How we deal with traffic lights during a power outage says a lot about how we deal with the coronavirus
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During a recent power outage in Connecticut, I stopped my car at a busy intersection where the traffic signals were blacked out. While I was relieved to see the majority of drivers following the safety protocol of a four-way stop, each taking their turn, I was disturbed by a number of drivers that saw the situation as a license to blow through the intersection.
Not only were they risking their own lives and those of others, but they were also further snarling traffic by undermining everyone’s faith in the rules of the road.
The scene seemed to be a microcosm of the national crossroads America faces as it negotiates the COVID-19 pandemic, which has become nothing less than a crucible of our national character.
Since the arrival of the coronavirus to America, we’ve been tested — if not for the virus, then by the virus. And though the pandemic has proved a unique threat, it’s not the first time we’ve been tested by national crises. Most notably, President Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address said the Civil War was “testing whether … any nation so conceived and dedicated [in Liberty] can long endure.” Well aware that “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” he called upon the nation’s integrity to transcend the political strife tearing it asunder.
President Donald Trump, unfortunately, is our anti-Lincoln. He has wedged this pandemic into the nation’s political and moral fault lines, threatening the existence of our lives, our democracy and our humanity in what amounts to a political civil war.
Just when it seemed America had flattened the national curve of rising infections by following the guidance of our medical and scientific community, our president cajoled many states like Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia to end their economic lockdowns, despite the evident danger for citizens: “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”
Medical experts like Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, now say new economic lockdowns may be required: “We understand there’s no appetite for these extreme measures, but we’re on a collision course with destiny right now.”
Meanwhile, Europe has largely reduced its infections and begun to reopen businesses more safely because, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, it cut its economy “by 95%, while U.S. infections surged because it cut its economy only by 50%.” The disparate responses perhaps reflect the competing values of its respective leaders and people. Rather than practicing what German Chancellor Angela Merkel called “community spirit” and democratic cohesion,” or what French health authorities term “collective discipline,” too many of our politicians, businesses and citizens have instead embraced the Darwinian philosophy of everyone for themselves, which, in effect, culls the elderly, the immune-compromised, and essential workers like the most vulnerable members of a herd.
Further, many of the president’s confederates, with his encouragement, contend that any limit on individual freedom amounts to a slippery slope toward nanny-state tyranny. Ironically, their irresponsible and undisciplined behavior has subjected the rest of the nation to the tyranny of their selfishness, which, I believe, is the real virus destroying our nation’s integrity.
Even John Locke, the 17th century Enlightenment philosopher who influenced our founders’ concept of unalienable rights, such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, recognized that humanity’s natural selfishness needs to be curbed by civil society: “Freedom is not, as we are told, a liberty for every man to do what he lists: (for who could be free, when every other man’s humour might domineer over him?)”
Or, as the saying goes, “My freedom ends where yours begins.”
In terms of the present health crisis, those who refuse to follow public health guidelines jeopardize other citizens’ lives and violate the reciprocity of our Constitutional social contract, which not only protects but also limits individual rights.
Now after more than 180,000 American deaths and nearly 6 million infections, the world pandemic has proved that unless we protect each other, none of us is protected.
Or, put more simply, a citizen has no more right to ignore COVID-19 safety measures than a driver has to run a blacked-out traffic signal at a busy intersection.