At this point in time, all of us have an opinion regarding the opaque concept of the United States' "Coronavirus response."

The legacy establishment media would have you believe that our federal government (namely President Trump) "bungled" the Coronavirus response. One of the most common things you see from the Left is a statement with the following template:

"President Trump is responsible for [current number] people dead because of his [failed/bungled] response to the Coronavirus."

This is common in the news, on Twitter among blue check morons, and your friend/family member who still thinks NPR and The New York Times are legitimate sources of truth and objective information about reality. Despite how silly this criticism is on its face (exactly how many deaths would Obama, Biden, or Clinton have prevented…?), why is it so common?

It’s taken me some time to fully understand these criticisms. Outside of Trump’s rhetoric in some cases, I truly haven’t understood what folks were taking issue with. Like many criticisms of the Trump Presidency, I kind of assumed they were just proxies for broadly reinforcing the “I don’t like Trump” point so many in the media and society have been harping on for the past 4 years. However, I eventually realized this talking point actually has substance to it, and reveals a deep philosophical divide in our nation. I understand that pointing out that there’s a divide in the country is neither new or interesting, I get that. But stick with me here, because I think this way of conceptualizing that divide is illustrative of just how deep this rift goes- and intractable the issue really is.

This brings us to an article I read this morning on the NBC News website, written by their very own news anchor and business correspondent, Stephanie Ruhle. Ruhle's article is a muddled mixture of criticisms, non sequitur, and logical contradictions. However, it's also a fantastic proxy for where many Americans are when it comes to processing the current situation with Coronavirus:

1) The Federal Government isn't "doing enough" to fight the virus, but
2) the virus can't be contained.
3) We need people to follow the guidelines!
4) But the guidelines are always changing!
5) Also, I caught the Coronavirus while stringently following the guidelines,
6) ...and we still have no clue how we got it, or where we got it from.
7) Worth mentioning: privilege probably somehow plays a role,
8) but I'm not here to offer any solutions or tangible proposals to fixing it.
9) I just know that I'm scared and mad and it's the government's fault.

I wish this were some type of caricature or reductionist view of Ruhle's analysis. It isn't. Even more troubling is how ubiquitous Ruhle's general philosophy (if it could be called that) is in our current society. So what is that philosophy, exactly?

Ruhle begins the article by asking the question as to what the “right thing” is when it comes to a Coronavirus response. This question remains unanswered throughout the article, though there are some hints as to what she has in mind, but we’ll get to that in a minute. She goes on to describe their family’s response when her husband first showed symptoms. She admits it was her own privilege that allowed them to initially quarantine in separate residences they own, then goes on to say the biggest help came from their neighbors and family members who dropped off meals for her kids and husband during this time. One might draw the conclusion that the bigger privilege was Ruhle’s family living near relatives and being part of a supportive community, but I digress.

Ruhle then goes on to express her relief that her husband was tested when he was, preventing them from going to work or sending their kids to school, thus becoming “superspreaders,” as she puts it. Ruhle includes a link to an article about “superspreaders," but there’s a problem with her comparison: Ruhle is a person, not an event, and she said her family took every precaution, and follow every guideline. Her linked article defines superspreaders as large events filled with people who don’t follow guidelines or take precautions. Her comparison makes no sense whatsoever, but again, is indicative of the lack of logical coherence found in those who hold this worldview.

Ruhle then discusses how she felt when developing symptoms herself, again alluding to her privilege due to doctors answering her phone calls, and having a job that allowed her “put her work on hold and focus on her health,” as if other companies would ask you to come to work while infected with Covid-19. It’s from here that Rhule shifts to her litany of complaints. She asserts that the “process still failed,” as the urgent care clinic never returned their test results, another clinic never processed her husband’s results, no one was interested in her contact tracing phone calls, and Ruhle’s family still has no idea where they caught Covid-19.

Here, Ruhle’s complaints reach their final destination, and their intended target for her overall frustration:

“Any of these scenarios is possible, because there is no comprehensive national containment plan. Quarantining symptom-free, rambunctious kids for 14 days can feel excessive when you are trying to manage your life, and the rules and consequences vary state to state and even sometimes city by city, as do the mechanisms for checking up on residents. But the consequences are real, and they are everywhere. We see them in our exploding rates of infections, hospitalizations and deaths... What's most concerning is that our government is doing little to nothing to make these guidelines easier to follow. In South Korea and Hong Kong, a positive test means two weeks in a government-sponsored quarantine hotel, with meals provided.”

It’s the federal government’s fault. All these states and cities have autonomy, and what we need to do is be like countries the size of Indiana, holding approximately 16% of the US population, and with an entirely different population demographic, geographic layout, and government system. In other words, be like a place that is so different, any comparisons between the two are made out of ignorance, dishonesty, or both.

The crux of Ruhle’s complaint, and the larger issue I’m trying to highlight, can be summed up in her next sentence:

“Here, almost the entire system is reliant on personal responsibility.”

This is the fundamental issue I see, and the one that strikes at the heart of our current social divide. Benjamin Franklin famously said “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Franklin identified a penchant for some people to prioritize the perception of safety or control, over the importance of having the ability to make decisions for themselves. The American experiment was founded on the latter. What Ruhle regards as a bug in our system, is actually a feature- a foundational feature, on which this very nation was established.

Ruhle’s perspective reminded me of a recent exchange I had on Twitter. Shockingly, I found myself in a largely good-faith conversation with someone who strongly disagreed with me about our country’s handling of the Coronavirus. We went back and forth for a while, including his suggestion that we should have handled things like Australia. When I informed him that our Constitution would prevent such a thing, he said some legal scholars disagree. In our final exchange, he expressed a sentiment very similar to Ruhle:

Him: “It’s only a state vs. state response because the federal government never took any action. That doesn’t mean they can’t in the future, or don’t have the right to.”

Me: “The Federal government did act, just not in concert with your personal philosophy of governance. They got the governors what they asked for, stayed on top of their needs, and trusted them with the rest. You might not like that philosophy of Federalism, but it's not inaction.”

Him: “Oh come on. Okay sure, they acted in that "not doing anything and leaving it up to the states" is technically something, but you know what I mean.”

This exchange is emblematic of the difference between folks like Ruhle who believe and employ the “Bungled Coronavirus response” template, and those who don’t. As I've written about in the past, most Americans have a default belief that the federal government is the primary one to "do something" whenever a crisis arises. Today, the establishment media was filled with headlines about Joe Biden's Coronavirus Plan. Investigate them for yourselves, but his "plan" was to literally do everything the Trump Administration was already doing, plus ask places that already currently require masks... to require masks. That's it. But this was enough to create the impression of "doing something" and subsequently receive the praise and adulation of those desperately seeking the hollow assurance such things bring.

Sometimes the desire for our federal government to directly "do something" is a legitimate one, other times it isn't. But when people feel their calls to "do something" are being ignored, or handled in a way that doesn't make them feel secure, we end up with this type of criticism from individuals like Ruhle. There are those of us who understand where the reality of our security comes from (bottom-up, beginning with the individual) and those of us who would rather feel secure, often in the form of being assured that someone, somewhere (typically the federal government) is "doing something" about whatever it is we're afraid of. Our current divide is the one Franklin identified over 200 years ago. We're still divided among those who want temporary safety, and those who'd rather have the liberty to create their own safety.

This issue cuts to the core of our very identity as people. It's not some superficial divide, like many of the identity issues the Left harps endlessly about. The value you, you as an individual, put on your own liberty (and legislatively, the liberty of others), is the difference between having a US Constitution that acknowledges the pre-existing natural rights of the citizenry, and having one that says those rights come from the government. It's the difference between having a Constitution that prohibits government from infringing on those rights, and one where everything is up for grabs at any given time, depending on the whims of whoever is in power. These are incompatible views of governance.

I've written in the past about how I see the economic principle of "Prospect Theory" being informative to our current situation. Prospect Theory includes the principle that people judge gains and losses in relative terms, not absolute. We're more likely to be risk-averse if we feel as if we have much to lose, and more likely to be risk-seeking if we don't feel as if we have much to lose. I would posit that we've lost our understanding of the value of liberty, and as such, there are far too many who are willing to gamble with it. They're like Ellis in Die Hard. They think they understand a situation, and are thus willing to roll the dice- without realizing they're gambling with their very lives, and the lives of their fellow citizens.

There was a time when our individual liberty and freedom was tangibly, observably tied to our success- both as a nation, and as individuals. One of the 'problems of progress' we now face is that many people have virtually all of their needs taken care of, and are able to have what might be called a "successful life" with very little tangible connection to their individual liberty:

Grow up with helicopter parents making every decision for you, go to an approved school and get a degree in something that will make you a decent amount of money (while parents are paying for that schooling), get a job based on the advice of your peers, professors, or parents, move into a nice apartment where your landlord takes care of everything, get into a relationship with someone that a dating app matched you with, and there you go. The new American Dream.

What stage of that process involved adventure, liberty, risk, or personal responsibility? It's a template that is increasingly failing, which is something that I have been writing about in my "In Defense of Riots" essays (I promise I'll finish Part 3 this week. Pinky swear). But despite these failings, it's still being followed. The farther folks get from seeing a connection between liberty and personal responsibility, and their own success (or failure!), the less likely they are to value it. Thus, you wind up with people arguing that the US should be more like Australia, where it's illegal for citizens to exercise or walk their dogs in their own yards due to Coronavirus restrictions.

I don't want that. Maybe you do. If so, move to Australia, or a city currently being governed like that. But as I said: it's not a bug that we're not like those places, it's a feature. This feature is what makes America the Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave. It's what brings thousands of people each year to sojourn from all over the globe, seeking a better life. That feature is what has led to the most prosperous, innovative, tenacious, and influential empire the world has ever seen. And yet, there are those who want to see that feature removed, in the name of a little perceived temporary safety.

There are many, many social pathologies currently dividing this country. But this one- the one over whether or not America is special place, with a special Constitution, and a special significance in the world, or it's an awful place that has ruined the world, and is in need of fundamental transformation in order to be redeemed- this divide is what will determine the future of the American Experiment. There's a lot of talk about greatness and building things right now. Might I suggest that it's time to Make Liberty Great Again.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/my-family-s-covid-diagnosis-shows-how-our-broken-confusing-ncna1250175

What are your thoughts? Am I a crazy libertarian who needs to just go live in the hills, or do you see this divide also? Or maybe something in between? As always, I'd love your feedback 🤙