues they care about in ways that are consistent with their own perspectives and beliefs.
* Hosts not only affirm the political views held by members of the audience but they also tell them in many subtle and not so subtle ways that they themselves are valued.
* Fans tune in to hear the charismatic hosts articulate the very things they feel most strongly about in ways they find persuasive. Some respondents seem to live vicariously through the host—imagining that they are as witty, clever, and confident as their favorite personality.
* By identifying with the host, fans imagine themselves deploying the same skills, defending their views against critics with a magical combination of intellectual acumen, fervor, humor, and dismissiveness.
* Taken as a whole, we find that outrage programs create a comfortable space that offers the fans something more akin to collusion than conflict. They are empowerment zones that bolster viewers’ and listeners’ selfassuredness rather than challenging their beliefs. Fans can tune in without fear of being uncomfortable. They need not fear confrontation, nor do the guests on the shows. Although these programs have a reputation for hostility, conflict on set is quite low… The tough questions, insults, and accusations are generally made at a safe distance from their targets.
* Recognizing these shows as safe havens leads us to wonder if this comfort is part of the reason that conservative outrage programming is so much more prevalent and successful than liberal outrage. While it certainly is not the only reason, differential levels of cultural anxiety around political discussion may be an important part of this story. We suspect this is relevant because our research suggests that conservatives take a greater social risk (or perceive that they do) when engaging in public political discussion than moderates or progressives.
* The experience of being perceived as racist loomed large in the minds of conservative fans… What makes accusations of racism so upsetting for respondents is that racism is socially stigmatized, but also that they feel powerless to defend themselves once the specter is raised.
* [O]utrage…is formulaic from the opening monologue and the segment structure to the forms of critique and limited presence of guests on TV and callers on radio. They are nothing if not predictable… The playfulness, sense of intimacy between viewer and host, colorful antics, snark, and intensity are engaging in unprecedented ways.
* The outrage personalities take themselves very seriously. This isn’t to say there isn’t laughter—most hosts and bloggers love a good laugh at the expense of their nemeses—but at the end of the day these personalities present themselves as valiant patriots for “truth,” easily disgusted by those who might trample on the Constitution, civil rights, or the people who are the heart of this great nation…
* “Rampant evil is what the Left has engaged in…” (Apr. 3, 2023)
* “The USA Today is a rag sheet on the level of Pravda.” (Apr. 3, 2023)
It’s not just a publication with some mistakes, it is Pravda!
* “If you support the [March 2023 Trump] indictment, you are not on the side of truth or of concern for America.” (Apr. 3, 2023)
Prager must have learned early in life how to use the power of drama to command attention. I wonder who he learned this from?
* “We are becoming like the Soviet Union.” (Apr. 4, 2023)
* “We sold our soul in the early 20th Century when we said the government should educate our children.” (Apr. 4, 2023)
* Jan. 31, 2023, he wrote: “LGBTQ+ ‘Pride’ Is Totalitarian”
* Apr. 14, 2023, Dennis Prager said: “Did you see the Irish prime minister’s dog start barking at [Joe Biden]? Remarkable. I’m not using this as proof that the dog knows what I know — that this is the scummiest human being to be president of the United States in our history, but dogs are sensitive to human meanness.”
* Jan. 3, 2023, Dennis wrote: “America Has Become the Greatest Exporter of Destructive Ideas”
* Nov. 3, 2022, Dennis wrote: “Young Americans Voted to Ruin Their Lives”
* July 26, 2022, he wrote: “Why My Friends and I Had More Wisdom When We Were 12 Than College Students and Faculty Have Today”
* Feb. 22, 2022, Dennis wrote: “Is Canada Becoming North America’s Cuba?”
* Feb. 15, 2022, Dennis wrote: “COVID-19 and the Failure of America’s Major Religions”
* Nov. 30, 2021, Dennis wrote: “A Brief Guide to Leftist Destruction”
* Oct. 19, 2021, Dennis wrote: “The Left is Evil — and Liberals Keep Voting for Them”
Revolutionary theories
7. Revolutionary theories: If galaxy-brainedness refers to a breadth of knowledge, an ability to forge connections between disparate topics, then their professed development of revolutionary theories displays the depth of their knowledge. Connected with their narcissism and worthiness of being a guru, they are greatly attracted to claiming that they have developed game-changing and paradigm-shifting intellectual products.
Grok says:
Rating: 2/5. Prager’s lack of original, game-changing theories keeps this score low, despite his bold claims about PragerU’s influence.
* Nov. 7, 2022, Dennis said: “I got a question from a young person on my Fireside Chat — how do I know what to trust? How do I know what’s true? I said those who wish to censor others are usually lying. If you are telling the truth, you are OK with other people speaking their minds.”
That sounds great, but is it true? Many people on the left want to censor “misinformation” about vaccines. Where is the evidence that they are lying? If you are a scientist who has devoted his life to virology and you believe you are telling the truth about the efficacy Covid vaccines, why would you be unbothered by people without expertise denigrating vaccines to millions of people? Many on the left want to censor Nazi and ISIS propaganda because they claim it is dangerous. Many on the left want to censor racial slurs because they believe it leads to bad actions. Where is the evidence that they are lying?
* On his Nov. 14, 2022 Youtube show with Julie Hartman, Dennis said: "I'm not looking for great lines to make a better living and get a bigger audience. I'm looking for important points to touch people's lives."
Like Deepok Chopra, Dave Rubin, and Gwyneth Paltrow, Prager undoubtedly touches lives, but it is not always for the good.
Grok agrees with me: “Bad people can touch lives and leave scars, while gurus can weave comforting narratives that obscure truth. Significance from touching lives only holds value if it’s grounded in honesty and genuine care. A guru’s quilt of meaning might feel warm, but if it’s built on illusion, it can trap you more than free you.”
Pseudo-profound
8. Pseudo-profound bullshit: This is their core business, their stock-in-trade. They are most comfortable in the role of armchair opinionator, the wise man (or woman, but usually man) graciously offering their advice to eager seekers of wisdom.
Grok says:
Rating: 3/5. Prager’s pronouncements carry a veneer of profundity, but they’re grounded in ideology rather than pure PPB.
July 18, 2023, Browne said: “Pseudo-profound bullshit is about the language, the syntactic structure, the buzz words, the jargon, stringing together words and sentences that give the appearance of saying something meaningful.”
Kavanagh: “Jordan Peterson was talking to Bret Weinstein about the possibility that hospitals harm more people than they heal because of superbugs and medical mistreatments. Jordan says, now that’s just a guess, it could easily be wrong, but it could also not be wrong. Bret took a pause and said, the fact that it is even plausible is a stunning fact. That is taking the language of recognizing profundity but what you’ve just issued is uninformed bullshit.”
“Gurus have high levels of verbal fluency. They’re able to speak in a stream of consciousness often without the usual verbal tics that inhabit normal human speech. It is often their use of metaphorical language that marks them. They replace an argument with a metaphor. They just say, it’s like and they give a metaphor. They haven’t demonstrated that the argument is valid.”
Browne: “A facility with language. They are well-educated people, loquacious, and like all of us, use the form of language as an indicator.”
Kavanagh: “It’s not just functional.”
Browne: “It’s performative. If you are using technical…academic language, this is taken as signifiers that something meaningful is said… Saying something that is straightforward in a complicated way that encourages people to think that this is profound.”
I’d rate Prager a 3 out of 5. On the positive side, he rarely uses pretentious language. He avoids jargon. He doesn’t try to sound like an academic. He doesn’t invoke complicated formulae. He doesn’t make needless references to literature or science or complicated theories. When he seeks to convey profundity, he does it in clear simple terms.
Here are some examples of Prager saying things that sound profound:
* “Nothing in the history of the human race has caused more evil than the belief in the importance of blood.” (Think a Second Time, 1996)
* “Most professors are shallow superficial thinkers.” (Dec. 25, 2023)
* “Children do not assuage our existential loneliness, a spouse does.” (Feb. 5, 2014)
* American values have “universal applicability” and are “eminently exportable.” (Nov. 1, 2005)
An evolutionist such as myself would see American values or Japanese values or Russian values as the product of particular people surviving in a particular environment.
* “Mr. Obama is by far the most left-wing person to ever hold the office of the American presidency…” (May 10, 2012)
* “Every child is a blank slate.” (Mar. 25, 2014)
Dennis Prager advocates the "proposition nation" (a country united by shared beliefs) as well as the "proposition family" (parents and children united by shared beliefs). He wrote: "As a father, my purpose is not to pass on my seed, but to pass on my values."
Prager doesn't believe the family is a big deal when compared to the importance of the individual. In a 2005 lecture on Deut. 24:5, Dennis said: “Traditional life in Europe became you are defined by your family but that’s not the way it ought to be. You are defined by you, not by your family. People think family is a big deal. It’s not. It’s a big deal, who are you?”
Prager's view that we are primarily individuals rather than members of families is a modern liberal perspective. In his 2018 book, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities, John J. Mearsheimer wrote:
My view is that we are profoundly social beings from the start to the finish of our lives and that individualism is of secondary importance… Liberalism downplays the social nature of human beings to the point of almost ignoring it, instead treating people largely as atomistic actors… Political liberalism… is an ideology that is individualistic at its core and assigns great importance to the concept of inalienable rights. This concern for rights is the basis of its universalism—everyone on the planet has the same inherent set of rights—and this is what motivates liberal states to pursue ambitious foreign policies. The public and scholarly discourse about liberalism since World War II has placed enormous emphasis on what are commonly called human rights. This is true all around the world, not just in the West. “Human rights,” Samuel Moyn notes, “have come to define the most elevated aspirations of both social movements and political entities—state and interstate. They evoke hope and provoke action.”
[Humans] do not operate as lone wolves but are born into social groups or societies that shape their identities well before they can assert their individualism. Moreover, individuals usually develop strong attachments to their group and are sometimes willing to make great sacrifices for their fellow members. Humans are often said to be tribal at their core. The main reason for our social nature is that the best way for a person to survive is to be embedded in a society and to cooperate with fellow members rather than act alone… Despite its elevated ranking, reason is the least important of the three ways we determine our preferences. It certainly is less important than socialization. The main reason socialization matters so much is that humans have a long childhood in which they are protected and nurtured by their families and the surrounding society, and meanwhile exposed to intense socialization. At the same time, they are only beginning to develop their critical faculties, so they are not equipped to think for themselves. By the time an individual reaches the point where his reasoning skills are well developed, his family and society have already imposed an enormous value infusion on him. Moreover, that individual is born with innate sentiments that also strongly influence how he thinks about the world around him. All of this means that people have limited choice in formulating a moral code, because so much of their thinking about right and wrong comes from inborn attitudes and socialization.
James Kirkpatrick argued: "Nor can any real family hold together on the ground of ideology. We love our parents and our children because they are ours—not because we agree with their view of the Constitution."
So what best predicts a child's education attainment (and with it future income and family stability)? Blood or home? As the Times of London reported: "NATURE not nurture is the main determinant of how well children perform at school and university…"
* “I was living in the very country [United States] that had best figured out how to make a better world.” (Apr. 18, 2012)
* “I hate bullies. Always did. That’s why I hate big government — it’s the ultimate bully.” (Mar. 18, 2011)
* July 6, 2022, Dennis said: “I don’t know what I have learned morally that I didn’t know in fifth grade. I can’t think of a single moral insight.”
* In a 1995 lecture on Exodus 5, Dennis Prager said: “The word for servant and the word for slave is the same [in the Torah], which is probably why to this day Jews don’t like to be servants because they think it is slavery. Did you ever meet a Jewish waiter? Jews don’t wait. That and the Chosen People notion are the reasons why Jews don’t want to serve anybody.”
* “The reason to be Jewish is to take Torah to the world.” (2010)
* “I have always identified Judaism with goodness, the thing that I most value in this world. I don’t remember meeting cruel religious Jews.” (2003)
* “Modern Muslims have a unique dilemma because the Islamic world today is a net moral deficit.” (Dec., 2016)
* “The American Protestant produced the greatest society ever produced by any religious group.” (Jan. 16, 2014)
* “It is our task to figure out what is eternal [in Torah] without just choosing what we are comfortable with.” (Lecture on Leviticus 14)
* “I believe the oral law [Mishna] developed the most humane way of killing an animal devised in history.” (Oct. 28, 2010)
* “The serious Jew meets four criteria:
1. This Jew is committed to each of Judaism’s three components: God, Torah, and Israel.
2. This Jew attempts to implement the higher ideals of each of these components.
3. Whatever Jewish laws this Jew does or does not observe is the product of struggle.
4. This Jew is constantly growing in each of these areas.” (Summer 1988 edition of Prager’s journal Ultimate Issues)
* Mar. 17, 2014: “Tribalism is racism. Tribalism is a curse for modernity.”
* Jan. 2, 2014: “I don’t like any ethnic neighborhood. I don’t think it’s the American ideal.”
* Feb. 13, 2014: “If you see another person, you should see another one of God’s children [first]. You shouldn’t see a white or a black.”
“This notion about we want to preserve the culture. That’s a very dangerous idea that race and culture are identical. Race is race and culture is culture. Either we believe we are all God’s children and character matters infinitely more than skin color or we don’t.”
* “Racism — the belief that people of a certain skin color are inherently different (and inferior or superior) — is not only evil; it is moronic.” (Mar. 11, 2014)
* “To divide people by pigmentation, genitals and money is wrong. We should divide people only by good and bad.” (Vol. 9, No. 2 of Ultimate Issues in 1993)
* “Graduate school was a tough time for me. Everything I believed to be true and good overturned. I had only pessimism for my country.” (Mar. 2, 2006)
* “After visits to about a dozen African countries, I came to realize that the spread of Christianity holds the best hope for that sad continent.” (Feb. 8, 2011)
Conspiracy mongering
9. Conspiracy mongering: To gain real insights, real special knowledge that nobody else can see – that’s hard work. For normal people, even a lifetime of study and research only provides scant few original intellectual contributions. That is not nearly enough for a guru, who needs a steady supply of fresh, original content to supply to their followers and justify their status. To be a guru, they must set themselves up, not only as uniquely insightful, but above and apart from orthodoxies, including established political or ideological groups.
Grok says:
Rating: 3/5. Prager’s rhetoric hints at conspiratorial thinking, but it’s more about systemic bias than secret networks, keeping it moderate.
Here are some examples of Prager’s conspiracy-mongering:
* On the June 19, 2023 Dennis and Julie Youtube show, Dennis said: “For the first time in my life, I strongly entertain doubts that Lee Harvey Oswald was the only shooter of John F. Kennedy. Now I’m not sure there was one shooter and I’m not sure it was [Lee Harvey Oswald]. It’s a bad sign if a guy like me is starting to contest it.”
So what revelations have appeared recently that substantiate his new views? None.
Aug. 24, 2021, Dennis said: "Why should doctors be any better than lawyers, or professors, or any other group that has disgraced itself in American life? There's no reason. Doctors have the same degree of wisdom as gender studies professors. The issue isn't medical knowledge. The issue is wisdom and courage. There are plenty of doctors who have it. Read about The Great Barrington Declaration….Your doctor knows nothing about COVID, nothing. All they know is how the virus works, that's all they know. It is an amazing thing that listening to this show, of a non-doctor, you have learned more about COVID — more about masks — than your doctor probably knows. Not only is it not a boast, it is totally meant to be an attack on the medical profession. I should not know 10 times more than your doctor about all of the issues with therapeutics. And if your doctor thinks ivermectin is dangerous, change your doctor. And I mean it. Might be a nice guy — go golfing with him, or her — but check out another doctor."
Sep. 29, 2021, Dennis said: "Many doctors have killed patients because of their ignorance, obstinance, and arrogance. It is not odd that the Talmud — the second holiest work in Judaism — stated 2,000 years ago that the best doctors go to hell. Doctors, even when they could do nothing 2,000 years ago, were known for their arrogance. There are some wonderful doctors in America — some, just for the record. Never said this in my life, my eyes have been opened in the darkness of the last two years. And they have been dark. Why haven't all Americans' eyes been opened? Like to teachers, and teachers unions, and colleges. Every student going back to college has to have a vaccine? Despite the fact that their age group is virtually untouched by this — untouched, I mean no fatalities. The more young people get COVID, the better it is for them and society, they have natural immunity. But your college doesn't accept natural immunity."
Jan. 10, 2022, Dennis said: "Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom I had on the show with the publication of his book on Dr. Fauci, has gone from being regarded as a kook to being regarded as a very serious, very courageous man. That's very big. In a sense, the left has lost. They've lost half this country that believed them on these matters just two years ago. "
Profiteering
10. Profiteering: Gurus perhaps desire respect and admiration above all else, but they also tend to feel that more worldly and tangible recognition of their talents is appropriate. Accordingly, gurus may be surprisingly willing to undertake activities such as shilling health supplements, that would otherwise be a little surprising in an intellectual of their calibre.
Grok says:
Rating: 2/5. Prager’s fundraising is ambitious, but lacks the blatant shilling or exploitative tactics of true grifters.
In shilling supplements on his radio show, Prager is a 5 out of 5, but that is likely due to the business of right-wing media.
Kavanagh said July 18, 2023: “A willingness to sell products and services that would otherwise be surprising for public intellectuals. You see them willing to lend their name to products. Franchising.”
Browne: “Steven Pinker minting an NFT of his ideas… Or some of these anti-vaxxers selling extraordinarily expensive bespoke treatment that doesn’t work.”
Kavanagh: “Franchising is a cause for concern… If your thing is that you are this moral-minded public intellectual and yet you’ll just lend your name to business school courses and offer some random input on the course but it is sold in your name…”
Browne: “It is the mismatch. If you run a fast food joint, then franchising is not a red flag, but if you’re nominally a public intellectual who’s interested in philosophy, then doing those things is a mismatch. That’s a theme of the Gurometer in general. These are people who present themselves as special public intellectuals with the best of motives who want nothing but to help society… The Gurometer presents evidence that they are not doing that.”
How dubious are Dennis Prager’s advertisers? Mar. 20, 2025, Grok says:
None are outright frauds like fake charities; they’re legal but lean on emotional manipulation over substance. Compared to broader right-wing media—say, Alex Jones’ snake-oil supplements or Trump’s NFT grift—Prager’s advertisers are less cartoonishly shady but still trade on the same vulnerabilities: an audience primed to buy salvation from a collapsing world. These ads hit hard with older, loyal fans, the perfect marks for a long con.
* On his YouTube show with Julie Hartman Nov. 21, 2022: Dennis said: "I am so committed to always telling the truth to the best of my human ability, when I receive scripts from sponsors, if there is something in there that isn't true, and there almost always is, I omit it."
Six minutes later, he read this ad: "Focus & Recall is not a pill. It is a patent-pending gel with ultra-absorption of science-backed ingredients to help you immediately sharpen focus, concentrate longer and strengthen recall. Supercharge your brain and see the difference. Go to healthycell.com. Use the limited time code Prager for 20% off your first order, risk-free."
Eighteen minutes later, Julie read an ad for Lear Capital, a major sponsor of the Dennis Prager show. “We’ve all got to find a way to protect our finances in retirement. One way to do this is to invest in gold. You should consider adding Lear Capital to your retirement as we are all looking for stable investments. Did you know that you can add real gold and silver to your 401K and IRA? …What I love most about Lear Capital is that they are an American-owned company proud to do business with Americans that share our conservative values.”
July 25, 2023, the Washington Post reported:
How right-wing news powers the ‘gold IRA’ industry
Ads for gold coins have become a mainstay on Fox News, Newsmax and other conservative outlets, even as regulators have accused some companies of defrauding elderly clients.
Dedicated viewers of Fox News are likely familiar with Lear Capital, a Los Angeles company that sells gold and silver coins. In recent years, the company’s ads have been a constant presence on Fox airwaves, warning viewers to protect their retirement savings from a looming “pension crisis” and “dollar collapse.”
One such ad caught the attention of Terry White, a disabled retiree from New York. In 2018, White invested $174,000 in the coins, according to a lawsuit by the New York attorney general — only to later learn that Lear charged a 33 percent commission.
Over several transactions, White, 70, lost nearly $80,000, putting an “enormous strain” on his finances, said his wife, Jeanne, who blames Fox for their predicament: “They’re negligent,” she said. A regretful White said he thought Fox “wouldn’t take a commercial like that unless it was legitimate.”
While the legitimacy of the gold retirement investment industry is the subject of numerous lawsuits — including allegations of fraud by federal and state regulators against Lear and other companies — its advertising has become a mainstay of right-wing media. The industry spends millions of dollars a year to reach viewers of Fox, Newsmax and other conservative outlets, according to a Washington Post analysis of ad data and financial records, as well as interviews with industry insiders. Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani have promoted the coins, while ads for Lear’s competitors have appeared on a podcast hosted by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Newsmax broadcasts of former president Donald Trump’s political rallies.
An analysis by The Post of political newsletters, social media, podcasts and a national database of television ads collected by the company AdImpact found that pitches to invest in gold coins are a daily presence in media that caters to a right-wing audience and often echo conservative talking points about looming economic and societal collapse. The Post found no similar ads for gold retirement investments in mainstream or left-wing media sources in the databases…
“No one in their right mind would pay the premiums that these guys are charging,” added Ken Lewis, CEO of online coin dealer Apmex, who reviewed several customer invoices at The Post’s request.
The Psychology of Following a Guru
So what type of people follow gurus such as Dennis Prager and Jordan Peterson? Kavanagh said May 15, 2023: “The type of things that would make anyone vulnerable to joining any kind of group would be people dealing with something difficult in their own lives, people who feel that something is missing. Those are risk factors. The message that guru types give you is that they are helping you see something special about the world that other people can’t and that you have these unique characteristics that make you willing to listen to the message and to look deeper. Having low self-esteem, and dealing with traumas makes you more susceptible. I was watching Matthew McConaughey. It was Tony Robbins type self-help. You see them preying on people’s insecurities and giving them this false allure of community. Gurus are doing that for people who think they’re intellectual. It’s a risk factor if you wanted to go to university or you think you aren’t recognized, holding a grudge against the elites looking down on people seems to be common. If you are successful but you feel a sense of dissatisfaction, like the people in Fight Club, and you want something more… People like Jordan Peterson are telling people here’s the way to lead your life, I can make you feel better. It’s the same risk factors that would make you likely to fall prey to self-help cults or multi-level marketing with perhaps a more intellectual or political bent.”
On a Patreon video called “The Confluence of the Gurosphere” released June 16, 2023, Chris Kavanagh talks to Matt Browne about “the…energies that cause the gurus to swirl together.”
Matt: “They become intertwined. They find each other and a network is formed. When we covered all of the gurus, we covered them as isolated gems interesting in their own right. But then after covering them, and having identified them as fitting our Gurometer, they then inevitably seemed to find each other even with gurus with no apparent connection.”
Chris: “Jonathan Pageau just had Jordan Hall on to discuss AI.”
“What connects them is the narcissism, the belief that they have all these revolutionary insights. Jordan Hall enjoys that he can switch paradigms. He can run 70 to 90 paradigms at one time. If you want to talk about it in that kind of language, I can talk about it in terms of resurrections and graveyards… Your religious paradigms are just ten of his seventy.”
Matt: “Jordan Peterson tells James Lindsay that you can’t have science without the Logos. It’s all based on Christianity.”
Chris: “One of [Jordan’s] big ideas is that science is fundamentally Christian. It relies on Christianity because Christianity has at its heart that there is a Truth in the universe and if you have that orientation, that allows you to investigate the natural world. And if you don’t have that, science can’t develop. Richard Dawkins and all of them don’t realize that at heart they are deeply religious people.”
“For James Lindsay, the feminist glaciology paper is central to his whole thing. It should be just a footnote, just an example that he sometimes returns to, but he now presents that as a turning point in his life. After reading it, he curled up in a ball unable to leave his room for three days because of the shock to the system that such a paper could be published in a prestigious scientific outlet. It’s a random geography journal, Progress in Human Geography. People like him and Jordan. They create this mythos around things that happen to them. I think they genuinely do experience weird manic moments, but the way that they retell it, it becomes part of this hero’s journey. It’s not — I heard a Jordan Peterson talk and it annoyed me. It’s — I heard a Jordan Peterson talk and it awakened a fire in me that I needed to reveal the charlatan world. I don’t think the authors of the feminist glaciology paper are still talking about it as much as James has. He endlessly talks about how he knows all these literatures but he constantly focuses on this single paper.”
Matt: “If he has such a comprehensive understanding of all of that literature, why doesn’t he cite some other examples? There are millions of papers out there. He should be citing hundreds of them.”
Chris: “It’s their susceptibility to narratives that are going to give them attention and make them feel that they are looking at things in a deeper way than normal people. That little hook – they are so easily led around by it.”
Matt: “In the last 20 years, we’ve seen the rise of the political dimension you could call anti-institutional. You have lefty stuff like Occupy Wall Street and Russell Brand.”
Chris: “Tim Pool.”
Matt: “Just being against the current thing. You can frame it as globalism and international capitalism. Or you could frame it as the New World Order and the WEF (World Economic Forum). There’s a right wing version or a left wing one.”
Chris: “And sometimes they cross over. Gavin McInnes started as one of the founders of Vice and then became the reactionary leader of the Proud Boys. That seems like a helluva journey. It’s about the institutions are shit, we’re part of the edgy counter-culture. It’s not inevitable that people who aren’t part of the establishment get sucked to the extremes, but there is a greater vulnerability for people who like to style themselves that way. Focusing on the corruption of establishments can make people susceptible to swallowing conspiracism.”
Matt: “I know several people in real life who are fans of Jordan Peterson. Fans of Trump. [Kinda] fans of Putin. They’re not right-wing Christians. They are lost boys. That’s the common denominator.”
Lost boys are a big part of the guru fan base.
Chris: “There is money sloshing around in the right-wing for promoting certain views. Peter Thiel hired Eric [Weinstein]. Provided money to [Eliezer] Yudkowsky [the guy who claims AI will kill us]. He also gave up on Eric eventually… The reason that Peter Thiel and Eric came together was that their worldviews aligned. Peter Thiel doesn’t care so long as someone is a wrecking force for institutions. These are narcissistic people who are led by praise and reward.”
Matt: “It’s easy for them to align with their personal interest. They’re labile. It’s like Trump. He’d say anything for a round of applause and a million dollars. They do have a reactionary, anti-institutional worldview. And they’re self-interested narcissists.”
Chris: “That grouping of people who come together for long-form podcasts to share anti-establishment positions and backpat each other and focus on what the progressive left is doing to destroy society. That grouping re-emerges and reformulates and you’ll see Douglas Murray cropping up across all of them.”
Matt: “Why do they all accept the UFO story at face value?”
Chris: “Their epistemics are broken. The smarter ones tap danced on the edge. They wanted to say look at the official narratives collapsing but they were quick to say, it could all be just because they know it could all blow up. I heard Sam Harris taking victory laps — look at all those credulous fools for talking about UFOs. You were talking for months. You believed that someone had contacted you to release sacred information about UFOs.”
“Jordan Peterson praises James Lindsay constantly and occasionally James reciprocates. It’s this constant feeding of the ego. So you were studying maths? Why did you choose the difficult area? They both talk about how they are so principled and that is why they needed to leave academia. They could have been extremely successful if academia had retained its principles and recognized genius, but the fact that they are so successful outside of academia, doesn’t that prove they were right and they are better than all those irrelevant academics. Use your brains guys. It just means that you are selling something that can get you attention. Don’t you know there are lots of people in the world selling rank partisan conspiracy content who aren’t deep thinkers but can make a lot of money?”
“Jordan thinks that because lots of people watch his content, that’s an indication that it is good and fundamentally correct. He gave the game away when he said that something had seven million views and seven million people agreed with me. He counted views as indicating agreement.”
Matt: “Truth is not a popularity contest. Making money selling something that is attractive doesn’t make you a more virtuous person. Their egos are hungry and they’ll take it as evidence.”
Matt: “The orthodox position is tedious. It’s a hard sell. Public health. Boring. It’s not going to grab you. If you are an online commentator, you’re going to feel an inexorable pull to stuff that will get the juices flowing.”
Chris: “We’ll lose the attention ecosphere by saying stuff that people will agree with. It isn’t interesting to say that UFOs aren’t real. You have to add the hook to make it more appealing. We get feedback that if we want to add more listeners, we should touch on this topic. That way lies hell. That mindset of always getting bigger audiences and always jumping on the new thing makes you susceptible to take-itis.”
Matt: “The vast majority of people who produce any content are susceptible because they’re obsessed with growing their audiences.”
Chris: “Rebecca Lewis did a report [in 2018] saying there is an alternative influencer network [Alternative Influence: Broadcasting the Reactionary Right on YouTube]. It drove them all mad…that Sam Harris was on the same map with Stefan Molyneux and Gavin McInnes. But she was right. There are network effects. You can hear Sam Harris talk about them and wrestle with it when he says, it is hard to criticize people I go to dinner with. You hear Konstantin [Kisin] say to Matt Goodwin, you and I are at all the same parties.”
Apr. 3, 2008, Dennis said: “Joseph [Telushkin]’s mother’s reaction to me when we first met, she said to him [privately], ‘He’s very charming but is he deep?'”
She was right to be skeptical.
Dennis Prager built his fame in part with appealing but ridiculous claims backed by shoddy evidence, misleading audiences with potentially deadly consequences.
Nathaniel Branden wrote in The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem:
Sometimes we see people who enjoy worldly success, are widely esteemed, or who have a public veneer of assurance and yet are deeply dissatisfied, anxious, or depressed. They may project the appearance of self-efficacy and self-respect—they may have the persona of self-esteem—but do not possess the reality…
Nothing is more common than to pursue self-esteem by means that will not and cannot work. Instead of seeking self-esteem through consciousness, responsibility, and integrity, we may seek it through popularity… Instead of striving for the power of competence (the ability to achieve genuine values), we may pursue the “power” of manipulating or controlling other people. The possibilities for self-deception are almost endless—all the blind alleys down which we can lose ourselves, not realizing that what we desire cannot be purchased with counterfeit currency.
Related: Your Hero System Is Your Morality And You Get It From Your Tribe
