By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host
Never let a crisis go to waste. Or, perhaps, the loss of liberty for the security of living despite the attack of a disease is worth it. One could go crazy trying to figure all of this out.
I have been critical of the leftist media’s treatment of the coronavirus (COVID-19) news. It has been politicized. They have been doing what they can to hurt President Trump, and the economy, with their hysteria. But, one wonders if we have been underestimating this Chinese Wuhan laboratory-birthed virus and its long-term impact on life on Planet Earth.
Once unleashed, this is now something we will likely have to deal with every year, just like the flu, and the common cold. Does that mean next year a new normal will set in where we are prisoners in our own homes in the hopes of not getting sick? How will once vibrant industries survive a sudden loss of customers every year? Will we need to be healthy, or face the possibility of death, every year?
A number of counties here in California have lockdown orders (they call it a shelter-in-place order) that pretty much makes it illegal to be out and about unless absolutely necessary. We can’t assemble, and that includes churches and schools. Sports has been cancelled across the board.
Is this something we will deal with for now on whenever this coronavirus pops up?
Are we being forced to become a “use technology or die outside” society?
I don’t know the answers to those questions, I am simply asking them. While I still remain skeptical about some of the news we have been getting, the medical professionals are telling me that one thing about this coronavirus is that it ravages the lungs. With me, I was once very healthy, I used to be a long distance runner, but due to certain life issues, such as age, and slowing down as I’ve gotten older, I now don’t have the lungs I once had. I get winded a lot easier. Does that make me more vulnerable to struggle through this illness should I contract the virus? My wife has a history of bronchitis. Is she at higher risk?
I believe the answers are “yes” to those last two. While I believe this will pass, and I believe some of this has been overblown, I am concerned. Not hysterical, but concerned.
That all said, my concerns reach further because of the threat this all has on our natural rights. While the excuse seems reasonable, government is limiting our right to assemble, and we have been good with it because we don’t want to get sick, should we really be happy that our right of assembly is so easily being taken from us? We have been disallowed from assembling at church (a slap also on religious liberty), we are being slammed if we don’t speak or write in concert with the hysterical narrative (a slap on freedom of speech and the press), and we are being told not to question the wisdom of the government (so much for the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances).
Could liberty be at risk as a result? Could we be entering the true post-constitution period in America’s history, not because of an authoritarian takeover by a enemy ideology, but as a response to a frightening virus?
We are being called to be a community, which can be good, but could it be a gateway towards erasing individualism in the name of saving the world from a deadly virus?
Is this how liberty dies? Not with bombs or authoritarianism, and not even with a legislative whimper called socialism, but through fear of getting sick?
Time will tell.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary