Dennis Prager Show - Eric Metaxas: Lockdowns are Stupid and Unconstitutional⎜The Dennis Prager Radio Show Aired: 2020-04-27 Duration: 04:56 === People Follow the Herd (04:28) === [00:00:00] Eric Metaxas' latest book, by the way, is terrific. [00:00:02] It's Seven More Men. [00:00:04] It's so important to read about great figures, my friends. [00:00:10] And, you know, it's so clear to me. [00:00:13] Every age, it's just a repeat. [00:00:15] A handful of people stand out for courage, and most people follow the herd. [00:00:21] It is the situation on Earth at this time. [00:00:25] Let me ask you, I don't know if I talked to you about this, Italy. [00:00:29] So, what is your take? [00:00:32] I mean, you're in the middle of New York. [00:00:33] You're at the new term, epicenter. [00:00:37] Do you agree? [00:00:40] With people like me and Victor Davis Hanson and Heather McDonald, who also lives in New York, that a lot of places should not be on lockdown? [00:00:51] Of course I do. [00:00:52] Look, it's ridiculous on a number of levels. [00:00:55] It's ridiculous just because it's flat-out stupid, stupid. [00:00:58] It's just dumb. [00:00:59] You're not saving lives. [00:01:00] You're not doing anything. [00:01:01] You're not doing anything except harming the economy, number one. [00:01:04] Number two, it's either unconstitutional or troublingly possibly unconstitutional. [00:01:12] You have to educate the people about what you can educate them on. [00:01:18] But at some point, we are free. [00:01:20] If I want to jump in front of a bus and kill myself, there might be laws against it. [00:01:26] But the point is, people are going to do what they want to do. [00:01:29] You cannot force people not to run out in traffic. [00:01:34] And I think that if people have enough information, most people are going to make the right I mean, this is a classic case, [00:02:05] and I really do think that... [00:02:07] It's a moment in our history where we're going to look back at how we dealt with this. [00:02:15] I think it was brilliant of the president to throw it in the governor's Eric, [00:02:42] I called it today the greatest Human error in human history. [00:02:51] Obviously, there have been greater evils. [00:02:54] The bombing of Pearl Harbor. [00:02:57] Gulag. [00:02:58] I'm not talking about evil. [00:02:59] I'm just talking about error. [00:03:01] Right. [00:03:01] This is the greatest international error in human history, in my opinion. [00:03:06] I think you're probably right, because there's nothing that has been global. [00:03:11] And there's nothing where everybody has fallen in line. [00:03:13] We haven't had the situation set up where this was even possible. [00:03:19] You know, we didn't have the global culture. [00:03:21] Now, do you agree? [00:03:22] I had on my radio program last week Diana West who said she felt Trump was tricked into this. [00:03:28] He wasn't tricked. [00:03:29] He was, for the first time in his presidency, intimidated. [00:03:34] Because if he didn't go lockdown in the beginning, which he clearly was opposed to, every death in America would have been ascribed to Donald Trump. [00:03:43] Every single one. [00:03:44] Right. [00:03:45] Look, to give you an idea, I use the example, Eric, of India. [00:03:50] 1 billion, 100 million people, 800 deaths. [00:03:54] Why are they on lockdown when far more people are going to starve to death in India than will die from the coronavirus as a result of the lockdown? [00:04:03] I mean, more people will starve in a week in India. [00:04:08] That's unbelievable. [00:04:11] So, the world seems to be governed by media. === The Rise of Media Culture (00:43) === [00:04:21] I don't know what else to say. [00:04:22] Now we're getting to the big issue, Dennis. [00:04:25] This is why you and I do what we do, because... [00:04:27] We didn't used to be here. [00:04:30] My theory, I've talked about this for decades, is that the rise of the media culture has been over the last five, six decades. [00:04:38] In other words, values were transmitted mostly locally around the world, including in the U.S. But something happened with the rise of the media culture. [00:04:50] Okay, hold it there. [00:04:51] That's really important. [00:04:53] I love that point. [00:04:55] From local transmission.