It’s a question many conservatives in California have likely asked themselves more than once: How is it possible not to despair at the decline of the Golden State?
PragerU CEO Marissa Streit this week posed that question to Dennis Prager, perhaps the ideal person to answer it. Prager, who grew up in New York, moved to Los Angeles in 1976 and couldn’t have been more excited. It’s difficult to imagine now, but as he recalls, California was then “identified in America’s mind with freedom.”
Interestingly, Prager is now in Florida — or, as Gov. Ron DeSantis dubs it, the “Free State of Florida” — a place many conservatives, including Dave Rubin and Ben Shapiro, have fled to in search of relief from California’s high taxes, heavy regulations, homelessness, and crime. Prager is there for another reason: recovering from a devastating fall in 2024 that left him paralyzed.
Related: Dennis Prager Gives First On-Camera Interview Since Devastating Injury
Prager didn’t despair in the aftermath of that life-changing accident, and he tells conservatives in California — and America more broadly — they shouldn’t either:
Despair is a sin. It’s a copout for not fighting. For me personally, in my condition, I had three choices. Literally three: death, despair, or persevere to the best of my ability and live life. Since I don’t want to have depression and despair, and I certainly don’t want to die, I have no choice. We have no choice but to fight. It’s unbelievable to me. The guys who stormed Normandy Beach, they had a lot more reason for despair than we do fighting the left and the Islamists in the United States because we go back to our families at night. A lot of them knew they wouldn’t go back anywhere. It’s a sin.
But it sometimes feels like, in one-party-ruled California, leftists don’t even need to show up to the fight. Take Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who — along with further-left progressive City Councilmember Nithya Raman — dropped out of a mayoral forum days after being embarrassed at an L.A. mayoral debate by GOP candidate Spencer Pratt. Even though 89% of viewers, according to an NBC Los Angeles poll, thought the former reality TV star won the debate, and while his powerful viral campaign ads are giving him momentum, conservatives have learned not to get their hopes up, although Prager doesn’t rule out a Pratt victory:
Spencer Pratt may win. I mean, it’s possible. I don’t predict it, but it’s possible. People are sick and tired of homeless encampments. They’re sick and tired of taxes. They’re sick and tired of the fires and no homes being rebuilt.
I agree that Angelenos are fed up, as I pointed out in “Are L.A. Voters Finally Waking Up — Or Headed for the Same Mistake Again?”. However, there were enough voters sick and tired of Gov. Gavin Newsom to force a recall election in 2021, and we all remember how that turned out. The left was able to portray the Republican frontrunner in that race — Prager’s longtime friend, Larry Elder — as the “black face of white supremacy” and link him to Trump. Newsom went on to easily survive the recall.
Pratt’s opponents are now trying to do the same thing by labeling him a MAGA candidate. In an NBCLA interview, Pratt was asked how he expects to win in a city that rarely votes Republican:
It’s a nonpartisan race. And the mayor is a nonpartisan race because the mayor is supposed to represent all of Angelenos. And that’s what I do. All the people I meet with every day are Democrats. It’s all the business owners and community leaders, all Democrats, [who have] already voted for me, turned in their ballots early.
Recent reports back up Pratt’s claims. According to PageSix Hollywood, Nicole Avant — who was Barack Obama’s ambassador to the Bahamas — has “stunned” L.A. with her decision to support Pratt. Other prominent Democrats like billionaire entertainment mogul Haim Saban and Universal Music Group Chairman and CEO Sir Lucian Grainge have also donated to Pratt.
Related: California’s Last Hope
So there are signs, including rising polls numbers, that a surprise may be in the making. But even if Pratt wins and Steve Hilton wins the governor’s race, is it too late? If it is, that bodes poorly for all of the West. As Prager says, “California is a microcosm of Western civilization.”
And Western civilization, if you haven’t noticed, is on life support at the moment — not just in Europe, but also in the United States. Prager warns:
It’s almost inexplicable that people don’t care about this enough until it’s right at their doorstep. So what’s happening in the UK? There’s an awakening. I don’t know if it’s too late. The number of Islamists, not peaceful Muslims, but Sharia-desiring Muslims known as Islamists, in Britain, in the UK, is quite large. As, by the way, it’s true in America, in, uh, Michigan, for example, where we have districts that elect radical Islamists because that’s the voting body there.
Just as conservatives in Texas, Florida, and across the nation should care about radical Islamists being elected in Michigan, they should also support conservatives in California — a state that just saw a mayor resign over connections to the Chinese Communist Party — as they continue fighting politicians and policies that are undermining the country.
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