Covid-19 and the totalitarian instinct

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety ~ Benjamin Franklin

I am concerned, but not surprised, by the reaction of many people to the Covid-19 lockdown - those who relish the fact that we are being confined to our homes by the government. For some, the New Zealand Government's comparatively low key enforcement of the lockdown is not enough, like this supposedly centre-right political commentator who wants it good and hard:

The mainstream media have rejoiced in the lockdown and seem to be promoting its extension through dubious surveys that say a majority of New Zealanders are happy for it to be extended. Of course, such survey results depend on the question - if people were asked whether they are happy for the lockdown to be extended if it cost more lives than it saved, it would produce the opposite result.

That is not a silly question. A British study by Bristol University Professor of Risk Management Philip Thomas concluded that if GDP per capita drops by more than about 6.5 percent for a significant period, more lives will be lost as a consequence of the lockdown than would be saved from Covid-19. This is unsurprising because the biggest factor in improved life expectancy in the modern world is economic prosperity. Reduce national income and more people die.

The response to Covid-19 in New Zealand, according to the Government's own estimates, is expected to reduce GDP by between 13% and 30% in the year to March 2021 in the absence of further economic stimulus. Therefore, we are well into the territory of the cost in lives lost from the lockdown being greater than those saved, even disregarding the negative impact on quality of life.

I used to be surprised by the collective self-loathing of many people in the Western world. Life is better in Western countries than anywhere else at any time in human existence by any measure, yet we are subject to a constant barrage of doom and gloom. In recent years this pessimism has been driven primarily by the narrative around climate change. The neo-Malthusian beliefs of the likes of Paul Ehrlich have become mainstream, with the dire prognostications of famine and disease due to overpopulation being replaced by equally alarming and unfounded predictions of calamity from global warming. On the positive side, Covid-19 has sidelined the constant scaremongering about climate change in the mainstream media. However, it has given those who pine for totalitarian solutions to every human problem a much more immediate threat to justify their misanthropic views.

At the heart of the totalitarian instinct is envy. It is the same instinct as H L Mencken identified when he was discussing Puritans: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy - the same instinct that prompted a Radio New Zealand journalist to write this article about a lone surfer in Wellington's Lyall Bay. Such people would rather everyone is miserable than some be happier than others.

New Zealand's Covid-19 active and total cases - April 16, 2020

New Zealand should get out of its current level of lockdown mid-next-week.   Certainly, going by our current Covid-19 infection rates there is no reason to continue the current universal house arrest. But people aren't rational and political decisions are often a reflection of the worst instincts of the population rather than the best. Let's hope that is not the case here.

Resisting the Ghouls

It is Day 3 of our universal house arrest (and I think that is a more accurate description than “lock down”) here in New Zealand, and I’m well set up to carry on working. I have every videoconferencing application known to mankind on my desktop Mac – Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Skype, Facetime, Jabber, etc. So far, the internet is working well despite everyone else in my household bingeing on Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple TV+. Yesterday afternoon I was even able to participate in my usual “Friday Fours” – the regular drinks I have with a group of associates – by videoconference. The biggest topic for discussion was how to buy alcoholic spirits in a Puritan lock down. Supermarkets, which are considered essential services and remain open, can sell beer and wine but not spirits. Other liquor outlets have to remain closed, unlike in Australia where “Bottle-Os” (take out liquor stores) are considered an essential service. You have to hand it to the Aussies, they have their priorities right!

I was listening to a podcast yesterday and one of the presenters was discussing Covid-19 with his elderly father, who was a doctor until retirement. The presenter asked how he would’ve coped with the virus in the heyday of his medical career during the 1960s and 1970s. The old man said they wouldn’t even have known it was a distinct virus, not having the DNA analysis we have today, and would’ve regarded it as just a form of influenza.

The story made me realise that some of our worst concerns are subject to what I would call information arrogance – a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. This is the problem with climate science – we know that an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere ought to lead to an increase in average temperatures, all things being equal. The problem is, all things are never equal in real life, and we understand very little about the influence of other factors in climate change such as cosmic radiation, the sun’s radiance, the formation of cloud, and the absorption of CO2 and heat in the oceans. The same is true of Covid-19. In most countries, we don’t know the true incidence of the virus because most people haven’t been tested. We don’t know the real mortality because we’re only testing people we think have already got it.

Perhaps the most unsurprising thing to me about the pandemic is that it is being exploited by the usual ideological thugs to push their dystopian agendas. We have already seen numerous claims that “there are no libertarians in a pandemic” and “we’re all socialists now”. The exploitation of these difficult circumstances by those on the left to justify their illiberal political views has been described by Brendan O’Neill of Spiked (an old leftie himself) as the “socialism of ghouls”. He goes on to say:

If your overarching thought upon observing a crisis of this magnitude is to feel ‘vindicated’, almost to welcome the crisis as an opportunity to promote your political worldview, there is something wrong with you. 

Indeed.

There has been much praise of China's response to the pandemic, despite that country’s regime being complicit in the spread of the virus. The idea that only a highly centralised authoritarian state could respond effectively to the virus outbreak doesn’t stand up to the most cursory examination. If China had been a more free and open country, instead of arresting those who sounded the alarm, the virus might have been confined to Wuhan. Other repressive regimes, such as those in Iran and Russia, have also botched the response. You could counter that Western governments haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory in responding to the virus and certainly the New Zealand Government underestimated the risk and responded too slowly, but others such as South Korea and Singapore have managed to bring the pandemic under control comparatively quickly.

We have heard much about how we are all in this together, but ultimately our response to the pandemic is personal and individual. We may be under the confinement orders of our governments, but we each have to take responsibility for how we respond to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. In particular, our ability to recover from this will depend on the decisions of millions of individuals - decisions about whether to invest, start a business, apply for a new job, buy a house, get married and have children, or take early retirement. Governments need to remember this once the pandemic is over. If they lock in the measures they have sold as a temporary necessity, and make all of us dependent on the state for ever after, we may never fully recover economically and socially, and the ultimate cost will be far higher than that of the pandemic itself.

Liberty has been the driver of the huge improvement in the health and prosperity of human beings all over the world for more than two centuries, and we are currently sacrificing that driver to bring this virus under control. The worst effect of the pandemic would be to make that sacrifice permanent.

America - Land of the Closely Scrutinised

It has been interesting watching the contortions of the mainstream media over the revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden and Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald about the illegal activities of the US National Security Agency and Justice Department.  In some ways I don't envy the left-leaning media their dilemma - who is right, the President who is everything they always wanted (left-wing, black and so cool he needs to be kept in a refrigerator) or Greenwald, who has impeccable credentials (gay, Guardian, ex-civil rights litigator) as one of their own?  Who should they defend - the symbol of their left-wing liberalism in the Oval Office or the only journalist upholding the principles they have always professed to defend such as freedom of speech and conscience?  The very fact that they are caught in this dilemma suggest to me that they were never serious about their principles in the first place.

I have read numerous articles and blogs coming from all sides of the political spectrum attempting to justify the illegal spying by the Obama administration on its own citizens.  The gist of the argument in favour of the government breaking the law is that it is necessary for the security of the nation.  Of course, every dictator since Sulla has used the same argument to garner to themselves excessive and unconstitutional powers and it has never ended well for the people.  Let's be clear, President Obama has been the worst offender in this regard and far worse than his predecessor, George W. Bush.  At least Bush sought a legislative mandate in the likes of the Patriot Act for the expansion of his powers.  The Obama administration has simply disregarded the need for any legislative or constitutional mandate for what it is doing, although it has used the law when it suits it, launching more prosecutions for espionage against whistle blowers than all previous administrations (the charges against Snowden are the seventh and there have been only three other such prosecutions in US history).

The US Constitution enshrines the principles of freedom of speech, privacy and due process precisely because its authors believed that future US presidents might do exactly what Obama has done.  Its drafters saw no situation where the abrogation of these principles was justified (except in the specific instances detailed in the Bill of Rights itself).  Take the Fourth Amendment, which says:

    The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

It couldn't be clearer.  The US Government cannot legally search or seize someone's papers (and any reasonable modern interpretation of "papers" must include email) without a warrant that is issued upon probable cause.  That means the government must have evidence against a specific person, place or thing it wants to search or seize.  Even the broadest interpretation of this cannot include the seizing of information about every American's telephone calls.

The framers of the US Constitution got it right.  They knew what was required if the Constitution was to preserve any semblance of liberty.  They enshrined these principles to ensure freedom survived the propensity of governments towards tyranny.  In my view, the assault on the Constitution by the current US Government is a far greater threat that any terrorist or other threat that has been used to justify these illegal and unconstitutional acts. 

Americans can no longer expose the excesses of their government or even express a dissenting opinion for fear of being targeted by agencies such as the IRS, which was recently exposed as having used its powers to illegally harass political groups that oppose the Obama administration such as the Tea Party. 

Unfortunately, the judicial oversight of the Executive Branch become a joke.  The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance ("FISA") Court, which is meant to oversee the issuing of warrants in regards to national security matters, has rejected just 11 of more than 33,000 applications for warrants in its 35 year existence and the US Supreme Court has become so politically loaded it has ceased to be any form of guardian for constitutional rights.

All this has meant that America is no longer the land of the free, but rather a land where people are so closely watched by government agencies whose methods and mandate would make former East German Stasi officers envious. 

The media should not be debating whether unconstitutional acts are justified, they should be arguing how those who have abrogated the Constitution should be brought to justice.