TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Trust Trump's Actions--Not His Words
Date: 10/06/24 Length: 40:57
Daniel Lapin 0:00
Greetings, Happy Warriors and welcome to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show where, as always, your rabbi, that's me, remains solemnly dedicated to revealing for you how the world really works. Thank you for being part of the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show. Thank you for subscribing if you haven't yet done that, do that. Thank you for spreading word. Just this week, I spoke to not one, but three people who came up to me and said, I didn't know you did a podcast now. Yeah. And I said, So how did you find out? Oh, friend, send me a link. Friend told me, okay, great, that's really wonderful.
Daniel Lapin 0:49
And so all you Happy Warriors, it's time for me to remind you why I use the term happy warrior for our community. And it's based on a poem by William Wordsworth, and he wrote, who is the happy warrior? Who is he that every man in arms should wish to be? It is the generous spirit who, when brought, finds comfort in himself and in his cause, and while the mortal mist is gathering, draws his breath in confidence of Heaven's applause. This is the happy warrior. This is he that every man in arms should wish to be, and that inspires me, particularly those words from William Wordsworth's poem really do inspire me. They remind me that there is a higher purpose and that we can make of our lives something meaningful and something uplifting. Another poem by William Ernest Henley called Invictus. It's also worth reading, by the way, and it ends with these lines, I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. And that reminds me, you know, of something that was a Lapin family slogan, and that is, you are not tennis balls floating down the gutter of life. So all you Happy Warriors listening, it's my honor to serve you all. We're all happy warriors, man and woman, because to live productively, you have to fight every day you're fighting against the force of entropy. If nothing else, you fight to maintain your possessions. You fight. Or if you don't like the word fight, you know struggle, but I like the word fight, you fight to build and maintain your family and your money, your body, your business, your profession, your career. Look, God created a world in which chaos and disorder rules. The second verse of the Bible, Genesis, chapter one, verse two, and everything was chaos. Everything was topsy turvy. Everything was upside down, the Hebrew word is Tohu va vohu. And my Oxford English Dictionary actually lists Tohu bohu, from the Hebrew as a word, meaning just total chaos. So you got to realize life is a fight, struggle, if you like, but yeah, that's what it is, and that's not a bad thing, because to stop struggling, to stop fighting, to stop seeking, to stop striving, well, that means you die. And I think of ourselves not just as warriors, but happy warriors, because to throw ourselves into the fight for eight or 10 hours a day, six days a week, that's one thing but to do all that with a debonair smile on our faces and a jaunty pace to our stride to all to do all that while generating an irrepressible surge of happiness welling up in our souls. Well, that means that we are all spiritually grounded in everything that is life affirming, devoted to our faith, to our families, to our finances, to our fitness and our friendships. And we know that we can triumph over those who both intentionally and unknowingly promote a dark abyss of satanic secular socialism and all of the many destructive and evil Social. Pathologies that it generates. And one of the evil pathologies generated by socialism is a an unwillingness to fight, an unwillingness to win.
Daniel Lapin 5:17
Why do you think America has not won a single war since World War Two, in spite of the fact that the country has thrust its young men and to some extent women into harm's way and into the battle without any determination whatsoever to win. Do you think Korea couldn't have been won by United States of America as we were then, and as the state of our adversaries were then. Do you think Vietnam couldn't have been a win? Do you think that Afghanistan and Iraq couldn't have been wins instead of bottomless holes into which limitless quantities of blood and money were poured, an inability to win a war is one of the lasting legacies of secular leftism. Now you might be saying to yourself, Oh, come on. Rabbi Daniel Lapin places every social ill, every destructive pathology at the feet of secular leftism. Surely you're not gonna argue that losing Wars is a prerogative of secular leftists? Well, yes, I am, actually. And what I'd recommend that you do, for a start is get hold of your rabbi. Daniel Lapin recommended Bible, I guess, or any other Bible, to be honest, and take a look at Exodus, chapter 15, verse three, it is a very short verse. It says, The Lord is a man of war. The Lord is his name, and in the Hebrew it's five simple words. The first word is the four letter description of the name of God, and then it's followed by man of war, and then the four letter description of God again, and then the word is his name. That's one word in Hebrew that is actually surprisingly important, because we fall into the trap of thinking that God is only a God of peace and love and compassion, and God certainly wouldn't want us fighting. But yeah, it seems he does want us fighting. And even more importantly, when we fight, he wants us to win. That's right, and I'll explain a little bit more about this aspect of things, because it has implications also in how you run your family and how you run your business, and I'll talk about that in the special bonus podcast for members of the Happy Warrior community. And so love you to join, by the way, if you're not yet part of the Happy Warrior community, please go ahead at go to RabbiDanielLapin.com That's right. That's our website, right? RabbiDanielLapin.com and look for the Happy Warrior community and join up and and be with us. I said that as important as it is to be able to draw on other people for guidance, advice, help and inspiration, it's even more important to be somebody who provides guidance, inspiration, help, leadership for other people, you get far more out of helping others than the other people get from receiving your help. So I can't stress that enough. I used to say, become part of the Happy Warrior community. So you can draw on other people for for help and inspiration when you're going through a tough stage in your five F's. But now I say no, become part of the happy warrior community so that you can put out that you can project some of the help. Because what it does is makes you feel better about yourself. It turns you into a bigger person.
Daniel Lapin 10:07
One does need moral encouragement in order to be a winner, a winner on any level, not just a winner of wars, because deep down, we all have a lurking suspicion that to be poor and humble and to suffer and to not be able to win at very much, these are all marks of virtue and piety. These all identify you as a deeply spiritual and godly person, and nothing could be further from the truth. Now, it goes without saying that that everything we're discussing applies to people who come from a Western civilization root in some way or another. Because what that does is it has already implanted in you, whether you like it or not, a basic concept of decency, a basic idea that being a decent person is a good thing. And so obviously, everything that we're discussing is irrelevant for somebody who is pathologically amoral. And I've met a couple of people like that, but you could count them on one hand. And so I mentioned that because you know you might think of somebody, you might even think of yourself as, you know, I have no morality. I'm completely amoral. I don't know. I think it's probably not likely, you probably have been impacted by the legacy of Western civilization to at least on some level, want to see yourself as a decent human being, and now we got a problem, because if we leave ourselves to unpack that independently And to figure out what decent means, invariably we err on the side of inactivity. We err on the side of not fighting. We err on the side of submission. We err on the side of of surrender. We err on the side of being agreeable, even when it is at the cost of winning, in other words, and I know this is going to be difficult to hear, but it is. It is true, and so I hope you're going to be able to overcome any instinctive surge of repugnance or indignation that might arise as you hear me say these following words, but the natural tendency of people, and I'm talking about men without any direction of decency, is to move towards the feminine. They become feminine people. They become feminized men. That's a reality, and it happens not just to individuals. It happens to nations and societies as well. And so I don't think that you would have any doubt that America, for instance, over the last 40 years, has become noticeably more feminine than it was before. Occasionally there are little bouts of recovery.
Daniel Lapin 14:00
I think President Trump during 19th at 2016 to 2020 was such a little bout. But of course, that got sidetracked badly by the covid scamdemic, and that set that off track. But in general, yeah, when President Biden tells the hoodies who've been shooting at American warships in the Gulf, the Red Sea already now for ages. He says, Just you wait. There will be consequences for that. You know what he sounds like? He sounds like a mom talking to her son who's been very naughty. And she's saying, Just wait till your father gets home. Now, I know this is a sort of dated phrase, obviously, but that's what it sounds like. I'm not going to do anything. You got me good and mad, and I'm going to try and make sure somebody else makes you pay the consequence. Because I I'm incapable of doing anything. That's what it. Falls down to and so, yes, societies become feminized and men become feminized by virtue of intuitively adopting the notion that that the way women behave, being agreeable, being a little bit subservient, being less likely to push aggressively for that which you want and that to which you're entitled. All of these things are perceived as being good things. And one of the dangers of religion, and it's prevalent, I think, in Christianity, or strains parts of Christianity, and it's prevalent in parts of Judaism, which is that religion becomes feminized and and so I remember when the conservative movement of Judaism, That's with a capital C. It doesn't mean that they're politically conservative, far from it, but it means that when they originally started that movement after World War II, they were hoping that by renouncing many of the rules and regulations and rituals of Orthodox Judaism, they would thereby conserve Judaism, because there'd be more people who could live up to the limited and reduced requirements of conservative Judaism. Well, it didn't work out that way, because conservative Judaism has shrunk away badly and Orthodox Judaism, with all its rules and rituals and restraints and regulations, is growing meteorically.
Daniel Lapin 16:55
But I do remember that when the conservative movement announced that the prayer Corin of 10 men, they were going to modify that to be 10 people, male or female, they said this is going to double the participation in morning service. And at the time, I told my congregation ain't gonna happen that way, because the bottom line is, particularly in winter, it's no fun going out at 615 in order to make the morning service before you go to work. It's no fun, and for the most part, women are going to be too smart to do that because they're not obliged. It's not part of the religious requirements of a woman to be at the morning service and and so they said, No, it's going to increase it. Because now, if that you know, there were 100 men willing to go, but there's probably 100 women who wanted to, but they were kept from going, and now they'll be able to, there'll be 200 people there. Turned out that instead of 100 there were 12. And then pretty soon after that, it became three. And then they closed it down. It stopped. Why? Because being masculine is a fight. It's a struggle, it's a challenge. There are I'm not saying it's harder to be a man than it is to or than a one. I'm saying they're different things. But there are aspects of being a man, being pushing for what has to be, fighting when necessary, not yielding. Being in exactly being exactly what our bodies give a physical clue to an underlying spiritual reality. Right?
Daniel Lapin 18:55
Part of being masculine is to be hard. Part of being feminine is to be soft and yielding, and so that challenge of being hard, it's absolutely necessary, as I've often quoted. Miss Paglia has often said that if civilization was left to women, we'd all still be living in grass huts. And there's a lot to what she says, because the fact is that building, a building, is incredibly tough. It's a struggle, it's a fight. It's not going out to gather some palm fronds and weave them into a roof and put them up over some sticks as you got a shelter, no digging a foundation, explosives, pulling out rocks and boulders, pouring concrete. This is tough work, tough to do, and it is entirely appropriate for women not to see it as their contribution. I. Right? Because without women, we'd all kill each other. Women have a vitally important role in preserving civilization, but it's a different role from men. It's all that's very clear. So when it comes to conflict, women debate, women talk, women compromise, women negotiate. These are traits that come naturally to women with men. It's a different thing. And so yes, it quite often, and many people have told me about this, that it works better in business circumstances where negotiations have to take place. It works very well to send in a woman, although the only risk to that is that she may not push for her side of the negotiation as strong as a man might. It is a difference now can a woman work on herself to lose those feminine characteristics and to become more masculine, obviously? And it's not hard to do at all, and she will acquire those masculine traits, but it's really important that she also understands what she's losing, because she is losing something. She's losing her femininity, and she is certainly losing the major part of the appeal that a man finds irresistible. That's right, a part of masculinity is dominance, and part of femininity is surrender, and if you understand what I'm saying, that's great, if you don't wait till you've had a little bit more world experience. I don't know if it's still true, but there was a time when a number of churches in different Christian traditions were finding that they only had women in attendance at services or at Mass. You hardly ever saw any men. The church had become feminized. And this does tend to happen. And so a great deal of Bible based ancient Jewish wisdom is focused on keeping men men, because it doesn't come naturally. It doesn't come easily. In the same way that you know that raising a boy in certain ways is harder than raising a girl, when you say to a boy, be a man, you try to get him to behave in a certain way, but you've never had to say to a daughter, come on, be a woman. You've never had to say that to a girl. You never have big difference. That's just one of the things that religion does. And so not surprisingly, in the absence of faith, in an environment of secular leftism, not surprisingly, the general move is towards the feminine. That's what happens. And the United Nations is one of the most feminine organizations in the history of the planet. There is no war that the United By the way, it's hilarious to look at the United Nations website and see how they struggle to claim credit for stopping wars or ending wars or preventing wars, and none of which they've actually done, in fact, in in one of the more shameful examples, In in 1967 in the Israeli Six Day War leading up to that, there were United Nations peacekeeping forces between the Egyptians and the Israelis, and at one point, Nasser, the head of Egypt, told the United Nations to get out, so they scuttled out, and the war broke out a few days later. So yeah, this is not an organization that actually stops wars, in spite of the fact that there are 1000s of so called United Nations, peacekeeping people, peacekeeping soldiers in Africa. They've never done anything. They didn't do anything to stop the slaughter, the slaughter of the Tutsis by the Hutus. And yeah, they're talkers. That's what they are. They're talkers. And where all of this is bringing me around towards is that. I'm going to tell you, as I did in 2016 that Susan and I are going to vote for Donald Trump. It's not a question. We didn't spend any time discussing it. It was straightforward, and it's obvious. And you know, there's a lot to talk about his his impulsive speaking and tweet. There's a lot of things to talk about, but bottom line is that we believe that to understand Trump, you have to take Trump's actions very seriously and laugh off what he says to get Trump The important part is what he does.
Daniel Lapin 25:41
The trivial part is what he says and what the secular left does. And they get themselves wound up about Trump is they focus on everything he says, And they ignore, pointedly, everything that he's done. And whenever I ask people every now and then I run into somebody who's a never Trumper, and I was, Oh, that's very interesting. Do tell me. Please tell me what's wrong with him, what don't you like about him? And it immediately launches into things he said. And I wait till the diatribe dies down, and then I say, but could we just focus on the things he's done? Would you tell me some of the really terrible things he's done? I got to tell you. I get nothing but dead silence I have not yet heard unless it's a hardcore leftist who says, well, he's turned the Supreme Court conservative. Yes, that's called democracy. He's not a threat to democracy. He is democracy. And so, yeah, there's a lot of that. What focusing on what people say is feminine, focusing on what we do is masculine. And that's why, for Happy Warriors, most Happy Warriors, especially if you're part of the Happy Warrior community, you probably already know one of the favorite slogans of us Happy Warriors, say little and do much. Say little and do match in Hebrew, Emor Maat Va'aseh Harbeh, say little and do a lot. That's really, really important. And what we're finding is that, generally speaking, politicians, not only in the United States but everywhere, have all become feminized, and so they do a lot of talking, but very little action, and then they try and talk more to bamboozle the electorate into confusing speech with action.
Daniel Lapin 27:53
I'll give you an example of a one term president. Jimmy Carter was a one term president, and something interesting happened with Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter became president in 1976, the presidential election was between Gerald Ford as a Republican and Jimmy Carter as a Democrat. Carter served four years. It was a most unsuccessful four years for America, perhaps beaten in lack of luster only by the Obama presidency. But 1976 to 1980 and then President Carter lost to Ronald Reagan. But remember, I'm talking about the tendency of politicians to focus on talk rather than action. And one of the issues during that election cycle was what's going to happen with the Panama Canal. Because, not surprisingly, there were Panamanians egged on by certain Panamanian leaders who were pushing and agitating to get the control of the canal. Why? Because it's a tremendous moneymaker. It just spins out money limitlessly. Remember that the Panama Canal was built by America, completed in the about 1916 or 1917 was the completion of the Panama Canal. It had been started by the French. They made an awful mess of it. America stepped in, salvaged it, did the job and built the canal, and had a treaty in place for eternal control of the canal and a space of land on either side of the canal. The Canal Zone, there wasn't a. Time limit on that there was nothing. It was a fixed thing forever, eternally, in all eternity America would own and operate the Panama Canal that was the way a giant, powerful, wonderful America that was able to do things like building the dams and the skyscrapers and the bridges that got built during what I think was really the American century. The 20th Century really was. It was the greatest century of America, other than perhaps its founding period. At any rate, Gerald Ford held very strongly that that there should be some renegotiating. Why? Why would you renegotiate the canal? A strong America shouldn't renegotiate the canal. Why? It's like somebody walking into your living room. You come home from going to a restaurant, and you walk into your house, there's somebody sitting in your living room, and he's sitting on the floor making a little campfire to roast some marshmallows. And you say, Excuse me, what do you think you're doing? Let me go get my gun. And the person says, Look, I'm willing to negotiate. Let's Let's talk. I'm willing that you should have the use of your living room on odd days of the month, and I'll have it on what are you talking about? There's no beginning to this conversation. You're out. This is my living room. What America, I believe, should have said, this is our canal. What are you talking about? You Panamanians organized riot. We'll go down there and put a stop to it. End of story. That's how things used to be. But President Ford lost the primary. Excuse me, he didn't. He won the primary. His primary opponent in 76 was Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan spoke the way I'm speaking now, absolutely not. What are you talking about? The Panama Canal, built by America, operated by America, and always will be. End of story. The Democratic nominee, Jimmy Carter, of course, in a debate, a presidential debate, it was October of that year, October 76 he vowed, he vowed. He was solemn about this. He literally vowed that he would never surrender control of the Panama Canal Zone. Wouldn't happen. He won. President Carter won. And guess what? His views on the Panama Canal seemed to change, and the actions he took were to send two of his pals, Sol Lenovo and Cyrus Vance, send them down to Panama to start, and you go, you know, the Panamanians are rowdy. They're rioting. They're threatening the zone. Let's, let's give in to them a little bit. Maybe they'll like us. Maybe they'll be nicer to us if we yield and surrender to them, right? That's what girls always think, right, surrender to the to the guy, and he'll love you and he'll want to marry you. That's what girls believe all the time. It happens well, that's what secular leftists believe as well, that if we just surrender and yield and give in to the tough guys. They were like us, and soon thereafter was 72 years later, 78 Carter finished off the deal to hand back the Panama Canal by 1999 or new year 2000 and they signed it. The in lamentably shamefully, the United States Congress ratified it. And sure enough, on New Year's Day, 2000 the Panama Canal reverted back to the Panamanians. What has happened since then? Well, a few things. The maintenance on the canal has deteriorated every now and then, locks close. Never happened under American Management. What else has happened is they've constantly raised the cost of transit. You know, America is a good country. Think about it. In the history of warfare, I should really check with Victor Davis Hanson, but I'm pretty sure, in the history of warfare, has there ever been a country that, after winning a war, did not enslave the. Defeated nation and actually helped rebuild it, that Japan and Germany were rebuilt and back on their feet economically, way before England was a remarkably benevolent country, and same as the Panama Canal, America could have prevented the ships of nations they were not happy with from using the Panama Canal. They didn't do that, and they could have charged different rates. They could have charged their friends low rates and their enemies high rates. They didn't they could have raised rates for everybody. They could have turned the Panama Canal into a big moneymaker. They didn't do any of the buff. It was as if America did this as a service to the world. And what a service to the world. You just think trade between Los Angeles and Germany, through the Panama Canal trade between New York and China. Through the Panama Canal trade between France, Italy, Germany, England and China and Japan, through the Panama Canal and you have any idea of how much is saved and how much more economical are the things you need and buy, because they didn't have to go around the Cape of Good or the cape around Cape Horn at the tip of South America. No, this was, this is an amazingly benevolent act, and President Carter in 76 say, Oh no, never, I vow, solemnly, promise I would never negotiate away the Panama Canal. Two years later, that's exactly what he did.
Daniel Lapin 36:57
So what I don't like about President Carter are not the things he said, it's the things he did. And what I do like about President Trump are not the things he says, but the things he did. It's a very, very big, real difference. So yes, say little and do much that is a masculine way of doing things. A feminine way of doing things is not so much in the way of action, but a lot in the way of communication and in women. It's a blessing. It's an absolutely wonderful thing when you live in a community where women work. It's a dead community. The streets are empty, the stores are empty, the library is empty. There's no feeling of neighborhood. When you are in a neighborhood where women are at home and are homemakers and housewives, you've got a vibrant community. The parks have got moms. It's great. And I've lived in both and I'm very, very familiar with it. I've also traveled in both communities. It's a huge difference, and that's because women communicate on a level, entirely different from men, as any man knows if, if you phone me up and you say, Lapin, good afternoon. How you doing? I say, Fine. Thank you. Everything. Wonderful. How you doing? Fine, excellent. Thank you. What's been happening? What have you been doing? At that point, I'm starting to get a bit itchy, like any guy would. I want to know why you called because we're action focused. We are purpose focused. If you called, there has to have been a reason. What can I do for you? And sooner or later, I'm going to start getting, I mean, even sound irritable, because I need to. I can't spend the morning talking to you. I'm happy to hear you're okay, but can we do business? Is there something you need? Is there something you can help me? Well, what is it? Let's get, let's deal with it. But that's not how it is. When a woman gets a phone call and it's a friend of hers, she's delighted and thrilled, and her husband might say to her 20 minutes later, who was actually, you know, that was ETHEL. And what, you know, what was nothing. We just, just just catching up. And it makes all the sense in the world, because men and women are different. Can a man make himself more feminized? I'll say he can tragically and tragically for his society and his community and his nation and his country. Yes, he can. Can a woman masculinize herself? Oh, yeah, no question about that. And if that happens, tough luck on the male in her life. That's all I can tell you. So there it is. Yes. I'm gonna trust Trump because of his actions, not because of his words. And Happy Warriors, remember that's right. Act of actions are more important than words. Say little, do much if you're not already subscribe, do that. If you're not already a member of the Happy Warrior community, do that and get access to the bonus show that will be available to you on your special, customized happy warrior website. And until our next opportunity, we're going to be together, I will wish you a ongoing journey moving towards your goals, for your family and your friendships, for your faith and your finance and your fitness. I'm Rabbi Daniel Lapin, God bless you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
