As I write this, there is a new “surge” in Covid-19 related cases. I put new in quotation marks because, as Dr. Tom Woods notes, the numbers are inconsistent and in some cases outright dishonest, but also because there is nothing unexpected about this increase. This “surge” was always expected by those who understood that as soon as people are able to interact disease will be able to spread more effectively. The whole point of the original lockdowns, supposedly, was not to prevent people from getting the virus (an impossibility) but to slow it down enough to give our hospitals time to prepare, to be able to deal with the new patients that will need care. And that has worked. Even as cases rise, deaths have fallen. It doesn’t hurt that all the modelers were dead wrong, either. Of course these points have been lost in the fear and fearmongering (just read that first link if you don’t believe me) and all of a sudden containment has become the watch word of the hour. That sounds great- who wouldn’t be against containment of a potentially deadly illness?
Well, consider that you cannot imprison a virus. You cannot send the police out the beat it, molest it, kidnap it, and lock it in a cage. But you know who you can do all that to? Us. And that is the true meaning of containment- nothing less than imprisonment of the population. It means placing people not convicted of any crime under house arrest and, if they violate that imprisonment, in jail cells. Which is why the Department of Justice has sought the power to imprison people indefinitely, without trial or even criminal accusation, any time an “emergency” has been declared. Despite all the rhetoric used to hide the truth of the matter -lockdowns, shelter in place, etc.- the reality is that you are under house arrest, a prisoner in your own home. That the only outcome of this policy would be a disaster is obvious to anyone who stops to think about what happens when you start shredding the global supply web by locking it down and exposing hundreds of millions to death by starvation and pushing a hundred million more back into extreme poverty. But I don’t want to discuss the political or even economic problems of and solutions to these totalitarian acts. I want to discuss the philosophy that can put an end to them; why liberty is necessary and better in every way.
Liberty vs. The Black Death
In 1720, the Black Death struck Europe, cutting a huge swath of merciless death through France. Yet, at the same time, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon (here after referred to by the collective pseudonym Cato) were writing what came to be known as Cato’s Letters in London. Referencing the Plague in France, Cato wrote in Letter 2:
The terrible circumstances of our French neighbours, under the plague in some places, expecting it in others, and dreading it in all, is a loud warning to us, to take all expedients and possible precautions against such a formidable calamity.
We have already had, and still have, a contagion of another sort, more universal, and less merciful, than that at Marseilles: The latter has destroy’d, we are told, about sixty thousand lives; ours has done worse, it has render’d a much greater number of lives miserable, who want but the sickness to finish their calamity; either by rendering it complete, or by putting an end to them and that together.
Indeed, had the alternative been offered us half a year ago, I think it would have been a symptom of wisdom in us to have chosen rather to fall by the hand of God, than by the execrable arts of stock-jobbers: That we are fallen, is a sorrowful truth, not only visible in every face which you meet, but in the destruction of our trade, the glory and riches of our nation, and the livelihood of the poor.
Cato understood the dangers of a disease far more virulent and deadly that what we face now, and yet understood that the greater danger lurked in the actions of the State to render the lives of the common people unlivable, to rend and destroy society through its actions. In their case it was government manipulations of the economy, ours is, in a very real sense, the same as the governments of the world destroy the lives of hundreds of millions in the name of preventing their lives potentially being destroyed by illness. Further, Cato well understood how liberty magnified the desires of the members of the public to serve one another. As Cato wrote in Letter 63:
Now the laws which encourage and increase virtue, are the fixed laws of general and impartial liberty; laws, which being the rule of every man’s actions, and the measures of every man’s power, make honesty and equity their interest. Where liberty is thoroughly established, and its laws equally executed, every man will find his account in doing as he would be done unto, and no man will take from another what he would not part with himself: Honour and advantage will follow the upright, punishment overtake the oppressor. The property of the poor will be as sacred as the privileges of the prince, and the law will be the only bulwark of both. Every man’s honest industry and useful talents, while they are employed for the publick, will be employed for himself; and while he serves himself, he will serve the publick: Publick and private interest will secure each other; all will cheerfully give a part to secure the whole, and be brave to defend it.
…[S]hall Englishmen, who make their own laws, be told, that they have no right to the common air, to the life and fortune which God has given them, but by the permission of an officer of their own making; who is what he is only for their sakes and security, and has no more right to these blessings, nor to do evil, than one of themselves? And shall we be told this by men, who are eternally the first to violate their own doctrines? Or shall they after this have the front to teach us any doctrine, or to recommend to us any one virtue, when they have thus given up all virtue and truth, and every blessing that life affords? For there is no evil, misery, and wickedness, which arbitrary monarchies do not produce, and must produce; nor do they, nor can they, produce any certain, general, or diffusive good.
It is much the same with us today. If we wish to have people who are not only willing to work for the common good, but whose very incentive is to do so, then we must have laws that allow for complete, impartial liberty. This will not only protect our individual lives and property, it will also motivate people to cheerfully act in such a way as to secure, to the best of their ability, the health of society. Businesses will do all they can to keep workers safety and provide for their health. To do otherwise would be to court lawsuits and financial collapse. People in turn will do all they can to prevent themselves, and thus others, sick. Liberty alone motivates good social interaction. When you try and compel obedience, people naturally fight back. There ears close down and defenses come up, no matter what the subject is that you’re discussing. Start fighting and you’ve already lost.
This is something many people criticizing people who refuse to wear masks don’t understand. By introducing force into the equation they’re rendering any virtue in their argument moot. No one who should listen will because now you’re telling them their choices are be beaten, caged, and robbed or servility. That automatically triggers their defense mechanisms and they’ll fight you as much as they can over something they would’ve willingly done if you hadn’t introduced force into the equation. If your idea is good then people will adopt it and it is only in liberty that ideas are able to prosper. But in the face of seemingly arbitrary power and mob rule? No, they will not comply. Nor should they. If society is to truly deal with curing or treating any illness, better to break the back of the State at the very beginning lest it cripple society and hobble progress in the name of helping it but in reality only benefiting the politically connected elites. Wanton and waste have become the norm as the economy is destroyed and currency devalued so that politicians can purchase votes from the public.
Recently Apostle David A. Bednar, speaking on the evils that government perpetuated by shutting down houses of worship and prohibiting the freedom of conscience and religious practice, taught:
The power of government must have limits. This time of restriction and confinement has confirmed for me that no freedom is more important than religious freedom. Protecting a person’s physical health from the coronavirus is, of course, important, but so is a person’s spiritual health.
… While believers and their religious organizations must be good citizens in a time of crisis, never again can we allow government officials to treat the exercise of religion as simply nonessential. Never again must the fundamental right to worship God be trivialized below the ability to buy gasoline. In our understandable desire to combat COVID-19, we, too, as a society may have forgotten something about who we are and what is most precious. Now is the time for us to heed the wake-up call, to remember, and to act.
We cannot allow fear to lead to dictatorship as it so often has in the past, as it threatens to do today. The powers assumed by those in political office now to force their will upon the masses is the very essence of dictatorship and we cannot allow that progression to continue today, no matter what their justification . As Elder Bednar says, the government must have limits. Who we are and how we live are essential rights that we must never again allow to be trivialized, must never again be allowed to be declared unessential. We must act to counter such growing authoritarianism. Nonviolent resistance and noncompliance must become not just our watchwords, not just theoretical ways of act, but the very essence of our everyday lives. Those who cannot be terrorized cannot be ruled. Where disobedience is the norm, dictatorship is impossible.
Liberty Is The Answer
As the great political philosopher Claude Frédéric Bastiat put it in his work titled The Law:
[W]hatever be the question upon which I am arguing, whether it be religious, philosophical, political, or economical; whether it affects well-being, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, property, labor, exchange, capital, wages, taxes, population, credit, or Government; at whatever point of the scientific horizon I start from, I invariably come to the same thing—the solution of the social problem is in liberty
Everything the government has done has only taken a dangerous problem and made it worse. The answer to this problem, as all others, is liberty. In liberty no one is compelled, not one is being forced against their will to do anything. Therefore they will be more willing to listen. In liberty the forces of the free market are let loose to create solutions to the problems of society in the cheapest way possible and when the thing society is most frightened of is an illness then that means the power of markets are harnessed toward creating the best protective equipment for the lowest prices as well as the development of the best and cheapest medical care. In liberty each person has the power to decide how much risk they will assume and to take the precautions they deem necessary for their safety. If you are in the high risk group then you can take measures to socially isolate yourself as necessary for your health. Everyone else can take wise, measured precautions as necessary without abandoning the work of furthering civilization and preventing the crash of the global supply web. In liberty any mistakes are minimized because they are most often local, whereas the State makes a mistake and harms the lives of hundreds of millions. In every case where people are afraid, liberty is the best situation to create the greatest opportunities for the most people possible.
So, on this day, this day of all days, when hundreds of millions celebrate the rights to revolution, noncompliance, disobedience, independence, and liberty, do not simply celebrate the liberty declared two hundred years ago. Do not allow the government to expand its powers and give it the ability to imprison you in your own home, to destroy everything you’ve ever dreamed of, to stomp on your hopes and dreams, to expose hundreds of millions to violence, terror, and death. Do not allow your liberty to become victim to the autocrat’s command. Declare your independence again, now, today. You have but to stand up and shake yourself for the shackles to fall from your wrists. Move as one, move as a million. Don’t simply memorialize the liberty of men dead two centuries. Make yourself free now. In doing so you’ll be issuing a declaration of independence truly worth celebrating- your own.