Posted on 04/01/2020 4:11:10 AM PDT by Kaslin
"There are no libertarians in a global pandemic." So goes the smug punchline of large-government advocates who point to the necessity of collective action in the face of an unprecedented global crisis. Without government, they say, we'd all be dead.
Few libertarians would disagree. The hardcore libertarians at Reason magazine aren't spending their days fulminating over the evils of government-required lockdown orders in the face of a fast-spreading, deadly disease. That's because they, like all other sentient human beings, recognize that collective action is sometimes necessary.
But here's the dirty little secret: Institutional failures during this pandemic are more indicative of what our politics should be during nonpandemic situations, not the blunt-force ability of the government to shut down the global economy and force us all to stay home. The question isn't whether government has power. Government is power. The question is how and when to apply that power. And what we've seen is that government sucks at everything, even the most basic things it is supposed to do well.
Democrats and the media like to pretend that government's failures in this process aren't endemic to government control. They like to blame such failures on Republicans, and on President Donald Trump specifically. But that's just not the case. Human beings are fallible, stupid, gullible and self-interested. Human beings who have the power of government to back them are not less human for having that power. Their humanity just has direr consequences, which is why in nonemergency circumstances, checks and balances are absolutely necessary.
Take, for example, the early days of the pandemic. Democrats say Trump was slow to respond to the incipient threat. But so were Democrats. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently declared, "As Trump fiddles, people are dying," but in late February, she was walking the streets of Chinatown, encouraging citizens to join her. New York Mayor Bill De Blasio has ripped Trump for his supposed downplaying of the virus, but De Blasio spent a month poo-pooing its threat. When confronted about that simple fact by CNN's Jake Tapper, De Blasio conveniently suggested that stop looking backward.
Why should we trust these people, exactly?
Or take the roots of America's inability to provide the health care resources necessary to hospitals across the country. While state and local governments were frittering away billions of dollars on useless government spending, they did precisely nothing to prepare for exactly the sort of black swan events for which governments were presumably invented. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spent a month failing to produce useful tests and prevented physicians in Seattle from performing proper testing, even after President Trump issued a travel ban on China. For years in advance, members of the federal government of both parties had been warned about the need for ventilators and masks. No one produced or stockpiled them. The Food and Drug Administration's red tape prevented the quick development of new measures to deal with the novel coronavirus.
Why should these people control our lives, when the threat of the red death isn't hovering on our doorstep?
The government is a giant, lumbering idiot. Sometimes we need a giant, lumbering idiot. Almost always, we do not. And those who have used this pandemic response -- one of the rare times we need a giant, lumbering idiot to intimidate people into preventing mass infection of one another, and to borrow the money necessary to redress the injuries thus incurred -- as a rationale for a government-run "new politics" should have their heads examined.
I hate to tell you, Ben ... but these “pandemic politics” ARE the new norm.
Our approach to deal with this plague was highly influenced by the death and sickness due to the CCWVI ( Chinese Communist Wuhan Virus) reports coming out of Italy.
Most Americans including this one were not aware that that the Italian socialist government had actually allowed the Chinese communists to purchase thus remove Italian ownership of a large segment of their fashion industry producers. Then replace the Italians working at those companies taken over by the Chinese and have them manned by thousands of Chinese nationals allowed to be brought in to work there.
Those statistics being reported always indicated the casualties were aged Italians no focus was permitted on China or even if the victims were from China and the emphasis was on the speed of contagion. While doing so also ignored the direct connection those producers have with the Chinese Communist government which owns them.
Thanks for the mention. We are learning a lot more about
Italy, and it isn’t sounding good.
Is this an April Fools story?
ML/NJ
Good quote! Basically we need simplification, less laws and less power mad politicians who think they need to govern us. We need God to intervene in answering this prayer.
‘We need to develop a better plan for the next time, and
education the public so that they understand we can’t
simply shut the nation down every time this sort of thing
takes place.’
except the ‘public’ is the very entity demanding and applauding the lockdowns; the authorities don’t destroy our freedoms, we do...
‘We need God to intervene in answering this prayer.’
pro-life people have been saying this very thing...for 47 years and counting...
Thanks for sharing that info about Sweden. Seems compatible with traditional American values. After what has happened with Wuhan, we’ll see if the citizens here will demand this be the plan before the next pandemic.
I think he’s a real taskmaster, and an effective one, so I
agree with your take on it.
I understand where you are coming from. I’m not convinced
you’re wrong by a long shot.
When the public is demanding action, there’s not much you
can do but take some action.
If Trump hadn’t done some of the things he has done, he
wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell this November.
It’s a sad reality.
Would like to think so.
Thanks.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.