Individual Responsibility

  

            How many of our leaders have expressed the hope that we can soon return to normal. I guess normal means kids back in school, workers off unemployment, spectators back in the stands, and our economy roaring again. But that’s not going to happen until and unless we have a major change of attitude among these same leaders.

            It’s interesting to note how the authorities of various countries around the world reacted to the pandemic, once they realized it was a highly infectious killer. In China, the Chinese Communist Party surrounded Wuhan with troops, creating a prison of 11 million people. In Italy and Spain, the leaders were caught flat-footed and didn’t have time to mount a defense. Others like in South Korea and Sweden came up with effective strategies to keep their economies buzzing while mitigating the spread of the disease. Sadly, some ignored the threat entirely and are now paying a horrible price.

            What did we do here in the U.S.? President Trump was wise to stop people from coming in from China, even before the first confirmed infection in this country. Anthony Fauci said not to worry, Covid-19 would be no worse than the common flu. But both Trump and Fauci didn’t realize that the virus was invading our shores from Europe. When tens of thousands of infected victims checked into New York hospitals and threatened to overwhelm the city’s health system, our leaders panicked. They shut the country down.

            The president and the governors who locked down their states claimed the authority to override the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They were well intentioned: they wanted to save lives. But in exercising the power of a dictatorship in their respective fiefdoms, they forgot one very important fact: their power, as spelled out in the Constitution, is limited by the rights granted to the people.  They forgot that any power they have was granted to them by the people whose rights they now trampled.

            Americans understand that the government has extraordinary authority to curtail dangerous activities during emergencies. Most people willingly cooperate with authorities, because they recognize that their orders are meant to save lives. The key here is that they would do it willingly: they don’t have to be ordered to do it.

            However, when they sense that their constitutionally protected rights are being denied, they react, they speak up, they protest, and disobey orders. They open salons and bars, they fill their churches, they take to their beaches. They claim their right to work, to worship, to assemble. They give the proverbial finger to authorities who threaten to arrest, prosecute, and jail them.

            I say bravo to them. I say bravo to the Wisconsin Supreme Court that has lifted all restrictions on businesses and gatherings imposed by the state’s governor. It’s about time a court has curbed the government’s power to act unilaterally to deny the people’s most cherished rights. Freedom. It’s what makes this country the greatest nation in the world.

            Will this country ever get back to normal? Perhaps. But only when individuals have the freedom once again to make their own decisions on how they want to live their lives.  Will there be risks? Sure. But we’ve learned an awful lot about how to act responsibly to mitigate that risk.

            We’ll know we’re on the right track when we are allowed to decide for ourselves whether or not to go to a concert or sit in the stands to see a football game. Sooner than later, I hope.

             

           

A Massive Mistake?

          I’ve never known a time when I’ve felt so overwhelmed by the news. There are so many “just in” bombshell stories, it’s difficult to focus on one without feeling you’ve missed something important somewhere else.

          For conspiracy fanatics, there’s the Michael Flynn case’s dismissal by Attorney General William Barr who saw Flynn’s set-up not only as a gross abuse of power by the FBI, but also as clear evidence that the Deep State was attempting a coup against President Trump.

          On the related Russia collusion hoax, there’s the call for Chairman Schiff to resign his chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee after documents he refused to release for over a year now show that he was lying all along about having solid, tangible evidence of President Trump’s complicity.

          And for those who enjoy seeing Joe Biden squirm, there’s the glee at yet another witness coming forward to corroborate Tara Read’s story of sexual assault by the Democratic presidential candidate.

          Yet, all these stories must take a back seat to the on-going saga of the war against Covid-19. This war is being directed by a civilian chief executive who never went to a war college, while he surrounds himself with advisers who have been in previous conflicts, but never one of this magnitude.

          The war on the ground is being fought by 50 generals on vastly different terrain. Like the Union generals in the Civil War, a few are brilliant, some are mediocre, and too many are downright incompetent, most of whom are arrogant fools infatuated with the power of their office; they issue edicts that not only violate the supreme law of the land, they traduce critics even to the point of imprisonment.

          Meanwhile, those who are ultimately responsible for managing this conflict have been making decisions based on an inchoate science handicapped by faulty field intelligence. They are torn between two seemingly irreconcilable strategies: one that favors the health of our citizens versus one that wants to save the economy from ruin.

          The very natural human tendency is to preserve as many lives as possible even if we have to sacrifice the wellbeing of the economy while hoping that the damage is not permanent. But that may in the long run prove to be a massive mistake, a mistake committed not only by the United States, but by countries around the world that take their lead from us.

          Covid-19 is very contagious, but so is panic and hysteria. The United States has a better chance of surviving the effects of a total lockdown than a country that lacks the wealth and resources to prevent a plunge into extreme poverty and starvation.

          We need to reassess the effects of the lockdown, because the ultimate outcome of this strategy, if prolonged beyond reason, could be catastrophic. Or, to put it in grim terms, more people will die from the economic impact of the virus than from the virus itself.

         

         

A Higher Authority

            When inaugurated, every state governor pledged to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. Almost every one of them has failed to some degree to do so in confronting the coronavirus. Some outrageously so.

            The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, states clearly and unequivocally what rights we enjoy as a free people. The first and most important amendment couldn’t be clearer. It protects the free exercise of religion, the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the right peaceably to assemble, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Every one of these rights has been violated during the pandemic.

            Here are just a few examples. People have been barred from going to church or even listening to ceremonies from parked cars; opinions critical of government lockdown orders have been purged from YouTube and Facebook; people have been banned from beaches and parks; protests at state capitals have incurred retaliatory measures; petitions have been summarily rejected.

            Then there’s the Fourth Amendment, which protects the people against unreasonable searches and seizures. How is New York Mayor Bill de Blazio upholding his oath of office when he tells citizens to spy on each other and report violations of his orders? How is it constitutionally permissible for authorities in Elizabeth City, New Jersey, to use a drone to monitor people self-distancing in public places and scorn them if they don’t?

            What’s next? Kites with cameras? Telescopes with facial recognition and thermal imaging? Drones that recognize if people are coughing? And here we thought that only the Chinese spied on their own people.

            When Tucker Carlson of Fox News asked New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy under what authority he had the right to overrule the Constitution, the governor sheepishly replied, “The answer to that question is above my pay grade.” That dodge, if we think about it, has some truth to it. Governors who issue edicts and mandates that violate people’s rights are asserting that they do not answer to a higher authority, even when there indeed is one—the Constitution of the United States. And when they do, they are breaking the law.

            People all over the country are fed up with prolonged lockdowns, enforced closures against stores and restaurants, and all sorts of prohibitions against small businesses. We have already seen rebellious shops forcibly closed, licenses revoked, owners cited and fined. What’s next?  Imprisonment? Internment camps?

            This country was born in revolt against an authoritarian monarchy. Do we need a revolution against our own authoritarian government to restore our freedoms? Our Founders stood shoulder to shoulder in their fight against tyranny. Should we summon their spirits to return to fight again?

Close to Home

            Over 65,000 deaths in the U.S. from the coronavirus and mounting.  Nameless and faceless people until one of them is a relative or a friend. For me, that barrier of anonymity was crossed last week.

            Claire Quintal died from the virus on April 29, only days after turning 90. She is mourned all over New England by people of French-Canadian ancestry like me who admired her for her selfless dedication to a cause, the Franco-American heritage.

            I can relate to Claire. She was born and raised only a few miles down the road from my hometown, and her childhood education was similar to mine. She was a brilliant scholar with many advanced degrees. The ten years she spent in Paris from 1958 to 1968 earning her doctorate and teaching bracketed my years of study in Europe. Who knows? I may even have passed her on the street on one of my frequent visits to Paris.

            Faced with a choice between marriage and a career, she chose the latter. And for over 40 years her dedication to her mission never wavered, highlighted by the founding of the French Institute in Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts.

            I met Claire Quintal when she invited me to speak at a colloquim at the Institute in 1994 and got to appreciate first-hand her dynamic leadership in the preservation of the culture, values, and history of the million Canadian immigrants who settled in New England towns between roughly 1840 and 1940.

            I could go on about Claire Quintal, but my point here is that the virus becomes personal when it takes the life of someone you know. Worse, I’m sure, when it’s someone in your family. In fact, there are no nameless and faceless victims, because they all had families, friends, or at the very least, people who knew them. While the numbers may seem overwhelming, each death is personal to someone.

           

Saving the Economy

            The most contentious debate surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic comes down to a simple proposition: our health vs. the economy. Which is more important? Well, they are both important. So, the question becomes how to preserve one without destroying the other.

             Reaction to the invasion of the silent killer was horror at the rapid spread of the virus and its lethality. New York City quickly became the epicenter of the battle and led to Governor Cuomo’s decision to lock down the whole state. Other hot spots like New Orleans and Michigan soon followed suit. It wasn’t long before every state had issued a similar directive. Stopping the spread of the disease had become a singular, overriding objective. Concern for the economy was secondary.

            It was apparent right from the start that the country had been ill-prepared to fight such an epidemic. President Trump wisely closed our borders on January 31, but that didn’t prevent infections from spreading rapidly. Shortages of essential materials had governors crying for federal assistance to provide test kits, masks, gloves, gowns, and ventilators. Even the availability of hospital beds became critical when the number of patients threatened to exceed existing capacity.

            Yet, the national response was admirable. By mid-April, there were no longer any shortages of critical materials, and even testing was catching up. At the same time, the rates of infection, hospitalizations, and fatalities had come down dramatically.

            By then, unfortunately, the economy was in shambles. Shops and businesses were closed, many permanently; unemployment numbers were headed for double digits; the trillions of dollars thrown at the problem by the federal government provided some help, but no solutions. Recession loomed. Even Depression. It was time to reopen the economy, to put people back to work, to relax the rules on self-confinement.

            The debate heated up. How do we restore the economy without causing a resurgence in infections and deaths? How fast and how far do we go? On the advice of his health experts, President Trump advanced a three-stage plan to get the country moving again by May1.

            Some opponents, particularly Democrats and the mainstream media, cynically see a prolonged economic crisis as a political opportunity to inflict damage on the president; the worse the economy looks in November, the worse Trump’s re-election prospects will be.

            Others see mitigation (stay-at-home rules, banning crowds, limiting the re-opening of non-essential businesses) as our best chance to eradicate the disease. But there is a fatal flaw in that argument. Covid-19 is not going away. Mitigation only postpones its return; when personal distancing is no longer mandated, the disease will spread once gain.

            There are only two ways of slowing the spread of Covid-19: vaccination and herd immunity (as more people get infected, the fewer people there are to pass it on to). While we wait for an effective vaccine to be made available to the masses, we may see herd immunity develop naturally. But for that to happen, an awful lot of people will need to be infected. As Sweden has done, we would let the virus play out, run its course.

            This solution may not be as horrible as it sounds. First of all, we may be much farther advanced on this road than we think. We calculate the mortality rate of Covid-19 as the number of deaths (the nominator) compared to the number of infections (the denominator). Tests now being conducted randomly are beginning to show that we have under-counted the denominator in a significant way. The tests seem to indicate that there are far more infected people than we realized. These infected people are asymptomatic: they have (or had) the disease, but few or no symptoms, and, because of that, have never been tested and therefore never added to the denominator.

            That’s important, because these people have (or will have) developed anti-bodies that give them immunity to the disease and make it impossible to transmit it to others. That being the case, a resurgence of the virus will not be as severe as feared; there will be no need to resume the lockdown.

            We may, of course, see a spike in hospitalization rates in some places. But we have learned an awful lot these past few months on both treating the sick and mitigating the spread of the disease. We now know the people most susceptible to severe illness and how to minimize their exposure; testing will help identify those who need to be quarantined until they have recovered and developed anti-bodies; we will have to apply common sense rules to manage crowds at concerts and sporting events; and people will have to continue healthy practices in their daily lives.

            There is no reason we cannot once again have both healthy lives and a healthy economy.

           

           

           

           

Theft on a Grand Scale

            By the time the Wuhan virus peters out, we will have lost many thousands of lives and we will be struggling to regain our economic balance after seeing so many businesses dissolve into bankruptcy.

            We may suffer yet another great loss in November. If Democrats have their way, we will lose something else of immeasurable value: fair elections—to theft on a grand scale.

            Consider the familiar Democratic mantra: Republicans steal elections by disenfranchising minorities. For example, Democrats continue to cite the 2018 gubernatorial election in Georgia lost by Democrat Stacey Abrams, the first female African-American candidate for governor. A suit claiming black voting rights had been trampled went nowhere; in fact, African-Americans had voted in greater numbers and a higher percentage of eligible voters than ever. The tired mantra, at least in Georgia, was proven to be false.

            Democrats clearly need a new strategy. Not to worry. Many Democrats believe the Covid-19 pandemic, which discourages human contact, has given them one.

            The plan is very simple: replace voting in person with write-in ballots. The idea is now being actively promoted by no less a trusted luminary as Michelle Obama. She could just as easily have advocated opening the door wide open to voter fraud.

            With the elimination of the requirement to show up at a polling place in person to vote, absentee ballots will be available to everybody, including people who had no intention of voting. Even dead people. All it takes is a small army of unscrupulous political operatives to falsify ballots and mail them in.

            It’s not that difficult. Democrats have already proven they can steal an election. In 2018, ballot harvesting in California’s Orange County wiped out Republican candidates in what was traditionally a conservative Republican stronghold. Nothing stops them from committing this same sort of voter fraud on a national scale.

            The best way to prevent voter fraud is with voter ID at the voting booth. A valid ID is required for any number of activities, from cashing checks, to buying booze, to travelling on a plane. The claim that requiring a legitimate ID to vote suppresses minority votes is a complete lie, as well as an insult to minority voters. On the contrary, it is the single best way to guarantee the integrity of the election process. But with party standards set by the likes of Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi, integrity has not been a Democratic strong point of late.

            Using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to push write-in ballots, Democratic governors will follow the lead of Governor Northam who recently signed a bill to repeal voter ID laws in Virginia and to extend early voting to 45 days to give cheats more time to falsify and harvest ballots.

            It’s all about achieving power by any means. If Democrats think they can’t win a fair election, they will find a way to win a crooked one.

Enemies Among Us

            I didn’t go to church on Easter Sunday because my church doors were closed. But services were recorded and available on-line. Such is the effect Covid-19 has on religious observance that infection is to be feared more than perdition.

            Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear took his role as infection fighter very seriously. He ordered churches to close their doors to prevent worshipers from coming inside to attend religious services. To enforce his order banning such gatherings, he said he would record the license plate number of anybody violating his directive and have the Health Department visit that individual’s home to impose a 14-day quarantine.

            A church in Louisville found a solution by having people worship in their cars. Call it a drive-in church service. That wasn’t good enough for Mayor Greg Fisher who prohibited church drive-ins. He did not, however, prohibit other drive-ins or drive-throughs like to liquor stores.

            Fortunately, Judge Justin Walker would have none of it. He issued a restraining order against the mayor’s prohibition, calling it stunning, beyond all reason, and unconstitutional. Bravo, Judge.

            On Good Friday a man was forcibly dragged off a bus in Philadelphia by two uniformed policemen. His crime? He wasn’t wearing a protective mask. A video of the incident has now been seen by over 2 million people.

            It is no longer enough to ask people to stay at home to help control the spread of the virus. Many governors are now ordering people to do so. Oregon Governor Kate Brown has gone one better by making any violation of her stay-at-home order a Class C misdemeanor punishable by 30 days in jail or a $1,250 fine.  And NO visitors!

            There are reports of people being arrested for surfing in the ocean or jogging at the beach. In California, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office encourages people to call and report violations of shelter-in-place orders.

            Has our country gone nuts? Only a totalitarian government controlled by a police state does this kind of stuff.

            Last week a wonderful lady had her husband drop off face masks for me and my wife. These were just two of over 250 she has sewed for her neighbors. On Easter morning another neighbor left a bouquet of freshly cut hydrangea blooms on our front porch. Our neighbors weren’t arrested. Not yet anyway.