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Another Perspective on the Shutdown
Suppose we think of it this way.
The greatest problem America faces right now is that people are being deprived of their liberty: of their freedom to assemble, to go about their business, to earn and spend money, and to live as they choose. This is a problem regardless of the impact it has on the economy or on any particular individual. While pragmatic arguments about the public health consequences of economic dislocation are worthwhile, they are unnecessary: the primacy of our liberties in any but the most extraordinary and imminent crisis is absolute.
Those who would deprive the people of their liberty face an enormous burden of proof: they must justify such deprivation with sound arguments and solid evidence. Arguments and evidence that might be acceptable in a moment of crisis may not be sufficient once the immediate crisis has been addressed; the further removed we are from an imminent threat, the greater the necessity that continuing restrictions be defended with clear and compelling arguments and evidence.
We were told two things when the crisis began. First, we were told that it was imperative that we “flatten the curve” to prevent our critical care facilities from being overloaded, which would presumably lead to a rapid escalation in deaths. Secondly, we were told that “flattening the curve” would be unlikely to reduce the number of people who eventually contract the disease, but merely distribute them over a longer interval.
In most of America, there is now no compelling justification for continuing to reduce our liberty. Therefore, in most of America, the constraints should be relaxed, until such time as a compelling argument can be made in favor of their restoration.
Arguments that are not compelling for the continuation of constraints are:
Having once reduced the people’s rights, a lower burden of proof is required to justify continuing to restrict the people’s liberty.
Authoritarianism has no legitimate momentum; it doesn’t become less philosophically objectionable simply because it has been in place for a few weeks. The moment conditions are such that they would not justify the imposition of restraints, conditions no longer justify the continuation of restraints.
If we relax restrictions too soon, we may have to reimpose them later.
We can not justify the continuation of restrictions on our liberty by arguing that, while there is no longer a compelling justification for such restrictions, a situation sufficiently compelling as to justify further restrictions on our liberty may yet occur.
If we relax restrictions too soon, people will die.
It seems likely that people will die sooner if we relax constraints, but their eventual infection and death was an acknowledged likelihood at the outset.
The argument could be made that deaths delayed are deaths avoided for one of a few reasons: that we will develop better treatment options in the interim, that the virus will be attenuated in its lethality through natural evolution, or that a vaccine will be produced. But these are all hypothetical, depending on discoveries or events beyond our control or prediction, and can not be compelling justifications for the wholesale deprivation of rights.
If we relax restrictions too soon, we will overwhelm our critical care facilities and dramatically increase the number of deaths.
This was the original argument in favor of imposing restrictions and would be the most potent argument in favor of maintaining restrictions if we believed it to still be true. But we have learned that we can avoid overwhelming our critical care facilities, and our abilities in that regard are undoubtedly improving with better testing technology and increasing health care resources. Therefore, this is not a compelling argument in areas not already challenged with rapidly increasing case counts and overburdened health care systems.
We are not seeking an optimal public health outcome. We have no Constitutional guarantee of optimal public health, and that is not our highest good. We are seeking a restoration of basic rights in a manner that avoids an extraordinary disaster sufficient to justify having revoked those rights in the first place.
It is time to restore our rights wherever a compelling countervailing argument can not be made.
Published in General
To the extent that this is a “war,” it is a war we can’t lose. By that I mean not that it’s imperative that we win it, but rather that it’s not possible that we will lose it: whether or not we ever develop a vaccine, the virus can not, without our help, destroy our way of life. It can make a lot of people sick, and it can kill a bunch of people, but it can’t defeat us.
It is not an existential threat unless we choose to make it one.
I’ve been pushing back on some individual comments here, but I would hope we can all at least agree on this. Well said.
As you noted, the main argument of not overwhelming our health care system seems to have morphed into something else. Our health care system is actually underutilized and in danger of being reduced if not bailed out when this is finished.
I think it was a mistake.
This is one of the best things I’ve read on this topic. Thank you!
Wait. I’ve been told that if you get the virus you die (that’s what the media and Hero Gov Cuomo have told me). I’ve also been told that if you are lucky enough not to die you have the virus for the rest of your life and can infect people forever. Based on this there is no way we can let people out of house arrest.
The initial claims and the support they received from the public were based on the hypothetical worst-case estimates of what might happen due to the outbreak from a new virus for which there was limited knowledge, in part because China delayed the collection of accurate data on it by 6-8 weeks due to their lies.
Now we’re in the goal-post moving stage of the coronavirus outbreak, where as more things become known about its virulence and fatality rates, those seeking to maintain control ramp up the metrics the want for control to be loosened. That means attempting to raise fears about COVID-19 from a severe version of past winter flu viruses to something on the level of polio or smallpox, where normal life can’t be allowed to resume until almost total eradication is achieved.
It’s pushing a total emphasis on security over freedom, and it’s mainly being done by people who still have jobs and are not at risk (or don’t see t he risk) of losing those jobs anytime in the near future. It’s just hard to see the majority of the public settling for that for very long if the death count fails to reach what people would consider pandemic levels (and the more the curve gets flattened the less those pushing security are going to want to see any comparisons between the current COVID numbers and past high-incident flu years, because people have to be convinced that coronavirus is both special and lethal in the same fashion as smallpox, and not simply a slightly harsher version of something like H1N1).
@bethanymandel
I agree.
I found the “flatten the curve” graphs to be quite misleading. In principle, they could be right, but this depended on health care resources happening to be exactly at that “sweet spot,” for the advocates of flattening the curve, at which the health care system was overwhelmed without strict measures, but not overwhelmed with them. This seemed unlikely to me.
My initial calculations were that we would have plenty of health care resources. Then the Imperial College London study came out, and with its dire predictions, the level of health care resources were so inadequate that flattening the curve would make little difference.
I suspect that this policy was the result of an overwhelming political need to be seen to be “doing something.”
We might also think in these terms: Once we have surrendered our rights in the fight against the virus, how many lives will be lost in the fight to get those rights back?
I’m going to say zero, if what you’re thinking about is blood-of-patriots kind of stuff. For the past century, we’ve almost always fought our Constitutional battles in the courts and the legislature, and I expect that to continue to be the case. But a lot of lives are likely to be lost as a result of the shutdown and its aftermath.
Now there’s a great entrepreneurial opportunity. Start up your own goalpost moving company.
I was thinking in the long term. The supreme court and the legislature have not exactly been zealous defenders of individual liberty this past century. In fact, they have gone to extraordinary lengths to rationalize encroachments on individual liberty in the wake of 9/11, in the enactment of Obamacare, and in many other instances. The corona virus lockdowns have provided another opportunity for would-be tyrants to “normalize” yet more encroachments on liberty. The precedent has been set even after the lockdowns are ended. The left is already licking its chops at the opportunity to use the precedent to boss people around in the name of the “crisis” of climate change.
We are the frogs with our liberty being slowly boiled away. Eventually we will wake up to discover that we live under tyranny. That’s when the blood-of-patriots kind of stuff will have to happen to get those rights back. I would prefer not setting the precedent in the first place.
Well, I guess long-term — really long-term — anything might happen, and it probably won’t be the Wuhan virus that gets us there. On the positive side, this President has made serious strides toward re-establishing a Constitutionally minded and competent judiciary, and that may push off our eventual day of judgment farther than the current crisis hastens it.
I’m skeptical that there will ever be an armed insurrection in any case. I think the age of such things may have passed. But I don’t know.
Lastly, as much as I like the metaphor, I’ve read — though I’m not certain it’s true — that even slow-boiling frogs will jump out of the pan before they’re cooked. ;)
I suspect the same. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be deaths. There may be some civil unrest that is put down forcefully. Or people arrested who die in prison. There weren’t armed insurrections in the Soviet Union but there were plenty of deaths. I don’t think we will go full USSR, but I don’t think our rights will be restored without some suffering either. Unfortunately.
Great Post Henry.
Once liberties are taken away they are rarely given back. We shall what excuse our State and Local governments make to extend their abolition of our liberties as necessary.
J Climatus points out that for the better part of a century the Supreme Court has allow much of our liberties to nibbled away for the sake of some government “necessary”. That is true, but I believe we are one vote away from a serious change in the Supreme Court’s attitude. There are now four leftists, one very unreliable moderate and four conservatives of a more originalist bent on the court . One more conservative and a there could be a flood of decisions that could bring back our liberties and bring back Constitutional integrity.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg is 87 years old. She has been treated for colon cancer, pancreatic cancer twice and lung cancer, plus she has heart disease. So it is almost remarkable she is still alive. Stephen Breyer is 81 but in seemingly good health. Sonia Sotomayer is in her mid-sixties but has Type 1 diabetes. Not to be gruesome, but it is not inconceivable that one of these three Leftist judges could be leaving the court very soon, and if Trump is still President, they could be replaced by a conservative that would change the Court into one that again loves our liberties instead of trying to slice and dice them whenever possible.
Henry,
I don’t understand the distinction you are making between the impacts on the people’s economic activity and the impacts on the economy.
Aren’t they the same thing?
There are some upsides to this fiasco, including the fact that some of those who called Trump “authoritarian” are acting like the very embodiment of that themselves. The Left is showing its true colors once again.
As my son said, they tell us to cough in your elbow and not shake hands, but bump elbows. Duh.
They just can’t help themselves, can they.
It’s certainly true that restrictions of rights should continue no longer than is reasonably necessary, but it’s incorrect to assume that the danger has passed.
If we let up on efforts to suppress the virus it could flare up and threaten the hospitals again. It is the lack of medical care in that situation that is feared would give rise to more death than the virus would produce otherwise.
We have to open up the country again, but we have to use caution.
“The danger” is too broad a term. More people will die sooner if we go back to work. That’s a danger I will accept.
Of course we have to be cautious. We have to monitor the situation and adjust, region by region, as necessary. But restrictions are no longer “reasonably necessary” in most of the country, and so should end.
The danger never passes. Life is dangerous.
Can’t argue with your observations. What is hard for me to embrace is that the COVID-19 pandemic has opened “windows of opportunity” and the only fundamental discussion we can have is what is the nature, character and motives of those seizing upon those opportunities?
Complexity of thought can and will lead you to very layered and likely distorted views or understanding of this situation. My simple mind suggests that the vast majority of our population, the proverbial rank and file, have virtually no means or ability to seize upon these “windows of opportunity”. And that is simply due to the nature of society, for the vast majority of us are merely working within a system that suggests liberty and freedom, but in fact is nothing more than a daily grind that does more to divide and isolate us than to unite and produce the true essence of liberty and freedom.
It is my opinion that those who seize upon these “windows of opportunity” are a very select few and it would appear that over time this select few are not necessarily motivated by the common good or general well being of the population they allegedly profess to serve, but rather to promote, defend and protect the status quo that is our government and society that exits today. Sadly this situation is nothing more than another opportunity to inflict behavioral control over the population. The likely mantra or salesmanship is; we do this for the common good, for we know better and you should trust that we know better.
There was never a moral dilemma albeit that one was suggested or sold, meaning salvage life, prevent massive and catastrophic fatalities, avert the implosion of our entire society due to this health crisis. In the end this was sold as a life or death paradox, and with such, a moral paradox was presented to a population that in truth was not a moral paradox, or so is my view.
Ultimately we now sit in the midst of a behavioral shift that cedes more control of our lives to a few, and obligates our law enforcement to adhere to this quasi rule of law, albeit that no actual law is being broken. It is the mere illusion of morality for very intended purposes. And let me stress this point, my critique or commentary is not suggesting that COVID-19 lacks virulence or is made up, but rather I am say that it’s severity is likely over hyped. Again, “windows of opportunity” opened and the rather manipulative, unscrupulous and agenda driven opportunists did their brand of carpe diem. This bell can not be un-rung, because we will never have truth or full clarity on how this happened or what should have been the appropriate course of action. That path and its proceeding parabolic arch of outcome will never be known.
In conclusion, the bureaucracy that is our government have provided themselves an infallible argument of convenience. They have wrapped their science and ideology around a proposed moral question, albeit that morality was never in the mix. The standards for how this society will be managed and dealt with going forward have forever been changed, and not for the better.
If one has failed to grasp the nature and character of the elitists who drive policy in this country, then an event like this is nothing more than an inconvenience. However, if one is truly a historian, probes not just the past 5 or 10 years but examines the past 120 years from Woodrow Wilson to present day, a very clear and compelling case is made regarding governmental control and the power of such control resting in the hands of but a few. And it’s insidious impact on the American people.
This force or conscious stream of ideological thinking has been relentless. From the formation of the FRB in 1909 to the 16th Amendment in 1913, to our entrance into WW1 in 1917 to Wilson’s 14 points and the subsequent formation of the League of Nations. Let alone the various communist movements in 1905 and demise of the Russian Monarchy in 1917 and subsequent revolution that ran from 1920 to 1924, we have witnessed a steady movement towards global leftists ideals. All of which have failed and seek nothing other than to control and subjugate populations. If one would deny such, then ask yourself this question, was it necessary to seize all the gold and wealth of the US citizens in 1933 for a $20.24 per Troy ounce and then a year later raise that price to $35.00 per Troy ounce? Let alone the host of socialistic ideology incorporated into legislative initiatives during the great depression and since.
The rebranding of socialist trope is similar to any virulent plague that rears its ugly head every 10 years, pushes its agenda, and hopefully truth, clarity and a willingness to fight this force with conviction rises up to embrace the challenge. Like it or not we are in such a period and maybe today, more so than ever, the battle is even more daunting. I hope not but intellectually, emotionally and spiritually our nation is weaker. Our conviction extends only to our individual desire for convenience. We have become content and our contentment is borne out of the lies that our leadership has fed us for 50 plus years. It has been a slow, methodical and progressive march that has seized hold of our educational systems, our media platforms, our intelligence apparatus, our healthcare, banking system, corporations, and therefore our government.
I only hope that we can find the strength from our greater Angels to defeat our lesser demons.
Speaking of opportunity, one thing this pandemic seems to have done is brought more people to Ricochet. Welcome! And if I may be so nosy, was that photo in your profile taken at a ballpark in the Midwest League?
Thank you and no, that picture was taken in the board room of our corporate offices.