Over the past two weeks, Gov. Roy Cooper and local officials have imposed a regulatory regime of increasing severity on North Carolinians.
The stated goal is to slow the spread of COVID-19, so the number of cases requiring hospitalization won’t shoot far above the maximum capacity of the state’s hospitals.
Did Cooper and local officials make the right call? I don’t know for certain.
Neither do you, to be blunt. They are acting on limited, incomplete, and problematic data.
I don’t envy the position they’re in. I respect their public service and pray for them. You should, too. But that doesn’t mean we should simply accept their decisions without scrutiny or complaint.
Our government hasn’t just shut down businesses, thrown hundreds of thousands out of work and disrupted the daily lives of millions of North Carolinians with no clearly articulated standard for when the dictates will be lifted. Our government has also suspended our basic liberties as citizens of a free society.
I have been ordered – under threat of arrest and imprisonment – to minimize my contact with friends and family who live across town or in another city. I have been ordered – under threat of arrest and imprisonment – not to assemble with others to express our jointly held opinions or practice our jointly held faith.
If you think I am arguing the government should never have the power to do these things, you are jumping to the wrong conclusion. As an advocate of limited, constitutional government, I grant that infectious disease is one of the few cases in which coercive action may be required to protect public health and safety.
The threshold for government to resort to such measures should be extremely high, however. And I get very suspicious when I see public officials justify actions such as shelter-in-place orders with the claim that “if even a single person’s life is saved, it will be worth it.”
Let me be crystal clear: anyone who says that should be kept far, far away from wielding governmental authority at any level. They lack the knowledge and judgment to make reasonable public policy. They exhibit a basic ignorance of how free societies work.
If North Carolina set a maximum speed limit of 25 miles per hour, we would see fewer traffic fatalities. If North Carolina prohibited swimming pools, we would see fewer drownings. And if North Carolina issued a shelter-in-place order every year from December to March, we would see fewer deaths from influenza and other familiar but deadly diseases.
For progressives who don’t yet get the point, try this one: every year, a small but tragic number of murders are committed by people who are living illegally in the United States. If we deport as many unauthorized aliens as we can, many of those murders will not occur.
The draconian response to COVID-19 has imposed grave economic and social consequences on North Carolinians and other Americans. They won’t shelter-in-place for months. They can’t.
And they’ll become increasingly impatient with leaders who offer them platitudes – instead of a practical plan – for moving forward.
John Hood is chairman of the John Locke
Foundation. He can be reached by email,
jhood@johnlocke.org.