Lockdown Regrets, Christian and Leftist
Aaron Kheriaty, Douglas Farrow, and co. Evalute the Churches' Responses; James Allan Reviews The Covid Consensus by Toby Green and Thomas Fazi
Two additional look-backs at the lockdowns of three years ago.
The first is a review of The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor? A Critique from the Left over at Law and Liberty, by James Allan, himself no leftist. Allan is an Australian legal scholar of comparative Anglo-sphere constitutionalism, who’s ideologically somewhat hard to categorize. He partakes of both classic-liberal and populist-conservative instincts, is critical of Bills of Rights, and is the author of what in retrospect was a prescient and important book Democracy in Decline. I felt that book, despite a few rough edges, was important enough a document of the decline of democratic say in the West that I compared it to some of Pierre Manent’s thoughts on the same topic in the essay collection Cosmopolitanism and Its Discontents.
While Allan makes his differences with the “left-leaning…historian Toby Green and economist Thomas Fazi,” clear, especially regarding the second half of their book that is more evaluative, and which blames “authoritarian capitalism,” but he praises them for
…stay[ing] true to the data bringing reams of evidence to the case against lockdowns. They show that the biggest losers of the lockdown response to Covid-19—to be clear, not of the virus itself but of the governmental response to it—were the young, the poor, and the non-laptop class of workers. The lockdowns and other governmental responses amounted to a massive transfer of wealth (not to mention life opportunities) from the young to the old. Likewise, these policies shifted money from the poor to the rich. The massive increase in the debt and incredible printing of money delivered big-time asset inflation which benefited (no surprises here) those with the most assets. The pandemic years were the best years ever for billionaires.
The second is a dynamite episode of a podcast to keep an eye on, called A Biblical Frame, hosted by the Christian (and Canadian) professors Jens Zimmerman and Ivan DeSilva. In this segment, “The Covid Apocalypse, Part I,” they discuss, with Aaron Khreriaty and Douglas Farrow, whether the churches failed during the Covid crisis, and pretty sternly agree that they did. It’s impossible to summarize all they say, in which important references to scriptural passages, the witness of St. Damien of Molokai, and the Grunewald Altarpiece, play a role, but the immediate take-aways are that far too many congegrations and church leaders conformed to the spirit of the world, neglecting their commanded Christian duties to: maintain the fellowship, minister to and provide sacraments to the sick, defend Nuremberg-like Christian principles of medical ethics, and to protect the poor.
I believe Kheriaty, author of the vital book The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Secuirty State, makes the most powerful points, but all four provide valuable contributions, and indicate that as “test” sent by God, the Covid crisis was clearly failed by most churches and their leaders, which requires reflection about why most of them were so unready for it.
From what Allan reports, it does not seem that Fazi and Green engage in much critical reflection about how the Left reponded, or how the history of the Left had done so much to bring us to this sorry state by 2020. But Kheriaty and co. do a great deal of critical self-reflection about how Christians reponded, and this is only part I.