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March 14, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show

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	Dennis Prager here.
	Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
	To hear the entire three hours of my radio show, commercial-free, every single day, become a member of PragerTopia.
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	Subscribe at PragerTopia.com.
	Hi, everybody.
	Dennis Prager here with new earphones.
	It's so interesting how sound is different depending on the earphone.
	This is probably not interesting to most of you.
	I recognize that as I say it.
	So, why do I find it interesting and most people don't?
	It's one of my things, about to find everything interesting.
	Or audio.
	Audio, yeah.
	But both are true.
	I'm not bragging.
	If you don't find it interesting, as an engineer, we're really in bad shape.
	There's an article here, which is...
	What shall I say?
	I don't want to say depressing, because I don't want to depress you.
	But it is depressing.
	And the trick is to not get depressed, even when things are depressing.
	That's an effort.
	It's an effort I make on a daily basis, and it works, I might add.
	Maine parents, where is this from?
	Fox 23, Maine.
	Maine parents going to great lengths to get young kids vaccinated on first day of rollout.
	I read to you the other day we're the only country in the world that is promoting vaccines for six-month-olds.
	So either in this regard we are better than everybody else or we are more foolish than everybody else.
	It is no question in my mind that it is the latter.
	Eager parents are lining up with their young kids hoping to get some of the first vaccine shots.
	Children between six months and five years old are now eligible to get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.
	Before the doors even opened, there was a line outside the former Sanford Marshals now turned into a vaccination site.
	We've been worried about their health and we haven't taken them indoors to a lot of places, Portland parent Chris Gorski said.
	I mean no insult to Chris Gorski.
	I don't know if it's a man or a woman.
	I could have avoided the name, but that was what was written.
	So I will say it as gently as I can.
	I feel sorry for Chris Gorky's kid or kids.
	Kids, I guess.
	We haven't taken them indoors to a lot of places.
	This is two and a half years.
	We haven't taken them to a lot of places.
	So, here's an interesting question.
	Is it not probable that every one of you listening knows the politics of this individual?
	Now, you would think, why would that be?
	What does vaccinating one's children have to do with whether one is a Democrat, a Republican, leftist, liberal, conservative, what have you?
	But it does.
	The more frightened you are of life and of death, the more likely you are to be on the left.
	It's just a fact.
	It's not...
	Not a condemnation.
	It's not a critique.
	It's a fact.
	Being on the left means never asking, am I doing the right thing in terms of the consequences of what I'm doing?
	It also means hermetically sealing yourself off from views such as those.
	That I have been expressing for two and a half years.
	It means you only listen to NPR, in which case you will be a frightened parent.
	I looked up...
	I'll get more data for you.
	I just got this article, so...
	I checked the number of children died from COVID. The first thing that came up, because it almost always comes up as the first things, is from a left-wing site, USA Today.
	And it's only from last October, so that's two and six, eight months ago.
	But nothing has changed in terms of percentages.
	So it's titled, How Bad is COVID-19 in Kids?
	See the latest data and charts.
	So, finally, scroll down.
	How many kids have died of COVID-19?
	This is USA Today.
	It's a left-wing source, which would like to maximize the number of kids killed by COVID. Of the 73 million children in the United States, fewer than 700 have died of COVID-19 during the course of the pandemic, according to the CDC. And so what is that?
	Fewer than 700 out of 73 million.
	And they note that...
	Oh man, where is that number?
	How many kids have died overall in the same...
	About 50,000 children have died of all causes since the start of the pandemic.
	50,000, and of them, fewer than 700. And by the way, I don't believe that it's even that high because of the staggering falsehoods that have...
	Surrounded the figures of those who died of COVID of any age.
	If you had COVID and died, the hospital had every reason to say you died of COVID, not with COVID. Big difference.
	And the reason?
	They got a fair amount of money from the federal government for every patient who died of COVID. So why would they not list died of COVID? If you had COVID and died in the hospital.
	But even in those instances, it's 700 versus 15,000.
	It is 700 fewer than 700. Out of 73 million.
	Now here, unfortunately, is the terrible truth.
	The press, the lying media.
	What was Trump's phrase for it?
	Fake news.
	Don't report the ubiquity of those who have been hurt by the vaccine.
	There's virtually no reporting on the part of people who don't report.
	All of these are propaganda mills.
	What is it?
	Democracy dies in darkness?
	The pompous motto adopted by the Washington Post?
	The Washington Post contributes to that darkness in a substantial way.
	Why would you vaccinate your child?
	What is the point?
	The vaccine doesn't even work.
	It's not even a vaccine.
	This is not an anti-vax comment.
	It's a fact.
	It's not a vaccine.
	It's an inoculation.
	It's an injection.
	But it's not a vaccine.
	Vaccines prevent you from getting the disease.
	Fauci got COVID, and he has allegedly got at least three shots, probably got two boosters.
	That's a lot of shots to have for a vaccine in such a small period of time, I think you'd have to admit.
	But these Maine parents have gone to college undoubtedly, and therefore learned not to think clearly.
	And I swear before my Lord, my God in heaven, to whom I am accountable, that I believe that.
	That for most people, college teaches you not to think clearly.
	And so all they do is they worship the God of safety.
	Better safe than sorry, but how do you know you won't be sorry?
	How do you know that?
	Maybe there are a lot of sorry parents with kids who got the unnecessary vaccine given the rates of death from COVID in children.
	They're lining up to get their kids.
	Vaccinated.
	What is it like to grow up at a home of a scared parent?
	I am happy to say I don't know.
	For the land of the free, better safe than sorry.
	Rising interest rates, stock volatility, out-of-control inflation.
	People are concerned about what the future holds financially.
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	AmericanFederal.com Vaccinating children, not taking them to indoor events, having them masked, not sending them to school.
	Under 700 out of 70 million children allegedly died of COVID. There's no doubt the number is less than that.
	The problem is that they never hear dissent because the left says all dissent is crackpots.
	Give me an example of a dissent to any left-wing view that is not dismissed by the purveyors of left-wing as either a crackpot or a hater.
	There is no such thing.
	So you are sort of vaccinated against conservative thought.
	Or if you will, even vaccinated against liberal thought.
	That vaccine seems to work.
	Some of us can penetrate it.
	I've devoted my life to penetrating left-wing lies.
	And people who hear me or hear PragerU, it is quite effective.
	There are some for whom it is not effective.
	I fully acknowledge that.
	It's a rotten way of thinking.
	It makes you miserable.
	You should see my emails.
	The left-wing emails are, in almost every case, so confirming to me what left-wing means in terms of character.
	The language, the cursing, the human dismissal.
	One thing I can say, and I have said it, it is one of the most cited of my columns by me and by others, how I found God at Columbia.
	How long ago the left made me religious, made me conservative.
	If the left wing produced happy, kind, non-resentful, intellectually deep people, it would be a very great challenge to me.
	I judge ideas by their fruit.
	How else can you judge any idea?
	Does leftism produce happier people?
	Do the people you know in your family and among your friends who are leftists, do they radiate happiness, joie de vivre, kindness?
	Not every conservative does, but far more do.
	Very important column in the very important city journal, The Assault on Children's Psyches.
	This is a brilliant piece.
	And I'm going to read excerpts of it to you.
	It is by Lior Sapir, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
	Let me look up Lior Sapir because I should have done this.
	It's very, very interesting.
	When I read an original idea, I am very, very, very excited.
	Let's see here.
	Well, all right.
	Lior Sapir is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a driven researcher with a Ph.D. in political science from Boston College.
	Dr. Sapir previously completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard University.
	He wrote a dissertation on the Obama administration's Title IX regulations.
	Very nice.
	It is a he.
	It's a Hebrew name.
	I think we'll have Leora Sapir on the show.
	This is a very important thesis.
	When I encounter an original idea that makes sense, oh my God, it is like a delicious piece of apple pie.
	It is like a hot fudge sundae.
	It is like the end to Mahler's first symphony.
	It is a shame that the only person you can see on the Prager Show video is me.
	If you'd have the joy of seeing Triple G, it would make your day.
	The transition from Hot Fudge to Mahler was...
	I had a feeling I would lose a few people.
	Just for the record, the end of Mahler's First Symphony...
	It's so powerful that almost every time I hear it, I have tears in my eyes.
	And it actually surprises me.
	It's not like I don't know what's coming.
	I heard it, how many times?
	200?
	I recognize that not everybody would fall in love with classical music, but I also recognize that if people gave themselves the chance, A dear friend of mine did.
	It's very interesting.
	It's very powerful to see what happened to him in midlife.
	He has just fallen in love out of nowhere with classical music.
	Whenever I'd come over, we'd hear jazz and pop music and lovely music, movie music.
	And I guess partially as a result of me, he just started checking out classical.
	And every time I see him, which is almost every Friday night for our Shabbat dinner with our group of about 15, he tells me of some new piece.
	Oh, Dennis, you know, this Beethoven Sinat, I can't believe it.
	I can't believe I love it so much.
	You should all give yourselves a chance.
	Oh, here we go.
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	So my friends, what was that?
	I love this, by the way.
	I love it.
	What nationality is this?
	Where is this from?
	It sounds semi-Jamaican.
	Yeah, it has that flavor.
	I love it.
	By the way, are you allowed to ask where is the music from?
	Because I saw a sign that somebody posted from their Uber.
	I've got to talk to you about this.
	Maybe the third hour, because the next hour is male-female.
	Guy had a plaque-like sign so that the passenger could read it.
	Please don't ask me where I'm from.
	I find it disgusting and offensive and so on.
	Boom!
	Yeah, exactly.
	It's the opening theme of this week's Fireside Chat, if you're not familiar with my Fireside Chat.
	It's at PragerU every week.
	It goes up on Thursdays.
	It has hundreds of thousands of views every week.
	About half a million or more.
	I don't know exactly because it's not all assessed.
	Because it's not all YouTube.
	But a lot of my viewers are young people and I wanted to explain to them That you are being taught to be offended.
	Wow!
	Another legacy of the disgusting left.
	People who only destroy.
	They only do bad.
	Not liberals.
	Liberals vote for them.
	But the left only does bad.
	I marvel at it, actually.
	So there's this piece, a brilliant piece, explains a lot, which I love.
	The assault on children's psyches.
	California's ethnic studies curriculum is fueling a mental health crisis among teenagers.
	That's the subtitle.
	Patricia, a pseudonym, is the mother of a teenage girl who in recent years has come to identify as transgender.
	She lives in California, considers herself progressive, votes Democrat, and leads a group for parents of children with rapid onset gender dysphoria.
	That is, youth who suddenly experience distress with their bodies and believe that undergoing medical transition will make them whole again.
	When I spoke to her recently, She recounted how her daughter's at first lesbian and then trans identity emerged in response to feelings of shame.
	Are you ready?
	This is the deep insight of the author of being white.
	Now what does shame about being white have to do with rapid onset transgender?
	Rapid onset gender dysphoria.
	The author continues.
	I have since spoken to more than a dozen ROGD parents, that is rapid onset gender dysphoria, whose kids seemingly overnight say that they are the other sex, usually girls saying they're boys, and parent group leaders who tell a similar story.
	Their schools compulsively tell their children how awful it is to be white.
	How white people enjoy unearned privilege, how they benefit from systems put in place by and for white people for the sole purpose of oppressing people of color.
	Plagued by guilt, the children, almost all of them girls, rush to the sanctuary of LGBTQ plus identity.
	Once there, they are catapulted into hero status.
	According to Patricia, that's the pseudonym for the mother, some teachers at her daughter's school are more forgiving toward queer and trans kids who hand in their homework late.
	I'm going to continue reading to you.
	The thesis is brilliant.
	Correlation between the anti-white hate that despicable teachers and principals foster in schools and rapid onset gender dysphoria and LGBTQ status.
	I will further explain it.
	The American public is getting pinched right now.
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	Women have always been a big problem to me, Dr. Fussband. - Good.
	Are you listening, Doctor?
	Yes, yes, yes.
	Go on, go on.
	Hi, everybody.
	Male-female hour every week, the second hour of my Wednesday show.
	Most honest talk I know of about men and women.
	And as I say, almost every week, one of the reasons for the honest talk, there are a couple of reasons.
	One is I am completely comfortable with any topic, including sex.
	Second...
	I am neither a man fan nor a woman fan.
	I'm a good person fan.
	There are good and awful men and good and awful women.
	I wonder if they're insane numbers.
	Which is somewhat my topic today.
	Before that, I just want to say that I would like to analyze the last words of the opening A series of monologues.
	Well, not monologues.
	Of lines for movies.
	The last one is, Doctor, I have trouble with women.
	I've always had trouble with women.
	One week I would like to do that subject.
	I'd like to cover that subject.
	Men who have trouble relating to women and women who have trouble relating to men.
	And what that means.
	I'm very lucky in that I don't fully understand the whole idea.
	But now back to the...
	Women have always been a big problem to me, Dr. Fussman.
	Right.
	So it's...
	Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
	Go on, go on, go on.
	Today's topic is with regard to the opening statements I make each week about not being a man fan or a woman fan.
	So, do you think that either sex is superior to the other?
	That's the topic of today's male-female hour.
	Do you know...
	Sean, if you can uncover this, I will buy you a very large bag of M&M peanuts.
	No, no, peanut M&Ms.
	I've been corrected a number of times by a Greek Orthodox member of the sales department.
	I did, Sean, I did a show...
	With a professor who wrote a book that women are superior.
	And we had a sort of debate on the air.
	He was a very sweet man.
	And he was 100% wrong, in my opinion.
	And I didn't find his arguments persuasive, obviously.
	But if you can find that, I'm very serious.
	That would actually make my day, because it means we really have...
	All my shows.
	Now, there is a tendency...
	Depending...
	No, no.
	He's a rabbi, he's not a professor.
	There has been a tendency at different times in different cultures to say men are superior and in others to say women are superior.
	The men are superior idea was the norm, I would say, in virtually all societies until the modern age.
	I don't think there's any denying that, that there was a sense, and a lot of women believed it as well, men are superior, are the superior sex.
	It was not, most of the time at any rate, it was not said or believed to denigrate women, but to state that, look, it's just the way it is, and men are, in the final analysis, superior with the understanding that a lot of men are awful.
	Every society understood that they were awful men.
	So we then went to, as usual, No, men are not superior.
	Women are.
	And that has been the general belief of certainly women and some men, but certainly a lot of women.
	It would be very interesting to ask The average college-educated feminist woman, or even feminist man, do you think women are the superior sex?
	Of course, that implies a binary sexual identity, so they may be uncomfortable in answering it, because the answer would imply that the human species is divided between male and female, which, if you go enough years...
	To college, you learn to deny.
	But I think that they would believe that.
	Certainly, for a while, or even now, many courts believe that all things being equal, it is more important for a child after a divorce to be with the mother.
	At least that was.
	Now there is, I think, I think, but I don't know for sure, I think the tendency is, It should be 50-50, which is what my belief is.
	Unless there's an extreme case of psychopathology leading to physical harm to a child, there should be a 50-50 split.
	45-55 I'll live with as well.
	But I do believe that there is a...
	A belief that came into vogue starting in the 1960s that women are the superior sex.
	Do you believe that either one is?
	That's the question on the table.
	I never thought women were the superior sex.
	I found that to be a very romantic notion.
	And the arguments given were, well, they're more nurturing, they commit much less violence, and they're both true.
	They are nurturing by disposition, and they commit less violence.
	That is correct.
	But it's precisely their nurturing, for example, that has led vast numbers of women to argue In the macro for terrible things, like a larger and larger and larger state or government, because the bigger the state, the more the nurturing.
	Also, I find it fascinating how many women are attracted to violent men, which is an issue unto itself, and Men behind bars for committing murder do not seem to lack for feminine attention, for female attention.
	Anyway, male and female traits are not the same.
	In the macro, I want the...
	The masculine to prevail.
	The masculine is standards over nurturing.
	It is not the task of the army to nurture its soldiers.
	It is not the task of the government to nurture its citizens.
	It is not the task of a teacher to nurture his or her students.
	You are to lead them.
	You are to give them standards of excellence to pursue.
	The very notion of standards of excellence is a masculine notion.
	Society cannot be run on feminine instinct, on female instinct.
	We are moving in that direction, and we are paying the price.
	1-8 Prager, 776, male-female hour.
	The Dennis Prager Show.
	Ah.
	Anywhere I go, there you are.
	Hi everybody, Dennis Prager, male-female hour.
	There's male-female hour every Wednesday second hour.
	Are men or women superior?
	Do you believe either?
	I don't believe either is superior.
	I do believe, though, that masculine traits...
	are better for running society.
	I also believe that feminine traits are critical in the development of children.
	Not that the child have feminine traits, but in...
	I mean, just to give an example, if the baby whimpers, most men sleep right through it, and most women Wake up immediately.
	Baby depends upon one of the parents waking up, and it's usually the mother.
	So I looked up, are men, it's interesting, I looked up, what would the internet, with its vast repository of idiocy, what would it come up with if I Google, are men or women superior?
	So it came up with this.
	The Genetic Literacy Project.
	Science, not ideology.
	That's its subtitle.
	Are women superior to men?
	Research suggests most of us are more likely to believe that sex differences favor females.
	Interesting.
	In a new study, 492 participants, most of whom resided in the United States, the United Kingdom, or Canada, were asked to carefully read a fake popular science article that reported on a sex difference in either drawing ability or lying frequency.
	One version of each article claimed that men had outperformed women, while another version claimed that women had outperformed men.
	After reading the article, the participants completed a questionnaire to gauge their attitudes about the findings.
	The paper has two main takeaways.
	The first is that, as we suspected, people react less positively to sex differences that favor males than to those that favor females.
	That's interesting.
	That's what I thought.
	That's the age in which we live.
	Ah, female traits.
	Ah.
	Okay.
	Let's see.
	Let's take your calls here.
	John Plainfield, Illinois.
	Hello, John of Plainfield.
	Hi, Dennis.
	Hi.
	I was kind of telling a similar opinion to your screener.
	I wouldn't be able to survive without my life at home.
	I think at home and in the workplace, women are definitely important.
	I think they should be appreciated.
	I think men are not necessarily more important, but I think in society, I think they're probably a little undervalued and appreciated.
	And Jordan Peterson had an interesting take on it.
	I had seen a few weeks ago, you know, he was talking about the infrastructure and defending the country.
	There are certain things that men can do, climb down in a dirty hole and we just take for granted.
	We flip on a light switch or flush a toilet and everything works.
	So I think on that front, but that's kind of my general thought.
	Right, so you don't think either is superior.
	You think they have different excellent traits.
	I do.
	Alright, I'm going to leave it at that.
	That's fair.
	I think that's my position.
	And they each have awful traits that they have to suppress.
	My lament, and I've made it often, and I can't make it too often, is that we teach the average...
	Home teaches boys to control their nature.
	The average home does not teach girls to control their nature.
	We live in the age of an inferred and implied belief in female superiority.
	That's my belief.
	One of the reasons that I'm addressing the issue on this male-female hour.
	The idiocy that females don't have to battle their nature as much as males have to battle theirs.
	The damage done in society by women is as great as the damage done by men.
	Male damage is more obvious because it's in the form of violence.
	But if you don't teach your daughters to control their nature, you are implicitly stating they are superior to your sons.
	Boys, you have to control yourselves, but my precious daughters, you don't.
	So even though most people will say that neither sex is superior, most people raise their children with the belief that girls are.
	Then teenagehood comes around.
	And they realize they were wrong.
	Okay, let's see here.
	Susan in Long Beach, California.
	Hello.
	Hey, Dennis.
	How are you?
	Well.
	Oh, good.
	Glad to hear it.
	Thank you so much for all that you do.
	And I love the fact that you changed your view after watching 2,000 Mules.
	Thank you.
	Okay.
	Anyway.
	I really don't have anything new to bring to the conversation.
	I would say I agree with your last caller about the importance.
	He was talking about the importance of his wife and women in his own life.
	I just can't get over sort of the arrogance that it takes to take a stance of superiority.
	That takes a godlike arrogance, and it really presupposes.
	That you know all that is and all that isn't in order to take that stance, right?
	It's almost like an illogical fallacy.
	So I'm with you, ultimately.
	I believe life is more like a yin-yang.
	You need all of it.
	And I also believe that human nature is broken by design.
	That's right.
	And that includes both sexes.
	Exactly right.
	Once again, I think that the folks committed to Judeo-Christian values have this question better.
	The Dennis Prager Show.
	Hey everybody, welcome to or welcome back to The Dennis Prager Show.
	The latest...
	Video up at Prager University, at PragerU, as it's generally known, is about Milton Friedman, the spectacular, influential economist.
	And the video is titled, Milton Friedman, No Free Lunch.
	That is, I've often quoted him as summarizing economics with just those.
	Words, there are no free lunches, or there ain't no free lunch.
	The notion that there is a free lunch in life, that there are no consequences to the behaviors that people engage in, is probably the single most destructive idea in our civilization.
	So people advocate, advocate, advocate, and never ask, what is the price paid?
	Like, just as a non-economics example, Keeping kids out of school for nearly two years.
	They didn't ask, gee, what is the price paid?
	They thought there's a free lunch.
	It'll protect the kids from COVID, even though kids aren't dying from COVID, in any number worthy of such a draconian response.
	And they didn't ask the question, and now kids are suffering.
	You know where they're not suffering, ironically?
	In Sweden, the only country to have not panicked.
	In the face of the worldwide panic, which I declared to be a panic in April of 2020. And ironically, the economist giving the course on Milton Friedman is Swedish.
	He's in Sweden right now.
	We're going to speak to him.
	So I want to welcome Johan Norbergs, the economist and senior fellow at the Cato Institute to the Dennis Prager Show.
	Welcome, sir.
	Thank you.
	Pleasure to be here.
	This is not about economics, but do you know that there are very many people in America, and I presume in some other countries, who had great admiration for the way Sweden handled the issue of COVID? Went through a dramatic experiment.
	Sorry, that's my cat.
	I'm in the holiday home right now.
	Oh, folks, if you are not watching this on video, you missed a great moment in the history of the Dennis Prager Show.
	It's SalemNewsChannel.com.
	If I may call you Johan.
	Johan, what is your cat's name?
	Sansa.
	Ah, I was going to guess that.
	Sansa jumped up.
	Into the camera.
	She's incredibly curious, so she wants to know what's going on.
	Is she a Milton Friedman supporter?
	Well, you know, I think it was Albert J. Nock, the early 20th century thinker, who said that the cat is a staunch individualist, doesn't obey any authority.
	Oh, that's right.
	Yes, that's so true.
	Yes.
	They're not very dependent.
	They would not make good socialists.
	Which means that whenever she pays attention to me, whenever she wants my company, it means so much more because she does it with her own free will, nothing else.
	Right.
	I thought it was because she heard my voice, but it was extremely narcissistic of me to infer that.
	Anyway, back to the opening issue, and then we're going to get to economics.
	Why do you think Sweden did react differently?
	Well, I think that many of the experts and public health authorities originally We're not going to sacrifice the kids by shutting down schools.
	We're not going to sacrifice the economy and jobs by shutting down the economy.
	That's what everybody said originally.
	But then when China began to shut everything down and basically imprison people in their own homes, not allowing them to meet relatives, going out for Even buying food and basic necessities.
	There was this kind of dictator envy, in a way.
	We would like to do the same thing.
	Drastic times calls for drastic measures.
	We're going to have to do things this way.
	And there was some researchers looking at why did countries impose these drastic measures and when did they do it?
	It was not related to...
	The state of the pandemic, the number of cases or the state of the health care system or the number of intensive care units or anything like that, it was only related to one thing.
	What did countries close to them do?
	They did what the neighbors do.
	It was really just keeping up with the Joneses and originally then the Chinese.
	And Sweden stood firm.
	We had a public health authority that said that, look, this is what we've always been saying, and nothing so far has shown us that we will deal with this pandemic in a better way by shutting everything down.
	In effect, then, I agree with every word you said.
	In effect, that means that people did not follow the science, they followed the herd.
	Quite true.
	That's exactly what happened.
	And when you look at what people said before the pandemic, when they tried to game it out, what should we do in case of something like this happening?
	They were following the Swedish.
	Much more than anything else.
	But then, you know, about politicians, they want to be popular.
	They want to be re-elected.
	They want to show that they're doing something.
	Doing something.
	And, you know, this is the old politician's logic from Jess Minister, the classical British BBC series, where they say, you know, this cause something dramatic happens.
	There's a crisis.
	This calls for something to be done.
	And this, whatever it is, is something.
	So therefore, it must be done.
	That's what happened in so many places.
	So I think the question is, why did it happen there?
	Not really, why did Sweden stick to the script?
	Because that's really what happened here.
	One more question, if I may.
	I feel like I might be unfair because this is so not...
	The subject of your PragerU video or even of your work.
	But whenever I defended Sweden, and I did the entire time, people would accuse me of being somewhat manipulative with the data because they would say yes compared to the United Kingdom or Spain or the U.S. Far fewer deaths,
	but you should compare Sweden's death rate from COVID to Finland, Norway, and Denmark, and then it is worse.
	Any comment from you?
	And that's true.
	It depends on your comparison.
	There are a few countries who did better than Sweden when it came to cases and deaths.
	Most of them did not.
	When you look at excess deaths in 2020, 2021, Sweden did better than other European countries, than the European average, than most European countries.
	But there are a few countries who did better.
	Other smaller Nordic countries did even better than Sweden.
	And it might be that if Sweden had imposed drastic measures and shut everything down, it could be that we would have...
	Avoided a couple of cases, a couple of deaths.
	And we have to be frank about that.
	But then again, there are no free lunches.
	There are always alternative costs.
	If you devote all your resources, all your actions to doing one thing and one thing alone, then there are other costs somewhere else that will be...
	Keep popping up.
	So kids staying out of schools, losing lots of education, losing life chances and incomes.
	There will be loneliness, depression, suicide, drug abuse, other things.
	So I'm always a little bit worried when people focus all their attention on one problem alone, because it means it's like the magician.
	Look at this hand.
	Well, then something else is going on with the other hand that they don't want you to see.
	That's a beautiful analogy.
	That's why I prefaced all of this by saying you can apply no free lunches to everything, and that includes the way in which people were treated, especially young people, during these lockdowns.
	Just for the record, and we're going to get to Milton Friedman and to economics in the next segment, we're going to take a break for commercials in a moment, Johan.
	But in my reading about Sweden and COVID, it seems that your excess deaths were related to nursing home deaths primarily.
	It was not in the general population in any event.
	It doesn't mean that they are not tragic deaths, but it is important to know what group of Swedes was most hurt.
	I have looked into this a lot.
	We'll be back with Johan Norberg.
	His video is up at PragerU.
	The Dennis Prager Show.
	My guest is Johan Norberg, Swedish economist.
	He's at the Cato Institute.
	He is now at home, actually on his vacation home, I presume, west coast of Sweden.
	And as usual, his English is perfect.
	The video is about Milton Friedman.
	Would you say that Milton Friedman, and I don't know what your answer will be actually.
	Sometimes I ask questions of guests and I think I know the answer, but I don't know this one.
	in the last 50 years, is he the most influential economist?
	I'm not hearing our guest.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Sorry, Johan, I'm not hearing you.
	That's a shame.
	Yes, I hear you now, thank you.
	Okay, good.
	This is actually one question where I don't know the answer either, because I'd say that during the 20th century there were...
	Three economists that were more influential than anybody else.
	It was John Maynard Keynes, especially during the first half.
	And then during the second half, I'd say definitely Milton Friedman, possibly challenged by Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian economist who had very similar political ideas and free market beliefs.
	Milton Friedman, he was not as influential in really guiding policy and advising politicians as Friedman, but I think the effect of his thoughts, his books, his theories, he could equal Friedman.
	But at least Friedman is one of the greats.
	Given the ascendancy of left-wing thought in every arena of life, including government size, I think we would have to say that Keynes was ultimately the winner.
	I think we would have to say that and Friedman and Hayek were the correctives who sort of saw when there was government overreach, partly As a result of politicians listening to Keynes' ideas and expanding budgets and building deficits and debts and eventually inflation and stagflation in the 1970s when we saw both rapid monetary growth,
	inflation and a growth in unemployment and lower growth.
	And that's how history might not repeat itself.
	At least it rhymes right now when we see rapid inflation and possibly stagflation ahead.
	The folks on the left say, follow the science.
	They don't, in my opinion, but we'll leave that aside for the moment, although we partially addressed that in the first segment.
	What they certainly don't say is follow the economics.
	The idea that For example, loose monetary policy, printing more and more money is a good thing.
	Or that the expansion of the government actually helps the economy.
	These are not economic ideas.
	These are psychosocial ideas.
	Is that a fair critique?
	Well, you know...
	There are economists who've espoused these ideas, who think that an easy way out of any kind of crisis is just open the taps and just send liquidity money out there into the system.
	But it's not good economic thinking, because money always ends up somewhere.
	And especially if you have too much money chasing too few goods.
	And we've had this period, actually, since the Great Recession of 2008, 2009. Central banks around the world have lowered interest rates to a level where they are lower than they've actually been since, at any point in time, since ancient Mesopotamia, according to Bank of England research.
	And that tells you something.
	If we ever believe in some sort of If you're not reverting to the mean, then interest rates are bound to go up.
	But then obviously during the great pandemic, we saw even more taps being open, not just interest rates going negative even, but more liquidity, printing presses, buying bonds, stimulus packages, the combined total of all of this money entering the economy in the last three years.
	It's around $20 trillion.
	$20 trillion, that's almost the size of the American economy.
	So you add one US economy to the global economy.
	And at the same time, you've shut down the economy.
	You've blocked ports, you've destroyed supply chains, made it difficult for goods to reach people.
	Then obviously, all those newly printed money will chase too few goods.
	You'll see an increase in prices.
	Everywhere.
	You'll see inflation and people's purchasing power will be destroyed.
	And this hurts the poorest the most.
	Those who don't own assets, stocks, real estate and bonds and so on, they will be hurt the most.
	Their purchasing power will be destroyed.
	And that's what we're seeing right now.
	And that's exactly what Milton Friedman would have predicted.
	It's a phenomenon.
	Worth noting that they don't actually seem to care.
	I'm puzzled that people like Paul Krugman, I'm sure, I have no doubt, you're familiar with.
	Do you know that, I think it was 17 Nobel Prize winners in economics, very recently signed a statement saying that we didn't have to worry about inflation?
	Yeah, that's right.
	You never have to worry about inflation until it's too late.
	I mean, that's because it always looks...
	Well, when we come back, this is made possible by ads, so when we come back, I want to talk about the Nobel Prize in economics.
	Hi, everybody.
	Dennis Prager here, talking economics and life with a major economics thinker.
	Johan Norberg, he is Swedish.
	He is in Sweden right now with his family, including his cat Samsa, whom we had the honor of meeting earlier in the broadcast.
	And he has the latest PragerU video up.
	It is about Milton Friedman.
	There are no free lunches.
	So I have this in front of me, what I had mentioned to you, Johan.
	17 winners.
	Of the Nobel Prize in Economics.
	This is from September of last year, obviously.
	Nobel Prize winners in economics sign a letter in support of President's Build Back Better package.
	In other words, printing trillions more of dollars, just printing them.
	Now, I am not an economist, but I do have an advantage.
	I have common sense.
	How do you explain That people who won a Nobel Prize in economics would say something that has no economic validity.
	I'd have to talk a little bit to the Nobel Committee in Sweden about their decisions.
	Well, it's local for you.
	It's local.
	Yeah, so it's personal.
	But, you know, it's not a prize.
	For having common sense.
	That's a great line.
	Having accomplished certain impressive scientific achievements in economics.
	And, you know, the old bitter and definition of an intellectual is someone who's accomplished something great in one field, and then he talks about everything else.
	Because suddenly he's got an audience.
	Yes, well that is what I call the confusion of knowledge with wisdom.
	The two are rarely related.
	And this would be an example.
	But again, I go back to my analogy about how many scientists I have only learned in the last two, three years.
	This is new to me.
	That so many scientists don't follow science.
	And how many economics...
	Economists don't follow economics.
	If you print trillions of dollars, the dollar becomes worth less.
	You will get inflation.
	My six-year-old grandson would understand that.
	Well, I think he might deserve the Nobel Prize in economics, perhaps because this right now is an important discovery.
	I think that one problem is that There's a herd mentality among scientists as well.
	They are human beings, just like you and I, and they have political beliefs and tendencies, and sometimes they see something where there isn't an obvious answer according to their scientific beliefs.
	Perhaps it's not a field where they have done research themselves, then they go with the flow.
	That's what you often do.
	And obviously, we shouldn't just follow the science.
	We should also always question the science and always ask questions about it and look at new empirical data that might suggest that something is wrong with the perceived wisdom.
	And therefore, if you don't question the other scientists, it might be that you end up...
	Going with the herd.
	And that's what's happened now with inflation.
	For a couple of years, we didn't see inflation.
	We didn't think there was inflation, despite the very low interest rates that we've had since 2008. I think we did.
	We saw it in asset inflation.
	We saw it on the stock market.
	We saw it in real estate.
	Prices have surged.
	But we didn't see it on consumer goods.
	And that's what Milton Friedman said.
	There are two things.
	You need two causes of inflation, not just monetary growth.
	You also need a turnover, that money is being used constantly by people.
	Well, for a couple of years, consumers didn't spend that much.
	They weren't that eager to spend.
	But some people were.
	Banks, financial companies and speculants.
	We saw lots of inflation in those areas.
	But for certain reasons, that wasn't counted as inflation.
	Well, now after the pandemic, when we've all been sitting at home and we didn't have much to do but buying new computers and video games for our kids, well, then suddenly we saw this surge of consumer spending.
	And then that's also the turnover, the speed with which money changes had.
	Combining the growth of the money supply and that speed, then you see inflation.
	Okay, I have so many more questions, including the relative sizes.
	Of the governments of Sweden and America.
	Back with Johan Norberg in a moment.
	Dennis Prager here.
	Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast.
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