One Month

It has only been about a month since our Governor ordered all Virginians to “stay at home.” I have been in strict compliance. Since I’m considered essential I am allowed to drive the mile and a half into my office every day. Once there, new safety protocols are in place limiting exposure. I stay there for roughly half the day, then return to my home for the afternoon and conduct business via the internet and call forwarding. The trips to and from my office have been the extent of my traveling, with the exception of a few trips to the drive thru of my bank and a couple of ice cream meetings with a friends in the largely empty parking lot of Ray’s Italian Ice where social distancing guidelines were strictly enforced. Pam has limited her outings to a once weekly trip to Publix to get groceries. Three times, I have driven to Wong’s Tacos to pick up our Friday night dinner order at their curb. That’s pretty much the extent of our adventuring since the Governor’s declaration. It’s been one month. One month.

Officially this edict is in place through June 10th here in the Commonwealth. Hope exists that it may be lifted before then. However, in the rapidly changing world of viral pandemics, there always exists the possibility that the June 10th date will be extended. For the sake of my personal sanity, I choose not to think of the most negative scenarios. In fact, I choose not to think much of anything which  involves dates on a calendar. I have defaulted to the cliched athletes’ response...I’m just taking it one day at a time.

Having said that, I must here confess to a fierce inner battle raging within me. With each passing day, I’m becoming more and more annoyed with the parameters of my life being set by a Governor. The fact that one man presumes to have the authority over my liberty is an affront to what I consider my natural rights as a free citizen of a Republic which features a Constitution and a Bill of Rights. I have chosen not to fight this because of the nature of the crisis we face, a highly contagious virus with deadly power. But choosing not to fight something is not the same thing as approving of something. I do not approve. I comply out of a moral obligation to my neighbors and my community. I admit my lack of definitive scientific knowledge on the matter and—for the time being—chose to defer to the judgement of those who have been democratically elected to positions of leadership. But my deferral is not infinite. The longer I am asked to forfeit my rights as a free citizen, the more conclusive information I will require from those making such demands.

Understand, this has nothing to do with politics in general or our Governor’s political affiliation in particular. I would feel exactly the same way if the one making such demands of me were a small government Libertarian. This debate isn’t about anyone’s personality. It is about the proper roll of government and the proper limits on its power— even in times of great crisis. I have a natural inclination to resist authority. I have always struggled with any authority in life. It was my mother who warned me many years ago that my unwillingness to submit myself to anyone else’s yoke, though a fine quality when applied judiciously, might wind up being an obstacle to a happy life. She was not entirely wrong in her assessment. My fierce independence has served me well many times. But it has also been the obstacle she warned me it would be in other matters, not the least of which was the necessary submission required in the Christian faith. So, when I watch government at all levels scooping up more and more power over ever greater portions of our daily lives, resentment and suspicion begin to grow roots in my heart.

I watch the daily briefings from Washington with growing disgust, irritated by the self-congratulatory campaign style cheerleading. I see the pettiness, the juvenile score settling, the incessant whining from the podium. Even worse, the vacuous blowhards who populate the press remind me that a free press is worthless if they are so hip deep in politics themselves, they can’t be told apart from the politicians. The specter of government officials casting themselves as our saviors by proposing one free money giveaway after another, making themselves, Washington D.C. the epicenter of our salvation is galling to me. No matter how this thing turns out it will be the central planners who will take the credit, and blame any failures on the public’s failure to properly fall in line. They will be united in their proclamation that in order for a modern society to protect itself from future pandemic, we must bargain away more and more of our liberty for greater safety. Not to worry, they will exercise these new powers with great care and deliberation.

I guess that my essential problem is that I am not a European with continental sensitivities. I know nothing of Monarchies, I have no experience with a feudal history, I am clueless of peerage, I am unfamiliar with the Socialist ethos that has governed much of Europe for most of my lifetime. For better or for worse, I am an American with American sensibilities. My country hasn’t had two world wars fought on our streets, and just one civil war. For more than half of America’s history we were largely ungoverned and frankly, ungovernable.( see the Wild West ). That history has forged in many of us a resistance to and great suspicion of centralized solutions to anything. Thomas Jefferson’s great word that the best government was the government that governs least rings true in my heart and in the hearts of millions more in my country. Today, that phrase seems charmingly naive. When I observe what has happened to the power, size and jurisdiction of government just in the last six weeks it is staggering. Maybe once this crisis passes, they will willingly lay all these new powers down. My gut tells me they will not, but even if they do, all of us will be stuck with the 6 trillion dollar price tag for it all.

Times change and human beings have to adjust. Perhaps I am experiencing a sea change in what life will be like for modern man in modern societies. Maybe the future will include less freedom, less personal autonomy in exchange for a more muscular government strong enough to protect us in the new age of pandemics. Maybe my notions of the proper role of government, along with my understanding of the preeminence of individual liberty have been overtaken by this rapidly changing world. If so, I will adjust. But, that doesn’t mean I have to like it. And it doesn’t mean I will ever become comfortable with a man or women in front of a bank of microphones telling me where I can and cannot go, what I can and cannot do.