TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Are You Your #1 Priority? Should You Be?
Date: 03/27/2026 Length: 49:37
Daniel Lapin 0:00
Greetings, Happy Warriors, and welcome to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show, where I your rabbi, reveal how the world really works. Thank you for being part of the show, and thank you for your support of the show. Right at the outset, let me give a great big thank you to each and every one of you Happy Warriors who supports the American Alliance of Jews and Christians, which is the organization that makes the show possible. You will find a link in the show notes, and that would be the place at which you can most easily participate. The link is www.aajc.org
Daniel Lapin 0:47
and I want to express my appreciation to each and every one of you who helps to make this show possible. Now, one of the central themes of the show, and you will find this to be almost always consistent, is that we are thinking of the five F's, the five fundamental features of a Balanced and fulfilling life, your family, your finances, your friendships, your faith and your fitness. Finances are all the relationships having to do with your finances, relationships with your bank accounts, your possessions, your co workers, your boss, etc, family, all those connections that are rooted in family, all other relationships that are not family and not financial in nature fall under friendships, social connections. Friends, right? Faith is not just our relationship with our boss in heaven, but also our relationship with all things that are intangible, all things that are spiritual at core, and that can include many aspects of finance. Look, there's a reason that economics is often thought of as the dismal science. They call it. One of the reasons is because it's unpredictable. Apparently, it doesn't follow the laws of any natural science. Gravity is completely predictable. There are no surprises. But economics, not so much. Why? Because we're dealing with human beings and relation, and human beings make financial decisions not always on a rational basis. And so it's quite possible for me to program a computer to say, Please buy me a pair of jeans whenever the price drops below $15 and I might well do that. However, that's not how people usually buy. There are many people for whom buying a designer set of jeans at $80 is a preference. Now it is for some. It isn't for others, but that $80 pair of jeans is no more durable than the $15 pair of jeans. It's no more effective at protecting you from the weather or anything else, but it is a fancy set of pair of jeans. I'm not mocking that that is a legitimate spiritual need that many people have, and many of the decisions we make in finance are spiritual in nature. And that's one of the areas in which faith and finance, those two F's, interact and meet one another. And then finally, fitness, your relationship with your own body. Those are the chief five areas. Now today we're going to talk about something which is, you've probably thought about it. Everybody has one time or another, and that is what is more important, who you are in yourself or you and your relationships. Which is more important? What should you focus on? More on the one hand, almost every single one of your most satisfying, enjoyable, productive and fulfilling accomplishments in your life has come about because of your association with at least one other person. It might have been parents, might have been teachers, it might have been your spouse, it might have been children, but other people have played, you know, a collaborator, a partner, other people play a role in. Your most powerful and memorable life moments. And so you might well say therefore, that, after all, it's my connections with other people that define who I am. But then there are other times when you're on your own and you think to yourself, gosh, you know when you come right down to it. I came into this world naked and alone, and I leave this world pretty much alone. And, you know, I've really got to make sure that that I am developed myself, that that's also an important part of it. The trouble is that, if carried to an extreme, the focus on self turns one narcissistic and self centered and selfish and egotistical. And we've all met people like that, we don't like them very much. On the other hand, how about somebody whose entire identity is utterly dependent on their relationship with other people and need to be the life and soul of the party, a feeling of loneliness and depression when they are in fact alone, an incapable lack of ability To be alone and to revel in being alone as well. And so there is this tussle between the two in the culture. In Western culture, at the moment, there's a huge emphasis on the individual. First of all, the idea is that society is made up of individuals, and what individuals want and what individuals find most significant and most meaningful is what really matters. And so individual rights matter. And when we then speak about the long term impact on a society, nobody pays any attention to that. For instance, I do not want to have any children. I think the world is a terrible place to bring children into. Or else, I don't really care about what the world is. It's just I don't want children, because everybody knows children change your life, and children impose limitations on what you I just don't want any children. And that is the end of that. Somebody else might come along and say, But wait a moment, there's a general rule in human affairs that any activity which, if everybody did it, would bring calamity. Well, that activity is not a moral activity. So for instance, what's the big harm in dropping a candy wrapper on the floor instead of looking for a garbage can as you're walking down the sidewalk? And the answer is, well, in and of itself, nothing much, because a functioning society can survive an occasional candy wrapper on the sidewalk. However, you have to ask yourself, What if everybody did that? Well, if everybody did that would be pretty bad. We'd be knee deep in garbage. Well, therefore it is therefore an unacceptable activity. You don't want to have children. Okay, you know, society can function with a small proportion of people not reproducing. But what if everybody did that? Well, calamity. Right now, not everybody is doing it, but enough people are doing it so that the fertility rate is dropping way below replacement level to simply maintain a steady population, which, by the way, is nowhere near enough to ensure dynamic and vital economic activity that would require what they say is a 2.1 right? 2.1 children per woman. But in most Western countries were below, or somewhere around about the one and a half level. So way, way below is that viable? No, that's not viable. So on the other hand, to think only of society and not for myself. Well, that doesn't make any sense, either. And so what does one do and what is one supposed to do? Well, I would remind you that tyrannical regimes generally seem to focus very much on the communal such as communism or socialism. We've all in this together. We've all got to work together. We've all got to try and do things well, okay, but I also want to hear just as much emphasis on the individual and the individual's liberties as well. That sort of balance is it's difficult, it's complex, and it's fairly deep within the book. Ourselves of
Daniel Lapin 10:03
public policy and understandings of how societies develop and what happens within societies. Yeah, there's pluses when we all work together, no question about it. There are also minuses when we get mass psychosis, as we saw during covid and many other times when a large number of people start almost hysterically believing in something that you know is simply not so that is a downside of this togetherness. And on the other hand, as I said, Too much individualism. Well, the result there is a selfishness and an isolation and a disconnect. And so a very delicate balance is needed in these things and we do that with our children as well. Right? We have children that in itself is a statement of community, that in itself is a statement that I'm not enough marriage. Why do I marry? Precisely because I realize that I am not sufficient by myself. I'm flawed and I have lacks, and if I marry the right spouse, then together, we make up for one another's lacks. We demand the best of one another, and we grow. And part of that growth is that we have children together, and all of that is a profound expression of our need for connection to others. But at the same time. It's not an obliteration of individual. We still recognize the need for each one of us to develop intellectually and physically in and of ourselves, right? It's I discuss ideas with my spouse. I discuss ideas with my friends. I might go to the gym and work out together with friends. So there is a connection between what I might call fitness and friendship, or even between fitness and family. But these things are very delicate balances, and one of the reasons that Western civilization has worked so well. And when I say worked so well, instead of pointing at hypothetical failures of Western civilization and among those, I mean that those who pull down statues of Columbus and who pull down statues of the founding fathers of America and those who dislike Winston Churchill, yeah, Tucker, I'm looking at you. The reason is always a dislike of the underlying principles of Western civilization and Western civilization is favorable, not just because it's the civilization that has produced the West and No, it's obviously Something people like because people struggle to reach it. Illegal immigration is a problem into America. It's a problem into Sweden. It's a problem into France, into Italy, into the United Kingdom. Somalia apparently has no problem of illegal immigration. Not a lot of people trying to get to Bangladesh, not a lot of people trying to break the border and get into Libya. It's not happening. People enjoy the benefits and recognize the benefits of Western civilization. It does simply work better. And what? What are the characteristics of Western civilization? Well, first and foremost, it is the ability to integrate self and community. It's the ability to integrate the task of building a society of togetherness and connectedness, and at the same time, maintaining a structure of individual liberty. Communism is very good at togetherness, even in the early days, the Israel kibbutz movement worked well for a while, but it pretty much eliminated individual liberties, and that, at the end of the day, was its undoing. The kibbutz movement, for those of you may not be aware, is that the earliest settlements in Israel in the 1930s and 1940s and even into the 50s, were communitarian. And people lived communally and worked commonly. And the whole idea was a people, if you just taught them well, people would overlook and even come to forget individual financial ambition, and they would work and focus on the community. That's not really how human nature works, and when we take that into account as Western civilization does, recognizing that individual liberty is underpinned by economic liberty, by the ability for me to own money and to own assets, then we move in the direction of real liberty, but mouthing platitudes about individual liberty while not having any financial or economic liberty never works, and it didn't work then either. So I would like to give you just a little bit of the background on where Western civilization got this from. So I'll tell you where the story starts, the foundational document of Western civilization. Well, it's the Bible. That's where it comes from. And yeah, that is the foundational document of Western civilization. There are going to be many people who do not like that idea and try to oppose it, but I think it's fairly easy to validate and fairly easy to demonstrate the veracity of that claim. But let's, let's take a look at an important interaction between God and Abraham, and it takes place in Genesis. Chapter 13. Let me read the words to you, if I may. Verse 14, And the Lord said to Abraham, after lot had parted from him, please raise your eyes and see from the place where you are northwards and southwards and eastwards and westwards for all the land you see, I will give to you and your seed in perpetuity, and I will make your seed like the dust of the earth. And if a man can count the dust of the earth, so will your seed be counted. And so the implication here is that God is telling Abraham, your children are going to be very, very many and this was a remarkable statement, because at this point, Abraham doesn't even have one child. And as a matter of fact, it would appear that he and Sarah, his wife, are not going to have any children. They seem to be not medically equipped to have children. And they're, they're settling down to that notion. God says, now you're going to have, not only a child, many children, many descendants, and they are going to be like the dust of the earth, meaning tiny, little specks, like grains of sand. Can you count them? Of course not. And so yeah, that's how many you're going to have. All right, you would have thought that Abraham would have erupted in pleasure and gratitude. Oh, thank you, Lord. I can't believe this, but I'm so excited to hear it. No, nothing at all. Then we go to two chapters later, chapter 15, in Genesis, verse five. And again, I'd like to read the words to you. And God took Abraham outside, and he said, please look heavenwards and count the stars, if you are able to count them. And that will be how many will be your children. So again, a similar theme, namely, the the sand, the specks of dust and sand on Earth. Can't count them. That's going to be how many children you're going to have two chapters later, chapter 15, your children are going to be like the stars of the heaven. Can you count them? No, obviously not. Well that's going to be your children are going to be innumerable as well. So okay, Abraham's response here, however, is a little bit different, and it's Oh. And Abraham believed in the Lord, and he was very excited about this. But why only here and not earlier? I mean, it's not as if they're more stars than sand of the seashore, dust of the earth. You know, it's impossible to count if, if that promise is exciting, it should have excited Abraham in chapter 13. But it's not until Chapter 15 that Abraham reacts to the promise of numerous children with great excitement. The clue lies a few chapters later, chapter 22 and again, let me read the words to you in verse 17, I will surely bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heaven and as the sand that is on the sea. Shore.
Daniel Lapin 20:04
This is it so to remind you, chapter 13, your children will be just like specks of sand. Chapter 15, your children will be like stars, terrific. Chapter 22 your children will be like the sand of the seashores and like the stars. Why do you need both metaphors? Answer ancient Jewish wisdom to the rescue. The answer is that although there is no distinction between Sand and Stars when it comes to quantity, there is an enormous distinction between Sand and Stars when it comes to quality, the difference is that sand is only significant in conjunction with other sand. A grain of sand, in and of itself, is nothing. It's the wind blows it away. It's only when grains of sand combine with lots and lots of other grains of sand that you can build structures. You can build a dam. You can there's nothing you can't do with huge amount of dirt, which is limitless quantities of grains of sand. So the promise that Abraham's descendants will be like grains of sand is a promise of high quantity but low quality. In other words, value only in the connectivity individual value almost insignificant. Abraham wasn't satisfied with that. God then, in verse chapter 15 makes an additional promise, not only like what I told you in chapter 13, but now your children will be like the stars of the heaven. Oh, Abraham, so excited that. So why? Because stars of the heaven are not only high quantity, they're also high quality, very significant. Each star is a sun, although we can't see them, every star might well have numerous planets around it, and who knows what those planets contain. Each star is a huge world on its own, and that's why, when we use the word star, that's what we mean. We say he's such a star. We don't mean that the whole football team are stars. We're saying he individually is a star that or we say a movie star, we don't mean the whole cast of the movie. We're talking about an individual person. And so it is that Abraham is now excited, because God is promising quantity and quality. He's saying that Abraham's descendants are going to have this huge secret of individual development of self as a star, but also the development of the ability to connect and to cooperate and to collaborate and to create in harmony with others, the secret of the stars. And that's it. Abraham is given the secret of stars and sand, and this gets locked in in chapter 22 where God says, Your children are going to be like the sand of the seashore and like the stars of heaven, two separate promises. They both are high numbers, but one speaks to the development of the individual, while the other speaks to the development of this incredibly powerful capacity to connect and communicate and to cooperate and to collaborate and to create that's hugely valuable. And so that really is something we try. We try to develop in and of ourselves, somebody who learns all the techniques of connection but has not developed himself at all. There's an emptiness to it. There's almost a sadness where the person brings nothing to the table, and he's desperate to make friends, and he's desperate to connect, but nobody else feels the urge to connect with him, because there's nothing there. And that's why it's so important self development to become the star, but then also developing the ability to connect. And that's the sand Secret, secret of the sand and the stars together, and that is the essence of God's blessing to Abraham that then becomes one of the great secrets of Western civilization, a combination of developing the individual and developing the individual's ability to connect. And the connection makes sense, because the individual brings something to the table. Others want to connect with you because of what you've built of yourself, how you've developed yourself, what you've made of yourself. And this is what we try and do with our. Jobs, what we try and do with our children, and what we try to do with our students, and that is, we help them grow and develop as individuals, while at exactly the same time not neglecting the techniques and secrets of connection, the sand secrets, how you connect with others, consideration, courtesy, manners, the sensitivities to other people. And you know, we all know what incredibly brilliant and highly educated people are who have no social skills. So they've spent most of their lives developing themselves intellectually and academically and educationally. And they may well be people who who work on the faculties of universities, and they're not terribly good at connecting. They don't even have much of an interest or a need in connecting with other people,
Daniel Lapin 25:53
and indeed, most of us do not befriend them. And so that's one extreme, very focused on self development, indifferent to social connection. Doesn't work. People who are indifferent to individual development but focused on social connection, they want to be the life in the soul, high, back slapping, happy, go lucky. And it also doesn't work, because what interest do I have in forming a deep connection with somebody who is so empty and so it's so important, not only for ourselves as individuals and our children and those whom we are responsible, but for the development of society, that the members of that society are able to function on both levels. It's one of the reasons that people who serve on the faculties of universities are very, very developed on the individual star front, but not very focused, not very knowledgeable, not very experienced on connection. They're also not very good economically, they make appalling business people, because business is essentially the art of connection and collaboration and producing additional value, turning one and one into 37 instead of two, that comes about through the magic of into human creativity. And so it's, very, very interesting to me that societies that are able to generate both those qualities. I'll tell you where you see it very much. Is in the land of Israel, where Susan and I were there when the war broke out, and as a result, we were not able to get a flight out. They severely restricted the amount of air traffic in and out of the country, and it took us 10 days or so before we were able to secure a flight out. But that's a place where you do see tremendous emphasis on both. Why? Because that is a biblical value that you know you're supposed to look at this evolving discussion. Chapter 13, chapter 15, chapter 22, in Genesis, and to say, Wait a second, what's going on here? First the promise is a sand promise, and no excitement. Next promise is stop lots of excitement there. And then God gives both together, sand. Okay, now I'm getting the picture, and this is at the heart of biblical success and at the heart of Western civilization in the sense that Western civilization is this balance. It doesn't allow the introspective, egotistical, narcissistic obsession with self. It is based on community and society at the same time, neither is it the socialistic vision of only the group matters. Everything must be sacrificed for the group. It's the combination of the two. Let's take a look at some of the other characteristics Shall we of of Western civilization that owe everything to the Bible and to the people of the Bible, and here you will see what we're getting to is an understanding of what lies behind anti semitism. It's not a mindless hate. It's not irrational. It makes perfect sense if you understand what I'm about to go through together with you. So one aspect of Western civilization is individual liberties, but also institutions of connection, political institutions, social institution. That's one of the reasons the United States Constitution guarantees right of free association. You can form clubs and groups in America. You can't do that in a communist country, there is no interest in allowing that at all. And so Western civilization successfully manages this balance between society group. Peoplehood and at the same time individual development. There's another one, a very important one, and again, it's easy to see that in terms of patents that are issued, in terms of technical books that are published, there is no even remote comparison between what the West publishes and patents and what the rest of the world does altogether. And am I saying the West is better than the rest? Of course, I am. But I'm not the only one saying it. Everybody who votes with their feet is saying exactly the same thing, although very often they arrive in their host countries and become extremely ungrateful immigrants, and very often work to undermine the society that has welcomed them in and given them an opportunity to benefit from functioning in a society that is based on these very fundamental biblical principles that lie at the heart of Western civilization, investigation of Natural Science. What are we talking about here? Yeah, the study of mathematics and of physics and of chemistry, the study of medicine, the study of biology. It's very noticeable that this is a thing of the West. It's not an accident that the Khomeini's of Iran sent their children to universities in America. Is not an accident that members of the Chinese Communist Party were sending their children to study in American or European universities. It is true the West for the long until the rest of the world began to pick up on this, the West held a long time monopoly on the study of the world. Where does that come from? Well, it comes from the opening seven words in Hebrew of the book of Genesis. In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. Why is that a source of fascination. Why did that have anything to do with the institutionalized investigation of the natural world? Very simply, one has to think about this a little bit, but the desire to know God is almost irresistible. Now we usually translate it into more comprehensible things. What am I saying? I'm saying most people do not walk around saying, you know, I can't wait to get to know God. How do I get to know God? Some people do, but the majority of us don't, but we find ourselves manifesting exactly that sensation and that emotion in other ways. Let me give you an example if, if I want to get to know the Beatles, and I go to somebody who's an expert on the Beatles and I said, we've looked I really want to learn about these four musicians from Liverpool. He say. The first thing he says to me is, do you know all their music? And I know what's that about. And he said, Well, there's no point in talking until you have learned and understood their music. And he sends me away. And he says, Don't come back to me until you know all their music. And I come back after that, and he says, How you doing? I say, You know what? I don't need you anymore by learning and getting to know their music, I think I've got them down. I know it. And this is also true of all forms of art. It's all forms of design, and even in engineering, when you get to know a person's create creations, you get a pretty good idea of that person, and this is why you know our most profound creations are our children. And more than one teacher has told me, elementary school teacher usually has, has told me you'd be amazed how much we know about what goes on in your family? Yeah, because you got to know our creations. And so naturally, you've got to know us as well. That's that's really how it works. This is one of the reasons that, when you, you know you, you get an expensive computer game for little Johnny, and then you discover he'd really just play with the little kid down the street. Our desire to connect with other people is a form of our desire to know God. We want to know his creations, and that's why the Bible uses not as a euphemism, but as a statement of reality, a metaphor for sexual intimacy is and Cain knew his wife.
Daniel Lapin 34:48
It's not just a metaphor, it's not just a figure of speech, it's not just a euphemism. It's right at its heart there, there obviously is no deeper and more profound and more complete way. Way to know another human being. And part of the seductive and irresistible appeal of that knowing is that it brings us into contact with God you know one of his creations so intimately and so profoundly. You actually do have a sense of the Creator, and I suspect that's one of the reasons that one of the involuntary exclamations that people at, people utter at at times like that, is, oh god, oh my god. I think there's something very real to that. And there's this deep, maybe subconscious realization that at the time like that, you are feeling close to the Creator by knowing one of his creations so intimately and so profoundly. So, yes, our desire to have instant communication, the internet, all of these things are an attempt to emulate God's omnipresence, to be able to be everywhere at once and to have instantaneous connection with people. Part of that is our fascination with an omnipotent and omnipresent deity. So so it is that early scientists from the from the sort of beginning of the period of modern science, say the 1600s and on, maybe even 1500s onwards, the overwhelming majority of the scientists were not only Western, but they were also religious Christian they were Bible believing Christians. The names roll off one's tongue. They're just so many of them who were profound Bible believing Christians. Why? Well, because their deep desire to know God drove them and motivated them to study his creation, because Judeo, Christian tradition, based on the Bible, is alone in establishing as a fundamental axiom that in the beginning, God created heaven and earth. Therefore, by studying Heaven and Earth, I can get to know their Creator. And that is a huge impetus for the investigation of Natural Science. It is not an accident that the civilization that was rooted in the Bible leads or led the world in education and study and investigation of Natural Science. That's how it works. Another thing, The Five Books of Moses have a category of laws that are so numerous they are actually they're difficult to count, and there are several systems of counting them in ancient Jewish wisdom, what am I talking about? The Laws having to do with financial transactions. There are huge numbers of them. Why? Well, because God said at the beginning of Genesis chapter two, it's not good for man to be alone. And what is one of the best ways to bring people together financial transactions. Because when I do a transaction with somebody, we both benefit. We shake hands afterwards and we say, Thank you for coming in. Thank you for the business. It's been good for both of us. We both seek it out. None of us is using a gun to force the other into a transaction. The transaction actually benefits us both. I am happy to have spent the $20 to buy a Swiss army knife, and the vendor is happy to exchange one of his inventory for $20 in his cash register. There is great value in that. And so it brings people together, but it is inevitable that in the natural order of things, there are going to be disagreements. When people transact with one another, there's not a clear understanding. I'll rent you my car for a week. You'll pay me this amount of money, you'll pay for your own gas, and at the end of the week, you return the car to me. Okay, great. While the car is parked in your driveway, a kid down the street threw a stone and it hit and broke a window in the car. At the end of the week, you bring me back the car and it's got a broken window, and I say, Wait a second, I rented you a complete car with all fixed windows. You returning me a car needs to be the same as I lent it to you. And you say, No, you know it has more miles on it. There's wear and tear. Broken windows is part of the wear and tear that's covered. It in the cost of the rental. I didn't do it. Had there been any negligence on my part, I'd obviously pay to have it repaired. But I I'm an innocent party some kid down the street, I know you know it was through a stone broke the window. You know that that's just part of normal wear and tear. Who's right on this? And I'm sure I have you scratching your head on it, you'll say, Well, I'm, you know, I'm sure there's an answer in state and federal law in the United States of America, there's probably an answer to that, and it might have to do with the wording in the original contract. Okay, fine, but it needs an answer. And there's 1000s of circumstances like this where two people engage in a mutually profitable transaction and something goes wrong, and how can they stay friends? And the answer is, by a system of law to which everybody subscribes. We all agree beforehand. This is how matters will be resolved, and so if something goes wrong, it gets resolved. It doesn't impact our friendship. We're still able to retain the relationship and we'll do more business together in the future. And that's exactly how it works. Western civilization built its entire system of jurisprudence on the Five Books of Moses. You don't believe me, well, what you might wonder then, why is it that until the 1960s I think maybe 1950s British law prohibited homosexuality in the light of today's thinking on the topic. You know, you might that's crazy. Why would they care about that? Well, because they took their the British system of common law, took their legal system largely from the Romans, and the Romans took it largely from the Hebrews. It was the Hebrew it is in the the Five Books of Moses that as well as explaining who is responsible if damage is done to an object that is rented, there is also a prohibition on homosexuality. And all of this was lifted into Roman law, all of it became British law. And would you believe it British law then became American law? And guess what? The prohibition against homosexuality remained there also until only a few decades ago. And so you may why? Yeah, because the origin of all these systems of law that facilitated economic transactions and made the west the economic powerhouse that it is well because that came from Hebraic law, laws about male female relationships and treatment of women,
Daniel Lapin 42:40
again, if you don't set up a system for male female relationships, the sex drive is so important, is so powerful, that it will make almost all productivity impossible. In other words, if whether I'm at work or I'm at home, there are always opportunities for sexual adventurism and concupiscent behavior, then nothing else happens and so again, derived right out of the Torah, right out of the five books of Moses, comes an entire body of law having to do with male female relationships, structuring marriage, formalizing institution of Marriage, and so on and so forth. Responsibility for children, how women are treated, if their marriage is terminated, what happens to the tremendous care taken, recognizing the inherent vulnerability of women. Law does that, and that's exactly what it's about. Property Ownership a huge novelty. In fact, the Indians that first greeted the Plymouth settlers in 1620 they didn't understand the idea of owning land. They thought it was like the notion of owning the stars and the sun and the moon and the heavens. You can't own land. Yes, you can. And again, a huge novelty. Again, in the book of Genesis, Abraham engages in the first transaction, the first real estate transaction. Buying land is not just a story. This is laying down the foundations of an earth shattering development, and that is that everything works better when people own things, ownerlessness a bad state of affairs. Everybody owning something is like nobody owning it, and that's why FedEx offices are in better shape than post offices, because the government owning it is like nobody owning it. When a private company owns something, they care about it. And so the Bible introduces this huge novel idea. Nobody had been aware of it before that, and that is that property ownership is a reality. It's how people function best. And so again, Roman law, British law, American law, institution. Rationalize these ideas of ownership of property. Again, it's not an accident that in communism, one of the very first foundational principles is no private ownership of property. The idea that the unit of society has to be the family as much as the individual, that marriage is in the interests of society. Tax law for many years, used to be built on this principle. All of these things that built Western civilization into what it became are all things that grew out of the Bible. And if you want to understand anti semitism is very, very simple. The one characteristic that unifies people who are, well, trying to destroy civilization really, whether they are ruling that shoplifting is no longer a crime, it's just a little behavioral quirk or whatever it is, defunding the police, or all of these things, everything you can is a war on civilization. You might ask, why would anybody want to destroy civilization? And I'm going to leave that for you to answer, and if you remember of our happy warriors community, you'd be able to just go on to the we happy warriors.com website and put in your thoughts on this, on this podcast, why it is that, yes, there are People who trying to destroy civilization, Islamism, trying to destroy western civilization. Now that's easier to understand, because the goal is to replace it with Islamic culture, which is quite different. Western civilization and Islamic culture cannot coexist. There are two mutually incompatible philosophies. There's no question about it. But it goes way beyond that as well. Are criminals consciously trying to destroy western civilization? Well, not in a philosophical sense, but they are trying to civilization works against them. Civilization suppresses crime and punishes criminals, and so anything that weakens the forces and powers of civilization are good for career criminals. And little by little, an alliance is built up to hate civilization and the people who brought civilization to the world, well, they're the Hebrews. And therefore, if you hate civilization, you kind of got to hate the Hebrews as well. And indeed, that's exactly whether it was Hitler and the Nazis, or whether it's islamicists or whether it's common criminals. There is a common denominator, which is anti semitism, the hatred of Jews, the hatred of the people who brought the principles of civilization to the world and who ultimately contributed to the creation of Western civilization. A lot I've covered there, and I hope you find it valuable, and I'd love to hear from you. Place to communicate with me is at the We Happy Warriors.com website. If you're not a member, become one. And if you enjoy the values of Western civilization, and that is what we promote at the American Alliance of Jews and Christians, then you might want to support it. So hop over to www.aajc.org The American Alliance of Jews and Christians, aajc.org and go ahead and support it and participate. Because I don't believe civilization can be saved by the Jews or by the Christians, but I think it can be saved by a partnership. I think of it as a great alliance, and that is something I'm very committed to working towards all the time, each day and every day. So I look at you as a friend and as a partner, standing shoulder to shoulder, and wish you a week of incredible progress coming up a week of progress with your family and your finances, your friendships, your faith and your fitness. I'm Rabbi Daniel Lapin, God bless.
