Come Home, America.

[Captain Huk]

https://lawliberty.org/the-coronavir...statist-worse/

​e are now embarked, again, on what William James called in a 1910 essay “the moral equivalent of war.” Nature has instigated it, but our government has issued the formal declaration. It’s become a familiar posture, although wars on poverty, racism, crime, drugs, terrorism, etc., are often fought by others and seem to require little from us. Not this one. Americans are summoned to a grand domestic project that will require military-like discipline and purpose, led by the federal government. We will fight this through pervasive isolation. The near-term devastation of our economy, particularly for many small businesses, will follow. We will live online. Even our churches and religious institutions are closed. Should we fail, many will die, many others willget sick; the health-care system will be overwhelmed, harming others still. Evenif we succeed — however we define victory — a large proportion of thepopulation will get sick. And no one can state with precision how long thiscontinues. It’s the full “moral equivalent of war” experience. A nation ravagedby deaths of despair, opioid abuse, declining rates of family formation, banalsecularism, loneliness, gray divorce, high levels of private and public debt,irascible political disagreements, among other unpleasant trends, has beenenlisted to fight it. You go to war with the army you have. And we don’t lookso sturdy.Every crisis is clarifying, generative, anddestructive. If the Coronavirus War is the supreme conflict — and our leadersare making it such — then it will prove no different. Assume we go intoeconomic and social isolation for three, four, 18 months. What follows? Theassumption is that we take our lumps now and then we can move forwardvirus-free. But there are always tradeoffs. Political leaders seem surprisinglyindifferent to the effects of isolation: increased suicides, drinking,drug-use, depression, anxiety, and ailments going untreated under a health-caresystem that could be at maximum capacity for months. The fact that our politics has been ratherevenly divided for the past few decades will likely evaporate. As Ross Douthat has observed, socialmedia tends to absorb our worst political tendencies. What if the energy inthat equation swings? Our lives under quarantine would then become almostepiphenomenal creations of the internet. Instead of social media receiving ourpassions, social media would become the springboard for our passions to jumpout of the online world, and into the streets. After thewar, the economy will be in shambles. Loneliness and alienation — alreadyevident in our society — will worsen and find relief in spiritualized politics.These are the kinds of socio-economic conditions in which a political leadermay emerge and force our country in a new direction, making a futurecourse-correction by an opposition party difficult, if not impossible. Think FranklinD. Roosevelt and the New Deal. For thoseof us who still believe in decentralization, civil society, markets, anddisciplined government, I’m afraid the path home is increasingly narrow andwinds up a rocky defile. After the pandemic, we will likely see certain collectivisttrends in our politics solidify into policy settlements. I can envision some pro-marketand decentralizing ideas becoming acceptable to Americans not previouslypersuaded by them. But, unfortunately, the evidence from crises past suggests thatthe state will grow, and principles of a free and responsible society willrecede.

The costs won’t be merely deficits and dollars, rather the reshaping of America’s civic mores. The line between government and civil society will unravel further.

Americawill move from trillion-dollar annual deficits incurred in peace and prosperityto at least two trillion-dollar deficits during a recession. Bailouts, whichwere contested in 2008, are the first thing on the menu for this crisis. The debatewill be only about the size of the bailout and how inclusive it should be.Besides bailouts, there will be monetary easing, and a propped-up equitiesmarket to “stabilize the economy.” After all, our leaders have put us on leave,ruined businesses, and caused unemployment to spike. Shouldn’t they pay us forit? This will set the stage for the next crisis and its round of bailees, thestates: California, Illinois, New Jersey, and other states who will soon beunable to meet their unfunded public-sector union obligations because they areimpossible to fund. Freedom without responsibility has led us to these outcomes.Instead of moving from strength to strength, we move from indiscipline tofundamental weakness. The costs won’tbe merely deficits and dollars, rather the reshaping of America’s civic mores.The line between government and civil society will unravel further. The effects of the coronavirus pandemic willfurther tighten the screws on the parts of our health-care system stillresponsive to market forces. We will be told that “times have changed in ourglobal world. We must prepare for the next epidemic, and that requires agovernment-directed health-care system.” The national community that “cametogether” to fight off the virus will be a symbol evoked for this purpose, withhealth care as the central weapon in the fight. Consequently, the reasoningwill go, we must now make it available to everyone with public dollars andfederal regulation. The isolation economy will place almostcrippling stress on many middle and working-class families— particularly single-parent households — from multiple directions. Theirchildren are now home from school, and they will struggle to oversee their children’seducation and care while trying to maintain livelihoods. Unlike members of theknowledge class, who flip open their laptops for work, many parents in thiscohort roll up their sleeves onsite. Their situations are sticky. Will thepolitical and bureaucratic classes judge their child-care efforts during thiscrisis to be deficient and in need of government intervention? We will likely seea broad insistence that after-school programs, daycare, and other intensivesocial and familial government ministrations are required. In effect, stateagents will be integrated further into the lives of many working families. Finally, there are our churches and religioushouses, which made the costly decision to close. As such, their role will belimited during this crisis, and that is a tragedy. Perhaps worse, theirimperiled position in the culture will be worsened as a result. For what willbe crucial in this war is to detach minds and wills from anxiety, fear, andloneliness. Who better to do that than a pastor, priest, or rabbi who can speakancient biblical wisdom about the suffering that produces true life? Who andwhat fills this void? The answers unsettle.Is a more optimistic future imaginable in theaftermath of the Corona War? A more hopeful vision might build on the notionthat markets are about more than just wealth creation. They’re also forces of decentralizationand social instruments that connect and match us together more adequately thangovernment. Assuming this pandemic is an extended crisis,we might see greater flexibility in health care, labor, and educationregulation, so that a cash-strapped government in a recession facilitatescheaper options for Americans. After the war, many may realize thatconsumer-driven health care with certain backstops for the chronically illwould be the better method for lower prices and delivery of care. Many will belooking for new work opportunities. So perhaps we’ll finally shed burdensome licensingregulations. What about education? Perhaps more parents willnotice what those who homeschool their children already know from experience:that it only takes about 3–4 hours of instruction per day to educate a child.Why, then, do we have a seven to eight-hour public school day? What is reallygoing on at my kid’s school? I’d like some choices. As for highereducation, many parents may observe their young adult children being educatedat home. They may wonder why that alternative isn’t available at a fraction ofthe cost. The point is not about online education so much as choice: Manyparents might well conclude that the service of higher education doesn’tnecessarily justify the price, or that there should be alternatives to thecurrent model. Yes, we’ll still get progressive calls for thosemeasures outlined above, but Americans will also learn something aboutthemselves, their families, their neighbors, and their communities that theydidn’t know before. Americans will learn that while, yes, we’re all in ittogether, we’re also all in it as particular people with particular neighbors, situatedin particular places, communities, and homes. We’ll remember that these are thethings worth protecting more than progressive abstractions. America will comehome to herself.These realizations would only become clear over time, not immediately. And they would require that we think deeply in the middle of a global pandemic about what we really want as citizens and as humans — a better way to live, one that would be served by our politics. The easier path — especially when citizens are isolated and alone and wearied by fighting the moral equivalent of war — would be to acquiesce to the loud voices of soft despotism. Those voices prey on our faltering beliefs in the nobility of freedom and responsibility. Let us hope that those beliefs are steeled rather than weakened by our present crisis.

[Samuel Adams]

All that would be necessary for Americans to come home would be a cessation of the use of the Fed’s commercial benefits by the individual, and a dumping of 14th amendment subjugation and return to original state republic Citizenship.

Human nature assures us......don’t hold your breath.