Dennis Prager thinks the worldwide lockdown may have been the biggest mistake in history
I sometimes agree with Prager, but not here:
But for those open to reading thoughts they may differ with, here is the case for why the worldwide lockdown is not only a mistake but also, possibly, the worst mistake the world has ever made. And for those intellectually challenged by the English language and/or logic, “mistake” and “evil” are not synonyms. The lockdown is a mistake; the Holocaust, slavery, communism, fascism, etc., were evils. Massive mistakes are made by arrogant fools; massive evils are committed by evil people.
The forcible prevention of Americans from doing anything except what politicians deem “essential” has led to the worst economy in American history since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is panic and hysteria, not the coronavirus, that created this catastrophe. And the consequences in much of the world will be more horrible than in America.
The United Nations World Food Programme, or the WFP, states that by the end of the year, more than 260 million people will face starvation — double last year’s figures. According to WFP director David Beasley on April 21: “We could be looking at famine in about three dozen countries. … There is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of COVID-19 than from the virus itself” (italics added).
That would be enough to characterize the worldwide lockdown as a deathly error. But there is much more. If global GDP declines by 5%, another 147 million people could be plunged into extreme poverty, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.
Much more at the link.
It’s not that I disagree with the idea that the lockdown was a mistake. I think it almost certainly was, although we don’t have an alternate earth where we can test out that hypothesis. It’s also not that I disagree with the idea that the economic and even some of the health consequences are vast and very serious. But I can think of a lot of worse mistakes in history, right off the top of my head.
The first that comes to mind is the aged and worn-out von Hindenberg’s appointment of Hitler to the post of chancellor of Germany. Many people believe erroneously that Hitler was elected to the post, and later he was, but only after the Nazis had obtained complete control through naked power plays and intimidation and violence against all rivals. Initially, Hitler was not elected chancellor – and in fact, the Nazis had been losing power at the time rather than gaining it. Hitler came to power as the result of an error of judgment by von Hinderberg:
Hindenburg, intimidated by Hitler’s growing popularity and the thuggish nature of his cadre of supporters, the SA (or Brownshirts), initially refused to make him chancellor. Instead, he appointed General Kurt von Schleicher, who attempted to steal Hitler’s thunder by negotiating with a dissident Nazi faction led by Gregor Strasser. At the next round of elections in November, the Nazis lost ground—but the Communists gained it, a paradoxical effect of Schleicher’s efforts that made right-wing forces in Germany even more determined to get Hitler into power. In a series of complicated negotiations, ex-Chancellor Franz von Papen, backed by prominent German businessmen and the conservative German National People’s Party (DNVP), convinced Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor, with the understanding that von Papen as vice-chancellor and other non-Nazis in key government positions would contain and temper Hitler’s more brutal tendencies.
Hitler’s emergence as chancellor on January 30, 1933, marked a crucial turning point for Germany and, ultimately, for the world. His plan, embraced by much of the German population, was to do away with politics and make Germany a powerful, unified one-party state. He began immediately, ordering a rapid expansion of the state police, the Gestapo, and putting Hermann Goering in charge of a new security force, composed entirely of Nazis and dedicated to stamping out whatever opposition to his party might arise. From that moment on, Nazi Germany was off and running, and there was little Hindenburg or von Papen—or anyone—could do to stop it.
That’s a mere summary of a much more complex process; you can read the details on many sites. They are heartbreaking as well as frustrating and infuriating. The gist of it is that some people thought they could tame, contain, and control Hitler, and in the process they made the enormous error of judgment of elevating him to a position of power it seems he would not have attained otherwise. This certainly would qualify as one of the biggest mistakes in history – the consequences of which, in terms of human suffering, dwarf what we are likely to experience from the lockdown.
In sum: Hitler was evil, but he came to power through a mistake, one of the biggest mistakes in history if not the biggest. There are other historical errors I can think of, one being the calculation made by various European powers that WWI wouldn’t last all that long and wouldn’t be all that difficult to win.
I am sure there are many more errors of great magnitude of which I’m not even aware. But I don’t think the lockdown will be quite in that particular league. At least, I hope not. I think that, if the lockdown ends soon, the world can recover – not overnight, but in a few years – fairly well.
I also think the lockdown has had some good consequences, or at least potentially good consequences. I’ve heard of some families with children realizing that they need to slow down more and spend more time together as a family, and I hope that will continue post-lockdown. I think that, at least for a while, people will feel appreciative of things they may have previously taken for granted – friends, the ability to go to concerts and sports events, restaurants, parties, and a host of others. I think more people have come to realize how easy it is for people to become cowed by petty tyrants of the Whitmer variety, and perhaps they’ll be more cautious about electing such people in the future. Perhaps. And I think more people have been made aware of the grave danger represented by China, and of the need to free ourselves from dependence on it as soon as possible. And I think we may – accent on the “may” – be more hesitant in the future to issue such extreme measures on the basis of shakily-based computer models for things about which we lack important information.
Wow. OK, this may or may not be the biggest mistake in history but to say some good things like realizing we need to slow down came of it is pretty weak sauce when compared to all the people that have lost jobs and businesses they worked very hard for. But I guess they can really slow down now, so there’s that. And it’s far from a given that we will get back many of our freedoms that have been taken from us in the last couple months.
Realization of the China threat is a positive development I’ll admit that but I have hard time thinking of many others.
“In sum: Hitler was evil, but he came to power through a mistake, one of the biggest mistakes in history if not the biggest. ”
Certainly true but you have to also consider that in terms of the lockdown and the shifts in local, national, and global power relationships that are unfolding we do not yet know nor even have a glimpse of what this mistake will amount to. Looking back from 70 to 75 years makes the magnitude of past mistakes visible. The way the next years will unfold from this watershed in the history of the states, the nation, and the world is much less clear in direction or magnitude.
Early innings and all that.
Can it evolve into something that is worse than the Hitler years? Never underestimate the capacity for evil of the human race. But you know that already, don’t you?
Well, Prager may be a bit hyperbolic in declaring the worst mistake in world history. However, if the lockdown leads to the defeat of Trump, along with a massive economic depression, it could be the biggest mistake in US history.
It’s the economic damage combined with the widespread infringement of our freedoms that make this surely a massive mistake and the longer it continues the harder it will be to get them back.
When governments take extreme, unprecedented action the first time it is very hard but after that it’s much easier I can’t understand how any freedom loving individual can’t see that extremely scary likelihood.
Possibly the worst consequence of the lockdown (aside from the terrible financial hardship experienced by many) is that far too many Americans (obviously, not all) have meekly submitted to the petty authoritarianism of mostly blue-state officials (governors, mayors, and police chiefs), while an incipient state of anarcho-tyranny begins to take hold, with those demonstrating for liberty demonized as bigoted or racist or fascist and officials in charge increasingly deeming actual criminals, many violent, worthy of release from incarceration. Combined with the desire for control over information by Big Tech, this augurs badly for the future of the republic.
vanderleun:
Of course we don’t know and can’t foresee the ultimate consequences.
But Prager lists a bunch of consequences that he says are the reason he says this is probably the worst mistake in history. Looking at the list he himself has made, it is certainly not the worst.
I saw a picture last night of a Georgia Tech football game in 1918 or 1919 and there was quite a crowd with most wearing masks. Just a reminder that we have never done this type of thing even for far more dangerous illnesses.
Griffin:
Nowhere have I indicated the good outweighs or is even equal to the bad. I am merely pointing out that there is some good.
Another good thing is indicated by my neighbor, who says a lot of parents he talks to are trying to help their children with Common Core math assignments and realizing just what a bad idea this is. Maybe there will be more kids in private schools after this.
Kate,
Yes, I will add that if this leads to less kids going to public school and far, far less young people going to college with the obvious drop in the number of colleges and there armies of administrative activists then that would be a positive. Of course, even that will cost many, many hard working staff their jobs in the contraction.
neo,
But I would argue that some of the good you mentioned could and should have come about freely by people and not needed widespread social and economic destruction to occur. If those people were unwilling or unable to come to those realizations on their own that is their problem.
Frau Gretchen Whitmer not only acts nazi Ilsa Koch style , but sure has that Aryan look down in fact she’s a clone of Leni Reifenstahl
https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/011/433/323/eeb1c8dbf3f7bad4fd3e8ae3f484a0c0_original.jpg?ixlib=rb-2.1.0&crop=faces&w=1552&h=873&fit=crop&v=1463682660&auto=format&frame=1&q=92&s=56c9c70f8fffaecf88757b282ee682b6
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_r7sURkxKVvE/RmH9uCvXlGI/AAAAAAAAAlE/YkepaxiCqdA/s400/Leni+R+mit+Schurbart+2.jpg
Griffin:
We have never done this exact same thing, not even in 1918, but we came rather close in some parts of the country.
See this, for example, about Philadelphia during the 1918 flu:
Looking at a photo from some random game in 1918 or 1919 doesn’t tell you much. If you’re interesting in the bigger picture of what went on then regarding restrictions, there are many articles about it. Here’s just one:
The article also comes to some conclusions about how effective or ineffective the public measures were, although I distrust the validity of such conclusions after seeing the all-over-the-place data for restrictions and COVID. At any rate, the point I’m making is that, although it was not quite as draconian then as it is now, the rules were quite draconian nevertheless, and varied from place to place.
Bankruptcies will be the hallmark of the hysterical, repressive “mistake” which I suspect was no mistake at all.
neo,
Yes I know, and as I’ve said here many times the last couple of months I’m all for a lot of the restrictions and at least somewhat open to others but this is way, way too much and was based on very, very questionable information and seemed to just pretend that everybody was in danger when in truth it is pretty clear and has been for awhile that our measures should specifically targeted at nursing homes and other older people that are hardest hit by this.
“… although we don’t have an alternate earth where we can test out that hypothesis.”
Great post, and that says it all, right there.
As the example you wrote, neo, if we were omniscient we would probably see the greatest, single mistake in human history was something rather perfunctory, like your example. It’s likely even something we don’t even know was connected or associated with future events.
What if Ming China hadn’t stopped Zheng He’s ocean exploration in the 1400s? What if the ancient Romans did more with steam power than using it for toys? What if George Washington had been killed in battle? All we can really do is understand where we are and draw lines backwards to try to map how and why we are here. In neo’s example, if Hindenburg hadn’t appointed Hitler was there an even worse and more megamaniacal German who would have gotten the post, not launched a two front war and succeeded where Hitler, ultimately failed?
Ugh. It is immensely frustrating to see so many people on the Right completely lose their bearings on this.
The Louisiana Department of Health says the 2018-2019 flu season saw over 1,400 deaths in the state. According to the CDC, Louisiana has already had over 2,100 deaths from coronavirus in about one-third the time of a normal flu season. Again, that’s WITH far greater disease prevention efforts than we ever see for the flu.
According to the CDC, if you look at the range of estimated flu deaths from 2010-2019, coronavirus deaths have already exceeded the high end of every estimate except for one year and has doubled or even tripled the estimated deaths of some years.
And to bust out the old “If the rest of the country was as bad as New York is right now” tracker, it would add up to over 400,000 deaths.
I don’t mind anyone questioning how this pandemic has been handled, though such questioning while an event like this is still going on is always a bit dubious. I am starting to be damn terrified of how many on the Right are entirely oblivious to how bad this pandemic actually is and how much worse it could have easily been.
Mike
It may also change spending habits as people realize that maxing out 5 credit cards for things they don’t need is a bad idea and saving some money for rainy days is a good one. They may also learn to cook and stock their pantries instead of spending so much on fast foods. There will certainly be shifts in employment, which will be difficult, but if local businesses that connect with the community get a boost, that could be good. Maybe New Yorkers and other Dem-run places will learn to think about who they elect.
The counterfactual to this is that humans are extremely clever and infinitely adaptable. When Hitler and Germany did rise up, millions of resourceful, clever people made uncountable adaptations and adjustments and put a stop to him and his armies. Even now, with only about eight weeks of earnest effort by the general population, amazing changes are being made to food distribution, education, medicine, medical care… One can’t examine evil or hardship in isolation. There is always a proportionate response. A bit delayed. But it always comes. This is fundamentally why capitalism will always beat planned economies. No one person or committee can outthink or outreact a billion people looking for an angle, trying to improve their lot in life, trying to help others.
“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” And, just as Burns’ mouse undoubtedly repaired its little house, humans scurry to adapt to whatever force upends our schemes and improve upon our situation.
MBunge,
People die it’s a fact of life whether it’s this or something else they die and sometimes more die of one thing more for a period of time. It has and will always be so. But to totally disrupt the lives of people who very little risk of death is not acceptable or it shouldn’t be for a free society.
And I am not someone untouched by this. I have a 90 year old mother that has been locked down in a senior living community for nearly two months and while she doesn’t have the virus there is no doubt that her overall well being has declined during this time. Especially mentally. She has become institutionalized.
expat,
Unfortunately those local businesses that can connect with the community will be the first to go. Walmart, Amazon, Costco, Target are all thriving.
And by the way, I keep seeing this “We should have just locked down the nursing homes” argument.
According to the CDC, there were 1.3 million Americans living in nursing homes in 2015. According to the 2010 Census, the number of Americans 65 years old and up was 40 million. Lock down every elder care facility in the country and there would still be tens of millions of senior citizens at risk for coronavirus.
Again, this isn’t meant to defend everything about how this pandemic has been handled but a lot of the conservative commentary on it is being fueled by ideological fervor that is utterly disconnected from the underlying reality.
Mike
“People die it’s a fact of life”
I don’t know how to respond to that because it is a statement that is willfully indifferent to the actual facts I presented. If this was an airborne form of Ebola that killed 80% of the people who get it, the statement “People die it’s a fact of life” would be just a true.
And I’m sorry about your mother’s situation but would you prefer that she every other person in her home were dead? And the hundred or thousands or tens of thousands of other 65+ people living in their own homes in your community? Better off dead?
Mike
“Looking at the list he himself has made, it is certainly not the worst.”
Yet.
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
? Yogi Berr
expat,
Although my wife and I are usually in general concert on the big picture stuff we have to navigate; raising and educating our kids, where and how to live… We have some differences on household funds. I’m the odd one here. She’s actually frugal, but I’m bizarrely frugal. A minimalist. You know those shows that film interventions with hoarders? Whatever that gene is in their DNA that makes them continually amass material items and not be able to see their possessions have become a millstone about their necks; I have the opposite gene. I have no desire to own anything. I get nervous when all my wordly possessions cannot fit in a duffle bag. I have mostly acquiesced to her wishes on this topic (since I know I am not normal in this respect) and we have a fairly normal home on a fairly normal street full of fairly normal things.
About six years ago I was doing some math projections and decided it was time to move onto the next phase of our lives. The kids were mostly educated. We’d be empty nesters soon. I would likely retire in about 15 years. So pare down our possessions and accelerate saving and investing to maximize the nest egg. I could not get her to understand my reasoning. It’s a conversation we’ve been having ever since. I’ve down spreadsheets, amortization schedules, forward and backward facing projections… One of the key components I was trying to get her to understand was risk. I want to minimize risk and maximize control. We can’t guarantee our future, but we can be better prepared to face the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, should it rear its head.
Well, as you indicate in your comment, one saving grace of this global pandemic is she now gets it and we are on the same page. So, if we do weather this storm I think we’ll finally be executing a tangible, concrete strategy that will make the next half of our lives together more beneficial.
Neo writes, “some people thought they could tame, contain, and control Hitler, and in the process they made the enormous error of judgment of elevating him to a position of power it seems he would not have attained otherwise.”
Let’s substitute China for Hitler to get “some people thought they could tame, contain, and control China, and in the process they made the enormous error of judgment of elevating China to a position of power it seems it would not have attained otherwise.”
So now the USA is a service economy, dependent on most essentials as produced by our enemy, China, which clearly seeks global domination and has the will, the population, and now the economic force with which to achieve that goal. And keep it. Forever.
I say that was a most profound mistake, initiated by Nixon and Kissinger in 1972.
Not so much a mistake, perhaps, but a most profound delusion, an insanity….that with increasing prosperity of the Chinese, they would naturally turn to a more Western democratic way.
But the Chinese as a cohort are different. Tiananmen Square? Yawn… never heard of it on (state-controlled) media. Personal rights do not exist. The Chinese are slaves in all but name.
Tibet? A million Uighurs in a “re-education” camp, facial recognition software and video monitors everywhere?
Better learn Chinese.
We are losing the non-military war. It will be surrender time if Trump is not re-elected.
There are smiles in Beijing over the effects of the Wuhan virus on the “barbarous” West.
MBunge,
Of course I don’t wish my mom or anyone else were dead. Nursing homes and senior living facilities should be taking very strong actions but it’s also true that those actions have other consequences.
But I also believe in personal responsibility and the right to live my life freely. The government deeming some business ‘non essential’ and shutting it for months is wrong.
And just because businesses would be open doesn’t mean anybody has to go to them and even without the lockdown there would have been economic damage.
So I guess I just think that if you want to freak out and fret about your numbers while sealed in bubble wrap under your bed then that is fine with me but I have a problem with you or the government requiring everyone else to do the same even when there is very little risk to younger healthy people.
Neo, on the 1918 analogy:
It’s one thing to lock down a few cities in one major country (the U.S.), when the world economy was simple, compared to today.
It’s another thing, to take the biggest high-tech risk since Little Boy was dropped in ’45, by locking down whole states and countries, when the U.S. and world economy are so JIT-ridden, incl. for spare parts (even for nuke plants?).
If this costs DJT the election, it’ll dwarf all prior errors, save for Hindenburg’s appointment of Adolf as Chancellor, and Goering as Minister of the Interior for Prussia (giving him control of the Prussian cops, who soon evolved into an unofficial arm of the NSDAP).
MBunge,
And of course the esteemed governor of New York reported today that 66% of new virus hospitilazations are people that were staying home. So it’s not clear at all that this is even working.
aNanyMouse:
I made it clear that what we are doing now is more draconian. I was making the point, however, that a lot was done in 1918 in terms of restrictions, and people seem relatively unaware of that.
Even if Trump were to lose, it would be hard to say this is the cause. Biden was leading in the polls before, and he’s leading now as far as I can tell. Whether the polls are correct is a whole nother story. But so far, this has not hurt Trump in the polls.
Griffin; MBunge:
Indeed, as I’ve said before, people were already not going out all that much (to restaurants, for example) before the government got into the act. Sports organizations like the ABA had already shut games down. Many large businesses such as dot-coms were already working from home. I believe that the fear was rising, and more and more people would have stopped going to stores, hair salons, etc., even without those things being closed, and the economy would have suffered. Less, but still it would have suffered. So we’re not comparing the pre-COVID economy to the shutdown economy. We’re comparing an unknown – the post-COVID-non-shutdown economy to the shutdown economy.
MBunge:
Have you seen my response to a previous comment of yours about flu statistics compared to COVID? If not, read it.
You also keep coming up with strawmen about what people here are advocating. Few people are saying we should have just locked down nursing homes. Most people are saying, however, that the restrictions went too far. There’s a lot of play in that area in-between the two extremes.
Mr Bunge
It appears to me that you are becoming a concern troll and every time you trot out the NYC one size fits all death prediction you seem to forget being slapped around the last time you trotted it out.
Earlier it was the situation in MN and now it is LA. Is all LA the same as New Orleans? Just reapplying the NYC model?
neo,
Yes there was going to be a big economic hit under any circumstance but so many of these business shutdowns just don’t make sense and that has had the effect of the government picking winners and losers. There was no reason for construction to have ever been shut down but it was and some still is in WA. Those are very high paying jobs.
I guess what I would say is times were going to be hard regardless but I think government should make it as easy as possible for businesses to weather the storm in tough times. In this case they did the opposite. Big time.
The basis for this lockdown continues to be obliterated.
https://lockdownsceptics.org/code-review-of-fergusons-model/
Griffin:
Agreed.
Why does Hitler come up so often as incarnate evil?
I would list Lenin, Stalin and Mao above him on the deaths-caused-by list of evil-doers. We’re talking over 100 million murdered dead by those three.
Yes, Hitler was unique, but not in terms of masses murdered with benign smiles. All four were “socialists”. Nazis were not fascists!
This isn’t me and my mom is in better shape than Dave’s but I strongly agree with every word of this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUzxmmNDKO4
Who Are We Really Saving?
“so far, this has not hurt Trump in the polls.”
Yeah, so far, the food distribution system hasn’t collapsed.
Give the Left a few more months, they’ll get their “scientists” to gin up another excuse to impose another lockdown, if not in every state, then in key states with Dem governors, e.g. Whitmer in MI.
aNannyMouse @5:53pm:
NSDAP, the official name for the Nazi Party, reads “auf Deutsch” the National Socialist Democratic Workers’ Party. “A” is for “Arbeiter”, the German for “Worker”.
Why do Wiki and so many others consider the NSDAP “right-wing”? What is it about “Socialist” and “Workers” that they do not get? The differences of definition of left v. right wing on Wiki are fascinating contrasts.
Cicero, I’ll ease up on Wiki here, since the NSDAP name doesn’t do remote justice to the core of its ideology, in which the “socialism” was mostly incidental, certainly compared to its obsession with race.
The Left has always preached *utter* racial (and usually gender) equality, while the Right has usually stood for at least some doubts on both scores.
The alt-Right displays contempt, for Conservatism Inc.’s kowtowing to the Left’s insisting on *utter* racial/ gender equality.
Cicero:
Just because Hitler was evil incarnate doesn’t mean the others weren’t as well. Unfortunately, there can be more than one.
However, I’ve written a few posts touching on the question of Hitler vs. Stalin, and/or the Nazis vs. the Soviets, at least indirectly. For example, there’s this, this, this, this, and this.
Regardless of what happens we will all be able to look back one day and say; Hindsight is 2020…
I mean that at a joke but it’s true. Everyone has a strategy from doing nothing to extreme lockdown. From letting the elderly & weak die because the economy is too important to nobody should die because people are more important than the economy. From we should stay at home until we have a vaccine to we need to open up and take our chances. And all ideas in between.
All I know is medical professionals and governments owe it to people to do their level best to keep them healthy and alive while also keeping us from the poor house. I think they have attempted to do that. The stimulus packages were unprecedented and the work by doctors and nurses has been terrific.
But it’s not easy, is it? Nope.
Yet second guessing is way too easy.
Prager takes the easy route. I personally like Sean Penn’s approach better. His Core Response is testing people all over America to help us figure out the next step.
}}} But I can think of a lot of worse mistakes in history, right off the top of my head.
Letting Horace Mann define the direction of the US educational establishment…
WORSE than choosing Hitler.
We haven’t yet seen all the ramifications of the former.
I am sure that many, who years later recognized the mistake of Hitler’s appointment, would not have said, 5 weeks after the fact, that it was one of the biggest mistakes in history. The more videos I see of police arresting people (in very physical ways) for not obeying distancing “rules” (rules put in place, it should be reminded, via executive fiat, not passed by a legislature after open, public debate), and judges jailing people for trying to earn a living and feed their children, the more I wonder. Never in my 52 years did I believe I would see images such as those we have seen in the last several weeks. As a political science major, a history buff and an MBA I am looking around wondering how things will EVER be like they were before all of this. I would not be so quick to judge. I can’t confidently argue that this won’t be a historical turning point in our country and the balance of power in the world.
The only question is whether it will be viewed as a positive or negative experience. And of course, that depends on who wins, for they will write the history.
Its not a mans world, its a womans world..
and it follows THEIR idea of safety, not a mans idea…
and that is the major difference between now and times before…
its even a large part of the tribal split between left and right
the women are mostly on the left, willing to trade freedom for safety and security
the men know that they will get neither…
[this just out… turns out more of the sickest got sick while being locked down, not outside going about their business… among a bunch of other new stuff out today]
Artfldgr,
I would simplify it as feelings vs logic driving decision making.
Feelings leads one to the ‘if It saves one life’ argument while logic leads one to understand that there will always be risks in life.
Feelings are driving us right now. Off a cliff I fear.
Hindenburg only released one Hitler. Looking at what is happening throughout the country it appears that the “lockdown” has released a great many Hitlers. The real issue is whether or not we can get them back into the bottle and at what cost.
I wouldn’t go so far as Prager, I did understand the initial rationale. However, that decision was based on data that is now obsolete. If we “knew then what we know now” we probably would or should not have opted for such a drastic measure.
But, now that we do know, we must start mitigating this mistake. Of course politics in in play now which means reason is out the window.
I live in a small town. In our entire county we have had 10 confirmed cases. What does this mean? It means that only a small percentage of our population has developed immunity. We have been in lockdown for two months and we haven’t achieved anything. We needed to get our healthy adult population infected and, thus, immunized, while protecting the ones who are vulnerable. Instead, we simply delayed doing so, at the cost of our economy.
Artfldgr,
I think statistics concur with some of your theory, but I think married women who feel financially secure also tend to vote Republican. The reasoning goes that women who have a provider tend to vote for the party of lower taxes because that means more for them (the women accrue more from their husbands if their husbands have more). Women with no provider (other than themselves) tend to vote for the party more likely to redistribute wealth from others to them through taxation. I haven’t seen any polling, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the same is true of stay at home husbands.
“…we do not yet know nor even have a glimpse of what this mistake will amount to. Looking back from 70 to 75 years makes the magnitude of past mistakes visible.” — Gerard
* * *
Or as Montage said, “Hindsight is 2020.”
(Wish I’d thought of it first!)
We won’t know where this lockdown ranks in the list of really bad mistakes (as opposed to deliberate evil, which is a worthwhile distinction that Prager makes) because the historians and spinmeisters will be duking it out long after we are all dead — of, with, or by Covid, or not — because they still can’t agree on the causes of the American Civil War, the reasons for WWI, and who killed JFK.
The one thing that I believe for sure is that it was a mistake to ever let Democrats win the presidency, to gain a Congressional majority, to pack the Supreme Court, and to take-over the government and schools.
It was a mistake to buy their narrative and policies on the New Deal (FDR), the Vietnam War (JFK & LBJ), the irrelevance of moral failings (Clintons as a package deal), and “Hope and Change” (The Light-Bringer).
(It was also a mistake for conservatives to go along with Republicans who went along with the Democrats on socialism-light policies, who sold out conservative principles for corporate cronies*, and who ultimately turned their backs on their base.)
It is always a mistake to believe that the Left has any solid principles other than their power-grabbing agenda, or that establishment Democrats are serious about calls for law & order (!!) during this present crisis.
Not only have they done a 180-degree about-face on sexual harassment (but we always knew they would)**, they are caricatures of their leftist forebears — those gun-wielding, bomb-toting, car-torching “activists” who were always being lauded for speaking truth to power and sticking it to The Man!
Witness the Dallas judge (Democrat) admonishing a hair stylist for committing a crime of civil disobedience!
Things sure look different to Democrats when they are The Man!
(or The Woman, in some cases).
(Long rant by yours truly on that post.)
https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/05/06/texas-ag-free-shelley-luther/#comment-2493074
Ben Franklin (as quoted in “1776”) reminds us that “A rebellion is always legal in the first person – our rebellion; it is only in the third person — their rebellion — that it is illegal.”
It looks like is a mistake to believe that there exists any Democrat who believes otherwise.
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https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/can_the_coronavirus_panic_spur_a_reset_in_conservative_values.html
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https://www.redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2020/05/06/feminists-reveal-their-even-if-bidens-a-rapist-ill-vote-for-him-anyway-strategy-and-its-ugly/
Andy on May 6, 2020 at 6:21 pm said:
The basis for this lockdown continues to be obliterated.
https://lockdownsceptics.org/code-review-of-fergusons-model/
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I haven’t coded professionally for nearly 40 years, but I still know enough to understand why that was a damning indictment of Imperial’s model.
At least getting a new team that isn’t under Ferguson won’t be a problem.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/05/exclusive-government-scientist-neil-ferguson-resigns-breaking/?WT.mc_id=tmgliveapp_iosshare_AvRS4lrtNXXQ
“Exclusive: Government scientist Neil Ferguson resigns after breaking lockdown rules to meet his married lover
Prof Ferguson allowed the woman to visit him at home during the lockdown while lecturing the public on the need for strict social distancing”
To my mind, Prager would be justified in referring to a technical style implementation error as a mistake, as opposed to some political calculation of advantage or the ability to manipulate, that misfired.
I suppose if you were determined to do so, that you could argue that all decisions have a political, and by implication moral, aspect to them. But I think that some procedures are so substantively noncontoversial in themselves and the general aim so widely shared, that the disastrously unexpected fallout, is not morally blameworthy insofar as the initial act goes.
Or we could just forget about sorting cases according to some qualitative criterion, and just speak of disastrous miscalculations by those in charge, and leave it at that.
The “evils” he lists–holocausts, slavery, etc– were not “mistakes”. They were calculated and decisive actions taken by people who exercising their power over others.
Once it has been determined that this leads to much more bad than good, how is this lockdown any different? No one really debated the merits of this lockdown, they simply copied what someone had done days or weeks before. It was a calculated and decisive action, not a “mistake”, taken after a single question was quickly answered, “Will this hurt Trump and his supporters?” Unless you are part of the elite ruling class, it doesn’t matter who you are, you are going to be out of a job and out of a home and you will have to fight and possibly kill others in order to safely eat before this lockdown ends in November with the defeat of Trump. It’s only after people have been through those horrors that they will happily accept the lesser evil of communism that the Democrat party has in store for them come January. Kiss your happiness, livelihood, and worldly possessions behind right now–you won’t have any of these things by 2021, never mind access to a computer or the internet where you can toothlessly gripe about what has been done to you.
Roy, on “that decision was **based on data** that is now obsolete.”
The data, on which the decision was based, was nowhere near overwhelmingly solid, esp. regarding whether the bug was spread thru the air.
We were bulldozed by the Dem governors, the MSM, and the Gates/ Chinese-backed WHO.
DJT was caught flat-footed, and got bulldozed.
DNW, the “mistakes” were likely aiming to sabotage of DJT’s election chances, and to test how easy it is, to snow the rabble into acquiescing in their home-imprisonment.
One of the left’s appeals to the base instincts of envy and resentment is the cliche “trickle down economics” to describe incentives to the supply side of the supply/demand duo. If hundreds of millions will be pushed to the brink of starvation and/or back into poverty by the suspension of the world’s most productive economies for a couple of months, then wealth doesn’t trickle down, it gushes.
sbardo, the best we can hope for is, that this snow-job by the Establishment (and its scientist shills) moves swing voters/ moderates to face, the extent to which the Establishment has contempt for our interests, and will stop at nothing to enslave us.
One of the impacts for which there is little discussion, is the litigation. Nursing homes, grocery stores and who know who else may get sued for lack of protecting clients/customers. Suits for business disruption, business insurance, rental agreements, mortgages, and it never ends. It could tie up things for years.
aNanyMouse: the NSDAP name doesn’t do remote justice to the core of its ideology, in which the “socialism” was mostly incidental, certainly compared to its obsession with race.
This sounds like a westerner who didnt know the core of the ideology…
Hitler was fulfilling engels Magyar struggle.. cant get more socialist than that…
Paraphrasing.. ie. a world storm (holocaust) which will wipe the hide bound peoples away…
The reason you dont see the socialism, is that your idea of socialism is communism..
and this is FASCISM… the marraige of socialism and capitalism…
communism controls through taking ownership of the means of production
fascism controls through the creation of permits, inspections, etc..
fascism is “the third way”… and to the right of communism…
which also answers the question as to the NSDAP
if capitalism is white
and communism is black
your not seeing the black in the white that makes gray
Socialism was NOT incidental… it’s just that you and most dont know what it is!
do not know how to define it…
You think its welfare and so on, when that is NOT what it is (weimar had welfare and women voting)
This is purposeful in that you can not guard agianst what you cant identify..
the picking of winners and losers is socialism.. its control of the means of production
where in socialism and communism is welfare? or redistribution?
Lenin said… you do not work, you do not eat…
Marx said women had to get into labor force so their work can be taxed by the state (not liberated, which they arent)
most people cant tell you what it is because thye have not been taught what it is..
but do like to argue they think they know.
Engels wrote.. Magyar Struggle
Hitler thought he was the Magyar and wrote My Struggle
the point of ALL socialists was to make sure you never knew his was socialism
you have to pass through fascism to get to communism…
so not knowing, prevents you from preventing a move towards communism!!!!
IF you read the Magyar Struggle and understand he was fulfilling marx AND ENGELS predictions, then a lot of his quotes make sense in a different way..
Hitler: I am the one who will wage the war!
note the wording… not i am the one who will wage war, but THE WAR
what war?
Völkerabfälle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lkerabf%C3%A4lle
Völkerabfälle is a term used by Frederick Engels to describe small nations which he considered residual fragments of former peoples who had succumbed to more powerful neighbours in the historic process of social development and which Engels considered prone to become “fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution”.
To Trotsky the slavs were “racists”…
so were jews…
and this is because trotsky AND hitler studied engels
what war is hitler refering to?
this one
This last passage, the final paragraph of Engels’ article in 1849, has fuelled accusations that this constitutes a call for genocide. The British Liberal historian, George Watson, for example, cited this text by Engels as evidence for his view that Hitler was a Marxist. He also participated in the conservative documentary The Soviet Story, where he uses the translation of Völkerabfälle as “racial trash”.
put the word into google and you get: Peoples waste
Engels put forth that the communist utopian society (never called it that) would not be possible as long as these people would be around… its why they want to remove elderly people, and favor the young… and so much more..
but unless you study this stuff in DETAIL, you WILL get the wrong image
because the wrong image protects the end result… its job is to confuse you
to prevent the preventing..
but if you DO read these other books that they do not teach or cover
you get a whole different image of things.. quotes change meanings from what you thought they meant and more..
from oxford:
it is a conception that goes far beyond what many of his followers and critics today mean by “socialism” or “Communism.” Marx never wavered from the proclamation voiced at the start of his career—“I arrived at the point of seeing the idea in reality itself” (Marx 1975a:18). It eventually led him to develop a concept of socialism that has been overlooked for far too long (and that we ignore at our peril).
Marx used many terms to refer to a post-capitalist society—positive humanism, socialism, Communism, realm of free individuality, free association of producers, etc. He used these terms completely interchangeably. The notion that “socialism” and “Communism” are distinct historical stages is alien to his work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death.
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Third Position:
The term “Third Position” was coined in Europe and the main precursors of Third Position politics were National Bolshevism (a synthesis of far-right ultranationalism and far-left Bolshevism) and Strasserism (a radical, mass-action, worker-based, socialist form of Nazism, advocated by the “left-wing” of the Nazi Party by brothers Otto and Gregor Strasser, until it was crushed in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934). Neo-fascist, Neo-Nazi author Francis Parker Yockey had proposed an alliance between communists and fascists called Red-Brown Alliance (Red being the color of communism and Brown being the color of Nazism) which would have been anti-Semitic, anti-American, and anti-Zionist in nature.
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this is why when you see Soviet Story, you find they are actually the same thing… and there are lots of inconvenient quotes and texts they just leave out today… like why is the German flag of 1930s Red? for communsm… and what did Geobles say that started the fights the fascists lost in the beer halls and drove them into politics as a solution over revolution? (he said “Lenin is the greatest socialist who ever lived, second only to Hitler” you can read the tiny article in the ny times)
in Weimar it was two socialisms fighting for the peoples attention, and the whole fascism is on the left was the communists way to distinguish THEIR socialism from the other socialism…
which has nothing really to do with redistribution (a means to the end).. and everything to do with how labor is divided and done as work… which makes little distinction between the slavery you think is not part of it, and the wage slave.
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Beefsteak Nazi
a term used in Nazi Germany to describe Communists and Socialists who joined the Nazi Party. The Munich-born American historian Konrad Heiden was one of the first to document this phenomenon in his 1936 book Hitler: A Biography, remarking that within the Sturmabteilung (Brownshirts, SA) ranks there were “large numbers of Communists and Social Democrats” and that “many of the storm troops were called ‘beefsteaks’ – brown outside and red within.” The switching of political parties was at times so common that SA men would jest that “[i]n our storm troop there are three Nazis, but we shall soon have spewed them out.”
Goebbels once stated “how thin the dividing line” was between communism and National Socialism
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Social dems were part of the brownshirts? bet you didnt know that?
but if you could not tell communists from social dems and nazis, then what?
you think that we know more of what they are than they did?
they read all this stuff we dont even touch… not even to know ourselves
“we don’t have an alternate earth where we can test out that hypothesis.”
But we do have Sweden which didn’t lock down. We can compare their statistics to the statistics of surrounding Scandinavian countries.
Incidentally, the Hong Kong flu of 1968-69 killed around 100,000 people and nobody had hysterics about the fatality rate. I was in the Navy then and we made a port call in Hong Kong. All the sailors looked forward to some shore leave in Hong Kong, despite the flu. I don’t recall anybody getting the flu.
Ray:
I’ve written about the Hong Kong flu of 1968 and also the Asian flu of 1957, which I think is an even better example in the sense that the Asian flu death total in the US in ’57 was equivalent to about 220,000 of today’s US population.
However, Sweden actually implemented some shutdown procedures, just not many compared to other Scandinavian countries. Also, Sweden has had a higher per capita death rate. But not so tremendously high. See this:
Sounds as though colleges are closed, I’m pretty sure that very large gatherings (concerts, etc.) are banned, and there are social distancing guidelines in places although I don’t know how well they’re being followed. So it’s not exactly business as usual there, although it’s definitely more normal than most places.
Also:
And they may indeed end up being right. Time will tell.
If Sweden was just like NYC …… dead horse alert! 😉
Artfldgr – among the great false revisions of history that predate the 1619 project, the casting of Nazis as “right wing” to imply that they have some connection with American conservatives — instead of the socialists and communists — is probably greater than the Democrat propaganda that the Republicans were the party of slavery, but it’s a close call.
but the Communists gained [ground]
It’s far too little commented on how the USSR commies were known to be killing their own people, often kulaks (small land owners) and others, so it was quite right to be afraid of them.
How many nearby Ukrainians would have to be starved before Nazis choosing the devil they’re not sure of, Hitler, over the devil they know for sure is evil, the Communists?
The purpose of demonization of Hitler seems to me to be in support of Communism.
And, sadly, I’d say China is more like a National Communist Workers Party, and fascist / corporatist / crony capitalist, than Marxist/ Communist, today. Better for the Han Chinese living there than most other commie regimes, including most ex-USSR ‘stans. (Turkmenistan, etc.)
Insofar as “Evil” is “against God”, no full atheist can believe in Evil. My very strong belief in Evil, like both Hitler and Stalin, leads me towards believe in God, as well.
Neo, Cicero — either way, the Germans made both mistakes, Naziism and Communism. Remember who put Lenin on that train.