I’m sick of talking about COVID-19 and railing against the lockdowns that have done more harm than good. But I know that it’s of vital importance that we remember the lessons we should have learned over the past two years of lockdowns. As an old adage goes, those who fail to learn the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat those mistakes.
Interestingly, the roll back of these mandates is happening right as the campaigns for the 2022 midterm election are revving up (see Alex Berenson for more on the rollback). And before the tragedy of the Russo-Ukrainian War captures all of the world’s attention, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on the past two years while they’re still fresh in our minds. These are the lessons I believe we would do well to remember:
1. Power is like toothpaste; it’s easy to get too much, and it’s almost impossible to put back in the tube.
The COVID-19 pandemic was not our first national (or international) emergency, and it won’t be the last. During states of emergency, there is a long tradition of suspending some of the rules in order to get through an existential crisis.
The Roman Republic had an emergency office called “dictatorship,” which permitted a single elected man to deliver Rome out of a state of crisis. Unlike more modern states of emergency, this one expired after six months. And the Roman Senate authorized any citizen to kill any other who sought absolute political power, so there was an incentive against hording political power (see Mike Duncan, The Storm before the Storm).
The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was a response to a systemic crisis of government. The Articles of Confederation lacked basic powers like that of taxation, enforcement of laws, ability to negotiate with foreign powers, and mint a national currency, to name a few. And while the original purpose of the convention was to amend the Articles, our founders ended up replacing them altogether with our current, pre-amended Constitution. Unlike other American leaders, they broke the rules to put better ones in place, not seize power for themselves.
After 9/11, America unveiled the War on Terror, which included the Authorized Use of Military Force (AUMF) and Patriot Act, both of which have given more power to the presidency and have created a domestic surveillance state, respectively. And, unfortunately, we will always have terrorists and illnesses, so the potential for a state of emergency is usually lurking in the background. Therefore, our leaders say they’re justified in keeping their new powers as they drool over them like Gollum and the one true ring.
We’ve seen Congress delegate much of its war making powers to the President during the Cold War and presidents since Bush II having unprecedented latitude to act unilaterally on anything related to a nebulous War on Terror. The problem is once the state expands to meet these challenges, it doesn’t like to contract. As such, we haven’t actually made it out of our current states of emergencies (9/11 and COVID-19). Moving forward, we must be more vigilant on how we allow those in power to amass more of it.
2. There’s a dark side to human nature. Our founding fathers knew this.
I know I’m not the first to express amazement at how quickly we “otherized” people who responded differently to mask mandates, lockdown policies, and vaccine requirements. All of a sudden, issues of personal medical care became public moral decisions (see Moralized Hazard). In an age of identity tribalism and political polarization, most of us see this as part of a larger problem.
That’s true. Just look at how quickly we’ve moralized the Russo-Ukrainian War. Instead of taking other viewpoints seriously, some call for dissenters to be brought up on charges and professionally destroyed (see Clarity on Ukraine). Sadly, demonization and dehumanization of “the other” dominates a substantial swath of our political landscape because it requires less brain power than rational, reasoned discussions.
It’s also because there is a dark side to human nature that some like to pretend doesn’t exist. Our education system teaches us that we are all a product of our culture and its institutions, and human society is to blame for these shortcomings. It’s income inequality, it’s racism, it’s money in politics, etc.
While we need to address our cultural and political problems, the first step is recognizing that there is a dark side to each of us. And while most of us don’t turn into Darth Vader, we indulge our darker nature when we speak and act in such a way as to deny the intrinsic value of others and respect their rights. That struggle is real for all of us, and it’s worth putting up the fight.
Don’t believe me? Anyone who has been around young children knows we don’t teach children to lie, misbehave, or act selfishly, yet the children do. We try to raise kids to go against these natural impulses. Also, how can our culture be bad if the humans who created it were good?
Our founding fathers knew that people have a thirst for power and a propensity to be self-serving at the expense of others. James Madison famously wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
We need to start promoting the right kind of public virtues, like truth, responsibility, individual liberty (even of dissidents) and the infinite value of every person so we can properly restrain the darker parts of our nature. I believe the moral vacuum of post-modern relativistic secularism worsened our collective response to COVID-19 and the lockdowns.
3. “Laws” aren’t always just, rights are fragile, and our Constitution is not self-enforcing.
Several months ago, I went to a mall with my mom, and while she made a purchase at a kiosk, the woman taking her payment began lecturing me because I was not wearing a mask. She told me that it was the law, to which I replied, “No, it’s an executive order. It’s not a law.” Unconvinced, she yelled as we walked away, “It’s the law!”
On some level, it’s good when citizens trust that what the government tells them to do is lawful, constitutional, and right. Like Martin Luther King, Jr., I believe that when our laws reflect the moral law of God, the former are just. Obviously, not all laws are just, and I think there are two types of unjust laws. The first type is unjust because of their content, the second because of the process by which they came to be.
Not all laws passed through legislatures, signed and enforced by executives (president, governors, mayors), and upheld by the courts are inherently just. Decades of slavery and Jim Crow prove that point. Even so, those laws, as morally abhorrent as they were, were the products of legitimate political processes.
Many mask mandates, vaccine requirements, and other COVID-19 lockdown policies were not based on laws passed legislatively but rather declarations from executives who are supposed to enforce the laws, not write them. As Gorsuch explained in his concurring opinion on OSHA’s vaccine mandates, our system is governed by the principle of separation of powers, and one branch cannot delegate its powers and responsibilities to another because that is an unconstitutional dereliction of its duty.
But because these executives interpreted their emergency powers to mean that they had the ability to circumvent the system, they issued orders enforced like and masquerading as “laws.” These “laws” are both unconstitutional in their conception because they did not rely on the people’s representatives and these executives unrightfully acted on legislative powers they do not have. And to make matters worse, they violated our rights in the process.
We recognize that “people are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” because this belief is necessary for individual dignity and flourishing. A society can only be as healthy and as free as its individuals. There are times in which we must limit individual activity for the sake of the common good. For example, someone can’t destroy a public forest to build a private dwelling.
Likewise, collective threats are not blank checks with which leaders can restrict any and all individual liberties. There are costs for doing nothing and costs for enacting any kind of policy at curbing a pandemic. Part of that cost is what happens when we lose our rights. As heartbreaking as it is to have lost my dad to COVID-19, I don’t think that’s any worse than the families whose loved one committed suicide because of the lockdowns.
What worries me the most is that once a line is crossed, it lowers the barrier to cross it again.
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