To Make People Good

 

Yesterday, 5/26/2024, I wrote down a short video snippet of Dennis Prager talking about the making people good.

 

Here is my paraphrase of the video, from one of his Fireside Chats: “This is the most important question. How do you make good people? Most people are not preoccupied with this question because they think people are basically good. All you have to do is give kids love.

 

But I have said all of my broadcast life of forty years, if all you give your child is love, all you will have is a well-loved barbarian.

 

Love is hardly enough: discipline, and guard rails and guidelines are actually more important even than love.

 

I am certainly a big fan of love; every normal person is.”

 

My response: I could not agree more; I would contribute my two cents that providing moral training—discipline, guard rails and guidelines are really  a form of parental love to civilize the savage heart of each child, so their natural goodness, present in each of them at birth, as a weak, recessive tendency, is strengthened until the child’s will is so used to being good, that the child wields a good will.