Libertarian: Lockdowns Weren’t Worth It
“Restrictive public health measures were sold as temporary trade-offs,” i.e. “we give up freedom of movement, trade, and normal social interaction for a short time” to “beat COVID-19 and then get back to living,” writes J.D. Tuccille at Reason. Yet a “meta-analysis of 24 studies published this week” by Johns Hopkins researchers found lockdowns “ineffective, only reducing COVID-19 mortality by 2.9% on average,” and thus “should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.” The key lesson here: “Any benefits the political class promises in return for disrupting our lives may be illusory.”
Fiscal expert: America’s Looming Debt Crisis
Washington has been engaging in “the largest borrowing-and-spending spree since World War II” based on the assumption that low interest rates make government debt “affordable,” observes Brian Riedl at National Review. Yet the Congressional Budget Office projects rates will nudge up to 4.6% over three decades, and even that estimate could prove low — leading to “the real danger” of higher rates colliding with a “historic surge” of debt. Including Social Security and Medicare shortfalls, debt could rise from 100% of GDP to 202% in 30 years. Interest payments would consume half of all tax revenue, and deficits would soar to 13.3% of GDP (compared to 3% or 4%, pre-pandemic). Surging interest costs would be “mostly irreversible”; future repayments would have to come from “higher taxes, reduced federal benefits, higher inflation, or more borrowing.” Washington needs to “practice basic risk management, rather than continue excessive spending.” After all, “America has no backup plan.”
Liberal: Universities’ ‘Galling’ Double Standard
When Georgetown prof Carol Christine Fair tweeted that Republican senators who supported Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination “deserve miserable deaths” and we should “castrate their corpses and feed them to swine,” the school backed her free-speech rights, recalls Common Sense’s Bari Weiss. Yet when constitutional law scholar Ilya Shapiro tweeted that President Biden’s “best pick” for the court, Sri Srinivasan, “doesn’t fit the latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman,” Georgetown called it “appalling.” Shapiro apologized for his “inartful” phrasing and deleted the tweet, but the Black Law Students Association demanded the school deny him a job as head of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, and now “his career is on the line.” It’s a “galling double standard” universities increasingly use against “mainstream conservative views,” warns Weiss. Let’s see if Georgetown does “the right thing.”
Culture critic: Neil Young Can’t Ban Speech
The “good news” about Neil Young’s “move to marginalize” Joe Rogan is that “it won’t work,” cheers Politico’s Jack Shafer — though it’s worrying because “the spirit of his campaign is uncomfortably close to the [book] banners.” If we’re “going to purify the web” of crackpot claims “shouldn’t we also purge daily newspapers of astrology columns”? Free and open debate, “with all of its inconveniences, benefits when it allows the free exchange of heretical thoughts,” even though the “human appetite for convenient, reductionist theories tends to soar during times of crisis.” Meanwhile, the Young-Rogan publicity will “probably lift the fortunes of both men.” “It doesn’t always work out this way,” says Shafer, “but sometimes, just sometimes, attacks on speech only enhance it.”
From the right: Beware of US Truckers, Joe
“The massive trucker convoy that crossed Canada to protest against that country’s new vaccine mandates will almost certainly be replicated in the U.S. and will bring with it huge headaches for the Biden White House,” warns Liz Peek at The Hill. “Biden pretends to be the champion of the ‘little guy’; he claims to support blue-collar workers. Truckers are exactly the kind of folks Biden is meant to embrace,” but he won’t. And if pushed, these drivers could “call for a sick-out.” Just think: The supply-chain problems we’ve had would “pale before the catastrophe that could unfold if tens of thousands of drivers simply walked off the job for a day or two.” Biden better tread carefully.
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board