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July 7, 2021 - Dennis Prager Show
08:14
Julie Hartman on Covid Lockdowns: The Price Was Too High for Young People
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She will be a senior at Harvard.
She has been deeply affected by the ideas you hear from me, and it's been very powerful to see her.
She is going to be a major force in this country.
I say that with great, not only certitude, but with some optimism for the country.
All right, so I wanted to talk to you about this past year and a half.
Your college was the first to shut down over COVID. Did you know that?
The first to shut down school was Harvard.
Is that true?
Yes, yep.
Wow.
I'm not surprised, but I just wanted you to know that.
And then, of course, everybody followed.
What price has your generation paid, forgetting Harvard, any place, what price do you think your generation has paid this last year and a half?
Oh, we have paid an enormous price.
I mean, I am now a senior in college, and I have not been back there since I was a sophomore.
So I left as a sophomore.
I'm coming back as a senior.
I've missed out.
I'm not alone.
All of my classmates have also missed out on this time.
Just think about that for a second.
College is such an important time in our development so that we can meet people, we can date, you know, and we've just been stuck at home all day.
And we've missed out on all of these opportunities.
I really think in the coming years, we will see how utterly crushing this is.
And Dennis, imagine it for babies.
I mean, really, really young kids who missed out on socialization opportunities, just seeing people being in the world, you know, interacting with others.
The results are totally crushing.
And the sad thing is...
I really think that we could have achieved much better results if we had not pursued such draconian measures and if we had just done some targeted lockdowns, that is, protect the vulnerable and let the rest of us live.
I mean, the social cost is, you can't even fathom how bad it is.
I'm starting to understand it because I'm grieving what I've lost, but I think in the coming years we will really see the effects.
I, of course, said this from the beginning, my anger at not having schools open.
In Sweden, they had schools open, by the way, for the record, virtually the entire time, and no increase in child deaths from COVID, young people deaths, which were extremely rare.
So, if your classmates, and again, it's irrelevant whether you're at Harvard or anywhere else, if anyone your generation For your age, heard what you said.
What percentage of them would think, boy, they really heard us for no good reason?
I think a lot of people would deny that that's true.
I think a lot of people would say, oh, well, you know, it's good intentions and you would rather be safe than sorry.
And you know what I think it is, Dennis?
I think it's easier to be ignorant.
Ignorance is bliss.
I don't think that they fully want to understand how draconian and how harmful this has been.
Because if you accept that basically the past year and a half of your life has gone to waste, that's a very tough pill to swallow.
So I think it's easier for a lot of people my age, and even not my age, just people in general, to tell themselves that it was worth it than to accept that in many ways it wasn't.
That is another brilliant point, by the way.
They have a vested interest.
Definitely.
In believing that they were treated wisely.
That's right.
It's very hard for a young person to believe that the adult authorities are fools.
With all of the nonsense about don't trust anyone over 30, young people ache to believe that older people Well, here's what I also say to people my age, and I don't think that they fully understand, that if we look at these lockdowns, I think there were some people who pursued them that wanted to save lives and they thought it was the good thing.
But I think in many ways...
A lot of the Democrats who advocated and enforced these policies really lacked principle.
What is the principle here of a lockdown?
If the principle is to save lives, and if they think that, you know, suspending people's civil liberties as a result is worth it, then why don't we have lockdowns in Chicago to stop crime?
That would surely save lives.
Yep, we'll be back.
Anyway, Julie Hartman has been on each week.
She is a find.
Shall we say?
As you obviously have recognized yourselves, she will be a senior at Harvard.
She is one of very few outspoken conservatives at that institution, or at any college for that matter.
I've been asking her, and she's contactable at julie-hartman.com.
The effects of this year, this lost year, You made a point, I just have to revisit it, Julie.
Your generation cannot afford, psychologically, emotionally, to think that they were misled by the adults of their lives.
Not only school adults, not only medical professional adults, not only politician adults, media adults, but even parents.
Think about all of the ways that we've been lied to.
I talked about this a few weeks ago.
We're told from a very young age that the world is going to end in a decade due to climate change.
We're told that America is infiltrated by white supremacists, that the police are out to get every black person, that all of the COVID lockdowns were completely worth it, staying home from school, not socializing was completely worth it.
I've come to realize that for these people, it is too psychologically difficult to grapple with the fact that a lot of these issues have been way overdone, way overdone, way catastrophized, and it has harmed us to such a grave extent.
That it's easier for people to just think that it was worth it.
It's almost a form of Stockholm Syndrome, I really think.
It's easier, maybe this sounds too dramatic to say, but it's easier for you to identify with your captor at times than to process the harm that they've done to you.
That was very, very bright.
Thank you.
The price paid is so profound.
I say this when I go to colleges.
You have no idea what the adults in your life are doing to screw up your life.
And it's too painful because the anchor of a young person's life is the adult world.
If that anchor is made out of silly putty...
My ship will just drift.
Yes.
You know, I'm reminded of the story, the emperor has no clothes.
And we are in an emperor has no clothes situation.
And it is not lost on me that at the end of the story, the person who says that the emperor has no clothes is a child.
Because when a child's young, they don't have...
They didn't go to college.
No.
No.
That's a major advantage.
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