Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Do you know the name of your most valuable employee? Do you know the name of the person most to blame for your problems and predicaments? Do you know the name of the person you are most responsible for educating and improving? Here's a clue: All three people carry the same name. Your physical characteristics are things like: height, skin color, hairstyle, and body type. Your spiritual characteristics are things like: integrity, resourcefulness, optimism, resilience, imagination, fluency and eloquence. Unless you are a swimsuit model, your spiritual attributes can make you far more money than your physical ones. So how do you improve them? Well, that’s why you’re listening to this show - stand by to learn priceless strategies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So, there was your Rabbi struggling with what to name this episode. At first, I thought of calling it “Even Poor People Deserve Compassion”. Then, I thought we’ll call it “Especially, Poor People Deserve Compassion”. Then, I thought about “We Love Poor People”. As you can see, the ideas were flowing fast and furious, but I was worried about appearing to lack compassion—one of the very worst sins in today’s secular theology. So, then I came up with “Poor People Means Virtuous People”. If you want to know why, in the end, I chose the title I did use, listen on. Now, for those of you who plan to write to me in righteous indignation, howling in protest at this podcast; I will save you time and trouble. Just cut and paste from what follows: “Doesn’t your faith command you to care for the poor? How dare you deny their existence! You’re such an ignoramus, you don’t you even know that over 30 million Americans live below the poverty line. I suppose you think it’s their fault. That’s called blaming the victim, you heartless human being.” There, see how helpful I can be? Now, if you invest the time to listen, you’ll hear the answers to all of those questions and many others you may not have yet thought of. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you liked being a happy warrior, well, I’ve upped the ante. It’s now a little harder. It’s easy to laugh when I speak about your rabbi (that would be me) revealing how the world REALLY works, but the truth is that learning how the world REALLY works and adapting to it is immensely painful. Having our illusions shattered is always painful; the slogan is easier than the reality. How the world REALLY works is quite different from the ways in which many of us wish it worked. Many fondly labor under the delusion that we live in a secular age in a secular world. Nothing could be further from the truth. I explain why I feel nothing but compassion towards former secularists who are having their entire worldviews obliterated. Secularism is the tired expression of yesterday’s cultural dinosaurs whose perception of reality is being pulverized. Only anti-scientific secular dinosaurs would believe dogmatically that a man can become a woman. Only tired and aging secularists would believe that it costs nothing if the government pays for it. Why can the 1999 movie 'The Matrix' help explain the quandary of secularism today? People used to think that the more educated and wealthy a society became, the more secular it would be. The growth of Islam, Christianity and Judaism thoroughly refutes that lie. Also, hear about my trip to Ghana last week, a place where 70 percent of the population is Christian. Learn where over a billion Africans are headed. Further, why is it MUCH harder for women to find good men to marry than it is for men to find good women? There are only four conditions of womanhood. Here's a hint: girlfriend is not one of them. Wise women seek security and all wives thrive in its cocoon. Men have failed since 1962 to be able to project power - not brutality, not tyranny, not bullying - but calm, competent, benevolent, masculine power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Never use the word “fair”.  The political landscape of many countries is changing because citizens are asking their governments, “What have you done to our country?”  Please allow me to teach you the hierarchy of moral obligations.  What does the Biblical dictum “Love your neighbor like yourself” actually mean?  I tell you about  two important books; but for your own health, tell nobody, not even your closest friends about them.  Many secular liberals speak of compassion but practice very little of it themselves.  Boasting of your commitment to “Women’s Rights” while betraying your wife.  Caring less about those closest to you. The reprehensible evil of government taxing the legacy you bequeath to your children. Is it unseemly for me to care so much more about my children than I care about your children?  Are you willing to pull the trigger on military reprisals? Why the state desires to educate your child. How political propaganda changes your mind. Why it is moral for any state to view its citizens as more valuable than any other people in the world. Would you like to hear about the guests who came to dinner and never left? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You’ll love taking this boat trip with your rabbi.  The one big lie that, if you fall for it, will utterly distort your vision of your own life.  Do you know the one colossal difference that forever distinguishes humans from animals? Clue: Progressives hate it.  A few fun fire facts especially for happy warriors.  Why do so many feel guilty about using a lot of energy?  The difference that fire made to Adam and Einstein and why your electricity bill has skyrocketed.  You’ll love this poem about a boat trip.  Resolving a perplexing and prophetic Bible passage about…..batteries! Find spiritual joy and existential ecstasy by using energy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Responding to a thoughtful listener’s letter attacking my views on marriage as “ridiculous”.  Would we stand for a system that forces young people to undergo at least four years of religious indoctrination before getting on with their lives?  Would we cruelly withhold jobs and employment from anyone brave enough to try and evade this brutal system of compulsory madrassas? Would we allow imams, clerics, and priests to impose their destructive dogmas on young minds?  Of course not, right?  But we do just that!   Secular Fundamentalism is a religion; it’s a militant faith, a community of shared values, heresies and sacraments. Today’s modern secular fundamentalism has its fanatics and its saints and we force millions of tomorrow’s leaders into bowing down to its idols.  The power of numbers over stories.  Making important life decisions with our heads and never with our hearts.  How to decide just who among us gets the rare and desirable resources we all covet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I respond to a thoughtful listener’s letter charging me with ‘bias’ against Islam. After the Nazi surrender in May 1945, German youths didn’t inflict terror on London and New York to avenge the destruction of Dresden and the bombing of Berlin. After the surrender on the battleship USS Missouri in September 1945, Japanese youths didn’t form terror teams against America to avenge Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So why, for decades, have Muslim youths been committing atrocities against western civilians for perceived wrongs going back to the 17th century? Why do many so-called “accident-prone” children bring painful incidents upon themselves? Most Germans have allowed their government to import over a million young men bent on dominating Germany and destroying it. Recall what Russian soldiers did to German women in 1944 and 1945. Learn how men and women react differently to “pointless” telephone conversations and the scariest words any man will ever hear. Why, in this age, does belief trump biology and feelings trump facts? Progressives’ silly faith in electric transportation will get them nowhere. Remember you heard it here first: There will be no electric passenger planes in your travel future. Today’s titanic struggle between truth and materialism rages on. Which marriage model do you prefer? Progressives are wrong; not everything about yesterday is mistaken, ignorant or evil. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why does liberalism and home shopping dominate television while conservatism mostly finds its home on radio? Why is liberalism the creed of emotionalism? Who had done more good for the world - Calcutta’s Mother Theresa or Amazon’s Jeff Bezos? Why is our balance mechanism found in our ears? Aggressiveness vs modesty - Why do men and women’s biological structures reflect these differences? Newspapers never used to show pictures of corpses - why do they now do so? Why was it okay for Planned Parenthood to sell the body parts of babies they killed, but a fully grown adult may not sell one of his kidneys? Why do doctors not simply vote cancer out of existence just as they did with other disorders? Why is political liberalism often equated with moral virtue but conservatism never is? Why are limits on political campaign finance immoral? Why does government want to force people out of their cars and into buses and trains? Why is the question of whether we evolved or were created not a scientific question but a life decision? Why is charity important even if you don’t have much money? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why does adultery inflict greater pain and suffering than corporate closures and job loss? In Governmental Indoctrination Centers (GIC’s), formerly known as public schools, little children are prematurely sexualized through a propaganda campaign known as Sex Education or Sex Ed. The argument is that children are “going to do it anyway” so we should teach them how to do it safely. Now, your Rabbi asks, let’s also have 'Gun Ed' since we know that children are “going to do it anyway”, that is play with firearms, we should teach them how to do it safely. Here's why this will never happen in your lifetime. When a policeman shoots a black man, without knowing anything else we instantly know that he did it because he was a racist. When a homosexual is attacked in a bar during a drug deal gone bad, everyone knows without doubt that those attacking him did so out of their hate for homosexuals. But when a fervent Muslim, steeped in the theology of jihad, murders a westerner while yelling "Allahu Akbar", authorities spend months futilely trying to discover his motivation. Inevitably they give up or ascribe it to ‘workplace violence’. Why can’t the Left accept the flaws of followers of Islam at face value? Furthermore, the Left considers Bible-believing Jews and Christians to be greater threats to peace and progress than murderous Muslims. Why is this? Whatever two adults do sexually is not government's business, but when two adults engage in a free, consensual, economic or business transaction; government regulates it, controls it, taxes it, maligns it or prohibits it. The Left gives a free pass to adulterers who ruin lives while they focus their fury on business professionals who improve lives. Why is our appetite for sex so understandable while our appetite for money so demonized? Finally, we reveal the difference between the two repugnant revolutions, French and Russian, and the two benign revolutions, English and American, that still shape our century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The first time in human history that children knew more than their parents and how parents evade their responsibility to their children.  The 25th word in the Bible, religious holidays and modern science.  Surprising secrets of the casino’s roulette wheel. How humans got to planet earth.  If you tell me your answer to this one question, I would know how you feel about wealth & poverty, marriage, taxation, public education and mental health. Why most societal destruction and violence is perpetrated by single males.  What the name of Israel’s national airline, El Al, means. Amazing story of the discovery of microbes. Why water is approximately 70% of people and also 70% of earth’s surface.  The world’s most successful treatment for alcoholism.  Why do some people risk their lives to save/help a stranger? How do placebos work? How a rabbi with the same last name as mine cured a war veteran with a paralyzed arm.  A strange conversation with a cow.  How to discover whether you are a consumer or a creator; a maker or a taker.  Why the inheritance tax is immoral.  When your children should betray you.  The real source of the joy in physical intimacy between a man and woman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices