Freedom fighting during a pandemic
We are moving into a period of bewilderment, a curious moment in which people find light in the midst of despair, and vertigo at the summit of their hopes. It is a religious moment also, and here is the danger. People will want to obey the voice of Authority, and many strange constructs of just what Authority is will arise in every mind. … The public yearning for Order will invite many stubborn uncompromising persons to impose it. The sadness of the zoo will fall upon society. —Leonard Cohen, “Moving Into a Period,” from “Book of Longing”
Go read Leonard Cohen’s “Moving Into a Period” in his “Book of Longing.” The poet foresaw that our present pandemic bewilderment would beget authoritarianism and captivity, amid best epidemiological efforts. Our elected authorities could do worse than to dwell on some artful prophecy, rather than increasingly dwelling on subjective constructs of correct conduct; rather than breathing in too much fear, and exhaling a peculiar version of order.
Speaking of the opposite of artists, lawyers today sift through the public health tea leaves justifying the daily contraction of our freedoms. The noose gets tighter and tighter, based upon a global public health strategy that we have all bought into. Canada is too far into project quarantine to change direction. We’re instead distancing ourselves until we can start coming back together.
Except for some, we’re told, who are putting the rest of us at risk, necessitating still more restrictions upon our rights, some lawful, some not, but often we cannot distinguish between the finger-wagging sneers and democratically accountable legal orders that can be reviewed by the judiciary to ensure constitutional compliance. C’mon people could be the motto for the voice of Order. We’re awaiting the counterpoint’s motto, but it will probably be uttered by an artist, or maybe by B.C.’s artful public health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry.
We see here and there, among the many, extraordinary, unprecedented restrictions on our freedoms in Canada, our authorities begin to drift from the solid ground of public health justifications for restricting our liberties, toward a fear-based model of suppression.
Police stopping vehicles for no good reason; the homeless harassed; official snitch lines set up to enable rage; provincial borders “patrolled” as if citizens were enemies; prosecutors stubbornly fighting epidemiological facts in the name of speculative risk to public order, filling the very prisons in need of evacuation.
But the adjustment to this clampdown is just that — an adjustment. Our authorities could put more into publicly justifying the scientific necessity of each new restriction, and more into crafting a proportionate means to achieving the public health ends.
Anecdotal and social media reportage cannot be the evidence upon which freedom is diminished. At no point should the governments’ response to COVID-19 be about anything but epidemiology. Not obedience to the elected ( c’mon people!) and public order, lest the means becomes the end.
Another adjustment is needed too to democratic transparency. Neither civil society nor the judiciary can possibly assess the legality of government and legislative actions if the law is the worse kept secret in Canada.
I say the worst kept secret because the finger-waggers we elected may say what’s what at their daily public lectures, but still we the people cannot find the words. We cannot find the words of the law, which fuels its power, because the lawmakers live and work in a bubble necessarily separated from the rest of us.
Because the words of the prophets may be online but the Pharisees are meeting too much in private to make important decisions that take too long to become public. We cannot find the words of the law because our authorities are not sharing their work with us. We are just supposed to trust them.
I don’t. I don’t trust them because I tasted the hubris of power when I was one of them, back in the day, the aftertaste bitter.
I don’t trust them because trust is earned, not once and for all, but continually through action, not promises.
I don’t trust them because that’s my job but also because it’s their job to operate within a constitutional system with a Canadian version of checks and balances that are founded on distrust of any one in favour of trusting the many. Because the elected are not deities but people with jobs, today, in a democracy governed by a Constitution.
Today, doing their democratic job does involve shrinking freedom, with the awesome power of the law. But why, when and how it’s done matters — needing more art, more science, less fear.