Otto, my beloved English Bulldog, died just before I made this video.

His presence in my and my wife's life for 12 years was an unmitigated joy.

He also amazingly became the best-known dog in America.

He was on camera for virtually every one of my Prager U fireside chats and became the

hero of a series of Prager U books for children.

And as I have often noted, none of this fame went to his head.

The sadness we feel at Otto's death and the outpouring of condolence messages have caused

me to reflect on three long-held concerns about pets.

Concern number one I have long feared that many people are replacing love of humans with

love of animals.

For decades I've asked high school students, if your dog and a stranger were both drowning,

which would you try to save first?

In nearly every instance one-third of the students voted to save the stranger one-third

their dog and one-third declined to vote.

In other words, for more than 40 years, two-thirds of high school students have not voted to

save a human being they didn't know before their dog.

The primary reason they've given is that they love their dog not the stranger.

I realized two things as a result of this answer.

One was that we are living in an age of feelings.

Feelings have replaced values as the guide to people's behavior.

The other realization was that as a result of society increasingly abandoning Judeo-Christian

that is Bible-based values, the belief that humans are special because only they are

...