As I detailed in my opinion piece “YouTube helped me become a conservative—so what?”, moving to Montreal in 2016 was particularly memorable for me, as it was when I truly started to dip my feet into the political side of YouTube.
Comedians and provocateurs like Steven Crowder, pundits like Milo Yiannopolous or Ben Shapiro, academics like Gad Saad or Jordan B. Peterson, all had so much to offer. Each person a character with new insights, and answers to questions I didn’t even know I had.
One of these “characters” was Dennis Prager and his channel Prager U. As well described by Wikipedia, Prager U or Prager University, is a channel that creates videos on various political, economic and philosophical topics from a conservative or right-wing perspective.
In most of the videos, guest speakers break down a topic or give their opinion while accompanied by very informative moving illustrations which display data or verbal metaphors. All in all, it seemed like a great way to get a bite-sized debriefing on complicated topics.
So when I found out Dennis Prager had an event in Montreal titled Happiness Is a Serious Problem, of which he has published a book of the same name, I was eager to hear about his expectations for the event.
Prager has very high hopes for the talk. “If this talk does not impact — perhaps even change — the listener’s life, either I have failed to clearly communicate or the listener has failed to clearly hear,” said Prager to The Post Millennial in an email interview.
Asking what to expect in his upcoming Montreal talk on September 25, Prager says it’s all about Happiness and its vital role in our lives. “Happiness is moral virtue (and therefore a moral obligation), not primarily an emotional feeling. The reason: Happy people make the world better; and the unhappy make it worse.”
Prager’s lengthy career—now spanning 25 years—has had some serious cultural influence, and has evolved along with the changing landscape of media along the way. Prager acknowledges this. “(the move to online is) more than a shift; it is a sea change. For example, almost no young person reads a newspaper—certainly not the print version, and probably not the electronic version, either” said Prager.
“Likewise, radio is mostly listened to by middle-aged and older people. Young people are far more likely to listen to podcasts. In light of that, we started Prager University (PragerU), which now gets a billion views a year.”
And it’s that young demographic that keeps Prager relevant to the culture. “It is heartening how often young people stop me at airports to take a selfie. And they are all over the world.”
In Canada, Prager is as relevant as anywhere else, and its popularity has skyrocketed. “PragerU seems to have taken off recently, but it has definitely been met with resistance in the mainstream and social media. Why is the establishment so intent on silencing diverse voices?”
Prager’s work in media doesn’t end at broadcasting, either. He has been working on a movie with Adam Carolla that will be viewable in “hopefully, a thousand theatres” on October 25.
“In my opinion, it is a great movie—not because I am in it, but because the subject may be the most important one of our time. We are experiencing the greatest threat to free speech in the history of the English-speaking countries, and that threat emanates from the universities — the places supposedly most dedicated to reason and free inquiry.”
It’s all a testament to Prager’s popularity, which has been met with resistance in the mainstream media, as well as on social media. Prager believes that it’s Prager U’s commitment to free speech that attracts freedom-stifling leftists.
“PragerU is a well-reasoned, highly intelligent, highly sophisticated intellectual and moral challenge to the orthodoxy of our time—leftism. And unlike liberals and conservatives, leftists have never valued freedom, particularly freedom of speech. That’s why conservative speakers are so often shut down at universities.”
As for what the future holds for Prager U, Prager has nothing set in stone. “Unlike the Soviets with their ‘Five-Year Plans,’ I do not plan for the future. I have always tried to do what was right at that time. PragerU will continue to grow, evolve, and offer wisdom to a world that no longer believes in wisdom (Shakespeare’s mural was taken down from the Department of English at the University of Pennsylvania because he was white and male),” said Prager.
“Personally, I am involved in completing the most challenging project of my life — my five-volume commentary on the Torah, The Rational Bible.”
To check out more of Prager’s work as well as his channel, click here. For more information about his speaking events, click here.
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