April 28, 2020 - Dennis Prager Show
07:04
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Contributing editor, City Journal, senior fellow Manhattan Institute, lives in Manhattan. | |
| Doesn't wear a mask when she jogs. | |
| I don't jog, I walk, and I don't wear a mask here. | |
| I wrote in my column, by the way, Heather, you'll just know, I went to Shabbat dinner Friday night with seven other people to a friend's house in Santa Monica, California. | |
| And were you being surveilled, or did anybody fall in? | |
| I want you to know, it would not have shocked me. | |
| Well, I was told by, I was giving a talk at Washington and Lee the day before that school shut down and all of Virginia shut down, and a woman that was with the group that supported me told me that her daughter had called Her local, | |
| the family doctor, on her parents for holding an informal prayer service at home that had ten people, one person above the mandated limit of nine. | |
| So you now have daughters, and she's from an elite college who, of course, these are the people, you know, we don't have to worry about children getting sick. | |
| Being in college or going to grammar school. | |
| But they are getting infected by safetyism. | |
| So they're the primary carriers. | |
| We need to contact trace college students who are coming out into the world at large spreading identity politics and safetyism. | |
| So there she is. | |
| Informing on her parents. | |
| And the doctor then gave a call to the parents to say, you're violating the state's social distancing rules. | |
| So we're moving towards a Stasi-type situation here. | |
| No, that's what I mean. | |
| Talking to you is like talking to me, except hearing a female voice. | |
| My column this week is our rehearsal for a police state. | |
| And I used the Stasi as the example. | |
| This is eerie to hear you. | |
| You've got to take a look at my article because you'll just cheer as I cheered reading yours. | |
| So I have a question, and I only have a theory in terms of answering it. | |
| How do you explain people like us? | |
| It's a very serious question. | |
| Thank God not just us. | |
| I mean, there are really a fair number of magnificent conservative dissenters to the totalitarianism of our time. | |
| Why are we marching against the direction of the rest of the herd? | |
| Well, I'm more curious about the conservatives who are with the herd, frankly. | |
| Because it's not a straightforward conservative-liberal divide. | |
| I think the conservative divide is perhaps more profound than even the never-Trump versus the tolerant-of-Trump or pro-Trump divide. | |
| But I think that there are... | |
| I don't know. | |
| What we're seeing is, again, this willingness to defer to the tyranny. | |
| Of one group of experts, which is public health, people who know nothing about the greater complexity of the economy, of society, of the damage that they're doing, they are understandably focused on saving one particular kind of life, which at the moment is a death to COVID-19. | |
| And that's admirable, and we should appreciate them, thank them for their expertise. | |
| But they do not have expertise in making the necessary cost-benefit analysis and saying we have to balance that concern with the ability of society to move forward in the future. | |
| Now, progressives have no understanding, no appreciation of the complexity and beauty. | |
| of private market transactions. | |
| So they think that the government can, the federal government, can print money, bring it out of the blue, and start throwing it around. | |
| And that is not just an adequate substitute for the economy. | |
| It is preferable. | |
| This is a good thing. | |
| What I don't understand is people on our side who are not so naive about the Substitutability of government for the private economy, who are nevertheless willing to go under the thrall of this one particular group of experts. | |
| Excuse me. | |
| I want to ask you about that. | |
| About the divide. | |
| And then I just want to say, I've told my listeners so often... | |
| The moment you ask, what does it cost? | |
| You're a conservative. | |
| And not just monetarily, in any way, what is the cost? | |
| That is a mature answer or question to ask. | |
| But I have found that there is a left-right divide on this. | |
| The number of conservatives who think that the lockdown is correct, I read this stuff all day. | |
| I'm deluged. | |
| I go to every major conservative website. | |
| It is overwhelmingly anti the lockdown. | |
| So I think, I've said on the air, I've never been as proud to be a conservative as I am at this moment. | |
| Well, maybe so. | |
| I think that many of our official organs are not necessarily skeptics as we are. | |
| But there's certainly, I think, Among the public, that is the case. | |
| And, nevertheless, I would say that some Republican governors, now one can question whether Larry Hogan of Maryland is really a Republican governor, but they've been pretty tentative now. | |
| We are seeing a revolt, and I applaud many of the governors who are saying, to heck with this, we have to let people go back to work. | |
| We have to let them have meaning in their lives. | |
| But a lot of the Republican governors... | |
| Oh, that's true. | |
| I wasn't thinking of politicians. | |
| I was thinking of the thinkers. | |
| Folks, read her column. | |
| I'm going to stay in touch with you. | |
| I will not say to you, stay safe. | |
| But I don't have to say to you, stay literate either. | |
| Listen to Hayden. | |
| Listen to Hayden. |
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