Penny Thoughts: The Urgency of Safety over Liberty

Threats to our safety always force us to do some strange things which under non-threatening circumstances we would not even think of doing. We might jump into some heroic action. We might flee the circumstance. We might even surrender some fundamental liberty we have come to believe would always remain no matter what circumstances might prompt.

Today we find ourselves faced with a “pandemic”. As defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) in its 2011 Bulletin, a “pandemic” is “an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people.” It can serve as a good a definition as any for our purposes.

Regardless of whether we believe the impact of the coronavirus, or COVID 19, and its attendant “panic”, has been the result of over-emphasis by the media or the malfunctioning of the Communist Chinese government, what we face here in  the United States as a result might very well turn into a basic crisis of the elemental principles we all believe and hold dear.

In moments of crisis or extreme threat, we seek the protection of that we believe will keep us safe. From a very young age, we have run to that which has kept us free from danger. It may have been our parents, grandparents, neighbors or law enforcement, but whatever the agency or person, we have always believed that it was the best bet for our safety.

Since the establishment of the United States and the evolving expansion of its powers through its laws, we have come to believe that the practices and applications of its governing offer us safe harbor from that which threatens us. Primarily, it has been through the creation of laws or agencies to affect those laws which has sought our attention. Many of you may remember our parents or elders using a phrase in which they had ultimate confidence because they believed that, through the creation of another edict, that which might be needed would be secured through a law. The phrase was, “There ought to be a law!”

We have witnessed the growth of our Federal Government to a level which I cannot believe that our Founders could have or would have imagined. I can only imagine what their reaction might be at how great their experiment in individual liberty has expanded.

So now, in the Twenty-First Century, we find that we are threatened by an enemy about which we have little knowledge and are feverishly working to defeat. It is not the nuclear threat, the conventional invasion or even the terrorist attack that might plague us. At least with those confrontations, we could have an idea of their charge and an identity of who and what they were or might be. 

With a virus, such precautions and preparations are fruitless. Our vulnerabilities become more pronounced and obvious. Imminent danger abounds and our safety is threatened. As is our usual process, we seek that which seems to promise us safety.

Unfortunately, today there are two elements which have conspired against a rational solution: 1) our relative lack of solid knowledge of this coronavirus (COVID 19); and 2) the ravenous media which is fed by competition to be the first to “get the scoop” on an angle. The first is being met with great courage and sincerity by our Federal Government. The second is exacerbated by our present “Information Age” which allows us to have instant access to all presentations by all sorts of media. And because news “reporters” tend to cut corners in headlines and news accounts, the nuances and contexts of many reports become dangerously distorted. Only the lens of history will adjudicate their viability.

Still, we find ourselves in this morass of information, however accurate or inaccurate, and we must deal with our responses to it.

Those in power see that their constituencies are hungry for action and in their zeal to serve this hunger far too often will establish laws which ultimately leave more damage in the long run than alleviating the immediate threat might achieve. And every time I hear that a new law or regulation is being proposed, there is something in me which cringes.

My purpose in writing this missive is really quite simple:  it is crucial to recognize that every time we allow a new law to be written, we give up another piece of our liberty no matter how large or small. 

In many instances, we may see that the trade-off was worth it. In times such as these, however, when the threat is compounded by confusing knowledge and a ravenous media pouring flames on the fire, we need to heed caution when we willingly allow law makers to create new laws for our “safety”.

And I recall the line of a poem I read years ago – “…thus, the once soaring mountain, majestic sublime/was reduced by an ant one grain at a time.”