TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Why The Rest Hate The West
Date: 05/27/2026 Length: 00:59:37
Daniel Lapin 0:01
Greetings, Happy Warriors, and I just wanted to tell you that before we get going on the main topic of today's podcast, which is why the rest hates the West, and you should take a look at the description for full details. I really was passionate about it, I'll tell you that, but at any rate, what I wanted to tell you was that this Sunday, May the 31st, I am doing a live event.
Daniel Lapin 0:29
I'm going to do book signing and a conversation with everybody who comes along. It's going to be on the five framework for life, and I'm going to be signing copies of our book, The Holistic You: How to Integrate into Your Life, Your Finances, Your Friendships, Your Fitness, Your Faith, and Your Family. All of that's happening this Sunday afternoon. If you are anywhere near Southeast Florida, if you're in the Miami or Fort Lauderdale or Boca region in southeast Florida, Sunday afternoon, May 31st, from 3o'clock onwards at the Smoking Gun Cigar Lounge. It's very comfortable and pleasant place to have a conversation. We've done it before, and it was.. I enjoyed it very much indeed, and that's why we're doing it again. So, if you'd like to get together for a serious conversation about life, about the 5F framework for organizing our lives, and possibly on politics or anything else that anybody raises for a conversation. It is very comfortable, it's very convivial, and people can have coffee or cigars, or both, or whatever they want, while we're sitting and chatting, but it's an opportunity to spend two hours together among like-minded friends, and and sharing some good times. It's in the lounge called the True Believer Lounge, which is located in the Smoking Gun, which is a cigar shop and also a gun shop, and it's, it's, it's been enjoyable. So, I welcome you there. It is on Sterling Road, 6970 Sterling Road in Hollywood, or in Davie. It's right there, just a few minutes off I 95 in the Hollywood region of Florida, this Sunday, may 31 Look forward to seeing you there. God bless.
Daniel Lapin 2:26
Well, greetings, Happy Warriors, and welcome to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin Show, where I, your Rabbi, reveal how the world really works. Thank you so much for being part of the show. And one of the ways the world really works is that it's operated by human beings, not by machines, and that means that regardless of how sophisticated the process appears at root, there is still going to be somebody behind the desk, or maybe a number of people in a boardroom, or a number of people in an educational institution, or a number of people in a social gathering whose attitudes and ideas coalesce around certain fundamentals, which then become part of the process itself, and we call it politics, and we call it all kinds of names, but it doesn't really matter, because at the bottom it all comes down to the same thing, you've got to understand how the world really works, and it works because of human beings.
Daniel Lapin 3:46
When you remove human beings from the equation, everything is simple. There's no problem when you're talking about nothing but a machine, where you're talking about nothing but a flower growing or a rock sitting in the sun, there are no problems, there are no unpredictable, there are no mysteries. It all becomes different when human beings are involved, motivations become very complex, and so that is why it is important to be able to understand people, because at the root, in no matter what endeavor we find ourselves engaged, there are people involved, we are people, and so I want to take a quick look today at what I call why the rest hates the West. Why is it that what we think of as Western civilization has been an object of hatred by certain people, and this goes back a long time. We're talking, I'm saying it's about 50 years ago that the late Jesse Jackson, as a young agitator and black activist, showed up at Stanford University to lead undergraduates chanting hey ho. ho, Western Civ has got to go. This is an old story, and it's been nonstop since then, whether it is the Wall Street anti-Wall Street protests in Manhattan, or what goes on on university campuses, where nothing but negativity about America is taught. Now, Western civilization, let's first of all dispense with what is frequently offered as the explanation not only for why Western civilization is hated, but why that is correct, why such hatred is justified, and what is cited is slavery. So, again, I don't have to spend time on this. If you're not interested, nothing I say will change your mind, and if you are interested, you probably already know the truth now, or if you don't3, and a half minutes of research will tell you the truth, but Western civilization is notable, not because it had slavery, because virtually everywhere had slavery, and nowhere was it more prevalent than in Africa itself.
Daniel Lapin 6:46
Africans practice slavery to this day. A part of the Islamic world is said to practice slavery. It was completely ubiquitous, but how Western civilization distinguished itself was by eliminating it. The Royal Navy devoted a good deal of its resources during the 19th century to patrolling the west and east coasts of Africa to stop slavery, and it was the United States of America that lost a significant part of its manhood, a loss of hundreds of 1000s of its soldiers, civilians, citizens in the Civil War, ending slavery, so Western civilization has nothing to apologize for in terms of slavery. Another complaint against Western civilization is colonialism. Well, here again, colonialism is said because of the oppressive and, and intrusive, and compelling influence that university culture has had on American life over the last 50 years. You have to go back, I think, to President Truman to find the last president who was not a creation of the American university system, as far as I can think of. I think one can probably say Ronald Reagan wasn't, but since then it's been very, very intrusive, and so only the university promoted view of colonialism is what most people have been indoctrinated to believe to be fact. However, having grown up in Africa and being very interested in this topic, my view is different. Accept it, reject it, take it under consideration, but all I notice is that countries that in Africa that were colonial countries were countries that got rid of slavery, got rid of candle cannibalism, and developed a viable society far quicker than those countries that were not colonialized. Secondly, to this very day, although colonialism has left, and although the excuse runs weak that colonialism left an indelible mark, and that's why African countries have not sprung back to where they should be. Bottom line is that countries that were colonies of England, for instance, have been and are doing far better than countries that were never colonized or countries that were colonized by some other groups, and so again. Western colonialism. I'm not sure it was the tragedy that it's made out to be. I do think that if people could vote on it, and I'm talking about people with long memories, if people who remember, and I've spoken to longtime African thinkers and riders and ordinary people in a number of different countries who do remember what it was like, and it may sound trite to say it, but I think even today in America we may be getting to the point where people are willing to be open-minded on this topic and to be charitable, when Africans say back during colonialism there was much less corruption, there was much less crime. It was much safer to walk in the streets. People were able to make a living. Busses and trains operated and ran hospitals operated, had medicine, had doctors, took care of people, and so I'm not sure that if you actually ask people to choose between living in colonial Kenya or modern day Kenya, I'm not sure that the choice would be as clear as American or British intellectuals would like to think it is, and so when you've taken away slavery and you've taken away colonialism, what's left for reasons to hate the West?
Daniel Lapin 11:45
Well, the next thing they fall back on is that the West has become corrupted, and here there's some legitimacy. I don't think that's a reason to hate the West, because it's not as if anywhere else is operating in pristine purity has entertainment become vulgarized in the West. Of course, are there many problems in the West? Sure, but let's talk about the West as more of an idea than how it really is. In other words, if I or you or any of us who are advising a newly emerging society on what avenue they should follow for the structuring of their society, and they want to know, should they follow Soviet and Cuban era socialism. It's going to be tough to credibly make the argument that that's an advisable approach, if, if we're going to say, you know, what should they follow? Basically, we're not going to say follow America or follow in, we're going to say follow a Western idea, and there are plenty of books, plenty of thinkers, plenty of guides, plenty of authentic transmitters of the Western tradition that you, in your country, can begin to devise a system that is that is based on that, and that models that in a way that will most effectively produce a society that most people will be happy to live in, I think that's fairly obvious, and so that still leaves us with a question of why hate the West.
Daniel Lapin 13:30
Why do the rest hate the West? And I think also that I should clarify that when I speak about Western civilization, I'm actually okay dropping the word Western. The hatred is for civilization per se. Well, which civilization do you mean? And those of you who are regular listeners to me will know what I'm about to say, those of you who aren't will hear it for the first time, so with apologies to those of you who know exactly what I'm going to say, here it comes. There actually is only one civilization, that's all there is. There's just one civilization, and the evidence is that Japan, after World War Two, adopted Western civilization. China is to a large extent diluting traditional China. I shouldn't even say traditional Chinese modern Chinese socialism with Western civilization. When people vote with their feet and get on top of rickety dinghies to cross the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe, they are moving towards Western civilization, not towards any other kind of civilization. There's not an equivalent. Number of people trying to get from the coasts of France and Italy to North Africa, that's not the direct people want to move towards civilization. You don't have to call it Western civilization, because there aren't any others. Now, I admit, obviously, that there are hundreds, if not 1000s, of different cultures, historically and present in the world, plenty cultures. Cannibalism is a certain culture. It may not be mine, but it used to be certain people's cultures.
Daniel Lapin 15:34
Slavery, not my culture, but it used to be part of many people's culture. The Roman Empire, it's been estimated, would on average import 1000s and 1000s of slaves every year, because if you don't have a growing economy, then you need to bring in growing population, new people, and the way to do it was they captured countries and brought slaves back to the motherland to Rome, and so, yeah, slavery was a part of life in, in Sparta, talking about the years, you know, 400 500 BCE, during that Sparta had slaves. They brought slaves in to serve the native population. Slavery is a culture, it is not a civilization, but it is a culture. And so, when we talk about civilization, what is it that makes civilization, do you think? So, let us go through about eight steps, shall we? Number one, the value - I'm not giving you these in order of importance, it's I'm just giving you them in order because I can't speak eight ideas simultaneously, and I have to list them, but I would just as soon put them on the circumference of a circle than in a line, and so value of human life. Now this is really important, because not all cultures value human life to the same extent. It is not an accident that there are parts of Asia, like Bangladesh, and many other places in which floods occur every few years that drown 1000s and 1000s of people, vast amount of death and devastation, and it just keeps happening in the terrible tsunami of was it 2004 in Asia.
Daniel Lapin 17:46
The alarm bells were not even operating. It's like nobody really cares deeply, and I think that's true. But when a number of Dutch people died in a flood, when the North Sea flooded during a terrible storm, I think it was 1953 the Dutch embarked on the greatest land reclamation project in engineering history, and built dikes and drained the Zeid as a, and that was the last time Holland flooded, because they were not willing to suffer that loss of human life again. Civilization values human life to such an extent that we even value the human being after life exists, and even before life arrives. In other words, we honor the unborn child, and we don't care about debates, is it a, is it a life, isn't a life, that is what is soon going to be a human being. It therefore requires honoring a corpse, you know. When Aunt Agatha passes away after a long and happy life, do we put her in a big plastic bag and put her out in the alley for the city to pick up with everything else on Tuesday morning, of course.
Daniel Lapin 19:06
Not, we make it sacred, we treat it with respect, and we reverently place her in the ground with a ceremony, and people gather and speak about her. Life is treated differently in a civilization. The civilized way to treat life, you honor life, you value life, and you even value the vehicle that contained life yesterday, and we even honor that unborn life still, that's all part of civilization. Am I saying it's not civilized to abort children? I'm saying that it's barbaric. Yeah, what's hard when. When they used to execute people by hanging, everybody understood that it was abhorrent to leave the corpse dangling for days for the birds and for people to desecrate. People understood that, and there's much riding on the topic of people realizing when they hang somebody and they used to have public hangings, which was terrible, and but even then the idea the corpse has to be taken down and treated respectfully, that's part of a civilized way of viewing life. Life really matters, the can Canada-made law, medically assisted dying law, and it's barbaric. I mean, not to value life, that any group of people comes to this is not a mystery, because civilization takes an ongoing input of energy to maintain, because it's counterintuitive, it's fighting against spiritual gravity, and this is the important thing, spiritual gravity tugs us all down towards a low common denominator, towards barbarism.
Daniel Lapin 21:25
Maintenance of civilization is a constant effort of trying to lift up and make sure that we are hoisting it and carrying the burden. Civilization is not natural, any more than an airplane staying safely in the air, winging its way to its destination, is natural. It isn't. It takes considerable energy to make that happen. To keep a civilization aloft also takes a lot of work. Next item of civilization is treatment of women, so it's not hard to see what the role of women is in a non-civilized culture. You can find it today in, in certain elements of urban cities, in many cities, I mean, urban cities, there's no other kind. In cities around the world, where things have gone bad, you will find it's not much fun being a woman, the idea that women and children first, that in tough times we save women and children first. That's not an idea that sprang from Sanskrit, that's not an idea that sprang from Buddhism or Islam. That's an idea that is part of Western civilization, that women are venerated, that women are treated, women taken care of.
Daniel Lapin 23:11
The whole idea of alimony, and again, things today have deteriorated. I would never tell a newly emerging country, try and copy America, try and copy England, copy Sweden, copy Germany. You know there are elements of each that have been preserved and protected, but by and large, follow the corpus of Western civilization. Design your society in accordance with the ideals of Western civilization, you'll be fine, but the idea of alimony, that a man cannot just discard a woman with whom he's had a relationship and leave it offend for herself, can't do that, you know, the reality is that a woman's, and I'm going to say this because it's true, and I only hesitate because I do not want to sound.. well, forget how I'm going to sound.. I'll just say it, and that is that a woman's general value deteriorates the older she gets, but her specific value to a specific man increases. In other words, whilst men may joke and some men act on it, but never, or shall I say, seldom, with great joy and an improvement in life.
Daniel Lapin 24:47
So, men may joke about trading in their old wife for a young, fresh model, but in reality, that's not what most men really want to do, even if they had the resource. Is to pull that off. The fact is that the woman with whom they have lived for many years, the woman with whom they have had children and raised children, the women, the woman with whom they have endured tough times and triumphed, the woman with whom they have experienced glorious moments of unforgettable bliss, they don't want to get her value is limitless, and so when a woman who is older and has been married and is now rejected, her value is not good in general, because the one man to whom she had real value is now no longer in the picture, and so a civilized society says you can't leave that woman without resources, that's out of the question. Hence, alimony. Where does that come from? Actually, the Bible, that's right, it's a Bible idea, ideas of inheritance, the idea that a widow, that a widow will inherit her husband, and I think that that's in most Western countries, I believe that's sort of more or less all automatic, because it's understood for the same reason. In other words, this idea of consideration for women, caring for women, understanding that it is only in a super civilized culture, only in a super civilized environment that a woman can talk nonsense about not needing a man. Women need men just as much as men need women.
Daniel Lapin 26:47
A man needs a woman, a woman needs a man. A woman who says I don't need any men is only able to say that operating in an environment where she can dial 911 and call for physical backup to protect her at a moment's notice, or and when a woman is capable in an environment that allows her to make money, and the reality is that it has almost been artificially developed in America. I'm speaking of, in the, to the extent that if one took the cultural thumb off the scale, women would not be doing as well as they are doing, because in the final analysis we know this, I happen to have the stats on doctors, but it's in many, many, many different areas, men work longer and harder than women. Women doctors are much quicker to move on to three or four day work weeks.
Daniel Lapin 27:50
Men doctors very often work six day work weeks. There is a difference in the amount of work you get from a man than what you get from a woman. It is also not an accident that in every job that actually makes things, roads, machinery, on and on and on, you look at the workforce, it's guys, not girls, and so we have put our thumb on the scale. One of the ways we've done that is we've now got more women than men in universities, other than in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, other than those hardcore fields, and so we've put our thumb on the scale to make it possible for women to say I don't need a man economically, but in the real world women who throw their lot in with a man, good woman, good man, those women live far, far better than women who go it alone.
Daniel Lapin 29:03
Do you really need me to tell you that? I don't think so. And so civilization means reverence for human life and treatment of women. Next, let's move on to technology now. Technology doesn't just mean the the latest iPhone or artificial intelligence that happens to be a current manifestation, but let's try and define technology. Technology, and this is not a carefully formulated expression, but I'm working on this together with you. If we, if we do it together, what does technology mean?
Daniel Lapin 29:54
Remembering that one of the earliest technologies was the use of fire, and then. Little by little we realized that we could use fire in the form of energy, and we eventually, it took a long time, but eventually in the 18th century we found a way of using steam power remarkable, and to this day a steam locomotive, and that they're not making any more, but you can find them and see them at museums sometimes, or sometimes there are places you can go to and ride a train with a steam locomotive for an afternoon excursion, but that steam locomotive is is old, old, old technology, but at the time cutting edge. It changed the world.
Daniel Lapin 30:48
Trains, steamships changed the world. That was technology, realizing that wood wasn't the last word in energy, because a shall we say a kilogram of wood contains only a little energy, but if we want that same energy from coal, well, we'd need only a much smaller amount of coal, and we'd get the same amount because coal has more densely packed energy within it, and then we discover, well, you know, we can even go beyond coal, we can go to oil, and now just a tiny little bit of it contains the same energy as a kilogram of wood, and this is one of the reasons that we never had coal-powered airplanes, because it would need to carry such a weight of coal that it couldn't get off the ground, but oil delivered much more energy for the amount of weight that the fuel weighed, and so all of this was evolving technology.
Daniel Lapin 31:53
We can follow the same map in medicine, we can follow the same map in convenience, we can follow the same map in communication, originally flashing lanterns from hill top to hill top, and then in May 1844 William Morse lays a copper wire between Baltimore and Washington, DC, and the telegraph is born, cutting edge tele technology. This technology means if we want to try and define it, technology is using human ingenuity in uncovering how the world really works to make the struggle for life easier to be able to make life easier, maybe I can leave out the word struggle, and that's what it is. And so it's through technology that we live healthier and longer. It's through technology that we're able to accomplish so much more with our time, and again, you know, there is a reason why in many parts of the world the wheel hadn't evolved, nobody had come up with a wheel at the time, by the time other parts of the world already were traveling in steam powered ships, and so not everyone develops technology in exactly the same way. The fact is that technology in the area of science generated throughout the 15, 1617, and 1800s overwhelmingly by scientists who believed in the Bible and in God.
Daniel Lapin 33:45
I mean, that's just a reality, like it or not. That is a reality again. There is a reason for that. The reason is that the greatest thrill in the world is getting to know God. Now, for a lot of people, they don't embark on that, which is it may seem mysterious if it's such an incredible thrill. Why don't they do it?
Daniel Lapin 34:10
Well, if you speak to a truly odd mountain climber, think of Alex Honnold, who climbs with frightening competence, very often without ropes. I think that's his style of climbing, and you know, you say, what does it feel like to get to the top of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, California, having climbed the 3000 feet without ropes, and I haven't asked him or seen him ask this question, but I guess he would say, "You can't imagine. It was the most incredible feeling. It was so elating, you know, that's what I would imagine he'd, he'd say, doing that, and to wish I'd say, "Well, why doesn't everybody do that then?
Daniel Lapin 34:59
And the answer is because not everybody is capable of making that climb, not everybody wants to expend the energy in order to get a thrill the likes of which they can't even fully comprehend, never having done it, and so the thrill of getting to know God is a lot like that for a lot of people, it's unimaginable, and so they don't, they don't do it, and they can't imagine doing it, and for other people they can't do it, and for other people it's just too much, and so they just don't go there, as it were. But what is the next best thing of know about knowing God well. This is like, you know, there are a lot of people who are very taken up with the Beatles during the time the Beatles were the idols of the music world. Wouldn't you have loved to have got to know the Beatles and hang out with them? For a lot of people, that would be an ultimate ambition. But what did they do instead?
Daniel Lapin 36:02
Well, for the most part, what, what people ended up doing is they, they got to know the music of the Beatles. That's the next best thing. And so you know, you want to know an artist who's no longer alive, get to know his paintings or his sculpture, and that's kind of like getting to know him. Authors, there are there are authors that, for me, are friends, you know. I think of Moses Maimonides. I actually, I kind of feel I know him. There's an author called the Maharal, it's Rabbi Lowe of Prague, 400 years ago I feel I know him. It's like he's a friend, because I know his work very well, and through his work I got to know him. Getting to know God is a tough thing for any of us, but getting to know his work well, that's the next best thing. You know what another word is for getting to know God's work, the study of science. And so, not surprisingly, until the age of secularism, relatively recently, getting to study science was motivated by a desire to get to know God and His work, and that's why so many of these scientists were religious, God-believing, Bible-believing Christians, because their drive to study science was precisely to get to know God.
Daniel Lapin 37:40
I'll tell you something else that may surprise you, but think about it, and maybe we'll talk about a little bit more when I can devote more time to it. The whole attraction between men and women is rooted in getting to know God. The thrill of male-female interaction is ultimately getting to know God by getting to know in a better way than any other way imaginable one of His ultimate creations, and so yes, you can get an almost godly kick out of climbing a mountain or looking at a river or seeing a beautiful natural landscape, but even more than that, the ultimate creation of God is not an oak tree or a lake.
Daniel Lapin 38:27
The ultimate creation of God is the human being, and there is no more powerful or deeper way of getting to know a human being than through sex, through male-female interaction. That is why it's not a euphemism. When the Bible says Cain knew his wife, and she became pregnant, she conceived. That's not because it didn't want to say he had intercourse with her. It's because that's what it really means. It's getting to know somebody beyond anything superficial. That's people understand that is the reality, that's really what it's all about, and so technology, yeah, that's that, that is it, use of energy, probing the world, medicine, microbes, anything, anything, anything having to do with getting to know the work, the world better, learning how to work wood, learning how to use builds with stone.
Daniel Lapin 39:27
Right, cathedrals came about in Western civilization. You know, it's not as if the ruins of Zimbabwe ever looked like the Cologne Cathedral. They didn't. It's a different culture. Civilization achieves heights in terms of working technology, the kind of furniture the West created, the kind of stone, and then ultimately working metals, and then ultimately around. Arriving at plastics, this is part of civilization. Next one, form of government, a form of government that presupposes a free population, the idea of democracy, the idea of governing with the consent of the governed, it's in America that was part of the American ideal, but the founders were overwhelmingly all Bible-believing Christians.
Daniel Lapin 40:32
Where do you think they got it from? Where do you think they got the idea of the three branches of government, the executive, the judiciary, and the legislative right, they got it from the book of Isaiah, chapter 23 For the Lord is our Lord giver, He is our judge, and He is our king, legislative, judicial, executive, and there are many other, many, many other similar examples. The whole idea of this form of government that individuals are free, but recognize that they need government in order for things to be operating in a way that we can live, but that form of government, it's not a tyranny, it's not socialism. We don't belong to the government, the government belongs to us.
Daniel Lapin 41:32
Then we come to the next one, and again, you're so familiar with this one that you don't realize what an unbelievable novelty and newness this was when it came into being. The idea of property rights, Native American Indians, they didn't have such an idea of property rights. Africa, no idea of property rights, it didn't exist. The idea that not only can we own things, but we should. That a more stable society comes when people own things. In other words, look at a neighborhood of renters versus a neighborhood of homeowners.
Daniel Lapin 42:12
You can see the difference right away, not even a question mark. Ownership of property is a vital part of civilization, right throughout parts of South America to this day, it is difficult to actually own title to actually prove that you own land, but this is an absolute foundational principle of civilization. Next money, the idea that it is a primary obligation of government to maintain the value of money, mint and preserve money.
Daniel Lapin 42:55
Again, it's a part of civilization. It doesn't appear in every culture, not by any means, but only in that culture that we call civilization, or Western civilization, if you like. But civilization is how I like that. Is really important, the existence of stable and reliable money. That's only the result of civilization, it's not found elsewhere. Next, marriage and family as foundational to society in parts of the West today, England, parts of France, parts of America, marriage and famine doesn't exist. We in certain parts of countries today, many countries significant proportions, like approaching 50% of children are born to mothers who have no husbands. Children are raised in mother-only environments, and it's not hard to see that this is one way to destroy civilization.
Daniel Lapin 44:12
Remember, I kept on saying civilization is precarious, it needs to be held up. You can't just expect civilization to exist, it's got to be maintained, and one of the ways it is maintained is by protecting and preserving the social structure of marriage and family, where the substitution of ballots for bullets, the idea that violence is constrained again. Civilization, where does that get taught? Happens to children that are raised by mothers and fathers. Children that are raised only by mothers, particularly boys, difficult for. Those boys to become acculturated against violence as a primary recourse. Yeah, that's all part of marriage and family.
Daniel Lapin 45:09
You find violence in cultures that are not civilized, in barbaric cultures, a court system that's part of civilization, that if anybody is aggrieved, if anybody, if something, if peace needs to be made between two individuals who've had a disagreement, we have a court maintenance of a reliable, trustworthy, non-corrupt court system, that's a part of Western civilization, and so that's pretty much it. Those are the headline items of civilization. And where does it all come from? It all comes from the Bible.
Daniel Lapin 45:51
Civilization is nothing other than the Bible painted large onto a giant canvas by civilization, Bible brought to life biblical principles about the organization of human society, that is what we call civilization, and so one of the interesting things is that there are many ideas, because there's so much hatred of God and of the Bible, it's so disturbing to people. Yeah, ordinary people. I'm not talking of people who are aggressive atheists. I'm not talking about people who froth the mouth every time they notice some thing religious in the public area. I'm not talking. I'm talking about even ordinary people are really ambivalent about God and religion, and I'll, I'll tell you where it's most evidently felt by by people like me, and I'm sure that in your world you have similar experiences, but in in Judaism there's something called Reform Judaism.
Daniel Lapin 47:00
Reform Judaism is really interesting. It's a conglomeration of Jews. It's an organized structure of Jews. What percentage of American Jews are Reform Jews? I don't know, maybe 20% something like that, and it's a very well, it's a comfortable way of being Jewish, because you don't have to believe in God. You do not have to regard the Bible as true. Reformed Jews, for the most part, believe that homosexuality is just fine.
Daniel Lapin 47:38
What do you say you're a reformed Jew, and the Bible says, and I don't care what you think about as an individual, but as a reformed Jew, surely you have to agree that it is a sin. No, you don't, because current sensibilities trump biblical statements. The Bible is old-fashioned, it doesn't apply anymore. I'm giving you the philosophies of Reform Judaism, and you can become a Reformed Jew, making almost no changes in your life at all. You don't, you really don't have to do anything at all, and so if, if people convert to Judaism, and they convert to Reform Judaism, their friends wouldn't even necessarily be aware of it if they didn't tell them, but if people converted to real Judaism, in other words, Torah observant Judaism, well, their friends would know, because all of a sudden they cannot drive on Saturdays or festivals, and they cannot eat at the same restaurants they always used to eat at, and many, many other things become immediately apparent, and so when people become committed to a Torah observant lifestyle, they find themselves having to defend themselves to family and friends, because it actually really does mean something, and so the hostility towards God and the Bible is so fascinating, because if you told somebody that you are going through a fast to cleanse your body of antioxidant, pardon me if I don't know what I'm talking about there, because I really don't, but let's say you told your friends I'm doing a 25 hour fast starting on Monday morning in order to cleanse myself from negativity and antioxidants and and micro plastics, everybody would pat you on the back and tell you that's terrific, but if you tell them you're doing a 25 of.
Daniel Lapin 49:59
Our fast, because you are observing what the Bible says in Leviticus, chapter 23 is to observe the fast of the day of atonement, known in Hebrew as Yom Kippur. Then people, if they're honest, they'll tell you you're just acting like a medieval, but it's the same action, but if the motivation is religious, it bothers people. If you, if, if you tell people, I'll be late because I meditate, or I do a Hindu form of meditation every morning, so I'm not going to be able to be there till 9o'clock People, oh great, no problem. But if you tell them you go to synagogue every morning to pray or to mass, I'm sure they have exactly the same thing.
Daniel Lapin 50:54
But I'm talking about my experiences, so if you tell people you are keeping a gratitude journal, oh, fantastic, terrific, but if you tell them that every morning you say a prayer, I give thanks to you, oh Lord, for restoring my soul to me and bringing me back, giving me life again, that's very different, you know, you're you, but that's what it's like if you, if you tell someone, and there is such a thing, if you tell somebody you're going to a digital detox weekend, and guess what, when we arrive at the resort, the first thing we have to do is we have to put our phone and our iPad into special lockers, and we have to lock them away, and we have no access to them, because this is to train us to detox from our from our devices. Oh, that's wonderful. Widespread applause, but if you tell them that you don't touch your phone from Friday evening sundown until Saturday night every single week.
Daniel Lapin 52:04
Well, you know, you're, you're, you're part of some kind of weird religious cult. So, and there are many, there are many other examples as well of that. I can go on and on and on, so you know, if you speak about dietary awareness, of you know, to think carefully before you eat anything, that's fantastic. If you say that I say a blessing, blessed art thou the Lord, oh God, who brings forth the fruit of the tree before I eat an apple, that's a different thing. There is, I guess, the only point I'm trying to make is that it's really, it's there's a real reality that people are uncomfortable with the idea of God with the idea of the Bible, and so when I want to explain, remember what this is all about is I'm telling you why it is that it is why we find so much hostility towards civilization. The reason people hate Israel and they hate America is because these are two societies that are built on and devoted to the culture of the Bible, and there is widespread hatred. Why is that? Why is there hatred of the Bible?
Daniel Lapin 53:36
Why is there hatred for Israel in America as societies that more than any other two societies in the world manifest the Bible, there are more households in America, more a greater percentage of American households have a Bible than in any other country other than Israel. Israel and America, highest proportion of Bible-owning households, that means something, but why is there hatred for Bible? And I'll tell you, the answer is because it sets standards, and none of us like the setting of standards. You know, Islam looks good, let's say. 19th century Islam, it might have looked good when you compare it to primitive tribal animism, right, but if you compare 19th century Islam to 19th century Christian civilization in America or Europe or Australia, it doesn't look good just by the natural, I mean, Where would you rather live, 19th century America or 19th century Saudi Arabia?
Daniel Lapin 54:51
Where would you rather live? It, I mean, how hard a question is that? Just in obvious, and. So it is that biblical civilization set standards that other people find disturbing. This is exactly the way you know when, when I was at school, I was an awful child, and I remember really disliking the good kids. What did they ever do to me? Nothing, but they showed me up. There were kids who actually did do homework, there were kids who enjoyed class, there were kids that related to teachers normally. I didn't do any of those things, and that would have been fine. It's just that they made me realize I could be better, which I didn't want to hear, and, and that's really what a lot of this is about. Israel has created a society that really says to our, is Israel perfect?
Daniel Lapin 55:54
We're not talking about that, we're, we're talking about this on an adult level, right? Perfection is not the issue, hierarchy is, is it better than other places in the Middle East? I think so. Is Western civilization better than other places in the world? I think so. And that is enough to make them deeply, deeply hated and resented. I really believe it's as simple as that. Anti-Semitism at its root, hatred of Jews for bringing the Bible into the world. Hitler actually said as much, and so hatred of Christianity today, there is a great deal of Christian anti-Christianism. There's a great deal of anti-Semitism. You know, why isn't there a lot of anti-aboriginalism? No, because human beings are human beings, we're not machines, and human beings feel spiritual gravity.
Daniel Lapin 57:01
We all feel a tug to eat whatever we like, and to be lazy, and to not be loyal, and not to be good, and not - we all feel to just let yourself go and do whatever you feel like doing. Everybody recognizes that, but it takes constant effort to be a good human being, constant effort, take away the model, take away anything that shows that that is possible, and our lives are much more comfortable, and universities are a prime example of this, even the great Greek philosophers, there were many of them who understood the need to hoist civilization up to keep it up there, because it isn't natural, and to extract the best from a person, and to inspire human beings towards courage and dignity and morality and compassion and happiness, to be these are hard things.
Daniel Lapin 58:08
Look, it's much easier to be a grumpy, whiny, complaining human being. It is, but that's not what's expected of us, and there is an instinct to hate those who show us up to hate those who demonstrate that each of us could be better than we are, and that lies, I believe, at the heart of why the rest hate the West. Why barbarism hates civilization, and that's really, I think, exactly what that, what it is that we're talking about. And so I feel I have to leave it here. This is already a long discussion, but I hope it's been useful to you.
Daniel Lapin 58:57
Please become a Happy Warrior, and let me know your thoughts. I'd be interested if you disagree. I'd be interested if you agree. You may have further evidence one way or the other. I welcome it. It's how I grow through interaction with you. And so become a Happy Warrior at RabbiDanielLapin.com And please join me again next week here at The Rabbi Daniel Lapin show, and until then I pray that you are able to hoist yourself upwards in your families, and your finances, your fitness, your faith, and your friendship. I'm Rabbi Daniel Lapin.
