Prager University- Part 44

Prager University Part 44

• China: Friend or Foe?
• Is Communism Moral?
• Follow the Science
• Why Girls Become Boys
• Understanding Ayn Rand Did Capitalism Save Communist China?
• I Used To Be Antifa
• What Is Identity Socialism?

 

China: Friend or Foe?

https://youtu.be/oSE35VnnOeI

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With the help of the United States and other western powers, China has become an economic powerhouse. The idea was that prosperity would persuade China to align its interests with the other free nations of the world. But that’s not what happened. Former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley explains why.

Script: Communist China is the biggest challenge America faces on the world stage. It’s a challenge that we’ve ignored for far too long. For decades, United States leaders in both parties encouraged deep ties with China. The idea was that China would move away from Communism and embrace freedom and democracy. This idea was wrong. The Chinese Communist Party is now more oppressive at home and aggressive abroad than ever before. It uses every tool at its disposal to strengthen itself while weakening America. Let’s start with trade. Trade is a fundamental, and fundamentally beneficial, part of our economy. But not all trade with all trading partners is the same. The father of capitalism, Adam Smith, observed in The Wealth of Nations that Great Britain’s command of the seas must trump trade benefits. “Defense,” he wrote, “is of much more importance than opulence.” America has long understood this truth. During the Cold War, we limited trade with the Soviet Union. We didn’t want the communist country to use our innovation and economy against us and our allies. Now it’s time to take a similar approach with China. For anyone who might have doubted the need for this, the coronavirus pandemic has provided a very loud wake-up call. As Americans rushed to purchase medical equipment, masks, and gloves, it became obvious we had outsourced a lot of what we needed to China. We had become dependent on them for not only PPE but many of our everyday medicines. Making America dependent on China for critical supplies didn’t happen by accident. It’s part of a strategic plan.  China’s Communist rulers have manipulated supply chains to China’s advantage, often illegally, to give it an edge over America and the free world. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. As it gathered economic strength, China became less free and more aggressive. Now we face an expansionist Communist China whose economic power vastly exceeds anything the Soviets could ever muster. China is using its growing economic clout to advance its authoritarian vision. The country’s rulers are determined to control or eliminate anyone who stands in their way. This explains why China’s Communist rulers ethnically cleanse their minorities. They have forced at least a million Muslim Uighurs into concentration camps. It’s why they impose a surveillance state on their own citizens. Why they have moved to strip freedom from Hong Kong. Why they threaten to take over Taiwan. Why China’s spies have infiltrated American college campuses and classrooms. Why China has stolen intellectual property from our most innovative companies. And why they seek to dominate the United Nations and international agencies like the World Health Organization. The simple fact is that Communist China will not stop. This is why America must respond — and lead. That starts with American resolve. To stand up to China, we need to stand up for our principles. While China has abused the free market to its own advantage, America must defend the integrity of the free market — the only pathway to economic prosperity. We must ensure that our trade relationship is fair and that China isn’t using the rules to its advantage. We must ensure that our most important security-related industries — from essential medicine to semiconductors — have American-friendly supply chains, instead of depending on an authoritarian rival state. We must also end China’s intrusion into American business. That means limiting Chinese investment in critical parts of our economy. And of course, we must support the Chinese people’s right to live free. It’s the right thing to do and the smart thing to do. For the complete script visit https://www.prageru.com/video/china-f...

 

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https://youtu.be/A9J4WLEnpaM

Is Communism Moral?

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Capitalism has produced freedom and crushed poverty. Communism has produced poverty and crushed freedom. So why is there still a debate as to which system is more moral? Dennis Prager explains. FOLLOW PragerU! Facebook: 👉https://www.facebook.com/prageru​ Twitter: 👉https://twitter.com/prageru​ Instagram: 👉https://instagram.com/prageru/​ SUBSCRIBE 👉 https://www.prageru.com/join/​ To view the script, sources, quiz, visit: https://www.prageru.com/video/is-comm...​ Join PragerU's text list! https://optin.mobiniti.com/prageru​ Do you shop on Amazon? Click https://smile.amazon.com​ and a percentage of every Amazon purchase will be donated to PragerU. SHOP! Love PragerU? Visit our store today! https://shop.prageru.com/​ Script: Motives are much less important than behavior. We all know this: If someone has good intentions, but treats people badly, those good intentions mean nothing. As it is with individuals, so it is with governments. Capitalism might sound less noble than communism—the individual pursues success to the best of his abilities (that’s capitalism) versus everyone shares everything equally (that’s communism). But it is capitalism that has produced freedom and it alone has lifted millions from poverty while communism has kept millions impoverished and without exception crushed freedom. Capitalism for all its imperfections enables a decent society. Communism, whatever its stated intentions, leads to evil. Yet, increasingly, people either ignore or deny the evil of this ideology, which, within a period of only 60 years, created modern totalitarianism and deprived more people of human rights, and tortured and killed more people than any ideology in history. How can we explain this? There are two ways. One is ignorance: People just don't know the truth about communism. The second is willful blindness: People know the truth, but choose to ignore it because the truth about communism's horrors is too painful to confront. Given the sad state of our educational system, we can assume most people fall into the first category. They just don't know. So let me offer some facts. But before I do, I need to address another question: Why is it important that everyone know what communism did? Here are three reasons: First, we have a moral obligation to the victims of communism not to forget them. Just as Americans have a moral obligation to remember the victims of slavery, we have the same obligation to the billion victims of communism, especially the hundred million who were murdered. Second, the best way to prevent an evil from reoccurring is to confront it in all its horror. The fact that many people today, especially young people, mention communism as a viable option for modern society, proves they don’t know communism's moral record. Therefore, they do not properly fear communism — which means this evil could happen again. And why could it happen again? That brings us to reason number three. The leaders of communist regimes and the vast number of people who helped those leaders torture, enslave, and murder were nearly all normal people. Of course, some were psychopaths; but most were not, which means that any society — including free ones — can devolve into communism or some analogous evil. Now some facts: Based on the authoritative Black Book of Communism, written by six French scholars and published in the United States by Harvard University Press, here are the numbers of people murdered by communist regimes—not soldiers; ordinary civilians. Vietnam: 1 million. Eastern Europe: 1 million. Ethiopia: 1.5 million. North Korea: 2 million. Cambodia: 2 million. The Soviet Union: 20 million. China: 65 million. And the numbers are conservative. And, of course, these numbers do not describe the suffering endured by hundreds of millions of people who were not murdered: the systematic stripping people of their right to speak freely, to worship freely, to start a business, or even to travel without party permission; no non-communist judiciary or media; the poverty of nearly all communist countries; the imprisonment of vast numbers of people; and, of course, the trauma suffered by the hundreds of millions of friends and relatives of the murdered and imprisoned. These numbers don't tell you about the frozen millions in the vast Soviet Siberian prison camp system known as the Gulag Archipelago, or the Vietnamese communists' routine practice of burying peasants alive to terrorize other peasants into supporting the communists, or Mao Zedong's regular use of hideous tortures to punish opponents and intimidate peasants. For the complete script visit https://www.prageru.com/video/is-comm...

 

https://youtu.be/XCM-QFyzI8U

Follow the Science

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Brian Keating is an astrophysicist at a major university. Science is his life. But when he hears someone say to “follow the science,” he gets nervous. Because that’s not how science works. And never has. Follow Brian on social media: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeatin...​ https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating​ https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating​ Buy his book: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA​ Watch The Book Club: https://www.prageru.com/presenter/bri...​ FOLLOW PragerU! Facebook: 👉https://www.facebook.com/prageru​ Twitter: 👉https://twitter.com/prageru​ Instagram: 👉https://instagram.com/prageru/​ SUBSCRIBE 👉 https://www.prageru.com/join/​ To view the script, sources, quiz, visit: https://www.prageru.com/video/follow-...​ Join PragerU's text list! https://optin.mobiniti.com/prageru​ Do you shop on Amazon? Click https://smile.amazon.com​ and a percentage of every Amazon purchase will be donated to PragerU. SHOP! Love PragerU? Visit our store today! https://shop.prageru.com/​ Script: I'm an astrophysicist at a major university. Science is my life. But when I hear somebody somberly intone, "science says" or "follow the science," I get very nervous.  Science doesn't belong to any ideology. Science is the never-ending search for new knowledge. That's what science means in Latin, by the way—knowledge. Not wisdom. Not morality. Not social policy. Knowledge. What we do with that knowledge is where wisdom, morality, and social policy enter the picture.  Knowledge, it turns out, isn't so easy to come by. And sometimes what we think we know for certain (the earth sure does look flat when we're standing on it) turns out not to be so certain. Of course, I trust in basic scientific truths—those things for which there is overwhelming evidence like, say, gravity; even that humans play a role in the warming of the planet. But scientists—even the best ones—can get things wrong. The brilliant astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle believed the universe existed in a steady state forever and had no beginning. But his view, once held sacrosanct by all astrophysicists, no longer holds. It's been superseded by the Big Bang theory that the universe had a beginning and is still expanding. In the 20th century, some of the most respected scientists in the world, including Nobel Prize winners, believed in eugenics—the reprehensible idea that the human race could be improved by selective breeding. The National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the Rockefeller Foundation supported it. By the middle of the century, it had been thoroughly rejected as quackery. No reputable scientist would have anything to do with this idea. So, we all need to get over this notion that just because someone—be it a politician, a bureaucrat, or even a scientist—employs the phrase "science says" means whatever they're saying is right. It might be right. But it might also be wrong. And if it's wrong, it won't necessarily be a bunch of scientists who say it's wrong. It might be one guy.  Ask Einstein. One hundred scientists wrote a book explaining why his theory of relativity was wrong. He quipped, “If I were wrong, then one would've been enough.''   It takes a lot to convince scientists to accept a new theory, especially if that new theory refutes what they have always believed—in some cases, what they've staked their entire careers on. As Richard Feynman, one of the most eminent physicists of the 20th century, famously said, "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts…" What Feynman is saying is that a good scientist should always maintain a healthy amount of skepticism. Science is, by its nature, provisional. Science would stagnate if we merely accepted proclamations of past authorities.  So how do we do good science? This is not a new question. Since the 17th century, scientists have employed the so-called scientific method to guide their work. It's not a perfect guide by any means, but it's pretty darn good.  The method involves: 1. Formulating a theory. 2. Predicting the evidence that should be found if the theory is true. 3. Collecting data. 4. Analyzing the data. 5. Refining the theory and presenting evidence to other experts.  The philosopher Karl Popper added one more item to this list. Popper said that a subject is scientific if, and only if, it can be falsified. In other words, if your theory can't be tested—if it can't be proven wrong, it's probably not good science.  This is just one reason why we have to be very careful about putting too much faith in "models." They often can't be tested. Models are predictions of the future based on current data. They can easily get things wrong. First of all, the future (in case you hadn't noticed) is very hard to predict. And the further out you go into the future, the less secure the prediction. For the complete script visit https://www.prageru.com/video/follow-...​

 

https://youtu.be/F7bMJd_QAXs

Why Girls Become Boys

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Ten years ago, it was unlikely that you knew someone who identified as transgender. Today, it’s unlikely that you don’t know someone who identifies as transgender. This is especially true of teenage girls. Abigail Shrier analyzes this disturbing trend and its implications. FOLLOW us! Facebook: 👉https://www.facebook.com/prageru​ Twitter: 👉https://twitter.com/prageru​ Instagram: 👉https://instagram.com/prageru/​ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss a new video! 👉 https://www.prageru.com/join/​ To view the script, sources, quiz, visit https://www.prageru.com/video/why-gir...​ Join PragerU's text list to have these videos, free merchandise giveaways, and breaking announcements sent directly to your phone! https://optin.mobiniti.com/prageru​ Do you shop on Amazon? Click https://smile.amazon.com​ and a percentage of every Amazon purchase will be donated to PragerU. Same great products. Same low price. Shopping made meaningful. SHOP! Love PragerU? Now you can wear PragerU merchandise! Visit our store today! https://shop.prageru.com/​ Script: If you know any middle or high school girls today—or if you are one yourself—it would not be surprising if you know someone who identifies as transgender. The latest statistics indicate that 2% of American high school students now identify as transgender—and the overwhelming majority of them are teenage girls. Between 2016 and 2017 alone, the number of females seeking gender surgery in America quadrupled. But if you graduated high school over a decade ago, it was unlikely that you knew anyone who was transgender because, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the condition underlying it afflicted roughly 1 in 10,000 people, or .01% of the population. Almost none of these cases were teenage girls. In fact, before 2012 there was no scientific or medical literature discussing adolescent girls who wanted to transition to the opposite sex. That doesn't mean that we didn't know about transgender individuals. Gender Dysphoria—the severe discomfort in one's biological sex—has been studied for nearly one hundred years. It almost always involved boys who began feeling it between the ages of 2 and 4 and were strong and persistent in their assertions to everyone around them that they were really girls. When a phenomenon that affects one half of a population—boys—suddenly begins affecting the other half—girls, and when its age of onset shifts from preschool to adolescence, something significant is happening. In 2016, Brown University public health researcher Lisa Littman began studying the sudden spike in trans identification of teenage girls. She concluded that peer influence and social media influence had a lot to do with this trans teen phenomenon. After all, based on parent reports, none of these girls had exhibited symptoms of gender dysphoria at the age that it typically first presents: early childhood. YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram all host popular social media influencers—today's version of Hollywood stars—who insist that if you feel uncomfortable in your body, you're probably trans. Many promise that if you start a course of testosterone, all of your problems will go away. There's every reason to believe that these girls are experiencing real psychological pain—rates of anxiety, depression, and instances of self-harm are all at record levels for this generation. A quick fix becomes very tempting. So it doesn't take much—a YouTube video, a friend's suggestion—to get a troubled girl to buy into the fantasy that gender transition is the answer. Unfortunately for these girls, who do not have typical gender dysphoria, gender transition rarely offers relief. And it's a catastrophic mistake for psychologists, educators, and the medical establishment to rush these teens towards "a solution" that will almost certainly harm rather than heal. Because here's what's not in dispute: unnecessary medical gender transition causes irreversible damage—high risk of infertility, sexual dysfunction, and the creation of a permanent medical patient.  Tragically, we've made it far too easy for kids to take this path—long before they're ready psychologically or emotionally to make such a life-altering decision. Testosterone is easily obtained by today's teens. In Oregon, a 15-year-old can walk into a gender clinic—yes, there are now gender clinics all over the country—and walk out the same day with a prescription for testosterone without her parents' permission. Sixteen-year-old girls have been able to undergo double mastectomies—the removal of both breasts—without even a therapist's note. Predictably, hasty gender transition—remember, we're talking about teenagers here—is now leading to a lot of regret. New testimonials appear on YouTube almost every week from teens who acknowledge they made a terrible mistake and warn others not to make the same one. For the complete script visit https://www.prageru.com/video/why-gir...

 

https://youtu.be/tRDLL_ZiPf4

Understanding Ayn Rand

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Ayn Rand is one of the most famous novelists and philosophers of the 20th century. Her ideas about free markets and free minds still captivate millions. Gloria Alvarez with the Objective Standard Institute tells Rand’s fascinating story. This episode was made possible by a generous donation from The Objective Standard Institute https://objectivestandard.org/​ FOLLOW us! Facebook: 👉https://www.facebook.com/prageru​ Twitter: 👉https://twitter.com/prageru​ Instagram: 👉https://instagram.com/prageru/​ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss a new video! 👉 https://www.prageru.com/join/​ To view the script, sources, quiz, visit https://www.prageru.com/video/underst...​ Join PragerU's text list to have these videos, free merchandise giveaways, and breaking announcements sent directly to your phone! https://optin.mobiniti.com/prageru​ Do you shop on Amazon? Click https://smile.amazon.com​ and a percentage of every Amazon purchase will be donated to PragerU. Same great products. Same low price. Shopping made meaningful. SHOP! Love PragerU? Now you can wear PragerU merchandise! Visit our store today! https://shop.prageru.com/​ Script: Who is John Galt? This is one of the most famous questions in modern literature. Even today, over 50 years after it was written, you'll hear people asking it. Why? Because it recalls the riveting suspense story, heroic characters, and powerful ideas portrayed in the bestselling novel Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia on February 2, 1905, Rand became one the most celebrated authors and philosophers of the 20th century. Her most famous novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, still sell hundreds of thousands of copies every year around the world. Rand lived through the early years of the Russian Revolution, saw her father's pharmacy business confiscated by the Bolsheviks, and experienced the horrors of communism firsthand. She longed to emigrate to America. In 1926, she did—and never looked back. To Rand, the United States meant freedom. She saw the Founding Fathers as heroes. They created a country based on individual rights. "Man's right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness," she said, means that every individual has a "right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself"—nor to the government. The practical results of the American system, Rand said, could be seen in the skyline of New York City. "America's skyscrapers," she noted, "were not built by public funds nor for a public purpose: they were built by the energy, initiative, and wealth of private individuals for personal profit. And, instead of impoverishing the people, these skyscrapers, as they rose higher and higher, kept raising the people's standard of living." Rand advocated pure capitalism, which she described as a system in which "the government acts only as a policeman that protects man's rights." No bailouts, no special favors for big business, no government intervention into the economy. When people are free to produce and trade, and when the government is limited to protecting rights, everyone benefits. Individuals thrive. Societies prosper.  How do we know this? Compare freer, more capitalist societies to less free, more statist ones: In Rand's day — America compared to the Soviet Union. West Germany to East Germany. More recently: South Korea to North Korea. Colombia to Venezuela. Such differences were painfully obvious to Rand. So were their causes. In Atlas Shrugged, she showed how easily a free society can collapse into a dictatorship. The heroine, Dagny Taggart, works tirelessly and brilliantly to save her family's railroad business, while ever-increasing government interventions destroy businesses and crush the economy. Meanwhile, one by one, the top producers across various industries mysteriously disappear. No one knows where they have gone. The only clue is a question they leave behind: Who is John Galt? As the economy crumbles, how do politicians, bureaucrats, and academics react? They blame "the greedy businessman" and decry the profit motive and free markets. Their solution: more government intervention which, of course, only makes the problem worse.  Sound familiar? Atlas Shrugged is a cautionary tale about pursuing equality over excellence—state control over free markets—but it's also about the power of the individual and the power of reason.  The individual's reasoning mind, Rand argued, is his tool of knowledge—his only means of understanding what is true or false, how the world works, what is good or bad for his life. This is the theme of Rand's work more broadly: In order to thrive, to achieve happiness, the individual must think for himself and live by the judgment of his own mind. For the complete script visit https://www.prageru.com/video/underst...​

 

https://youtu.be/n1rTnBvI3h8

Did Capitalism Save Communist China?

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How did one of the world’s poorest countries—China—become, in thirty years, one of the world’s richest? The answer is surprisingly simple and surprisingly powerful. China scholar Helen Raleigh breaks it down. FOLLOW us! Facebook: 👉https://www.facebook.com/prageru​ Twitter: 👉https://twitter.com/prageru​ Instagram: 👉https://instagram.com/prageru/​ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss a new video! 👉 https://www.prageru.com/join/​ To view the script, sources, quiz, visit https://www.prageru.com/video/did-cap...​ Join PragerU's text list to have these videos, free merchandise giveaways, and breaking announcements sent directly to your phone! https://optin.mobiniti.com/prageru​ Do you shop on Amazon? Click https://smile.amazon.com​ and a percentage of every Amazon purchase will be donated to PragerU. Same great products. Same low price. Shopping made meaningful. SHOP! Love PragerU? Now you can wear PragerU merchandise! Visit our store today! https://shop.prageru.com/​ Script: How did one of the world’s poorest countries—China—become, in thirty years, one of the world’s richest? There’s a one-word answer. Capitalism. Here’s how it happened. In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (aka the CCP), defeated the Nationalist party in a brutal civil war. The leader of the CCP, Mao Zedong, promised the Chinese people that he would create a new China, a socialist paradise where the benevolent state would take care of every citizen's needs from shelter to education to employment. No more greedy businessmen. Factories would be owned by their workers. No more evil landowners. The state would own all property on behalf of the people. No more hunger. Everyone could eat as much as they want at public cafeterias. To transform China into this heaven-on-earth, Mao launched radical socialist reforms: industries were nationalized, private businesses were eliminated, and land was confiscated. But rather than turning China into a heaven on earth, these policies turned China into a hell-on-earth. Healthcare was cheap but there was a chronic shortage of doctors, hospitals, and modern medicine. No one was unemployed because the government gave each person a job. But if you didn't like the job you were assigned, well, that was just too bad. Your government-assigned job was tied to your food ration. No work, no food. Speaking of food, it wasn’t long after Mao took power that widespread food shortages began happening. My own parents had to get up at 3 o'clock in the morning to stand in long lines outside of a grocery store to get a pound of sugar or several ounces of cooking oil. Often, they got nothing. Every year was worse than the last. Between 1958 and 1962, China experienced the worst famine in human history. An estimated 45 million Chinese starved to death, victims of their own government’s murderous stupidity. Among the lives lost were my uncle, my grandaunt and her family of five, and my dad's maternal grandmother. At the time of Mao's death in 1976, more than 90% of the Chinese population lived below the poverty line, earning less than $2 a day. The only equality socialism had achieved was an equal distribution of misery. Mao's successor, Deng Xiaoping, recognized that this couldn’t go on much longer. The only way to save the CCP's one-party rule was to get the economy going. But how? Deng had no idea. Fortunately for him, a small group of farmers did. In 1978 these farmers, 18 of them in the village of Xiaogang, made a secret deal with their village leader.  After fulfilling the government quotas, they would be allowed to keep any surplus for themselves and sell what they didn’t need. Such a move was risky because it was a rejection of the CCP's socialist policies. But the result was magical. The first year after this deal went into effect, the 18 farmers produced more grain than the entire village had produced in the previous 10 years combined! The “Xiaogang model” began to spread to other villages. When Deng heard of it, rather than punishing the farmers, he had the good sense to recognize that these simple peasants had shown him how to revive China's economy. Soon after, Deng announced sweeping economic reforms. He opened up China to the outside world, inviting foreign investments, and most importantly, loosening the government's grip on the Chinese people. The results were nothing less than astonishing. The freer the Chinese economy became, the wealthier the Chinese people became. In the space of three decades, 800 million Chinese people emerged out of poverty. Chinese cities now match and exceed the greatest cities of the West, skyscraper for skyscraper. The CCP likes to pat itself on the back for China's economic miracle. However, the real credit should go to free-market capitalism and 18 brave farmers who risked their lives to give it a try. For the complete script visit https://www.prageru.com/video/did-cap...​

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https://youtu.be/Y7IpSoUXvmE

I Used To Be Antifa

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Gabriel Nadales was an angry, bitter, and unhappy young man — the perfect recruit for Antifa, the violent left-wing group which claims to fight against fascism. How did they find him? And how did he find his way out? Check out his book "Behind the Black Mask: My Time as an Antifa Activist" https://www.amazon.com/Behind-Black-M...​ FOLLOW us! Facebook: 👉https://www.facebook.com/prageru​ Twitter: 👉https://twitter.com/prageru​ Instagram: 👉https://instagram.com/prageru/​ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss a new video! 👉 https://www.prageru.com/join/​ To view the script, sources, quiz, visit https://www.prageru.com/video/i-used-...​ Join PragerU's text list to have these videos, free merchandise giveaways, and breaking announcements sent directly to your phone! https://optin.mobiniti.com/prageru​ Do you shop on Amazon? Click https://smile.amazon.com​ and a percentage of every Amazon purchase will be donated to PragerU. Same great products. Same low price. Shopping made meaningful. SHOP! Love PragerU? Now you can wear PragerU merchandise! Visit our store today! https://shop.prageru.com/​ Script: There was a time in my life when I was angry, bitter, and deeply unhappy. I wanted to lash out at the whole fascist system: the greedy, heartless power structure that didn't care about me or the rest of society's innocent victims; a system that had robbed, beaten, and stolen from my ancestors. The whole corrupt edifice deserved to be brought down; reduced to rubble. I was a perfect recruit for Antifa, the left-wing group which claims to fight against fascism. And, so, I became a member. Now I was one of those who had the guts to fight against "the fascists" who were exploiting disadvantaged people. I wasn't 'a card-carrying Antifascist.' There is no such thing as official Antifa membership. But I was ready at a moment's notice to slip on the black mask and march in what Antifa calls "the black bloc"—a cadre of other black-clad Antifa members—to taunt police and destroy property. Antifa stands for "Antifascist," but that's purposefully deceptive. For one thing, the very name is calibrated so that anyone who dares to criticize the group or its tactics can be labeled "fascist." This allows Antifa to justify violence against all who dare stand up to or speak out against them. A few groups boldly declare themselves Antifa like "Rose City Antifa" in Portland. But most don't, preferring to avoid the negative publicity. That's part of Antifa's appeal—and strength. It's hard to pin down. There's no identifiable leader. To be part of Antifa you must adopt two basic principles. First, you have to have the mentality of an "Antifascist." And second, you must be willing to enforce that mentality. To adopt an Antifascist mentality means to reject everything that is fascism. But that begs the question: What is fascism? While most Americans associate fascism with Nazi Germany or modern dictatorial states like Venezuela, China, and North Korea, to Antifa, fascism means Judeo-Christian values and capitalism. As an Antifa group said on its Twitter account in 2018, "The fight against fascism is only won when the capitalist system is smashed." And they mean smash: breaking windows, tearing down statues, throwing Molotov cocktails, looting and burning businesses, and harassing and physically assaulting people. We saw it all in the summer of 2020. In Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, and other cities. Antifa is not solely responsible for all left-wing political violence. Not every attack by a left-wing radical is an Antifa attack. But Antifa exemplifies the worst of this dangerous ideology, which is becoming bolder and more prevalent in American society. Joining Antifa was the worst decision of my life. How did I get out of it? Like anyone who gets out something bad; I encountered something good—the very system that I had sought to destroy. Friends—people who turned out to be my real friends—pointed me to challenging thinkers like Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, and Ben Shapiro; and eventually organizations like the Leadership Institute and PragerU. What they said just made sense. And offered me a better way to live. Antifa and the radical left did not care about building a better society, they cared about control. They could only offer me more anger, bitterness, and unhappiness. I always expected to keep my past a secret. But as I saw cities around the country struggling against the rise of left-wing political violence while left-wing and even liberal politicians said nothing, I knew I had to speak up. If people like me who know what is really behind Antifa don't, the Left will obliterate what it means to be a free American. So here I am. For the complete script visit https://www.prageru.com/video/i-used-...

 

https://youtu.be/TAPOQFWSUkE

What Is Identity Socialism?

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There’s a new socialism in town. Its foundations are more cultural than economic. Dinesh D’Souza explains this major development in leftist thinking and its impact on your life. FOLLOW us! Facebook: 👉https://www.facebook.com/prageru​ Twitter: 👉https://twitter.com/prageru​ Instagram: 👉https://instagram.com/prageru/​ SUBSCRIBE so you never miss a new video! 👉 https://www.prageru.com/join/​ To view the script, sources, quiz, visit https://www.prageru.com/video/what-is...​ Join PragerU's text list to have these videos, free merchandise giveaways, and breaking announcements sent directly to your phone! https://optin.mobiniti.com/prageru​ Do you shop on Amazon? Click https://smile.amazon.com​ and a percentage of every Amazon purchase will be donated to PragerU. Same great products. Same low price. Shopping made meaningful. SHOP! Love PragerU? Now you can wear PragerU merchandise! Visit our store today! https://shop.prageru.com/​ Script: There’s a new socialism in town. I call it identity socialism.  The old socialism, the kind Karl Marx dreamed up, was all about the working class, the sort of blue-collar worker who, ironically, voted for President Trump. But today’s socialist couldn’t care less about the guy in the hardhat. He had his chance at revolution and blew it. Today’s socialist is all about race, gender, and transgender rights.  Class is an afterthought.  To understand this is to understand the Left’s takeover of the college campus and all the ills that takeover has spawned: from MeToo to Black Lives Matter to girls competing against biological boys. But campus culture has now metastasized into the culture of the whole society. As liberal writer Andrew Sullivan has put it: “We all live on campus now.” Identity socialism is first and foremost about division. Not just class division, but now race division, gender division, transgender division. Blacks and Latinos are in, whites are out. Women are in, men are out. Gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, transgenders are in; heterosexuals are out. Illegals are in, native-born citizens are out.  One may think this is all part of the politics of inclusion, but to think that is to get only half the picture. The point, for the left, is not merely to include but also to exclude. So, where did this identity socialism come from? Meet Herbert Marcuse.  Born in Berlin in 1898, Marcuse fled Germany at the dawn of the Nazi era. After stints at Columbia, Harvard, and Brandeis, Marcuse moved to California, where he joined the University of California at San Diego in 1965. You’d think that living in a paradise like Southern California with all the comforts and privileges of academic life, might have softened Marcuse’s Marx-like hatred of capitalism. But it was not to be. If anything, the more he prospered the more he wanted to bring the system down.    He had a problem, however. A big one. Socialism didn’t work in America. Life was too good. The working class in the US didn’t aspire to overthrow the existing order, they aspired to own a home. How could you foment revolution without revolutionaries? Classic Marxism had no answer for this. But almost a hundred years after Marx, Marcuse did. The answer was college students. They would be the recruits for what he termed the Great Refusal—the repudiation and overthrow of free-market capitalism.  Conditions were perfect. The students of the sixties were already living in what was in effect a socialist commune—a university campus. Rather than being grateful to their parents for providing them with this opportunity to learn and study, they were restless and bored. Most importantly they were looking for “meaning,” a form of self-fulfillment that went beyond material gratification.   Of course, as with all successful social movements, timing was critical. Here Marcuse was very fortunate. The sixties was the decade of the Vietnam War. Students faced the prospect of being drafted. Thus, they had selfish reasons to oppose the conflict. Marcuse and his acolytes turned this selfishness into righteousness by teaching the students that they weren’t draft-dodgers; they were noble resisters who were part of a global struggle for social justice.   Marcuse portrayed Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Cong as a kind of Third World proletariat, fighting to free themselves from American Imperialism. This represented a transposition of Marxist categories. The new working class were the Vietnamese “freedom fighters.” The evil capitalists were American soldiers serving on behalf of the American government. For the complete script visit https://www.prageru.com/video/what-is...

 

 

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The Rational Bible: Exodus by Dennis Prager  

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"Dennis Prager has put together one of the most stunning commentaries in modern times on the most profound document in human history. It's a must-read that every person, religious and non-religious, should buy and peruse every night before bed. It'll make you think harder, pray more ardently, and understand your civilization better." — Ben Shapiro, host of "The Ben Shapiro Show"

"Dennis Prager’s commentary on Exodus will rank among the greatest modern Torah commentaries. That is how important I think it is. And I am clearly not alone... It might well be on its way to becoming the most widely read Torah commentary of our time—and by non-Jews as well as by Jews." — Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, bestselling author of Jewish Literacy

Why do so many people think the Bible, the most influential book in world history, is outdated? Why do our friends and neighbors – and sometimes we ourselves – dismiss the Bible as irrelevant, irrational, immoral, or all of these things? This explanation of the Book of Exodus, the second book of the Bible, will demonstrate that the Bible is not only powerfully relevant to today’s issues, but completely consistent with rational thought.

Do you think the Bible permitted the trans-Atlantic slave trade? You won’t after reading this book.

Do you struggle to love your parents? If you do, you need this book.

Do you doubt the existence of God because belief in God is “irrational?” This book will give you reason after reason to rethink your doubts.

The title of this commentary is, “The Rational Bible” because its approach is entirely reason-based. The reader is never asked to accept anything on faith alone. As Prager says, “If something I write does not make rational sense, I have not done my job.”

The Rational Bible is the fruit of Dennis Prager’s forty years of teaching the Bible to people of every faith, and no faith. On virtually every page, you will discover how the text relates to the contemporary world and to your life.

His goal: to change your mind – and then change your life.

 

Highly Recommended by ACU.

Purchase his book at-

https://www.amazon.com/Rational-Bible-Exodus-Dennis-Prager/dp/1621577724

 

 

The Rational Bible: Genesis by Dennis Prager 

USA Today bestseller

Publishers Weekly bestseller

Wall Street Journal bestseller

Many people today think the Bible, the most influential book in world history, is not only outdated but irrelevant, irrational, and even immoral.

This explanation of the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, demonstrates clearly and powerfully that the opposite is true. The Bible remains profoundly relevant—both to the great issues of our day and to each individual life. It is the greatest moral guide and source of wisdom ever written.

Do you doubt the existence of God because you think believing in God is irrational? This book will give you many reasons to rethink your doubts. Do you think faith and science are in conflict? You won’t after reading this commentary on Genesis. Do you come from a dysfunctional family? It may comfort you to know that every family discussed in Genesis was highly dysfunctional!

The title of this commentary is “The Rational Bible” because its approach is entirely reason-based. The reader is never asked to accept anything on faith alone. In Dennis Prager’s words, “If something I write is not rational, I have not done my job.”

The Rational Bible is the fruit of Dennis Prager’s forty years of teaching the Bible—whose Hebrew grammar and vocabulary he has mastered—to people of every faith and no faith at all. On virtually every page, you will discover how the text relates to the contemporary world in general and to you personally. His goal: to change your mind—and, as a result, to change your life.

 

Highly Recommended by ACU.

Purchase his book at-

https://www.amazon.com/Rational-Bible-Genesis-Dennis-Prager/dp/1621578984