TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Your 5Fs Will Keep You Afloat Even If The Sky Falls In
Date: 04/26/2026 Length: 01:02:33
Daniel Lapin 0:00
Welcome Happy Warriors to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show, where I your rabbi, reveal how the world really works. Thanks for being part of the show, and thanks to all of you who support the show. And this is something that each and every one of you as a Happy Warrior know that you always get in proportion to what you give. And the way of supporting the show is to go to RabbiDaniellapin.com forward slash start and you will there see an opportunity to make a donation to the AAJC, to the American Alliance of Jews and Christians, which is the promoter and producer of this show, so hoping that you enjoy the show enough to want to participate in making it happen and bringing it to you on a regular basis. So as a Happy Warrior, you will also be able to get hold of the bonus podcast, especially for you all and all of that at rabbi. Daniel lapin.com, forward, slash, start and away you go now the just a day ago, on Saturday evening, there was another attempt made on the life of President Trump. This was at the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, DC. It was at the Hilton Hotel, and thankfully, nobody was injured, except, hopefully, maybe the asylum himself. And he is caught. He's a young man from Torrance, and he apparently did it for political purposes. Okay, so here's the thing. You know, there is a certain amount of wisdom, enduring wisdom, that can be reaped from popular culture, not all. I mean, there's a lot of popular culture that is nonsense, the Cinderella story, the well, you know what? There's certain truth. And the idea that I'm going to take that back, the Cinderella story also has a certain amount of truth. It is hypergamy, which is that the prince can definitely marry the peasant girl, and within a short space of time she will be a princess. It doesn't work. The other way, a peasant cannot marry a princess, and in the hope that he will become a prince, women become move upwards to join the socio economic rank of their husbands. It doesn't work nearly as easily the other way around. So there's some truth in that. Remember the Shawshank Redemption that was a movie that sort of used the metaphor of prison for the restrictions and difficulties of ordinary life. And it showed you know that hope and discipline and friendship can sometimes persevere. Or there was, when was that? 1990 1994 and then also that same year was Forrest Gump. Remember him that in an often unfair world, decency and discipline and dignity can win out, not every single time. But there's some truth in that, and I give you that, that that those examples, just because I don't want you to laugh at me for quoting from a James Bond book, in this case, not a movie. But Ian Fleming wrote the James Bond novels, and the seventh one was Goldfinger, and he published that in 1959
Daniel Lapin 4:03
and in it, you may I'm assuming, I'm assuming you've seen it. In it, the villain Oric Goldfinger says to James Bond, he says to him, Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago, once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and the third time it's enemy action. So all these three attempts on the president, two of them were in 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania in July of 2024 you remember the president won his second term in November elections of 2024 and in Butler in July that year, a young man manages to get off a shot. That grazes the president's ear right that close to an assassination. And in September of that year, what was his name, there was Thomas crooks. And then in September of that year, there was a guy in Florida, Ryan Wesley, Ralph managed to get within easy shooting range of the golf course that the President was going to be on, and he sat there waiting in it with a sniper's rifle, and again, almost by chance, they got hold of him. I don't know. I'll leave it at that. I'm not. I don't know any more information. I just know that the in the words of the sage Ian Fleming, once, it happens twice, okay? A coincidence, three times. Enemy action. I'm not sure whether this is three times in a very similar kind, you know, a single guy, and each, each case, you know, not, not visibly, a lunatic, this, this last guy has was, was made Teacher of the Year by an organization he teaches for. I think he has a degree from Cal Tech, which is perhaps one of the best engineering schools in California, if not the entire country. So in each case, these guys aren't lunatics there, and somehow they've got to within range, shockingly close and so here again, three times, I'm just saying, I'm not saying anything. Really. I'm just saying I don't know anything. I'm just quoting the sage Ian Fleming in the 1959 novel, Goldfinger. So I've spoken about another sage, a lot less reliable than Ian Fleming, a lot less productive in every possible way. And this was the late unlamented Paul Ehrlich professor of butterflies at Stanford University. I stress professor of butterflies because he made in his book 1968 The Population Bomb, published two years before the huge celebration of Vladimir Lenin's birthday of 22nd of April. 1870 Earth Day was made the 22nd of April. 1972 years earlier comes Paul Ehrlich speaking about how The Population Bomb and he made just a series of catastrophic predictions. Not a single one of them came out to be and I don't even it wasn't a book about science. It was a religious tract, because, as I said in the last show, religious tracts do not change just because people come up with evidence that they're wrong, and despite repeated evidence that Paul Ehrlich couldn't have been more wrong, it made absolutely no difference. He was still honored. The book was honored, and among the people that honored Paul Ehrlich was Donald Kennedy, who became president of Stanford, talking about the elite, and also a guy called John Holdren. Now, John Holdren was science advisor to Bill Clinton in 1992 to 2000 and he was again appointed Chief Science Adviser to Barack Obama from 2008 to 2016 and he was John Holdren strongly supported Paul Ehrlich's views, which are that if people will not voluntarily
Daniel Lapin 9:06
cut back on population, then we need to take steps to make them do it. And John Holdren supported Pearl Paul Ehrlich's support for when Indira Gandhi pushed for forced sterilization in India and when China pushed for the single child part not where they did these things, Paul Ehrlich applauded them. He wanted to develop a government office in America to prepare programs of forced sterilization in America in order to cut back on population. Now it's, I mean, in this day and age, does anybody still think that too many people is the problem in the United States of America? That's really what I'm asking. Do people really think that? Well, I can show you something that says they do. What I'm I'm looking at is a full page ad in a in a good newspaper, good magazine. I read it regularly. And this full page ad reads, negative population growth. Incorporated launches comprehensive Earth Day 2026, this is in a current issue, of course, and this is an educational campaign, NPG, national negative population growth, the nation's premier organization devoted to achieving a smaller, sustainable US population and world population, we urge all Americans to recognize population size and growth as credible threats against any effort to preserve Our environment for future generations and so on. They tell what their campaign is and how you can help. You can contact your mayor and your governor and remind them that population size and growth are big threats and our biggest worries. Reach out to high school educators in your community. It says, support. NPG, this. This is Oh, so, by the way, negative population growth is a national nonprofit membership organization founded in 1972 right, two years after Earth Day. So a lot was happening in 1972 and, yeah, what's so interesting is that the reality is now available to anybody who wants to know in exactly the same way as I've given you this example. I could give you many others, but I've given you examples. The information is out there that non kosher food, food that is not certified kosher according to the dietary rules of the Old Testament, that food is cheaper than kosher food, that information is there, and yet I still persist, and my wife and I still persist in purchasing only kosher food. Come on, couldn't we? Didn't we know we could lower our budget? Well, yes, but the reality is that, like everybody, many of our financial decisions are made for reasons other than material ones. Not everything we do is cost driven and our choice in food purchase would be one example, because it's a religion. It's not a science, it's our religion. And so here as well, negative population growth. Paul Ehrlich, all the people who still believe that too many people is the problem. Hey, the information is really out there. It doesn't make any difference, because when it comes to religion, the facts don't matter. I was looking at the American fertility rates. In other words, I want to know how many new babies are being born in America. All right, it's of importance to me, if for no other reason, then I would like to be sure that companies in which I own stock will have customers for their services and products. Otherwise, they're not going to be able to pay dividends on their stock, and that wouldn't be good for me. And so I'd like to know that they're going to be increasing number of people, if for no other reason than that, the economy should function. And so I looked from the year 2000 to 2025, our fertility figures did this 2000 to 2008 slightly up, and then 2008 to 2025
Daniel Lapin 14:09
we way down. And the figures, actually, the fertility rate figures are in 2002 children per women, 2008 up to 2.1 children per woman, which, by the way, is minimum replacement level. That's not good enough for my stock investments, but it's not catastrophic. And then from 2008 we down to 1.6 down to 1.62 2.1 1.6 2000 2008 to 2025, and that is exactly echoed if you look at births per 1000 women, births per 1000. Women. It's a different way of getting the information. Births per 1000 women depends on a calendar or a period of time. So in the year, 2000 births are per 1000 women. Went from 61 births per woman, 2008 up to 69 and then 2025, way down to 53 so whether you look at the figure, the time based figure of births per 1000 women, or you look at total life children per woman, makes no difference. Things are very serious in America. They are extremely serious. More serious in South Korea. They're more serious in several European countries, but even in the United States of America, pretty bad. I throw out as an aside because I have discussed it separately in Israel, overall, nationwide, it's about three, little over three nationwide, and so yeah, it is the only industrialized country with an above replacement fertility rate. Now, if you look at the demographic surveys on this stuff, they all come to the same conclusion, in 2008 there was a financial crisis, and so that is why it started going downhill from 2008 I don't agree with that, and I'd be interested to know what you think again as a happy warrior, please go on the happy warrior website and let's talk about this. I'd love to hear what you think. I don't think it's because of financial because I don't think people do not have children because they don't have money. I don't think you can pay women to have children. I don't think that works. The evidence from every country, from South Korea to Hungary to Sweden is they've struggled and come up with programs to pay women to have baby. Doesn't work. So I don't believe that the explanation for the drop from 2008 to 2025 is due to the financial drop, because the fact is, while there was a financial drop in 2008 there's been a recovery since then, and we're seeing no matching recovery in in births. And secondly, I don't think that it has to do with money. I think it has to do with a sense of optimism for the future, and in terms of optimism, I think there is a positive correlation between religion and optimism. If I live in a world that is ultimately administered by the boss, our Heavenly Creator, then I feel I live in a world of abundance because he's an infinite God and he can provide. And I live in a world that is not a world of shortage and so having children, it's a positive thing, doesn't worry me at all. But if I am a secular individual, my entire worldview is material. By this, I don't mean materialistic in the sense that you do a lot of shopping. I mean material in the sense that everything of any significance in the world can be measured in a laboratory. And if you believe that, well, then you live in a limited world, because on the surface of it, it would appear, and this was what Thomas Malthus said at the end of the 1700s the late 18th century, and it's what Paul Ehrlich said in 1968
Daniel Lapin 18:57
which is that human beings increase exponentially, and natural resources increase arithmetically. And that means human beings rise on a graph that looks like this, the number of people resources increase on a much lower slope, and eventually those slopes cross, hence there will be large scale famine, and millions of people will die from starvation in America, which is just what Paul Ehrlich predicted by the end of the ninth the end of the 20th century. Well, the we're now a quarter of the way through the 21st Century, and there is still no famine in the United States of America. If anything, there's a plague of obesity. So people are not having too little to eat. They got too much to eat. Paul Ehrlich was wrong. He might have been right with butterflies, that was his specialty, but people are not butterflies. And so everybody knows that the population, everybody who cares. To Know. Knows that population is shrinking. Everybody knows that shrinking population is a huge problem, and people still send money to organizations that work to limit population and to shrink the size of populations. That is how it works. It can't be helped. That's what happens. And these, these people, John Holdren and Donald Kennedy and other people who were along with Paul Ehrlich and I mean, he got the MacArthur prize for this rubbish, and he was on Johnny Carson about 20 times. Everybody loved it, because there is something appealing about secularism. People, a lot of say, oh, you know, I wish I could believe in God. It's so come No. Faith in God is hard work. It doesn't come naturally. It's you know any more than knowing how to make an omelet, comes naturally. It takes work and it takes diligence, and it's not easy and it's really much easier to take a material view of the world. Hey, you know what? I don't have to think deeply. What I can see exists. What I can't see doesn't exist, and that's all there is to it. And there is an attempt to come up with an evolutionarily, by a by evolutionary biology, explanation for every aspect of human life, when in reality, explanations, the simplest and most obvious explanation, is one that does take into account the spiritual things that are not immediately explainable in terms of measurable scientific phenomena. Yeah, because science is an extremely useful instrument, but it has limitations. It's only good for things that you can measure scientifically, and there's a lot of things that are outside that zone. Let me give you an example. It's really, it's quite funny, really, when you see attempts to try and explain scientifically, things that simply do not respond to scientific analysis. I'll give you an example. The universe is of what size? How big is the universe?
Daniel Lapin 22:38
The Universe, I wouldn't say most, because I don't know that it's most, but many scientists say that the universe is infinite. How big is the universe? There is no measurement. It can't be measured in a lab. You see the word infinite also isn't, strictly speaking, scientific, because you're now entering the realm of theology. God is infinite. Okay, end of story. The universe is infinite, really. Well, wait a sec. We're not done. You want to know how many stars I didn't I didn't memorize this. You want to know the stars in the universe? Well, stars apparently are a finite number. You want to know it's somewhere around 250, sextillion stars. That is somewhere around about 22 that's somewhere two, 2.52 and a half, followed by 23 zeros. Six zeros is 1,000,009 zeros is 1,000,000,012 zeros is a trillion, and this is 23 zeros, so a trillion, trillion. Okay, whatever it is, there's a fixed number of stars. Well, you see the logical problem, don't you, the universe is infinite. I'm just trying to show that not everything responds to scientific analysis. And here's an absurdity, which is scientifically, scientists will tell you the universe is infinite, but they also tell you that the number of stars is finite. That means that, theoretically, when you travel to the very last star, the universe still continues. So what do you see? Do you see an empty like the star? You look over your shoulder, you see billions of stars. Look forward, they're no more stars. Is that what's going on? And any solid scientist would say, Look, you should asking that question means you're not educated enough to even understand that. This is all abstract thinking. Abstract thinking means spiritual thinking. That's right altogether, by the way, the universe is not a very useful area of study for what possible. Well, we studied the universe. We'll learn more about the origin in the universe, and then that helps you how exactly I'm being very practical. Not at all. Doesn't help whatsoever. Artemis two, the moon probe with four American astronauts on board, returned to Earth on April 11. What's that about two weeks ago, and it spent 10 days in space, going to the moon, circling around the back of the moon, and coming back. I didn't know exactly what it cost, but it cost real money for what purpose, seriously? For what purpose do you really think that people are ever going to want to go and live on the moon? Do you think people are going to want to go and live on Mars? It doesn't make sense. It's not a real way of spending money. For what possible purpose now NASA pushes for this. NASA pushes for federal funding for this. And they speak national prestige. And you know, you remember what President Kennedy said in 19 was it 19 5919 No, 1960 I think he said the challenge to put a man on the moon in the next decade. And sure enough, by 19 summer of 1969 Neil Armstrong stood on the surface of the moon. Fantastic, you know? And it was very exciting. And for anybody who remembers watching it, it was amazing. Then, of course, there's some people who believe it was a hoax, but let's, let's leave it at that. And what happened? What you know, you'll hear all sorts of well, this helps us do this? No, the truth is, it helps us do nothing.
Daniel Lapin 27:07
A telescope is not nearly as useful as a microscope looking downwards towards the small that's where everything beneficial has come to human beings, all the way to nuclear power, ultimately, the answer to energy, the answer to our energy needs, nuclear power, and that's only comes from looking downwards to the smallness of the atom. But everything else you know producing valuable compounds, medicinal drugs, Miracle fibers, glass, fiber, glass, all of these things are discovered from using a microscope, by peering into the miniature, looking downwards to the small the telescope has brought us nothing of value. In other words, astrophysicists get on TV all the time, and they speak and they listen and they pontificate, but it's all valueless. Number one, it's all abstract, unprovable theory. Nobody knows. Is there life in outer space? What's the difference? Who cares if there is? Presumably, at some point it'll make itself evident. If it isn't, it isn't. But what does it matter? Why spend that sort of money? And if you thought about it, would actually come down to a real number. If you had the choice on your tax form when you're paying your tax, you could pay $25 more in order to continue funding space travel, or you could take. And I don't know what the figure is. I don't know if it's $25 or more or less, but whatever it is, me, I'd opt not to pay it what I just don't see the benefit I get from it, irrelevant. And now, if there is actually going to be a benefit in space travel, you know who'll come up with it? Elon Musk, Space X, let them do it. Let them do it with private money, and let them profit from it if they provide a marketable and valuable commodity or goods or services. Great God bless them. Good luck to them. But why should my tax money be extracted from me in order to send people on a jaunt around the moon. For what purpose? What do I get out of it? Absolutely zero. But this is what happens. This is what people are doing. And it's, it's a real it's, it happens because institutions acquire a life of their own. And so NASA has 1000s of people working for them, and all those people want to keep their jobs, and they're quasi governmental jobs, so they have very nice jobs and very nice benefits and very nice pensions. They want to keep. Keep them and so they hire lobbyists, and the lobbyists encourage government to increase spending for North American space, North American Space Administration, I think. Is that what NASA stands for? I think so, yeah, and that's what it's an institution. Call it corruption, if you will. But think of the teachers unions. What are we getting for all the increase in spending that we pay teachers? I mean, it's very nice, but what an amazingly protected occupation that really is. And I know that there are many, many wonderful, wonderful school teachers, but I also know that the New York School District has dozens, maybe hundreds, of teachers who get paid every week and do not teach. They do nothing because they have been proven to be beyond dreadful teachers. So they don't put them in the classroom, but they still continue paying them. How does that help me? If I was a taxpayer in New York, how does that help me? Exactly, but it doesn't work that way. Scores go down, students ability to read, students' ability to reason, students' ability to come out and be useful to an employer, all eroding year by year, worse and worse and worse. Teachers Pay up and up and up. Why? Because it's become a corrupt institution. The post office. What do you get? Have you noticed? What's happened to the price of a first class stamp, all it does is climb the service we get from the post office also improving hardly down. So why do we keep paying more corruption?
Daniel Lapin 31:57
It's all a way of transferring wealth from those who produce and pay taxes and giving it in large, large quantities to people who are able to get the government to play a role in redistributing the money in that fashion. That's really what's happening. It's grim and grisly and sad and miserable, but it's a reality that is really what happens. Part of it is that we have created a population that is economically illiterate, that doesn't make these calculations. We've created a population that is not only economically illiterate, but also morally illiterate. And again, this week, there was an extraordinary discussion in the New York Times, the great New York Times, the opinion section of the New York Times really some rather remarkable things. And what are they talking about? So here's how they introduced the section. If you don't mind, I'm going to just read it to you. When does shoplifting become an active political protest? The New York Times opinion editor Naja Spiegelman is calling this micro looting, micro looting, and it describes the phenomenon of people stealing small things from big corporations. The New York writer geo tole Don Tolentino and the political commentator Hassan Pike, join Spiegelman for a lively discussion on this trend. Hassan Pike, I do not know, but he is a an internet personality and influencer and Gia Tolentino is a woman who writes for New Yorker magazine. She's a journalist and, and so now I'm just going to give a few quotes from the interview. Her son, pika says, I think micro looting is cool. We've got to get back to cool crimes like that, bank robberies, stealing priceless artifacts, things of that nature. I feel like that's a way cooler than another cryptocurrency scheme that people are engaging in. So then the Spiegelman, the editor, the opinion editor The New York Times, says to these two people, pika and Tolentino, would you steal from Whole Foods? Whole Foods is now owned by Amazon, yes. And I have she says, under very specific circumstances, I will say, I think that stealing from a big box store. It's neither very significant as a moral wrong, nor significant in any way as protest or direct action, but I did steal from whole foods on several occasions. Wow. This is a an elite journalist who's quite comfortable. I. Acknowledging in public that she's stolen from Whole Foods. I don't feel bad about it at all. So the New York Times said to her, is that because Whole Foods is a corporation? Yeah, she says
Daniel Lapin 35:19
I had a bit of consumer discipline about where I was spending my money, and I already felt like I was in the hole, even by shopping there. And it certainly felt, in a utilitarian sense, I was not a big deal. Guys, really not a big deal. Stole a few things from pika joins in and says, Well, I'm in favor of stealing from big corporations, because they steal quite a bit more from their own workers. So listen to this is the guy who is proudly proclaiming his own moral stance. Corporations steal from their workers. Statement, no proof that they steal from their workers, and so I can steal from them. I think this is serious, because he's got a lot of followers, lot of followers. And if this is what a large number, maybe a growing number of young Americans, think, then the economic future of the United States is very grim. Listen to more.
Daniel Lapin 36:37
The things you steal from whole foods are factored in, they make a bottom line calculation of shoplifting and things, so it doesn't make any difference. These are mega corporations, and they still end up having increased profit margins. In any event, I'm saying that I don't care if someone needs the food, they should just steal it. Wow, it's almost breathtaking, but it's interesting to actually think about the way they modulate the argument. If it's to steal food, of course you should steal How about if it's to steal an iPhone? I'm not sure what they'd say, but that's how they'd figure it out, on the basis of what's being stolen and from whom the stealing is done, we feel quite friendly towards stealing for need. I think if someone was walking out of Whole Foods with a bag of food and using it for food or giving it to poor people. Most people would agree there's nothing wrong with that. That's what he said.
Daniel Lapin 37:56
And here are the rules said. Hassan paika, if you steal from the poor, you become rich. If you steal from the wealthy, you go to prison. So there's only one direction where you can do unlimited theft and erode the social contract for the 99% not sure I know what that means. The wealthy are allowed to engage in theft. Wage theft is the most consequential amount of theft that takes place in the United States of America. Wage theft that means underpaying workers. Piker says, Frederick Engels wrote about he was the guy who co wrote the Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx. Frederick Engels says piker wrote about the concept of social murder. Brian Thompson, as the United Healthcare CEO, was engaged in a tremendous amount of social murder. Listen to this. Gosh. You remember, the CEO of United Healthcare was murdered by a young man Mangione, and he says, You got to understand it was quid, quid pro quo. Quid pro quo. Eric Brian Thompson was engaged in social murder, therefore for him to be murdered by Mangione made sense the systemized form of violence, the for profit, paywall system of healthcare in this country. This was a fascinating story for me, because of the healthcare system so many people immediately understood why this murder had taken place, even before they knew the shooter was or what the motive was. We had universalized the pain inflicted on us by corporations so that every American has experienced this.
Daniel Lapin 40:01
So for them, this murder is a payback for the torture they've suffered, and that's the reason why the reaction to Luigi Mangione was not so negative, and he's with it. He's on board with that. Pike goes on and says, Zoran, the thing with Zoran Mamdani, the mayor of New York, is that he does instill confidence in governance. People are for the first time, see someone actually making that positive change, and it brings more confidence, and it creates an environment where people can demand more Zoran mamdanis. This is what is going on, and that's why I always say I want to let 1000 Zoran mamdanis bloom around the country. They just waiting to be elected and to come into positions of power and show the rest of the country that you can actually change things for the better. You can do good government. The New York Times lady says, I love that. So a lot of we've been talking about is taking what little power we have, trying to take back some of the power for ourselves. What? Let me end by asking you, what's the one thing that you think should be okay but currently isn't okay? Piker says intellectual property, theft, stealing movies, things like that. The woman writes for The New Yorker, Jade Tolentino says one thing that should be legal that isn't I have to regularly explain this stuff to a small child, and I've so thoroughly explained to her that some things are against the rules, but they're okay, depending on who you are, and some things are not against the rules, they're not okay. There are so many perfectly legal things I do regularly that I find immoral, like getting iced coffee in a plastic cup. Serious, my friends, you know, if this was a comedy show or this was something isolated, I wouldn't waste your time telling you about this. But this is on the cutting edge of popular culture, New York Times, New Yorker magazine. Hassan pika, this is, I think, something we must get used to, and that is that people in America below a certain age are thinking this way, and we need to understand how they're really thinking. So getting coffee in a plastic cup is immoral. I find it to be selfish and immoral. She says, another thing is, I've taken so many airplanes for vacation trips, I've acted in selfish ways that may be legal, but they're thoroughly, unbelievably immoral. So maybe something like blowing up a pipeline, for instance, is illegal, but should be legal. New York Times lady Spiegelman says, I can relate to what you're saying. It's so hard to live ethically in an unethical society. Wow. So she continues. The editor of the New York Times, there are so many moments when I'm like, my comfort is more important than someone bringing me food through the rain, and it doesn't feel good, but it is part of living. I mean, no one's making me do that, but it's part of the way in which you live our society, and it's so incentivized, it splashed all over the subway ads. It's just be selfish. In other words, when you order through one of the you order takeout food through one of the delivery you're being unethical and selfish. If it's raining, isn't this? I want you to hear this, because they're not stupid people. These are educated people, not stupid, not unintelligent, not uneducated, not ignorant.
Daniel Lapin 44:10
But we have effectively been destroying a common moral matrix in United States of America since 1962 my date, and this is the result. We have allowed universities to teach no such thing as morality, and there can't be, because otherwise, whose morality are we going to use all the old arguments I've heard them dozens and dozens of times. Well, be aware we are now reaping the whirlwind, and be aware that there are real life consequences. Brian Thompson is dead. Luigi Mangione believed he was doing something good, and I got to point out that believing you're doing something good is not a mark of morality. Morality cannot be subjective. I'm sure there are a number of murders that are committed. The people I started off talking about so far, the three men who tried to murder President Trump, they would tell you they were trying to make the world a better place. What a person believes inside as to whether what he's doing is moral. Can't work a society like that. Morality cannot be subjective. It's got to be established and clarified. Theft is either theft no matter who you're stealing from, and no matter how little you're stealing. I should mention, by the way, ancient Jewish wisdom talks about how the flood, Noah's Flood, was brought about because of people stealing amounts of pennies. The idea being that that already shows the abolition of a common moral matrix, and society is destroyed through that, in very real terms, and so we are unleashing a deluge with this kind of thing. She then, in wrapping up, she says, speaking to Tom Tino, the woman journalist for New Yorker, and to Hassan paika, the online guy, what are some of the things that, what are some of the things that should not be okay, but currently are okay? And pika says extraction of surplus labor value, okay? It that's a term again from Marx and Engels, and it means that all employers are evil and all employees are exploited. And so Spiegelman, The New York Times are there. Oh, great, you gave me an answer, yes. He says, It's exploitation. And then she adds, I think New York should charge people to park on the street and everywhere. They all, oh, yeah, we really should do that. And then she comes to an interesting one. You know, what should be illegal? Private schools should be illegal. And her son, pika says to Oh, I agree with that. That's a great one. Yes, private, yeah, I can see why I'm sure I don't have to tell you my good that's remarkable. So is it okay to steal? She says to them, is it okay to steal from Whole Foods? I'm asking you explicitly. And Tolentino says, Sure. And pika says, Sure, no problem. Burn down your employer's warehouse because you're mad about wage theft. She says, No. He says, Well, he smiles impishly, and he says, My lawyers tell me to answer no on that. In other words, yes, go ahead and burn down your employer's warehouse if you feel you're underpaid. But I can't say that my lawyers tell you this kind of cutesy stuff. What a way to treat morality do? And so she confirms. So we have a yes from both of you on stealing from Whole Foods, and they both agree, yes, yeah, wow. Oh, amazing. That is truly amazing. And, you know, I've spoken in the past about how epochs and societies seem to last for about 250 years. Well, one of the things that breaks down over that 250 years is a common matrix of morality.
Daniel Lapin 49:04
When a great society is built, the first people building it have a clear moral vision, and everybody's on board, and everybody understands what's right and what's wrong and what's good and evil. And it takes about 10 generations and all that erodes. That's where we are in America today. There is no common morality matrix. There really isn't. I mean, on simple things like abortion, there's a major disagreement in society. But what's even becoming more astounding is there's a major disagreement on whether it's moral to execute the CEO of a corporation. Major moral disagreement on whether it's morally okay to steal from companies. That's pretty amazing. Morality is subjective, and so that's one area that Poe. Is a huge threat to the future of the United States of America. Is Iran a problem? Sure, no question about it. But this is a spiritual problem with frightening physical impact and so we can talk about Iran. We can talk about Institute guarding institutions and the results of what happens with this institutional and monetary corruption. Let me give you an example of that. Do you know when the very last battleship was built? Battleships? Right? You probably think the United States Navy has a whole bunch of battleships, and you'd be wrong. The last battleship built was the HMS Vanguard, built by the Royal Navy of Britain. It was the last battleship ever built. It was built in August 1946 Exactly a year after the end of World War Two, the USS Missouri was built just before that finished, finished before that. And of course, the surrender of Japan was signed on the decks of the Missouri. Missouri was battleships are huge, huge, huge vessels no more built since then. You know why? Because World War Two showed that they were becoming obsolete. It was too easy, and we saw this happen, particularly in the Pacific. Atlantic. Also saw it. We saw how easy it was for planes carrying torpedoes to destroy battleships. Now a battleship costs way more than an airplane carrying a torpedo, and so even if you spend three or four or 10 airplanes trying to blow upon battleship at the end of the day, that is a winning move, and battleships were just too easy to destroy. And so battleships became obsolete with World War Two. That's why no battleships were built since then. I and again, I welcome your comments at we happywarriors.com I welcome your comments on this, but I believe that aircraft carriers are now where battleships were in 1945 aircraft carriers are just too vulnerable to cheaper munitions. That's the whole gap you see in the in the end of the 19th century, there was the Anglo Zulu war, and on the 22nd of January, 1879 there was the first battle in which the British army was defeated by a technologically inferior force. A huge crowd of Zulu warriors descended on a small fortress in South Africa that was manned by, I think, about 1500 British army people. British Army soldiers and the Zulus through sheer number, although the Zulus had spears and clubs, and the British soldiers had Martini rifles, and in general, rifles always beat clubs. You see what I mean. Imagine, just imagine two tribes at war with each other. Each tribe has 1000 warriors, and one tribe has they're not technologically or economically equal. One tribe has spears and clubs and the other tribe has bows and arrows.
Daniel Lapin 53:55
Let's say that in order for guys with spears and clubs to destroy an archer with bow and arrows. Let's say it takes, I don't know, maybe 100 people to because the archers will be able to keep away, but little by little, in sheer numbers, they will encroach, and finally, they'll get close enough to club the archer to death, but 100 of them may have died. That's not a way you can sustain a war. You can't ultimately win about you can win a battle. You can't win a war like that, because if it's costing you 1/10 of your soldiers, you got 1000 soldiers, and 100 of them die to take out every single Archer of the enemy, and you both start off with 1000 warriors. It's not going to work, because you're going to have none left. And on the other side they're still going to have 900 what's 990 there was the problem with. With battleships, it may take 10 airplanes, torpedo airplanes, to knock out a battleship. So what? It doesn't matter. But that is a big win. And so when Japanese battleships were being sunk by American torpedo planes, that signaled the end of the war in the Pacific. There was, if you can't continue like that, where am I going with aircraft carrier? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, by the way. But where am where am I going with aircraft carriers? Well, the Gerald Ford is our newest aircraft carrier. We may be building others, I'm not sure, but the general Ford, how much does an aircraft carrier cost to build? And I want to be sure I've got this right. At least $15 billion there are different ways of computing the cost that make it higher than that, but at least $15 billion that is 15,000 million. Dollars to build an aircraft. By the way, it costs $10 million a day to operate. Now,
Daniel Lapin 56:14
Chinese hypersonic missiles have a range of 1000 miles. Now there is no defense against them. They're too quick. How much does it cost to build a hypersonic missile? Arrangers, depending whether we're estimating what the Chinese cost to build or what we cost, what it costs us to build a supersonic missile in America, but to build a hypersonic missile, the lowest estimate $100,000 the highest estimate is 50 million. 50 million. It sounds like a shockingly high figure, but wait if a $50 million let's say it costs 50 million the high end, and you can knock out a United States aircraft carrier that cost 15 billion. What is the ratio? It's 300 you've spent 1/300 of what the enemy spent to build the aircraft carrier. You've spent a 300th a third of a percent to knock it out. So if it takes you 20 missiles to take it out, it's still a win. It's a huge win. That's why I'm thinking that aircraft carriers are now as obsolete today as battleships were in 1945 I may be wrong. This is just me thinking and hoping I'm alone from many of you who will respond. As I said, we have a special site for you to be able to respond on. It's called we happy warriors.com and let me know what you think. But if that is the case, why are we still building aircraft carriers? I may be wrong, but if I'm right, I would I would ask, why are we building aircraft carriers? Why do we still have them? And I would answer that we have institutional rivalry between the Air Force and the Navy,
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and there are careers entrenched in both, and people are preserving their fiefdoms. They prepare, preserving their little worlds. They're Provost, preserving their jobs. And so they push to get studies to congress people explaining why we do need aircraft carriers. And on the other side, they'll say, we need more missiles. But all of these things are now being because things have got out of control. The systems are too big, and the morality is no longer a common moral system. And with that moral breakdown, there are a lot of people who not in it for their country or for their society, but in it for themselves. And so here we are, and it's no different in the United Kingdom, and it's no different than the European countries. The European Union itself is a monstrous, corrupt entity. So there it is. I don't want to be miserable about it, and I don't want to be depressing about it, because in the final analysis, even if all these things I'm talking about are real, the bottom line is that regardless of those things, if you focus on your five F's, you focus on your families and your finances, your social relationships, your friendships, and you focus on your fitness, and you focus on the spiritual part of your life, your faith, and you focus on the 10 interlinks, how your fitness impacts your finances and how your faith impacts your family and how your friendships. Impact your fitness, all of these 10 interlinks you work on, all that you are dramatically improving your life and the life of your children and the life of those you care about around you in your community. And so it is possible to become depressed. It's possible to become dismayed and pessimistic about some of these things. And indeed, there are problems, but the best way you and I at our level are able to do anything about them is increase the number of people who have a shared moral vision, and that means having children and supporting people who are having children, but remember, be fruitful and multiply is not what it says in the original Hebrew. In the Lord's language, it says, Be fruitful and raise your children correctly. Oh, that's right. Society just having more people, that's not good enough if they are destructive takers instead of constructive makers, then that's not helping the world at all. But you raise fantastic kids, and you are doing something really important to turn things around, if not this year, maybe next year, and if not this decade, maybe next decade, but don't for a moment, let the subversive thought enter your mind that by taking care of your five F's, you're being selfish. No, you're not. You're doing a huge amount for other people, because remember, you're not making money until you are delivering more value to everyone around you. There is no other way to make money, and if you are raising a family and educating your family, you're doing wonderful things for people around you, maintain your social connections, maintain your friendships made, maintain your societies. All hugely important. Take care of your health, your fitness, and be guided by the spiritual aspects of life. Your five F's. Our Website, as always, Rabbi Daniel lapin.com, forward slash start, and I look forward to your support, your participation, your help, and above, I want to hear what you guys think, that's what being a happy warrior really means. Thank you for being part of the show. I am your Rabbi Daniel Lapin, God bless.
