Have you heard the news?  The epidemic is largely over in Sweden, the country that has been criticized for not imposing lockdowns.  Sweden chose the commonsense approach of protecting the elderly and those with pre-existing health challenges and allowing people at low risk to circulate, contract the virus, and develop natural immunity. 

Mike Whitney, writing about Sweden’s approach and success over at “The Durden Dispatch,” put it like this: “Common sense has prevailed.”  Another article at “Durden” provides truly amazing graphs that vividly illustrate Sweden’s success.  America and most of Europe tried one approach, the Swedes tried another, and the results are now in.  Going with common sense worked; going against common sense failed.

Anthony Fauci claimed we could stop the spread of the virus by imposing generalized house arrests.  This had never before been tried.  Then, in a bizarre progression, the restrictions went from a 15-day lockdown in order to “flatten the curve” to the ever-lengthening lockdown we are in now.  There is no clear exit strategy for us, no end in sight, except apparently we are to wait patiently for a vaccine to appear, who knows when and who knows with what effects.

In the meantime, the lockdown is keeping children out of school, causing the failure of countless businesses, creating vast losses of savings and capital, and shutting down normal life.  Meanwhile, life goes on quite normally in Sweden.  And Sweden’s economy is doing better, much better, than its neighbors.

There are at least two general observations to be made. 

First, you and I are fortunate that national independence still exists to the extent that Sweden could follow its own policy.  If the corruptocrats at the World Health Organization had been able to impose their mandates on every country and every city, the common sense approach could not have been tried, and the correct policy could not have been demonstrated by its results. 

That’s important because in a general sense, human progress is made by the process of trial and error.  Centralized authority shuts down the process of discovery.  That is why American federalism provides better results than were ever achieved by the Politburo of the Soviet Union.  Had a centralized authority been able to impose the coronavirus lockdown on every country, we would have missed the opportunity to learn from experience what actually works.  No doubt there is even wisdom yet to be gained from studying the differences in the way the policy was applied in different areas here in America.  If we ever get an honest assessment of the different outcomes for the different approaches, for example, in New York City and cities in Texas, we’ll learn a lot.

Second, the disadvantages of centralization also apply to the goings-on in the so-called news media.  The near unanimity in the media about the virus and, for that matter, everything else of importance to the globalist elite means that the people in the media are for the most part no longer playing their traditional role in the process of learning by trial and error.  In a true free press environment, people in the press would have been interested in following developments in Sweden because Sweden was taking a different course.  Instead, the press has been nearly unanimous in holding Sweden up to scorn.  Political correctness has replaced actual reporting. 

For the most part, the people in the press are not interested in finding out what is happening and reporting it to you.  The model for the press has become Walter Duranty or Nikole Hannah-Jones.  Duranty was the Moscow bureau chief of The New York Times during Stalin’s rise to power and some of the most murderous years of Stalin’s rule by terror.  Duranty painted a glowing picture of Stalin and of life in the Soviet Union, winning Stalin’s favor and a Pulitzer Prize in 1932. Hannah-Jones is the creator of the 1619 Project at the Times.  The purpose of the 1619 Project is to convince Americans that America is a racist country.  Hannah-Jones was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2020.

Today, if you rely on the Times or ABC or PBS, what you are being told may not be factually correct, but you can be certain it is politically correct.

Robert Curry serves on the Board of Directors of the Claremont Institute.  He is the author of Reclaiming Common Sense: Finding Truth in a Post-Truth World and Common Sense Nation: Unlocking the Forgotten Power of the American Idea.  Both are published by Encounter Books.