I no longer publish anything on facebook, except in the rarest of circumstances. I stopped this last fall upon confirmation of its having facilitated the Biden administration’s various treason-against-the-First-Amendment actions. The final straw on top of many previous ones.
But in March of 2020, I wrote on fb regularly, and upon the announcement of the Bay Area lockdowns on March 15, an announcement soon imitated by other governments across the world, I posted this reaction:
No. Prohibiting "all non-essential gatherings of individuals." That would include, let's see, book clubs, impromptu discussions with strangers, going on a date, perhaps most counseling sessions, a Bible study, helping someone to move-in, kids playing together, group bird-watch, stopping to listen to a street guitarist, most repair calls, fishing trip, etc. (Order seems unclear whether social gatherings that occur in your home are allowed if they include members not of your own household.) Confining everyone to their homes, except for walks. No pleasure drives, but hiking and biking okay. No non-virtual visits with friends you don't live with. ("It's 'Non-essential!' Back into your house!") No non-online shopping for non-essentials. Putting out language that in strict terms says it has the force of law, but then adding that in most cases the police might not enforce it. Not applying the same rules to the homeless, despite known greater risk of infection and spread by that population. All this, and more,on the basis of around 40 confirmed cases in San Fran and 270 in the Bay Area. No discussion of whether it is sustainable to undertake this now when the real uptick of cases may come later, say, in May or June or October. No more persuasion to do this voluntarily, no more leaving us to make our own fine-grained judgments about exceptions, in consultation with friends, family, and neighbors.
Bay Area citizens should by-and-large comply with this order as they are able, except in cases where strong reasons clearly dictate otherwise, but I think they should strongly consider, once the dust is settled, voting out every city and county official who joined in making this decision. Some "judgments of degree" that go outside of reasonable measure do indicate unfitness for democratic office. I understand that the health powers of local govt are sweeping for epidemics, and need to be, and I respect differences of opinion on the seriousness of the situation and will normally bow to what seems to err on the side of too-much safety, but this is a step which demonstrates an easy-going attitude about our freedoms, an adversion to democratic dialogue, and an appalling-yet-unstated confidence that the unintended effects economic and otherwise will not outweigh the gain in safety. They didn't need this in order to shut down the bars, or to deal with certain weak-spots. Our governing classes are slipping into despotic habits…and they need major push-back. I am not any sort of libertarian. But these officials need to hear a roar of shock and disapproval, and from across the ideological spectrum. Officials outside the Bay Area need to be warned against imitating this. Try to convince me otherwise with all the COVID-19 epidemiological science you want to, and maybe I will change my mind or waver, but to the extent you make no room in your analysis for the less-hard but still-real sciences of Economics and Political Science, or to the extent you charge me with hard-heartedness towards the elderly, to that same extent I will be inclined to ignore your arguments. Suburban types that do not (directly) depend on small-to-medium-sized business operation really need to do more thinking here about the trade-offs we're facing. If the logic is running in the whatever-it-takes-to-lower-the-case-count direction at all times and on all points, it is a logic that has delinked itself from comprehensive reasoning.
That’s word-for-word what I said then, with one unnecessary sentence removed, and a paragraph break provided. I believe only a week before I had learned about proposals to close the bars, and while I had not taken a categorical stand against that, I was rather skeptical, and had cast about for ways to keep them open while cutting legal room capacity. I guess by the time I wrote the above I could see that my specific desire on the bar-issue was a lost cause in the court of public opinion.
I will also note that at the first two anti-lockdown protests I attended, that April and May, I was among a minority of the protestors who wore a mask. My overall opposition to the masks didn’t kick in until June, when I saw videos proving their ineffectiveness.
But my basic stand, and my general refusal to compromise with majority opinion, was already clear when I wrote the above, March 16. I wasn’t an opponent of lockdowns only after the “two weeks to flatten the curve” had passed, but from the get-go. At the heart of my stand was not a dogmatic libertarian commitment to individual-liberty, but a concern for community liberty, and for democratic say. And also for what I called comprehensive reasoning, which Greg Weiner would later label “prudence” simply. I didn’t know then what we do now, that the key prompt for the adoption of lockdown policy came from several U.S. “intelligence agents” recommending we imitate what totalitarian China had done, but I knew lockdowns were wrong. Knew it most of all due to my training in real political science.
What was your reaction?
It’s been a long three years, and the road ahead remains a dark one, particularly given the dogged refusal of most of our elites—“conservative” ones included--to admit the new reality, a reality which includes their massive errors and sins, into their consciousness or into any words they utter or write. Particularly noxious, and potentially setting the stage for worse despotism to come, is their continued refusal to talk about the mountains of evidence indicating that the mRNA vaxxes have caused widespread harms and deaths.
But nonetheless, it’s a good time to look back at the opening weeks of the real 21st-century, which didn’t begin on January 1, 2000, nor, contrary to something Pierre Manent once pretty-much argued, on September 11, 2001.1 No, just as the real 20th century began in August, 1914, the real 21st century began around March 15, 2020.
And my first reaction to it was: no.
Democracy without Nations? The Fate of Self-Government in Europe. 2007, pp. 14-15.
My First Word upon Learning of the Lockdowns
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble..."
That's the 1st Amendment talking.
To shut down churches and prevent peaceable assembly is simply not legal, unless the Constitution is amended. Certainly the CDC had no legal power to do that.
And yet precedent is set, not only for the next epidemic, but for whatever else our overlords choose to do to us from now on. Our protections under the First Amendment are null and void.
We can overcome what has surely been intended to be “ precedent” ....with the individual and community courage and will to ensure...”Never Again”!