TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Romance and Reality-Money and Marriage
Date: 04/12/24 Length: 1:00:07
Daniel Lapin
Greetings, happy warriors. And welcome to the rabbi Daniel Lapin show where I, your rabbi am solemnly dedicated to revealing for you how the world? Yes, how the world really works. Thank you for being tuned in to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show, we are going to go back in history a little bit to the the 80s in about 1984-5-6. Yeah, that area. And there was a wonderful man who was very influential in America, particularly in terms of conservative politics. His name was William F. Buckley. And I was privileged to know Him. We met originally by both having been on a program speaking for a certain event. And, and we were talking after the good, we share a love of sailing, and he was just leaving or just come back from a big sailing trip. And he said, Well, let's stay in touch by MCI Mail. I was fascinated because I had not met anybody else who knew what MCI Mail was. Turns out, it was the very first email system, I was enchanted with us, because I know that anything that makes it easier for human beings to connect with one another is hugely important in social and particularly in economic terms. And so you can actually watch the meteoric escalation in economic productivity. When steamships, for instance, dramatically shorten the distance between Europe and America. You can see what happens again, meteoric peaks in economic productivity, when the telephone becomes normal and accepted and common and popular. You can see the same thing when television penetrates American homes. So anything that allows us to connect more easily with one another is hugely significant. And so I was very much on top of this development. So MCI was a communications company, that, and again, the Internet was very, very raw and unrefined at this point. But MCI came up with a very first email system. And again, the Internet as we know it, the web didn't really become real until about 2000 or so. Here we are 15 years earlier than that 1985. And there weren't that many people on it, you had to actually be a subscriber to use it. And William F. Buckley, who was the founder and the editor of National Review magazine, he was also a close personal friend of President Ronald Reagan, who was in the presidency at this point from 1980 to 1988. And, and so there was about 85 or 86, that that we connected. And it was about the same time that I began watching Firing Line, and then later on through YouTube, I was able to go back and see earlier editions.
Daniel Lapin
Okay, now wait, hold everything. Have you already subscribed to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show? If not, you know, I ask you this every week. So if you are a new listener, well, then you have a reason to not know about it. But if you're anybody else, please do make sure for the benefit of all the relevant and important parties to this transaction. Just go ahead and subscribe to the show. And furthermore, you might be thinking about whether or not to start your next learning journey with the Scrolling through Scripture online course. That is one of the things that when one of the resources that we've created about which I am most thrilled, Well, now's a really good time, because if you purchase Scrolling through Scripture, Genesis Unit 1, or Genesis Bundle Units 1 & 2, you receive our Thought Tools Book Set, which is three softcover books, by the way absolutely free. It's nearly 50 dollars value, plus free shipping, the books will be shipped directly to addresses within the US International zone, they'll be issued within the US. So here's what I mean to say. But customers outside the US will receive ebook versions via email. So if you want to learn more about Scrolling through Scripture, you might want to listen to a free lesson, which you can actually do by going to Rabbi Daniel Lapin.com, and then going to look for Scrolling through Scripture. And then you'll look for the free lesson and you'll enjoy it. I don't think, in fact, I know there is absolutely nowhere else, you will be able to gain an insight into the first 31 verses of the Bible in a way that strips aside all the kindergarten-level descriptions, and all the elementary school translations and reveals it to be what it really is, which is a thrilling matrix of the comprehensive nature of life on this planet. So that's called Scrolling through Scripture. And I think you will find that to be very, very exciting, and I hope so at any rate, so go ahead and subscribe and also take a look at Scrolling through Scripture. They will be wonderful if you can do that.
Daniel Lapin
Okay, so let us move on with the show. William F. Buckley came up with this idea of a sort of talk show format on television. I believe it was Nash was I think it might have been PBS that carried it. I'm not 100% Sure. But at any rate, he used to have a weekly show where he would interview and converse in depth with people, people with whom he agreed people with whom he disagreed. And it Tuesday, it remains a fascinating show. William F. Buckley was an immensely likable guy, even to those with whom he disagreed dramatically on politics and economics and on religion. He was a serious Catholic. And so at any rate, we certainly got on very well. And I, as I say, I went back and listened and watch all the episodes of firing line. One of the most interesting was filmed in 1966. With who, with a man called Hugh Hefner, who was the creator of something called Playboy magazine. Now, Hefner had begun Playboy magazine 13 years earlier in 1953. So it was well underway already. And every issue each month carried not only the famous pictures of nude ladies, but it also carried something that Hefner wrote called The Playboy philosophy. And it was exactly on the Playboy philosophy that William F. Buckley wanted to do converse with Hugh Hefner on the show firing line. And it was absolutely fascinating. So what what happened is, and I've been just to give you some some quotes, Hugh Hefner sort of said, look, the Playboy philosophy is an anti Puritanism, a response to the Puritan part of our culture. And so then, Buckley took him on on whether he rejects not just the Puritan part of our culture, but Mosaic Law, as he put it.
Daniel Lapin
So again, to quote William F. Buckley from the transcript. I'm not worrying about whether you reject Cotton Mather's accretions on the Mosaic law, but whether you reject the Mosaic law itself, do you reject, for instance, monogamy? Do you reject the notion of sexual continence before marriage? He'll have to says, Well, I think what it really comes down to is an attempt to establish a new morality. And I really think that's what the American sexual revolution is really all about. It's an attempt to replace the old legalism. It's certainly not a rejection of monogamy as such, but very much an attempt. In the case of premarital sex. There really hasn't been any moral code in the past except simply Thou shalt not. And William F. Buckley interjected and said, Well, that's a code, isn't it? And Hefner said, well, perhaps but I don't think it's a very realistic one. And so it continued. Now, to me, what's so interesting about listening or watching this discussion between these two men in 2024? Is that in 1966, when the conversation actually took place on the air, it was, it was very early. And so one of the things William F. Buckley said to Hugh Hefner, one of the ways he challenged him was he said, What credentials? Do you have to write a playboy philosophy? You know, what are your credentials to to issue a rebuttal of conventional Judeo-Christian tradition in favor of the Playboy philosophy? And I remember thinking, you know, that wasn't a really good challenge. A better one, I think. And I hesitate, because William F. Buckley was an absolutely brilliant man. He passed away in 2008. And the world felt a lonely place when that happened. But he, he could have said, I think, look, we've had a chance to see centuries and centuries of society that has based its entire moral worldview, on the Judeo-Christian bible ethic. And so what do you think? You know, what do you think it might look like? What do you think society might look like? After, shall we say 100 years of your philosophy? The Judeo-Christian-based philosophy has resulted in Western civilization. And it's produced engineering and science and music and medicine and art, and social institutions and governmental institutions, and property rights. What do you think society might look like? After 100 years of your philosophy? After all, again, this is what I wish that William F. Buckley would have asked you Hefner marriage, traditional marriage has served the function of channeling male sexual energy into productive and long-term satisfaction, which allowed the West uniquely to produce these advances in human living, which benefit the entire world today. I wish he would have asked that. But it was all very new. Don't forget the birth control pill was 1962. And this is 1966. Things are just beginning. Very early on to unravel. Well, 70 years have gone by. And we got we already have a pretty good idea. You know why? Because the truth is that regardless of who won the debates, and I don't think it was clear who did but the the the reality is that you have no one of the cultural debate, we are looking today at in America, dramatically different from the America that existed in 1966. And so, we now have a pretty good idea of what a society based on the Playboy philosophy actually looks like. You see, in order for human societies, for groups of people to be able to live together, certain conventions become accepted and become widely practiced. And these usually revolve around first of all male-female relationships, because it is so volatile and so incendiary and so capable of destroying a society and also about transactions, financial transactions. These are the kinds of things that these conventions typically revolve around in the natural order of things, each generation, in other words, as children grow up, as they take their parents standards in these areas as the starting point, and then as in the way of children since time immemorial. They liberalize them they challenge them, they struggle against them. And they invariably end up with more palatable standards if you like. And so the general direction of society is towards entropy and decay, because it's very difficult and unlikely for a young generation to maintain or even increase the, the rigor of the previous generation standards. And so you're not surprised to discover sexual mores becoming more liberalized, and feelings about money tending towards envy, the natural and tropic tendency towards wanting more for doing less. And this is in short, the very pattern that removes cultures off the stage of world history. It generally takes about 10 generations as I've spoken about in the past, to go from the strengths and standards and and rigors of the founding generations to the laxness and softness and, and lack of strength of the 10th generation that basically escorts that society off the stage. In other words, the strength has given away given way to to decadence, and that society is on the way out. And so, you know, I sometimes hear people saying, well, look, you know, we came through World War One, and we came through World War Two, and we came through a depression and we are survivors, America's you know, we're still gonna get to make it. And the answer is that it's not the same people. And a simple way to recognize this is that, first of all, something I've told you about before, which is that sexual decayed sexual concupiscence lack of restraint in the male-female arena or the sexual arena. Increasingly, less
Daniel Lapin
standards increasingly less self-discipline in those areas on a society-wide level, invariably results in a less capable generation. And, and that's true in almost every single area. And so we see that if you go back to 1966, when the issue the episode of firing line, that I've been talking about when that originally was filmed. Think about what the standards were on television. Think about what the standards were on the movies of the day. And any child, you could have a child watching television, or watching the movies, and primetime television at that period and 66 would have been shows like Gilligan's Island, which ran I think, from 64, download 64 to 67 or 68. So, in 1966, we're right in the middle of the peak popularity. And this isn't just for kids. This is the family watched Gilligan's Island 8pm You know in the night, and whilst there were very faint hints at romantic possibilities. There was absolutely nothing overt, nothing that would have been embarrassing for parents to be sitting in the family living room. And watching Gilligan's Island. Even with their teenage kids, it was completely innocuous. Can I even use an old-fashioned word? It was pure. But 30 years go by? And from 66 to 96 or actually was 94 when a sitcom appeared on American television called friends and friends ran from about the 94 to about 2004 roughly 10 years I think it ran and now you actually saw young people disconnected from their families and living alone and together. And we actually saw on television and normalizing of premarital physical relationships between men and women not married to each other. And yes, I know the tendency to do this today is to say yeah, that's perfectly normal. It's perfectly okay but If we're interested in watching the roadmap, the timeline of the destruction of a society, you have to go back to see where it begins. And you have to see that in the absence of any injection of moral energy, that decline is going to happen automatically. What would be an example of an injection of moral energy that could prevent it? Well, the Judeo-Christian bible-based system, which insists that every generation has to methodically and diligently teach these precepts to their children.
Daniel Lapin
And so in this society, whether it was a Hebrew Society of years ago, or an American society more recently, or a general Christian society, parents took this seriously in a way that you will never find secular families in 2024 doing, but parents would teach these chapters and verses to their children. And that would restart the entire moral calculus. And so it wasn't that children were then free to make their own moral decisions, and to embark on their own slippery moral slide down from the standards of their parents, which they were able to dismiss as old fashioned. And, and instead, you've got this moral injection of a biblical system, being methodically and purposefully taught by parents to their children. And that made sure that children did not start sliding down front, they re-adopted, and re-accepted the exactly the same set of principles and precepts that their parents did from their grandparents. And so American society on that basis from the time of the pilgrims, to, as I say, probably around about 1960, and that's sort of loosely configured, held together. And why it is that to this very day, in Torah-committed Jewish families, you do not have, in general, the sicknesses of general society. Just it isn't there. And it's only because each generation re-injects an infusion of moral energy in order to prevent the perfectly natural and the perfectly normal, entropic tendency of decline, decay, and degeneracy, ultimately. So. So from 1966, which is still pretty much an America, the way it used to be in terms of morality. We as as I jumped 30 years to show a tenure show called friends from about 94 to about 2004. And that was, if you did that jump, or if you know if, if William F. Buckley could have shown a few clips from friends to Hugh Hefner, that would have been a fast I mean, obviously, it couldn't happen. But Hugh Hefner would have been shocked. He absolutely would have because he himself grew up in a Christian family. And he certainly did not speak in this interview of overturning conventional society and destroying value. No, he thought he was really helping, at least in the early stages of the Playboy philosophy. And so had they been able to jump ahead 30 years to see a brilliantly scripted television show that made it so cool and so clever. And so with it, to be like those six young people living on the Upper West Side of New York, it had, it had a powerful impact on society. And then friends ended in about 2004 or 2000, somewhere like that. And then came another show called Two and a Half Men, and that ran for about another 10 years approximately, and that picked up where friends left off with a level of crudity. And vulgarity, but again, brilliantly written, hilariously laugh out loud, funny, but in a way that left you feeling tarnished and a little bit dirty, laughing at the cleverness of the of the dialogue, but realizing that you are laughing at something sort of pretty basically animalistic, the show reveled in jokes about bodily functions. The show almost made the hero a stereotype of other men, caring very little, for women in general, or even women in particular, as he used to women, and it was kind of a in many ways, he was the result of the Playboy philosophy. But Hugh Hefner, and William F Buckley, were not able to look ahead from 1966 to, shall we say, 2006, when Two and a Half Men was capturing a huge number of American eyeballs on television, but that's what we saw happening that kind of deterioration. The back in 1966, on William F. Buckley, his firing line, Hugh Hefner is espousing his Playboy philosophy. And William F. Buckley, I think was finding it frustrating because he was sort of saying, you know, who are you to put forth a new philosophy to replace the Judeo-Christian bible-based model. But Hugh Hefner was simply saying, Look, you know, I'm I'm suggesting ideas, I'm suggesting a new and I think, improved way of looking at principles and values and standards, which no longer serve the modern human being.
Daniel Lapin
In general, look, if somebody wants you to take their views, as fact, go ahead and feel free to inquire as to their credentials. And you might ask whether they're willing to go on record, like when Professor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, two years after this firing line, in 1968, wrote a very a book that became very popular called The Population Bomb. And he spoke about how within a few decades, Americans would be dying of starvation, because there are too many people The Population Bomb, you get the idea. And you might well have said, Look, are you willing to go on record Professor Ehrlich? And he would have said, I have I've published in a book with my name on the cover. And, and you said, Well, what gives you the right to do this as well, you know, I'm a professor. And then it could, you know, stand or fall on its own merits in due course. Rising sea level. Okay, there's another one. All right, the sea levels. All right now, this goes against everybody is anyone who is near the coast or spends time near the water, it goes against every single thing, people can look at photographs of famous landmarks, like The Little Mermaid statue, or Alcatraz, on the Island in San Francisco Bay or anywhere else. And you could take a look at pictures that are, you know, 50 years, 100 years old, and see the water level and now see where the water level is now and you see that people are playing and simply lying. Right? You know, that's, that's all there is to it. They're just lying. As a matter of fact, as long ago as five years ago, the beginning of 2019, The Atlantic magazine, which is by no means a conservative, or right-wing magazine, ran a big story saying all the terrifying sea level predictions are looking far less likely. And, and they did this because it was obvious to anybody with eyes in their heads, that it's just not coming true. These frightening predictions of how global warming is going to melt the glaciers. Oh, and even more global warming is going to acts as anything warm expands, the sea water is going to expand and it's going to start flooding coastal cities. And, and, and they were worried that people were going to dismiss everything as the work of complete cranks, because anybody who actually took the trouble to look into it could tell that the rising sea levels was nonsense. It was it was a non-story. It just wasn't happening. it all and, and so that's why they came out and they said, Well, you know what the truth is that, you know what guess the, the Thwaites Glacier and the Pine Island Glacier? Well, they're not really melting as it seems as if they are, it runs through cycles, it gets colder, it gets warmer, nothing to worry about basically, everything is fine. It's not exactly what they said. But it's kind of more or less where it was going. But these kinds of statements where people ask you to take things on fact, fine, you know, you you can take make a record of it, and then you'll see whether they were right or they were wrong.
Daniel Lapin
The Kinsey, one of the biggest of the world's business consulting firms, published three papers, one in 2015, one in 2018, and one maybe 2019 or 2020. reporting about how, if you practice diversity, and inclusion, and what are the DEI equality? I always remember it Yeah. diversity and equality and inclusiveness. Is you any company that practice that is going to benefit, it's going to have higher profits. McKinsey and Company published that, as I say, several times, they issued three reports. And they say, you know, look, this is amazing. It's you're doing the right thing, you know, you're bringing in people who are divers, not on merit, but because of their color or because of any other political aspect, not because they're good at their job. Well, it's still gonna pay off. Well, guess what? Econ journal watch, went back and examined all the studies of McKinsey Consulting. And they saw that these actually was four studies, 2015 2018 2020, and 23. All claiming the same thing. Oh, diversity, equity and inclusion. All of this is going to really increase the profits. Not true. It's simply not true. Our results indicated that despite the imprimatur often given to McKinsey studies, the studies, neither conceptually in terms of the correct definition of causality, know empirically, in terms of their set of large US public firms support the argument that large US public firms can expect, on average to deliver improved financial performance, if they increase the racial-ethnic diversity of their businesses. Yeah, it's, it's, it's simply not true. But so it is with facts. However, when people are discussing ideas, it's kind of different. Because ideas are a lot like bullets. What do I mean by that? With a bullet all that matters, if somebody's pulling a trigger, and shooting something at you a bullet? Really, all you want to know is whether it is a phone dot fired from a Nerf gun that toy kids play with? Or is it a 357 Magnum round from a stainless steel revolver with a six-inch barrel? That's all you really have to know, that person holding the gun, and whose fingers on the trigger can be trained or untrained, licensed or unlicensed? It doesn't matter. We don't care whether he went to university and got a master's degree, or whether he is an autodidact whose only graduation was from kindergarten. That is how ideas all you have to confront them, regardless of the person articulating them. It doesn't matter who's pulling the trigger. You just have to worry about what kind of bullet it is. You don't have to worry about you don't care about what sort of person is expressing the idea. You only have to worry about analyzing the idea for truth and validity or otherwise. So if somebody challenges you with a disturbing idea, don't waste your time and energy trying to fend off the challenge by questioning the individual's credentials. And in reverse, never let people discredit your ideas by lazily labeling them as you know, old fashioned or sexist, or retrogressive, or capitalistic or racist, or anti-semitic, and so on, and so on and so on, forced them to engage and discuss the merit of the ideas. Don't let them disqualify ideas by labels. That's lazy. And it's a lie. So, I tell you all of that, to tell you that about 10 years ago, a very interesting thing happened. I have a lot of interesting things happen all the time. But something that I found interesting and I, I put it aside, because I knew I was going to talk about it with you. And it's 10 years, I've been keeping this. And what happened was that a woman called Susan Patton, wrote a letter that was published in the Princeton University magazine called The Daily Princetonian. And then, she converted it into a short article that was carried in both the Wall Street Journal, and Forbes magazine. Amazing. Let me tell you a little bit about the piece. It appeared on February the 13th 2014, in the Wall Street Journal, and it was entitled A little Valentine's Day straight talk. And this is her talking to her daughter, who is a student at Princeton University, and to her daughter's friends. And here's what she says, I'm going to just read a little bit of her short article. Despite all the focus on professional advancement for most of you, the cornerstone of your future happiness will be the man you marry. But chances are that you haven't been investing nearly as much energy in planning for your personal happiness. As you're planning for your next promotion at work. What are you waiting for?
Daniel Lapin
You're not getting any younger. But the competition for the men you would be interested in marrying? Most definitely is. Think about it. If you spend the first 10 years out of college focused entirely on building your career. When you finally get around to looking for a husband, you'll be in your 30s competing with women in the 20s. That's not a competition in which you're likely to fare well. If you want to have children, your biological clock will be ticking loud enough to ward off any potential suitors. Don't let it get to that point. This is, as I told you, a woman called Susan pattern Writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2014. Continuing, you should be spending far more time planning for your husband and for your career. And you should start doing so much sooner than you think. This is especially the case if you are a woman with exceptionally good academic credentials, aiming for corporate stardom. And extraordinary education is the greatest gift you can give yourself. But if you're a young woman who has had that blessing, the task of finding a life partner who shares your intellectual curiosity and potential for success is difficult. Those men who are as well educated as you are often interested in younger, less challenging woman. She doesn't say prettier, younger women. Could you marry a man who is enjoy intellectual professional equal? Sure, but the likelihood is that it'll be frustrating to be with someone who just can't keep up with your your friends. And you'll have these each said You know, you're gonna be having conversations, and you're gonna get this glazed look over your husband's face, which you're not gonna like. And what about if you start earning more than he does? Forget about it. And she's right at that point, the marriage is probably doomed. So what's the smart girl to do? asked Susan precedent. Answer. Start looking early and stop wasting time dating men who aren't good for you bad boys, crazy guys and married men. College is the best place to look for your mate. It's an environment teeming with like-minded age appropriate single men with whom you already share many things. You will never again have this concentration of exceptional men to choose from. When you find a good man, take it slow. Casual sex is irresistible to men. But the smart move is not to give it away. If you offer intimacy without commitment, the incentive to commit is eliminated. That grandmotherly message of yesterday is still true today. And then she goes on to say look, it's not out of the question that you meet a terrific marriageable man after you leave college, but there's not that many of them. And once you leave college, you're three years older or four years older, and guys you might be looking at, or looking at younger women. So realize the reality. That's what she's saying. You may not think you're ready for marriage in your early 20s. But keep in touch with the men that you meet in college, especially the super smart ones, they'll probably do very well for themselves, and their desirability will only increase after graduation. And then her last paragraph is if you want marriage or motherhood, start listening to your gut and avoid falling for the politically correct feminist line that has misled so many young women for years. There is nothing in Congress about educated ambitious women wanting to be wives and mothers.
Daniel Lapin
Don't let anyone tell you that these traditional roles are retrograde. They are perfectly natural and even wonderful. And if you fail to identify the one while you're in college, he says, Well, you know, let's hope that you'll do so afterwards. Well, Forbes magazine got inundated more so than the Wall Street Journal. The protest was such that Forbes Magazine did something they almost never do. They issued an apology for publishing Susan Preston's article, and I'm pretty sure you can no longer see it on the Forbes website, I think. But what you can see on the Forbes website is an article entitled, I graduated from Princeton and I married a Princeton man. And she writes, This is a young woman I've hemmed and hawed over whether to post about Susan Patton's now infamous letter in the daily Princetonian on March the 29th. And, and that was of, of 2013. Actually, that's when it was 2013. And, and let me just say, right off, I don't agree with Susan Preston. She says, you don't necessarily have to find a man in college. And she then proceeds to denigrate Susan Preston, and talk about all the ways in which she's completely wrong. She says Here are the worst of Susan patterns that separate Susan Patton's article, she said, as she quotes and you just heard me read this as well. For most of you, the cornerstone of your future happiness will be inextricably linked to the manual marry, and you will never again have this concentration of worthy men. And now she says to be out there telling a woman that her happiness will be inextricably linked to a man is the worst advice I've ever heard. This woman is clearly not a feminist. Oh, my God, can you believe it? Can you believe it? The woman who wrote the piece is not a feminist, I believe says this go I believe that each woman's happiness is inextricably linked to the choices she makes and how she fulfills her career and her personal needs. She says I know plenty women who are 40 and not married, and they're very happy and very career-focused. Maybe they'll get married, maybe they won't. But then I certainly do not see their happiness linked to a man. And she goes on and on taking sentences or phrases out of Susan prep Susan Patton's article, and then attacking them from the perspective of politically correct feminism. And this was so interesting, and I thought, you know, what a good debate for young women to be exposed to now they've made it hard to find Susan Patton's original article, but it's out there, you can find it. And but there is no shortage of articles and, and columns attacking every aspect of what she said. And again, the attacks are not on the merits of the ideas, because there's not really much you can argue with about the very simple straightforward ideas articulated by Susan Patton. And this woman, this young woman argues against it. On the basis of how can she say this? I know plenty will. And this girl is too dumb to understand that anecdotal stories do not constitute a rebuttal of an argument or an idea. Issues. She's not tackling the essence of the idea in the slightest. So okay, fine. And and really amazingly, in the years that followed the publication of the article about a girl's focus on getting married for more than you focusing on your career, because it will produce more durable, more important, more lasting happiness. So, in the years just so much criticism I actually found on the internet for easily. I mean, this wasn't a long search I found for attacks on her article. Meanwhile, years have gone by it's 10 years since then. And a young woman called grazie Sophia Christie writes a piece in the cut, which is a section of New York Magazine. And the name of the article is the case for marrying an older woman. An age-gap relationship can help. And grazie Sophia Christie then writes a piece and I'm going to just pick out just a couple of sentences to give you the gist of it.
Daniel Lapin
She starts off talking about life with her husband. She's been married for a few years, my husband is 10 years older than I am. I chose him on purpose, not by chance. As far as life decisions go on balance, I recommend it. When I was 20, and a junior at Harvard, a series of greater ironies began to mock me. I could study I could prove myself as much as I wanted. And still, my biggest advantage remained so universal. It defeated all my other plans, my youth, the newness of my face, and body, compellingly effortlessly. I shared it with the average idle young woman shrugging down the street. What she was saying what she's saying was that from the perspective of most men, the fact that she was working very hard on her career, and her academics at Harvard, was not as important as her youth and her looks good now, complain about it. But it's a reality. And that's what she says. So she says, I decided to go and study every Saturday in the Harvard Business School. And there I set with about 50, of the planet's most suitable and eligible bachelors. And then she, she says, she speaks about her looks. And she says, You know, I was good-looking, and I have most of my eggs. And I even have plausible denial deniability when it comes to my purity. And I have a pep in my step. And, she said, older guys still desire those things. And so I could never understand why my female classmates didn't join me, given their intelligence says they should have figured that. So in essence, the reason I'm putting these two stories together, separated by 10 years, one in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, followed by a slew of attacking articles, and one in the New York Magazine, online, the cut, and she's basically saying exactly the same thing. And this young woman is saying, um, you know, I'm not going to wait till I've devoted the next 10 years to my career, and then hope to look to get married when I'm 30. And it's a very interesting piece. And she must have realized the attacks that she's gonna get. When I think of same-age, same-stage relationships, where I tend to pictures a woman who's in too much for too little. I'm 27 now, and much she got married when she was 21. I'm 27 out and most women right age have partners. These days, girls become partners, quite young. A partner is supposed to be a modern answer to the oppression of marriage. The problem with a partner, however, is if you're equally in all things, you compromise in all things, and men are too skilled at taking. And she gives a list of how these men benefit from having girlfriends and how the girls lose out by being girlfriends not wives. It's fascinating. I you'd probably even find it interesting if I were to almost read the whole thing to you, but I'm not gonna do that. But needless to say, even though the Sony came out a few weeks ago, it has already attracted a great deal of angry protest. And I find that absolutely fair. fascinating. So there it is. Sofia, grazie has already aroused a angry firestorm of protest. I have not read a single substantive argument against what she says, Only steely anger. And the only thing I would say if I were to talk with her, and by the way, I've actually tried to locate her to have her as a guest, I'd love to talk to her on the show. But one of the things I'd say to her is, look, you surely know, as well as I do, that you're not really so much focusing on an older husband, because, you know, you were 21 or 22. He was 32 when you got married, you know, 10-year gap, not huge. But what you really are saying is not older, but wealthier. And, and, and that's a reality. That's not a bad thing. That's a good thing. One of the incontrovertible nice little pieces she has in there. And I'm, I'm going to share this with my wife, Susan, this evening at dinner. And I think that she and I would both say exactly the same thing. Here's what grazie Sophia said. She says last week, my husband and I looked back at old photos. And we agreed that we'd given each other our respective best years. Sometimes really, quality is not so obvious. Sometimes it takes turn, sometimes it takes almost a decade to reveal itself. And that's what she says the ultimate equality is that we both feel that we've both given one another our best and our best years. And, yes, women do try to make men focus on becoming more financially successful. Why? Well, because women are looking for a man who is more financially capable than they are. That's ideally what women are looking for. And when a woman finds herself married to a man who may have shown promise, but it didn't pan out, or a woman who wasn't wise enough to know that a man's financial ambition and prospects really matter. And don't waste time even dating men who don't fit that doesn't mean it's got to have money them it's got to have prospects got to have ambition. But women who find themselves married to men who do not manifest those masculine qualities of financial ambition, end up feeling very often resentful, and unhappy. And so is this a good thing or a bad thing? It's a good thing. Because if men are stimulated by women to try harder to make money, that's wonderful. You know why? Because unless they decide to become highway men, or bandits, or holed-up artists, pointing guns, at convenience store clerks, the only way they can make more money is by serving other human beings. Because unlike the government, that can forcefully seize your money. The only way that a man can obtain your money is by offering you something that you value even more than the price of the thing is asking you for. And you think about that as really what's happening every time there is a consensual agreed transaction, right? If I hire a young woman to babysit my children, and I'm happy to pay her $35.45 That I'm happy, because the freedom that she gives, my wife and I for an evening is worth to us more than that. Nobody forced us to pay her. And so it is with all financial transactions. And so to be motivated by a woman to seek and strive harder, that's good for society. Samuel Johnson, the great English writer, wrote, and I'm quoting him here, there are a few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money. That's right. If somebody wants to become an environmental regulator, and I'm not at all at ease about it, but if a young woman wants to start a company that is going to make a really, really useful piece of software. That's wonderful. That's terrific. I'll probably buy that software if it's in my field. That's great. If a person wants to become a climate activist, that's not going to be good. He's probably going to be gluing himself to the highway when I'm trying to get to work. know, when people when men particularly are focused on making money, that is the very best thing you can expect men to do and want men to do. You don't want men? Well, I don't have to paint the picture for you, you can see yourself one of the many ways in which men can start doing things that are not good for you, not good for society, not good for your neighborhood.
Daniel Lapin
That's the secret. That's what it's worthwhile understanding. Yeah, it's really important to know how the world really works, right? It really is. And to also understand that there are certain unchangeable realities. The reason that Shakespeare is seen as a great writer, is because he writes about the last thing aspects of human nature, things that are true in England 400 years ago, just as they are true in the United States in 2024. The reason Dostoevsky, the Russian novelist was such a great writer, is because he recognized the unchangeable realities about what it means to be a human being. And you got to realize that there are certain things that the left that secularism that progressivism insists can be changed in people. You know, I, I always remember an extraordinary piece, I read about a couple who mistakenly were misled into believing that they could improve their marriage. And you'll pardon me, and this is absolutely horrible, but they could improve it by bringing in a third person into their marriage. Well, a whole thing about a marriage is the exclusivity of a husband and wife. But nonetheless, they decided that an open marriage with another person would work for them. And, and the man wrote later on, after the whole thing had exploded into a horrific mess. And lives were ruined. He wrote, and he said, I really believe that I was a modern man, and that I could overcome feelings of jealousy. And I could liberate myself from these primitive caveman feelings, he says, But as much as I tried, whenever I knew my wife was with another man, he says, I started retching uncontrollably, and throwing up all over the bathroom floor. Yeah, that's right, because he was trying to violate how the world really works. And one of the ways the world really, really works is that it is very important for a man to be able to make money, much more important than it is for a woman in terms of his intrinsic identity. And it is absolutely right and normal for a woman to look for a man who is more successful than she is. And it is absolutely right and normal for a man to seek the youngest and most beautiful woman that he can find. And that's not to say that it's, you know, it's wrong or it won't happen. For a man to marry. A girl is two or three years older than he is showing her many marriages like that. That's fine. Absolutely not a problem. But in general, that's what men are looking for. Men are not looking and shouldn't be looking to see how academically successful his future wife is, or how much money she's making. No, we have a name for a man who looks to a woman for money. So there it is, my dear friends. It's how the world really works. And it was so interesting for me to listen to that discussion between Hugh Hefner and his Playboy philosophy. And William F. Buckley, one of the most eloquent spokesman ever for the Judeo Christian bible-based view of society. So until next week, I remain lovingly your rabbi and remind you to stay focused on your five deaths. Work on building your family, your finances, your faith, your friendships. And yes your fitness I'm Rabbi Daniel Lapin God bless you.
