Problems With the Perpetual Emergency | Eastern North Carolina Now

Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the John Locke Foundation. The author of this post is Mitch Kokai.

    Fred Bauer writes for City Journal about the impact of an ongoing COVID-inspired emergency.

  • When John Winthrop warned his fellow Puritans that they were about to enter a "community of peril" in venturing to Massachusetts Bay in 1630, he helped inaugurate an American tradition: the politics of crisis. One of the great paradoxes revealed by American life is that crisis can both invigorate democratic institutions and threaten their foundations.
  • The shock of crisis can simultaneously inspire feats of grand statesmanship and corrode the norms of a free society. The Constitution-one of the great acts of political engineering and democratic imagination-emerged out of the tumultuous paralysis of the Articles of Confederation. The Civil War secured the Union and extended the promise of liberty, but the wartime federal government cracked down on civil liberties and suppressed some presidential critics. Franklin Roosevelt marshaled a vast "arsenal of democracy" to confront the totalitarian threat, but his administration also pressed the rule of law to its breaking point-with internment camps, invasive state surveillance, and the use of federal agencies to harass political opponents.
  • Emergencies inevitably tend to concentrate power. To confront crises, a state needs an infrastructure for central authorities to act nimbly. The Articles of Confederation were flawed in part because they did not give the federal government enough vigor and flexibility. Two world wars and the Cold War helped swell the power of the presidency in the twentieth century.
  • At the same time, however, the urgency that marks a crisis also stands in tension with the institutions and practices of democratic life. When people must evacuate a sinking ship, there's no time for them to hold a parliamentary debate about the order of retreat. At the core of the habits of democratic life are compromise, charity, and patience. Democratic stability partly depends on various factions accepting political loss and believing that the stakes of a given election are not existential.

Go Back


Leave a Guest Comment

Your Name or Alias
Your Email Address ( your email address will not be published)
Enter Your Comment ( no code or urls allowed, text only please )




Suburban, Rural Schools Make Masks Optional; Urban Counties Keep Mandates John Locke Foundation Guest Editorial, Editorials, Op-Ed & Politics California’s Recall Election as ‘America’s Final Warning’


HbAD0

Latest Op-Ed & Politics

Be careful what you wish for, you may get it
Former President Donald Trump suggested this week that if he becomes president again, he might allow Prince Harry to be deported.
It's a New Year, which means it's time to make resolutions — even for prominent evangelical leaders. The Babylon Bee asked the following well-known figures in the faith what they hope to accomplish in 2024:
Vice President Kamala Harris will visit a Minnesota Planned Parenthood clinic, reportedly the first time a president or vice president has visited an abortion facility.
An eight-mile stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville has been temporarily closed due to a string of “human and bear interactions,” the National Parks Service announced.
University of Wisconsin tried to punish conservatives for the fact that liberals regularly commit crimes to silence opposition
most voters think EU officials not doing a good job on illegal immigration
Come from behind by GOP candidate is a blueprint to 2024

HbAD1

Biden spending and energy policies to blame
Tuberculosis carried by illegal invaders has already infected Texas cattle
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said this week that the only campaign promise President Joe Biden has delivered on as president is the complete dismantling of the U.S. southern border.
Hamas is reeling after losing two of their most cherished leaders on the same day: military commander Saleh al-Arouri, and Harvard President Claudine Gay.
President Joe Biden’s brother told the Internal Revenue Service that Hunter Biden told him he was in business with a “protege of President Xi,” referring to the leader of China, according to notes by an IRS investigator that were divulged during a congressional interview of Jim Biden.
Gov. Roy Cooper seeks a temporary restraining order to block a law changing the composition of the State Board of Elections.
X owner Elon Musk mocked a news segment from ABC News this week that promoted President Joe Biden’s talking points about the Democrat-led Senate’s failed border bill, which critics and many experts have said would make the situation on the border worse.
That’s the question Marguerite Roza of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab sought to answer in a recent webinar on the topic.
The University of Florida has fired all of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) employees and shut down its DEI office.

HbAD2

Hot on the heels of its highly publicized television performance on New Year's Eve, the pop-punk band Green Day announced the release of an edgy new album titled Get the Vaccine, Climate Change Is Real, and Trump Is Bad.
Glenn Beck: 'When the United States government can come after individuals, that's when you know our republic is crumbling.'
Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) reportedly blasted Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for “stonewalling” details about the illegal immigrant accused of murdering Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Georgia college student.
Financial asset manager BlackRock said in its annual report that environmental, social, and governance policies could hurt its bottom line after Republican state officials cut ties with the company over its ties to China and climate activism.
Daily Wire host Matt Walsh passed away Monday aboard Southwest Airlines Flight WN2208 after the passenger in front of him reclined her seat and crushed him to death, officials announced.
“The Biden administration's plan in the Middle East is to hand over power to the Palestinian Authority, which literally pays the families of terrorists who murder Jews.”
Washington, D.C. — Congressman Greg Murphy, M.D. issued the following statement on the latest continuing resolution:
The official cause of death for Rick Harrison’s son Adam has been revealed by the coroner’s office.

HbAD3

 
Back to Top