The Glenn Beck Program - Best of The Program | Guests: Asra Nomani & David Harsanyi | 10/27/21

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

Glenn reads an article on why we should be more optimistic that America is on the right track. Asra Nomani, vice president of Parents Defending Education, joins to share the latest on the war against the school boards. David Harsanyi, author of "Eurotrash," joins to discuss why America must reject European policies, not implement them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, welcome to the program. We've got a lot of good news for you. We start the podcast off with some things that are happening that show that the tide is changing. And we focused a little bit on the media and something that John F. Kennedy said back in 1961. Also, we have Osraam Nomani. She is this remarkable woman, former Wall Street Journal reporter, who is now following all of the things going on with school boards. she gives us an update on that. There's some real progress on that.

David Harsani is with us. Also, Bjorn Lomburg is talking to us about climate change. Don't forget, Glasgow is coming up this weekend. And Joe Biden wants to give them a big hug and kiss. And that's the focus of your new special as well. Yes. Tonight on Blaze TV, BlazeTV. Blase TV.com slash Glenn is the place to go.

We get $10 off your subscription to Blaze TV. So that's tonight at 9. o'clock. Right after a brand new student us America. You're welcome. That was a gift. Thank you. You're listening to.

So, Dee Parker wrote the case for optimism, 10 reasons why the pro-freedom right will defeat the anti-liberty left. He said, the leftist enemies of freedom and civil rights are such that it makes it impossible for them to win. And while it would be a disaster if they were to befall the planet, it would be a disaster. be still hard to be positive. It is still hard to be positive when it's a steady diet of doom and gloom every day. Every day brings yet another attack on freedom and progress from people falsely labeling themselves as liberals. Many of these reasons for optimism of the pro-freedom right are

because they are directly contrasted with the negative characteristics of the anti-liberty left. Now, this is really important. Do you remember years ago I talked about Martin Luther King and how he was right about a couple of things. One was once you have the images that people can contrast between good and evil, people will always pick good, Americans will. Now, that is true as long as our judicial. Deo-Christian values are still alive in our heart. That's why we try so hard to keep our hearts soft. That's one of the reasons why I started Mercury 1 to remind you how good it feels to do good. And we were just reminded this summer when we went and helped people in Afghanistan, which is still going on.

We have to keep our hearts soft so we can recognize the difference between good and evil. That's one reason why I say we can't become them. and defeat them in the way they want to defeat us. We have to go a different path. Martin Luther King said, if you contrast the two, they will always pick, the American people will always pick good. We didn't have the pictures of the German shepherds, you know, being sicked on blacks as they marched in Memphis.

We didn't have the fire hoses. What we had was a group of people, that we felt were Marxists. And do you remember how they fought against that? When Newsweek came out and said, we're all, what was it, socialist now? We pointed that out at Fox and said, really, we are?

Because I thought you were denying that you were socialists. Now they're saying they're out in the open. And Barack Obama went on a big smear campaign and saying that anybody who claims that he was a Marxist or a socialist was racist. Now they're coming out and they're embracing Marxism. As I said to you, they want to tell you exactly what they're doing. But they can't because the minute they do, you're on to them and you're saying that's not me.

This is what happened in Afghanistan when Joe Biden failed miserably and then claimed it to be a victory. Americans saw that and went, that's not us. That's not us. I don't recognize that, those military leaders. I don't recognize our government. That's not who we are. And we could contrast that with who we've always been. Now, let me give you some of the reasons for optimism, according to De Parker.

He says, one, we're on the side of freedom, and anti-liberty left is on the side of authoritarianism. This is becoming more and more clear. For instance, Chomsky was just on MSNBC a couple of days ago. And he said, people who refuse to accept vaccines, I think the right response for them is to not force them, but rather to insist that they be isolated. If people decide, I am willing to be a danger to the community by refusing to vaccinate, they should say then, well, I also have the decency to isolate myself. I don't want the vaccine. I don't want the right to run around harming people. That should be convention. Enforcing is a different question. It should be understood and we should try to get it to be understood. If it really reaches a point where they are severely endangering people, then of course you have to do

something about it. So what is he, what is he saying? He's saying that. there should be camps or there should be they should self-isolate in their home, but he really means isolate because the next question was, well, how do they purchase food? This isn't how do they go out and work or anything else. How do they purchase food? Chomsky's response is telling, well, quote, actually, that's their problem, end quote. so who is on the side of freedom and people and who is on the side of authoritarianism it is becoming clear that the left is authoritarianism and not because we say it because their actions are now

showing it second point of optimism we have timeless advantages the anti-liberty left only has short-term tactics and tricks. Well, let me give you one. Did you see that the military came out yesterday and said, what is it? There are 496 Americans still trapped in Afghanistan? Well, first of all, there are more than 496, but that is double the amount that they said over the summer. They said there were about 200.

Okay, so double the amount, over double the amount, and then later they said there was less than 100. Now they're saying there's almost 500. The truth is that it is much larger than 500 could be in the thousands. One, two, three thousand. Could be five thousand. Nobody really knows. But when we said that, we were called conspiracy theorists. we were called all kinds of names, unreliable, it is becoming apparent that their short-term

tactics and their tricks don't work. Another example of this is, well, it's just transitory. Don't worry about inflation. It's just transitory. Well, it's not transitory, is it? Have you checked what you're paying for meat? Have you checked what you're paying for gas? Have you noticed how expensive, almost everything is? Did you know that this Thanksgiving, the meal that you put down, the traditional Thanksgiving meal here in America, will cost you more than it ever has in the history of our country? That's saying something. It's not transitory. It is something that we should be working to solve. All of their short-term tactics and tricks, They all fail, but we have the truth on our side.

We have mathematics on our side. We have evidence on our side. Three, while we can be honest, the anti-liberty left has to lie to survive. Sanjay Gupta was a great example of this with the horse dewormer stuff. That is a Nobel Prize winning medicine. Yet everybody had to claim that it was a. horse dewormer. Why? To stop people from getting the, stop people from getting some sort of treatment and to focus everyone on the vaccine. We all know the truth. The vaccine is effective. If you

want to get it, you can get it. We also know that there are other things that will help ease the pain if you have COVID. Horse dewormer is not one of them. However, the Nobel Prize winning human version of that may help. But they have to discredit everything. January 6th. January 6th is another case. Why is it that they won't release all of the video?

Well, there is a really fascinating. report that is out now from Revolver that looks like that maybe the FBI was involved in setting this up. We'll give you that story coming up. But they always have to lie to survive. We can be honest. We believe in civil liberties is number four. They don't.

Let me again give you this. This is the scariest thing I have heard from a government official. perhaps of all time. And it came out of, out of Rochelle Walensky's mouth. She's the CDC director last Sunday. She said, there is a plan to get unvaccinated essential workers, education, and counseling, so they will feel comfortable getting vaccinated. I got news for you.

I'm not getting vaccinated. I have antibodies. I am not going to go through some government education, and I certainly will not sit down with a government-sponsored therapist for counseling. So, wait a minute, which one of us believes in civil liberties? Which one of us really is fighting for freedom of speech? Which one of us is fighting for the freedom of the press? Did you see yesterday two new people were. appointed to the FCC, hardline lefties. That is going to affect my job, my voice, your ability to

hear me on radio. Mark my words. They have to shut people down. That's not somebody who believes in the Bill of Rights. The fifth reason to be optimistic. We love America and the average person loves America. They do. We have problems and we're honest about those problems. But the anti-liberty left hates America. Look at Colin Kaepernick. We believe in individual rights is number six. The anti-liberty left believes in collective rights. Vaccines. The mandates, the passports. By the way, the FDA has approved one of the vaccines for. kids. So I guarantee you the collective right of your kid and you to be the parent of your kid and decide what goes into his body and what doesn't go into their body. You're going to lose that right

if you're not standing up. By the way, Terry McCullough, he doesn't mind. You as a parent don't have a right to raise or teach your kids or question what your kids are learning in school. Number seven is economic liberty has always worked and societal slavery of socialism has never worked. You know, they said the model is China. Have you seen what's happening in China lately? Number eight, we're productive in society. Those who believe in the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence, we generally are productive in society. Anti-liberty leftists are parasites. Good example of. this is unrealized gains. What are unrealized gains in the stock market? That means if you're a teacher,

your teacher's union has your pension and your pension is in the stock market. And every time the stock market goes up, you're now going to have to pay for those unrealized gains. another words, even if you don't pull that money out, you're going to pay to the government the privilege of that money making money. Elon Musk just came out and said, this is insanity, insanity, and it is. You know, this goes back to their lies and their tricks. They say they've already paid for everything. No, they haven't, or they wouldn't be looking for unrealized gains. or if they say, no, we're not into redistributive wealth,

we're not into socialism and killing the system, then they wouldn't be doing this, because this will hurt the stock market. People will pull their money out of the stock market. Why? Because you can't afford to pay the unrealized gains without pulling the money out of the stock market. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Azra Nomani is with us, and hopefully, I think, you have some good news for us, Azra. Oh, yes. I hope everyone's strapped in. Yeah, good. Good. I'm ready to hear some good news. What is happening on the school board front? Well, what's fantastic is that we have this mama bear revolution just, you know, coming up in school districts around the country.

and we have made the School Board Association back down from their threat against our parents. Of course, they issued an apology to their own members Friday night, one of those Friday night misses that they hope will get ignored, but they don't realize we're all home because our kids are home, right? We're paying attention to everything. You know, I don't think they got the memo or they forgot that little point about eyes in the back of our heads. Yes, Glenn, like you.

You're an investigator, you're a researcher, but you don't even have anything on a mom, right? Oh, no. Uh-uh. You really don't. You really don't. And once, so, you know, we've got these mama bears, and I think we all grew up reading a little Nancy Drew, because we know how you got to follow the money. You have to find out the truth. We don't accept white lies, right?

We don't accept this kind of nonsense. And so what we were able to do last week was. You know, earlier we established really clearly that the Attorney General had a conflict of interest with his son-in-law running a company that profits off of school board decisions, the company called Panorama Education. And then with this great work that our mom-in-chief at Parents Defending Education did, she sent Freedom of Information Act requests to every single member of the National School Board Association's board of directors. So, as you know, their emails are open to public scrutiny.

Correct. And so in those emails, we got evidence that the School Board Association interim director, Chip Slavin, acknowledged that he'd been in talks with the White House for, quote, several weeks before he issued the letter asking for intervention from the Justice Department. And voila, you've got this, you know, this completely, cooked up campaign then against parents. So there's something new as well. There is a new member to the National Assessment Governing Board.

Are you aware of this? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So she was the co-signer on this letter calling for help from the White House, and Ms. Garcia's name, and she is the president of the National School Board Association. And so conveniently, she was named by the Education Secretary, as we know, a political appointee in the Biden administration,

to this much coveted role, you know, that now has oversight over school assessments and does a report card every year. And again, bringing it back to the money that has emerged over the last several years, particularly of this thing called education technology hinges

it cooked the books many times. Like it's very, very dubious, some of their evidence-based. It's really not evidence-based. Very important that we look at, understand that these government appointments

help private industry and in some cases not-for-profits that are actually working for profit. I got another headline for you, Glenn, because I know you love breaking news. Chip Slavin, I just this up late last night investigating this, but Chip Slavin, the interim president for the National School Board Association, he has been an advisor to an education technology company,

and that company has, its founder is the chair of it. You've got to be kidding me. Yeah, I need. I mean, this is just so incestuous. Yeah, I knew you would understand. You, I can see your mind working, connecting the dots and understanding exactly what I just told you. So, yeah, it's incestuous. And it's everything, it's just traditional, like gumshund.

shoe reporting that we have to do on this and we have to remember always that school system that has your child walking through its doors is part of an industry like we have to always put now incorporated at you know behind every like it's fair fact county public schools incorporated it really is um it's it's it's really disgusting that they hide behind these are public schools and we hate corporations because as as we saw with Common Core, a lot of the goals that are being set now by these corporations in the guise of helping students is just to make better workers for those corporations. Yeah, better workers and then also build a market, right?

They're building a market. So this is the rest of the story that I, I, I definitely want to make sure that we get time to talk about. So for the last four months, I've filed 200-plus FOIAs with the public school systems in America. And we created something that we've called the Consultant Report Card. And the last time I was on, I promised your listeners that I'm going to give them a top 10 list of companies to look for in their school district. Okay. So we've got it.

Go to DefendingEd.org and look for the consultant report card. And one of the first blogs that we've got, their blog posts is the list of the top 10. But then beyond that, we've identified 200 plus companies and consultants that have raised over $20 million in contracts that we've documented. And you know, Glenn, this is just tip of the ice cream. Oh, yeah. And of course, and the number one company is Panorama Education. And so, yeah, and so right now we just dropped a piece in real clear education that I want everyone to look at, like go to my Twitter thread and I'll tag you on it also.

But everyone needs to know, like this company, Panorama Education, as an example, they are using something called social and emotional learning to data mine your kids. and psychologically profile them. And we have an example in our column today that I co-wrote with my colleague Erica Sansey, where you can see to nine students in Portland Public Schools in one particular school that one boy said that he need to know that information? No.

Does a company in Boston need to know that information? No. And guess what? They also are surveying the parents. So I know now, and you know now, all you got to do is Google, Portland Public Schools and Panorama Screener survey results, and you will know how many parents self-identify as questioning, as non-binary, as transgender, and then heterosexual, since, you know,

they count too. And this is all being done by the school district? So what is happening is the school district, this big enterprise, is outsourcing to these contractors like Panorama education this work. And what we found in Fairfax County, Virginia, is that they are able to bypass all these privacy laws that are put in place to the contract that Panorama education officials are deemed. Let me go back to the School Board Association, the National School Board Association.

We have Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Ohio now dropping out. and saying, we don't want anything to do with the National School Board Association because of the letter. Now with the news, not only of the letter, but the collusion with the White House and the money that is being made, and I think it was a letter to protect that money to the Attorney General. why aren't more state school board associations pulling out of the National School Board Association? Yes. So these are the ones that have pulled out, as you said, but our number now is that 21 states out of 50, right, that have distanced themselves and reprimanded the National School Board Association for their letter. So this is like classic.

Why wouldn't they pull out, though? Why are they just saying, hey, this is a bad? What do they get from the National School Board Association? Yeah, you know, Glenn, it's the same machine, right, that Washington trade groups pull on the state organizations or, as you know, like, we do this in industry. We do it in public office. Like, this is our public roles. Like, this is why the teachers union has such power, right, as a national, like, they claim to represent the states. I pulled the 990 on the National School Board Association.

It's a multi-million dollar nonprofit, quote-unquote, nonprofit, right? And they, you know, they get, they just tell these local folks, as you know, oh, we're going to represent you in Washington. We're going to lobby for you. We're going to get, you know, you know what they do. like they get their language and the appropriation language, they get money funneled to the states, whatever, you know, shenanigans they're trying to pull in D.C., they claim that they can do it better. I have to tell you, if you are a parent, you should go to your local school board and demand that they send the message to the state school board. You don't want anything to do with the National School Board Association.

This is obviously corrupt. You now have two people that you can point to directly that are part of this incestuous, I don't even a cabal that is his silencing parents and mining our children. You've got to get away from the National School Board Association. And no matter if you really think that they're doing things, they must be taught a lesson. and that lesson will only be taught when they lose everything. They have to lose everything. Nikki, our president, put it really well yesterday when we were just chatting,

and she said, you know, they need a house cleaning. And that house cleaning is only going to happen when the state's revolt, basically. And they say that we will not participate in this war that you have launched against the very people in our communities that we were elected to represent. I only have about a minute left. FDA advisors recommend Pfizer's vaccine now for children ages 5 to 11. You know now that is coming as a mandate to our kids. This is not going to help calm parents. Yeah.

You know, Glenn, I have a 19-year-old, and I just thank the heavens that I don't have to take that decision that the parents of these young kids are having to navigate right now. We have really failed our society on this public health message. We turning it into edicts and directives and, you know, much like the, you know, top down on school boards, you know, and trying to silence us as parents. And so just what we encourage is please everyone, for whatever position, you have advocate, you know, just you are the voices of your children and whatever conclusion you come to from that place of reason and love that you have as a parent, please, like, overcome

any fears that you have and look at, watch the videos of school board meetings, you know, yesterday we spent the night all watching Loudoun County and it, and I don't want to drop that bomb in the last seconds of our conversation, but, but it's all indicative that like, it doesn't takes one parent, you know? In every situation, one parent courage is contagious. Thank you so much, Asra, I appreciate it. We'll talk to you again.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. David Harsani, senior writer of National Review, author of Euro Trash, why America must reject the failed ideas of a dying continent. You can find David's

work at National Review.com in his new book, wherever books are sold. Hello, David. How are you? I'm well. Thank you for having me. You bet. It's always good to talk to you. So tell me about the Euro trash, because as I'm looking at Europe, I have seen Europeans say, oh my gosh, America has gone crazy. And we're becoming so much like Europe.

We are passing Europe in some ways. Are we not? I think that's fair to say in some ways. I mean, when you look at this $3.5 trillion bill, it's a welfare state, cradle of the grave, sort of European-style expansion of the state. But it's even worse because in Europe, at least they pay for that stuff. And, you know, in Denmark, a person making $60K will pay like 65% of his salary and taxes. But can you imagine an American doing that?

And Bernie doesn't want us to. He just wants to either print more money or tax people as it's paid for. David, David, David, I've heard from the president. No joke. It's the truth, man. It's all paid for. It's not going to cost a dime. Zero dollars.

Zero dollars. It's the same guy who told us that spending more money will help with him bring down inflation. I don't know if he has his economic factor or anything else, frankly. So why doesn't the socialist system that works in Sweden work here? You're talking about, I think Sweden has nine million people, and it's the largest Nordic nation. You can't scale that kind of system. It would mean having a massive bureaucracy. But the other question is, why would I want it anyway?

It's not as if they do anything better than we do. Certainly, they're not better at assimilating new people. They're not better at health care. They're not better at any of the things that we can quantify, and they're certainly not better at things we can't, like risk-taking and entrepreneurship. So I don't know why we'd want it, A, and B. I don't think that we could do it even if we wanted to. So, David, are we, I mean, we are now talking about, what is it,

unrealized gains in the stock market. For people like Elon Musk, who is like him or not, he is changing the way things are happening in the world. And he sees over the horizon, he sees a different future. and now we're talking about giving him an extra tax on unrealized capital gains. That's insane of a European mindset where when you think about innovation and technology, the top 30 technological tech companies in the world, one is European, Spotify, and the rest are not.

Most of them are American. Why do Europeans come here to start their companies? Tons of our biggest companies are started by immigrants or, or children of immigrants here. It's because of things like this, taxing people's unrealized profits would undermine the risk-taking venture and undermines investment.

And it's exactly the sorts of things they do in Europe. I mean, every country is a little different, but that's the mindset over there and we're bringing it over here. But they don't tax unrealized gains, do they? I mean, I've never heard of that before. How does that system even work? Your stock goes up.

they, you pay income tax on it, then your stock goes down, do they give that money back? But, I mean, how does that work? No, because these are, these are tricks to try to tax rich people, where it's in Europe, they just do it. Right. We're honest about it. Right. So, yeah.

Until they start driving people out. So have you ever, have you ever seen a president or really anyone do what Biden did when he went over to Europe and tried to get the Europeans to a, agree on a baseline corporate tax so no one would be stealing corporations from each other. You'd trap them in the

countries. Never. Never. I just don't even understand. I mean, you know, a lot of people talk about one world government. Sometimes it's down a little bit nutty, but I have to say, when you have the United States trying to create a worldwide tax system to

stop competition, which is what that does, I just can't think of any American president that's done that. That would have been something that would lose you the election immediately. I mean, I just think there's nothing I can even compare it to. I think one of the worst things that we have seen in Afghanistan didn't help us on any front. I mean, we have now lost the moral center of the United States. I mean, and a lot of people had been convinced that, you know,

America wasn't moral and in many ways we haven't been for quite some time, but we at least would go into Afghanistan and we would help our allies. We would help women and children, et cetera, et cetera. We don't have that moral high ground anymore for our military. I don't think we're trusted anymore. And the other thing that is horrible is people used to view this country as a land of opportunity. Now they're. view us as a racist state. Still, people stream to our borders to come in because it's just not true. And, you know, by any, again, quantifiable measure, and I go into this pretty deeply in the book, we are far less racist and more tolerant than any place. In my neighborhood, for instance, I live among people who would be killing themselves in many other situations and live peaceful here to send their kids to the same schools, etc.

But it is true that people think of us that way wrongly. Show me. And I believe that. Show me how we're more tolerant than Europe, because that's not what you hear ever. Well, let's talk about immigration. And, you know, I'm legal immigration, not illegal immigration. But think about assimilation. In Europe, there are places in outside of Paris, outside of Berlin and elsewhere, where there are basically ghettos, generational ghettos of high unemployment.

I don't mean, you know, 10 percent. I mean 35, 40 percent. Jeez. that where people don't speak the language of the country, where they don't accept the customs and the ideals of the country, you know, people say diversity is our strength here. That's just a trope. I mean, what our strength here is that we have diverse types of people who accept the same foundational ideas about living together or they used to. In Europe, you don't have any of that. These countries can't assimilate any group in a healthy way, and we do it all the time when we do it right. Why is that? Why is that? I think we're a bill for it, frankly. I mean, some of this is just structural problems. You have Hungary. Hungary has an ethnicity.

It has a culture. It goes back a long time. They have grudges that go back a thousand years. It's not as easy for them to accept other people. It is for us. But, you know, I'll give you one quick poll number. In France, 27% of people say they wouldn't want to live next to someone who wasn't like them, race, religion, whatever. In America, that number is 1%.

Now, maybe some people are lying. but at least they know that that's the right thing to say that's the credo that's the way we live here and europe just isn't that way people go to like the tourist spots and they think that's europe that's not europe talk to david arsani of national review uh david one of the things i think is fascinating and it's totally against the narrative that we hear from the media is we need to be more enlightened like uh like europe is and one of the big issues they talk about is abortion like we why don't we have women rights like they do in Europe. Why don't we have abortion that anyone can get at any time? That's what Europe is like they're ahead of us and they understand real women's rights.

Is that actually accurate? No. Europe, one of the better things that are better than us actually is have stricter abortion laws. But, you know, it's complicated because I don't think there really is a pro-life movement in Europe. So they've sort of settled on a more moderate stance organically. There are very few religious people in Europe. and that's a big problem. So there isn't that movement, but they are, there are a few things they do better. They have less homicides, you know, in urban areas and things like that because of our gun culture,

which obviously I approve of in some ways, the murder part, but the gun ownership part. And abortion and social policy. But some of their social policies, I mean, they do not value life in the same way we do. They do not try to save. So why? So why do they. why are their laws more restrictive than, uh, than ours? Is it just from experience the genocide that has happened in Europe over and over? Again, I wouldn't say their, their laws are

stricter than ours in many places, not in some places, but let's say New York, but they're not, you know, they're still very liberal. They would be considered liberal by any stretch for us, I think. So I just think it's because there's they, they moderate, I think the pro-life movement drives the progressive left to more extreme and extreme places, just this pushback. Now, you know, it used to be, what was it, safe and legal, or rare safe and legal, and now it's, you know, celebrated. So I think that that's just because of our political culture in some ways, I hope. Is Europe as divided as we are?

I mean, I see things like, I think it was in, gosh, where was it? Is Switzerland? I can't remember, but just this weekend, they had massive protests out on the streets about vaccines and everything else. And you're seeing these protests. Are they as divided as we are and we're just not seeing it? I'm actually surprised by those protests in some sense because in general, I think Europeans are quite docile and pliant people. I say that in the way that I think that their risk takers came here or left or go elsewhere. So I'll give you a quick example in Finland like 91% of people are like doing.

And it doesn't matter. Wait, wait, wait, wait. What was that stat? What was that stat you broke up? So you can't have that here because we are diverse and we live in different sorts of places and we do different sorts of things and we have different cultural backgrounds. But in Scandinavia, people are more, more clients there. They like their government. They don't debate in the way we do and they don't have sorts of ideological lines.

They also don't have the diversity. We are the most diverse country in the world. No one else is like us. In which we do it is immense. And I think the European Union was formed and based on the idea of federalism in the United States. But of course, they've lost that. It's just centralized, top down control now. That's what progressives want here, right?

But it won't work. It can't work when you have a truly diverse nation. David, there's this thing that Bernie Sanders and the left has done forever, which is like, oh, why don't we just have the health care of Sweden or Denmark or Finland and apply it that way? And I think a little bit of that actually creeped into the right when it came to the COVID stuff, which was basically they just said, well, why don't we just do all the things that Sweden is doing? I mean, is there anything we can learn from these countries that seemingly have some things that they do correctly that we could bring here? Yeah, I think we could have learned from Sweden that we shouldn't shut down our economy because of the pandemic. that would have been a smart thing. And again, I wrote, started writing this book before COVID.

The COVID thing actually scared me quite a bit in the way that we had politicians and bureaucracies, especially bureaucracies, just unilaterally running the country. The bureaucracies run the country. And in Europe, bureaucracies are huge and multi-layered in ways that we can't even imagine. And, you know, listen, Donald Trump was elected. The bureaucracy decided they didn't want him to be president. and, you know, and they undermine them every step of the way. The CDC decides it's going to run the country during COVID. These are scary things because it's not a democratic process, but it's certainly not a liberal in a good sense process.

Tim, but you said that you mentioned that Europeans are compliant. Were you surprised at the COVID reaction of the people in the United States and how much of this people kind of just went along with? Yeah, I think it was scary. It was really scary that a governor in Virginia could shut down the churches and people would be like, okay. I mean, I just don't even, I don't understand how that can happen here. And how are we, how are you feeling today?

Are you more optimistic than you were a year ago? Yeah, I feel better. There was that story. I was just a microcosm of this was that Ruth Marcus, the Washington Post, was in an elevator in Texas, and she told this guy, you know, I think you should be wearing a mask, you know, and the guy said, I don't really care what you think. I think that's like the American credo, right?

I don't really care what you think. And that's how we should function. It sounds selfish, but it's not. It's not. That's another thing. Europeans think we're selfish, but we give around, and you know this, of course, seven times as much per capita as European. Yeah.

David Hartsani, thank you so much. Senior writer at National Review, his new book is called Euro Trash, why America has to, must reject the failed ideas of a dying continent. That in of itself is sad and frightening that Europe is dying, but it is. It's true. No, no, no.