Like a tsunami wave, the current Corona virus pandemic has swept unimpeded across countries, oceans, and continents upending the comfortable cultural patterns of civilization and pointing dead center at the world’s economic stability.  The pace and severity of the virus spread has placed many countries under siege, and the public willingness to accede to previously unheard of governmental restrictions in both personal and economic activity threaten the long cherished concepts and dictums of individual liberty.  The core document of the United States, its Constitution, with its associated first ten amendments known as the Bill of Rights, has   been the underpinning of protecting our citizens’ free will and access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  The current crisis is like no other; it is neither the devastating but locally focused  effect of a weather  disaster or terrorist incident, nor an extended war taxing the country’s resources and perseverance . In a unique way, it is the toxic mixture of both.  It is uniquely positioned to convert us rapidly and without prudential review into a brave new world progressively alien to respect for traditional freedom.  At the same time, counterintuitively, it has destabilized long held assertions that an ever shrinking world due to technology requires   universal acceptance of new “freedoms” of unimpeded travel, blurring of borders, and uninhibited trade, with a supranational governance to assure the protection of these “rights”.

President Trump has been accused of being slow in recognition of the impending pandemic, but he was, in late January, against much criticism, the first to restrict international travel to and from China.   Wuhan, China was the epicenter of the virus’s origin and spread and the Chinese government did everything it could to squelch early recognition of the new disease and any effect on its world position or economy.  The United States position on flight restriction was termed “racist”, but the lack of restrictions in  two countries tightly linked to China’s Belt and Road strategy to increase world economic reliance on China resulted in unimpeded numbers of infected Chinese workers into Tehran, Iran, and subsequently Iranians and Chinese into Milan, Italy. The result was a delay in the propagation of the virus in the United States and a dramatic explosion in Iran and Italy.  The spread of the virus has now extended to 177 countries, effectively , the whole globe.

The ideal of easy and ever faster and efficient international travel seems a bulwark of liberty, allowing the individual inexpensive and unrestricted access to new markets and new opportunities.  Jet travel after World War II made the concept of difficult and expensive ocean travel obsolete .  Increasing international familiarity and responsibilities brought about by the conclusion of the war made global perception more and more attractive.  For fifty years, ever more integrated travel, trade, and markets made possible by  associated technological advances brought increased attraction to the idea that national borders and citizenship restrictions stood in the way of progress.  The positive effects of trade on improving global standard of living brought with it the ever more aggressive attitudes of extra-national governance on national sovereignty, economic “fairness”, and climate disguised as “improving” the global human condition.

The Brexit movement and the subsequent election of Trump were the first such indications that not everybody felt that losing their ability to control their   citizenship privileges and freedom to choose their destiny was a good idea.  Fierce debates and media driven civil wars broke out in both countries particularly focused on restrictions to unimpeded immigration and the importance of borders to a nation’s identity. Massive dissonance led to a delay in implementation of Brexit in Britain, and 3 year long effort to destroy Trump, culminating in a failed Impeachment effort.    The virus brought sudden clarity to border and immigration issues.  Specifically, Trump’s long standing disdain for unrestricted immigration and its effect on American sovereignty and economic health, suddenly seemed prescient.  The borders argument is now front and center  to control of the  virus spread, to the extent that Mexico is now closing its borders to Americans, and states to other states.  The other globalization arguments are close behind, with more concern about unabated free trade and its affects on local populations survival and the country’s reliance on unfriendly global powers for critical economic resources.

Internal to most countries, the virus has resulted in a secondary assault on personal freedom of action and dramatic governmental decisional primacy on society.  As the virus’s spread progressively required principles of isolation and quarantine,  governments assumed control over decisions regarding civil liberties long ago secured through hard won societal efforts.  The resistance to “social distancing” became increasingly an anti-societal act, until governments advanced even to “stay at home” declarations, and arbitrarily determined which businesses were “essential” and could remain functional and which were deemed “non essential” and had to close, no matter the economic damage.  The entrepreneurial core of America and main driver of employment , the small business, was crushed in the wake.  Within weeks of draconian health care decisions for country wide soft quarantine in place, the massive economy of the U.S., 25% of the world’s economic capacity, teeters toward a path risking a depression.

Loss of freedom in individual health and economic decision making, warranted or not, with resultant effects to the economy, has led to a second wave of massive governmental intrusion.  A 2 trillion dollar stimulus package, 10% of the the country’s entire GDP, was pushed through Congress within a week and signed by the President, securing company bailouts, checks to individuals, loans to businesses, and massive unemployment support.  Given the dire consequences of an extended economic shutdown, it is understandable the government felt the need to act in a dire fashion.  The long term effects of such a massive federal intrusion on economic activity and the resultant massive effect on the debt being passed to future generations, has untold potential effects on personal freedom.  To bring the perspective of scale to such an intrusion, consider the perception of the otherwise unfathomable scale of a trillion –  a million seconds of time  take over 11 days to complete – a trillion seconds, over thirty one thousand years.  The society is now committed to massive debt that will bind personal choice and tax policy to a forever anchor on choice.   It will take downstream perspective as to whether such massive government intrusion was worthy, and the massive suppression of personal initiative by governments reversible.

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream.  It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”  

                                                                                                                                                                                   – Ronald  Reagan     

Extraordinary times often take extraordinary measures – that is fully understandable in the uncertainty of the times.  The worry is that the instinctual  concepts of personal freedom and free once so deeply woven into the fabric of society has sustained significant damage from decades of casual acceptance of security and comfort over risk and reward.  The corrosion is creeping into how we react and respond to, how innately we feel, the progressive conceptual loss of our freedoms, and what we are willing to do to protect them.  The consent of the governed is the key to the whole decision tree.  Think long and hard about where we are at, and where we are going.  Once the dust has cleared, you will see, there’s quite a bit on the line.