Author: Dennis Prager

Most Americans hold either liberal or conservative positions on most matters. In many instances, however, they would be hard pressed to explain their position or the position they oppose. But if you can’t explain both sides, how do you know you’re right? At the very least, you need to understand both the liberal and conservative […]

Pamela Geller — the woman whose group, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, organized the Muhammad cartoon drawing contest in Garland, Texas — may be the most hated person in America right now. She is certainly the left’s chief villain. And, sad to say, though few conservatives hate her, more than a few have condemned her. […]

Two months ago, The New York Times published an op-ed piece by a professor of philosophy titled, “Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts.” This is how the professor began his piece: “What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that […]

Whenever I have received a call from a listener to my radio show challenging Israel’s legitimacy, I have asked these people if they ever called a radio show to challenge any other country’s legitimacy. In particular, I ask, have they ever questioned the legitimacy of Pakistan? The answer, of course, is always “no.” In fact, […]

The “Black Lives Matter” campaign is based on as big a lie as the “campus rape culture” lie; the Rolling Stone magazine gang rape at the University of Virginia fraternity lie; the gang rape by the Duke University lacrosse team lie; the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” Ferguson lie; and all the other lies that animate […]

Hillary Clinton has announced that she is running for president of the United States. What her likely nomination says about the Democratic Party and tens of millions of Americans is depressing. Other than Barack Obama — whose resume consisted of being a charismatic black — it is hard to come up with a less accomplished […]

As one who loves America — not only because I am American, but even more so because I know (not believe, know) that the American experiment in forming a decent society has been the most successful in history — I write the following words in sadness: With few exceptions, every aspect of American life is […]

It is far easier for an individual to do great evil than to do great good. That the world isn’t fair is known to every human being who thinks. It may be our first insight into life. What child who ever complained, “That’s not fair,” wasn’t told by some adult, “Life isn’t fair”? One sad […]

American Jews on the left were beside themselves last week. Israel’s Jews did something that utterly infuriated these American Jews: Israel’s Jews overwhelmingly voted for a man of the right (or for other right-of-center parties). And not just any right-winger, but the only leader in the Western world to publicly differ from their hero, President […]

Two weeks ago, a group of students at the University of California at Irvine removed a U.S. flag from a common area of the student government suite. Shortly afterwards, six undergraduate members of the Associated Students Council of UCI passed a resolution banning the display of the flags of any nation in the office lobby. […]

Twelve years ago, almost to the day, CBS News sent Dan Rather to Baghdad to broadcast an interview with Iraq’s tyrant, Saddam Hussein. I wrote at that time: “Other than the lengths to which Dan Rather went to be obsequious to a tyrant, Americans learned nothing from his interview with Saddam Hussein.” “If one is […]

There is no question about whether President Obama — along with Secretary of State John Kerry and the editorial pages of many newspapers — has a particular dislike of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But there is another question: Why? And the answer is due to an important rule of life that too few people […]

Regarding Islamic violence — the greatest world evil since Nazism and Communism — the president of the United States, his administration, and the left generally live in a make-believe world, a world of denial. In their world, Islam is today, and has always been, a religion of peace; Muslims are threatened by Islamophobia; Christians are […]

On the happily few occasions when callers to my radio show make a particularly foolish comment, I ask them what graduate school they attended. When they ask why I assume they attended graduate school, I respond, “Only someone who went to graduate school would say something that foolish.” Because it is never my intention to […]

In his National Prayer Breakfast speech last week, President Barack Obama said: “And lest we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow […]

In the famous 1997 movie comedy “Liar Liar,” actor Jim Carrey plays a lawyer who, as a result of his young son’s birthday wish being magically fulfilled, cannot tell a lie — he can only tell the truth — for 24 hours. Let’s imagine that such a wish forced President Obama to do the same, […]

I spent Thanksgiving debating at the Oxford Union. Oxford University is the most prestigious university in the world. And the Oxford Union, hosting debates since 1823, is the world’s most prestigious stage for competing ideas. These facts made what transpired all the more depressing. The proposition debated was: “Hamas is a greater obstacle to peace […]

Since 9/11, the Western world’s academic, media, political elites have done their best to portray Islam in a favorable light, treating it very differently from all other religions. Criticism of every doctrine, religious or secular, is permitted, often encouraged. But not of Islam. Only positive depictions are allowed. We’ll start with an example of pro-Islamic […]

One of the rarest and most important things a pope does is issue encyclicals. In the eight years of Pope Benedict’s papacy, he issued three encyclicals. In the 27 years of Pope John Paul II’s papacy, he issued 14 encyclicals. Since his ascendancy to the papacy in March 2013, Pope Francis has issued one. But […]

In my fifth and final column on the greatest guide ever devised for a good world — the Ten Commandments — I offer my readers what may well be the best single thing you can do — that you are probably not doing now — to improve the quality of your life, your family’s life […]

The Ten Commandments is the most morally influential piece of legislation ever written. To give a good idea of how relevant each of the ten is, take the third commandment, one of the two most misunderstood commandments (the other is “Do not Murder,” which I explained previously). Is there such a thing as “the worst […]

I have been devoting my columns this month to the Ten Commandments because we need a fixed moral anchor to solve the problem of evil. And nothing is as effective as the Ten Commandments. Two weeks ago PragerUniversity.com released 11 five-minute video courses — one for each Commandment and an introduction. It has received over […]

We don’t have to love our parents. We have to honor them. Last week PragerUniversity.com released 11 five-minute video courses: each of the Ten Commandments and an introduction. We received over one million views this first week. The reason we made these videos is that we believe that everything needed to make a good world […]

Ask almost anyone to recite the commandment in the Ten Commandments that prohibits taking a life and you will be told, “Thou Shall Not Kill.” That is the King James translation of the sixth commandment. It is a magnificent translation. But this one has led to much moral confusion. Yesterday, PragerUniversity.com, which has had more […]

As we await protests and riots scheduled for Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere if a grand jury in Missouri does not indict the white officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, a black teenager, a little moral clarity is called for. For decades now, we have been told that there is a black-white divide in America. […]

One of the first clues that this Columbia-educated, liberal, Democrat, New York Jew had that there was something wrong at the heart of progressive/left-wing thought was when I read and was taught over and over that “poverty causes crime.” I knew from the first that this was dogma, not truth. How did I know? First, […]

Since the Bolsheviks inaugurated the first edition of their party newspaper Pravda (the Russian word for truth), the left has shaped truth to serve its goals. On an individual level, there are plenty of progressives who are honest and plenty of conservatives who aren’t. But truth is just not a left-wing value — feminism, environmentalism, […]

Last week, I was a speaker and the emcee at a rally convened by the Republican Party and WLSS, the Sarasota station that carries my radio show. The other speakers were Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, and Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. I spoke for about […]

In almost every area of American life, the better things are, the worse it is for the Democratic Party. And vice versa. Marriage. Even today, after decades of feminism, most Americans agree that it is better for women (and for men) — and better for society — when women (and men) marry. Yet, when women […]

Why do some things scare people more than others? One reason is that people engage in a rational assessment of risk and conclude the appropriate level of fear. For example, people feel free to walk alone at midnight in Times Square but not in Central Park because they have made a rational assessment: Times Square, […]