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The scene was the most unnerving of any in my political adulthood at least since the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Sen. Robert Kennedy, and this scene also involved guns: Dozens of protesters armed with automatic weapons stormed the state capitol in Lansing, Michigan, demanding an end to enforced social distancing requirements made necessary by the coronavirus. Unnerving, but not entirely surprising.

The protest had some of the symbolic trappings of the Tea Party movement, for example: the prominent display of both U.S. and Gadsden flags, the latter emblazoned with the group's motto, "Don't Tread on Me." This Revolutionary-era motto was a tad excessive then, but at least the marines who hoisted it really were fighting for the principle that free men should not be disenfranchised, as the colonists were.

The crowd in Lansing is surely free to vote for the political leaders they desire, to be taxed only by their freely chosen representatives, is not required to quarter troops from abroad in their homes, nor risk being sent to London if they commit a crime. The 6% sales tax Michiganders pay exempts groceries, so there is no tax on tea either.

The mood was dark, but not the skin color of the protesters: This was a mostly all-white affair, as these libertarian events usually are.

The racist roots of modern libertarianism were well documented in Nancy MacLean's book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America, which I reviewed in two parts, here and here. The godfather of the movement, James Buchanan, was unapologetically committed to states rights and proudly fond of John C. Calhoun. Watching the protest in Lansing, I could not but recall that George Wallace won the Michigan primary in 1972.

There were the self-contradictory signs invoking freedom when the absence of violence and the peaceful transfer of power have long been distinguishing marks of Western democracy. Only a deeply inadequate political theory would not see that the defense of the freedom of speech and promotion of self-government are essential to the protection of freedom and that bringing a gun to the legislature inhibits free speech and threatens the functioning of democracy. The only freedom these libertarians are committed to is their own and, while we can perhaps comfort ourselves that the protesters in Lansing were fringe extremists, the highbrow libertarians at the Cato Institute also operate from an impoverished, in their case excessively formal, definition of freedom. For them, the rich man and the homeless man are both free to forage in the dumpster for their dinner.

There was a sense of grievance driving the emotion of the mob, a sense that was palpable at Tea Party rallies in 2010, long before any virus infected the land. To be clear, America's working class has good reason to feel aggrieved, but it is the economic structures that flow from this same libertarian attitude that have left them as so much collateral damage in the laissez-faire, globalized economy. Unwilling or unable to identify the true culprit, they are happy to find scapegoats: immigrants, union bosses, "welfare queens." This sense of grievance has been nurtured by Republicans since Reagan's time, but it has been stoked into fever pitch by President Donald Trump.

True, the political left has been afflicted by socio-cultural memes concocted in academic laboratories, all of which tend to invite Democratic politicians to traffic in condescension. Remember "deplorables?" Only an activist political left, focused on economic justice, will bring any help to those cast aside by the Reaganite-Thatcherite economic landscape of the last 40 years. How grimly ironic that such political promise may be destroyed by the penchant on both left and right for culture wars rather than for political solutions.

Five years ago, Alan Wolfe warned us of the totalitarian core of libertarian ideology in a brilliant essay in Commonweal. He followed it up with an extraordinarily well-done conference on the topic at Boston College's Boisi Center, which he then led. The fact that libertarianism is at odds with Catholicism has long been obvious, which is why the courting of libertarian guru and funder Charles Koch by the Catholic of University of America was so repulsive. With my great friend Stephen Schneck, I helped organize a series of conferences on the wrongheadedness of libertarianism that began with a speech by Cardinal scar Rodrguez Maradiaga. This video starts with the cardinal being introduced by Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO. I hasten to point out that the defeat of libertarianism in our polity and culture will begin here, in an alliance of labor and the Catholic Church.

Those "Erroneous Autonomy" conferences started in 2014, which seems like a lifetime ago. Dark as the threat of libertarianism appeared then, none of us foresaw what we witnessed last week, armed protesters storming a citadel of democracy. The rest was predictable: the abuse of symbols, the racism, the self-contradictions, the totalitarian itch. But the threat of violence, expressed so openly and in such a raw fashion, this is new. Let the condemnations be swift and loud, before it is too late.

[Michael Sean Winters covers the nexus of religion and politics for NCR.]

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Armed mobs: the grim apotheosis of libertarianism - National Catholic Reporter

The coronavirus pandemic, everyone tells us, is changing and will change everything that we think, believe, expect, and do. Its what used to be called a world historical moment. Yet the curious thing about this certainty is that it seems to sit comfortably with the reality that, to a first approximation, no one has actually changed any view about anything because of the pandemic. The sins that you think the plague is punishing are the sins you were preaching against before it began. If, like Bernie Sanders and his followers, you believed in the absolute importance of national health insurance, of socialized medicine, then looking at the mess of the American health system under extreme duresseven at the simple reality that many of our doctors are primarily small businessmen and our hospitals profit-seeking firmsyou are more than ever convinced of the necessity of Medicare for All. But this truth, undeniable on its own terms, does run silently aground against the parallel truth that, despite excellent, public-spirited health-care systems, France and Italy have per-capita mortality rates worse than our own. Paris, where the system is quick and flexible and universal, is shut down even more tightly than New York.

On the other hand, if, like the distinguished historian Niall Ferguson, you accept the importance of escaping, Brexit style, from big transnational bureaucracies, such as the European Union, you find proof in the superiority of the small, flexible, responsive city-state model you have long preferredalthough the skill with which, say, Singapore has actually evaded the plague seems to alter from week to week.

If you see that issues of identity and inequality are central to our time, then the harsh proof that prejudice and poverty have created disproportionate casualties in the African-American community during the pandemic is the central fact. (And yet, it would be strange to look past the parallel evidence that men of all kinds and classes are dying from the virus more often than womena correlation that seems to be largely biological, because even female mice have stronger defenses against coronaviruses than male mice do.)

And if you were indignant about the culture wars before, you have no time for them now; if you hated people cancelling Baby, Its Cold Outside before the plague started, you are even colder about it now. (Though coming out against the culture wars now would be more impressive if you had ever been enthusiastic about them in the first place.)

In fact, it makes no more sense to moralize this virus than it did to moralize earlier plagues. This pandemic has acted with equal cruelty in theocratic societies, social-democratic ones, and in free-market citadels. To the degree that states seem to be more or less successful against the pandemicpredictably, in Iceland, or unpredictably, in Greecethe true and full cause of their escape is as yet unclear. California may have done so much better than New York simply by closing sooner, but its advantage was at most three days, with New York seeming to pay an unduly large price for a reasonably small delay. Certainly, plagues X-ray each governments inequities and flaws, but they do so indifferently, universally. This one exposes the failures of the authoritarian opaqueness of Chinas Communist Party as much as it does the indecencies of the Trump Administration. To seek one set of social sins as somehow central to the crisis is to miss the reason they put the pan in pandemic.

Nor is it necessarily our weaknesses and dysfunctions that account for our fatalities; it is often our greatest strengths and virtues as people and communities that are responsible for the worst consequences. New York City is the U.S. epicenter of this pandemicthe picture would look much less serious in America if it were not for us. But the best guesses as to why point to what are largely consequences of many of the most admirable things about the city and its people; things that are as good and as green as mass transit, high-rise living, and the glorious density of kinds that make New York New York. (The habit of driving alone in cars rather than crowding together on subways may be one reason that California has suffered less than New York, but that does not mean that driving alone in cars is now morally virtuous.) And the intergenerational mingling of Italyuntil months ago, one of the boasts and joys of Italian lifeseems partly responsible for that beautiful countrys woeful record. At a time when people longed for community, they had it, and have suffered for it.

There is no surprise in this. Far from making us revise our fundamentals and reform our thoughts, major historical crises almost invariably reinforce our previous beliefs, and make us entrench deeper into our dogma. By Christmas of 1914, it was apparent that no European powers war aims could be achieved, and that to continue the course would entail only meaningless mass slaughter. But that didnt make the European leaders revise their views; it just made them redouble the effort. They just dug inliterally, into the mud on the Western front, and ideologically, into the dogmas of heroic militarism and the necessity of war.

What makes it hard to maintain our intellectual integrity in such times is that crises can expose some political truths, though we have to struggle to see straight and recognize the limits of what they expose. It is not false to see a vast difference between the Five OClock Follies of Donald Trump and the noontime sanities of Andrew Cuomo. (One New Yorker is so dependent for reassurance on Cuomos appearances that she claims to feel calmer as soon as she hears the odd New Age-y music that precedes them.) But while Cuomos candor and clarity may have helped flatten the curve, the plague has not nearly ended, and in the face of the uncertainties he has had to rely on essentially the same therapies that until Trumps latest swerves, the White House had, however reluctantly, enjoined as well: shutdowns and social distancing. The performances have moral content in themselves, but everyones efficacy is severely limited in the face of an as yet incurable virus.

If there is a point to be drawn from the plague it is, perhaps, that we are caught in a conundrum of numbers not easily parsed by human minds. The scale of modern populationsabout nine million people in New York Cityare so vast that even small statistical minorities represent huge numbers of human beings. The COVID-19 truthersthe self-proclaimed and mostly self-instructed skeptics about the gravity of the coronavirus crisisare not entirely wrong when they point to what are, by historical standards, the limited fatalities of this plague and to the accompanying truth that the fatalities largely fall in predictable groups, chiefly of the elderly and the already ill. But in this country alone that limited number means more than sixty thousand people dead already, many of whom were healthy and some of whom were young. Even a small percent of an enormous population is an enormous number.

In times past, societies accepted mortality from infectious disease as part of existencedeath as part of lifewithout stopping work or study or love or dinner. (When Beth March dies after contracting scarlet fever, in Little Women, it is heartbreaking, but not surprising.) It is a part of the moral acquisition of our time that we dont feel this way, and part of our material improvement that we dont have to feel this way. We could, until recently, rely on science to relieve us of a good deal of our suffering. That we have so little to rely on for the moment may be the real lesson that the plague is teachinga lesson, really, in the fragility of progress and the suddenness of its possible reversion. Such ambivalence, at least, contains more truth, if of a tragic kind, than the simplicities of ideological self-soothing.

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Will the Coronavirus Pandemic Really Change the Way We Think? - The New Yorker

I cant wait to get back to normal is a frequent refrain today. How likely is it that the world-wide coronavirus pandemic will permit such a return? One certainty is that our journey forward will not end any time soon. But now that several states have begun to open up, its worth thinking about changes that are likely to come, or not to come. With a keen sense that I may be mistaken, I submit the following:

The economy: Though some politicians predict a quick recovery, Bill Gates says it will be slow and fitful. Already, unemployment numbers surpass those of the Great Depression. Attuned to market demand, companies will move slowly. Moreover, thousands of small businesses will declare bankruptcy or simply disappear. Large ones, utilizing technology, will inch back with fewer workers, and new starts will favor online marketing and sales.

Health care: The pandemic has reminded us that our health-care system needs reform. While the federal government will cover coronavirus-related medical bills, unemployed millions not eligible for Medicaid will be on their own. The American health-care system, often tied to employment, is the worlds most expensive; yet in terms of life expectancy, childhood mortality and other quality measures, the U.S. ranks in the lower half of industrialized nations. It is unlikely that the opposition of health and insurance sectors with their high-powered lobbying efforts will be successfully overcome.

Respect for science and facts: For a generation weve seen combat between experts and partisans, between facts and alternative facts. When we speak of health, climate change and large matters of public policy, we need leaders who talk straight, who avoid going down rabbit holes about the boundless powers of untested drugs or the possibility of injecting disinfectants into our bodies to clean our lungs. So stark have been the advantages of science over naive thinking that one of the positive consequences of the pandemic may prove to be renewed appreciation for data-based analyses.

Climate: We are better able to see that climate change is here in full force. CO2 emissions are down and city air is cleaner. Compare a photo of any industrial city two months ago with one taken today. They clearly demonstrate that we can do something to improve our climate and our odds of healthy living. For now, polarization stands in the way of people doing what is necessary.

Higher education: Colleges and universities are empty for the most part, their students at home, while some are taking online courses. What now? Will colleges be able to open? And if so, will students with their unemployed parents be able to make tuition payments? Elite universities and big-name public universities, with endowment funds north of a billion dollars, will weather the storm. However, small tuition-driven private colleges are at risk. For many it is emergency time. They face enrollment decreases that will cause some to founder, even close.

World politics and cooperation: With most of the worlds nations reporting cases of coronavirus, perhaps the biggest global crisis since World War II, it would appear reasonable to expect a new era of cooperation. Richard Haas, American diplomat and president of the Council on Foreign Relations, is not so sanguine. The world that will emerge from the crisis will be recognizable, he writes. Waning American leadership, faltering global cooperation, great-power discord: all of these characterized the international environment before the appearance of Covid-19.They are likely to be even more prominent features of the world that follows.

Politics and culture wars: Earlier this month several historic bills designed to prevent the spread of coronavirus have passed with bipartisan support in Congress. A poll recently conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that an overwhelming majority of Americans agree that government recommendations on the prevention of Covid-19 infections are about right.

Together with an awareness that we are all in this together, positive signs of a more cooperative spirit are emerging. However, those who have observed or participated in two decades of corrosive partisanship and self-indulgent culture wars have good cause to feel uneasy about the outcome.

Ron Lora, a native of Bluffton, is professor emeritus of history at the University of Toledo. His column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the The Lima News editorial board or AIM Media, owner of The Lima News. Contact him at rlora38@gmail.com.

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Ron Lora: How different will the post-coronavirus world be? - Lima Ohio

Princeton, New Jersey During a pandemic, accurate information can be a matter of life and death. People need reliable reports about the impact of the disease and the threat it poses to their city, community or neighborhood. Most citizens immediate concern is not whether their country is on the right macro-trajectory, but whether their local grocery store is practicing proper hygiene and enforcing social-distancing measures.

One of the many tragedies of the COVID-19 pandemic is that it comes at a time when local media have been decimated in many countries.

The heart of the problem is that local news, in particular, has been severely disrupted by a broader restructuring of the economy over the past two decades. Historically, advertising sustained serious journalism. As New York Universitys Clay Shirky pointed out in a 2009 commentary, Walmart may or may not have had an interest in the news from Iraq, but it was nonetheless subsidizing newspapers Baghdad bureaus.

When digital platforms like Google and Facebook started hoovering up the advertising revenues that previously went directly to news organizations, local outlets were the first to feel the pinch. Newsroom staff was cut dramatically. According to a recent Brookings Institution report, one in five local U.S. newspapers has disappeared since 2004, leaving 5 million Americans with no local newspaper at all, and 60 million more with access to only one.

The growth of such news deserts has had profound political effects. When there are no journalists to report on town council meetings and public procurement decisions, corruption can run rampant. But partly because no one hears about it, political interest also declines. Hence, the shuttering of local papers has been associated with lower electoral turnout, fewer candidates seeking office and more incumbents winning. The same trends undercut citizens representation at the national level, because local and regional papers cannot afford to keep a correspondent in the capital to report on what their members of Congress or Parliament are doing.

Less obviously, the decline of local news has reinforced the pernicious polarization that we are witnessing in a number of democracies. When it comes to local issues, citizens within the same community or neighborhood are generally pretty good about diagnosing problems and arriving at practical solutions to them. But as local reporting has dried up, the vacuum has been filled by national news, which tends to be geared toward zero-sum culture wars and partisan flame-throwing.

In Hungary, Turkey and other countries where democracy and the rule of law are being systematically dismantled, some relatively independent national newspapers and websites have survived. But, perversely, such institutions can become a fig leaf for regimes facing international criticism for their attacks on press freedom, while pro-regime outlets often enjoy a monopoly at the local level. In rural Hungary, the situation has gotten so bad that the U.S. Department of State has sought to subsidize independent reporting there.

Finally, the fate of local newspapers does not necessarily run in parallel with that of the national press. In the United States, the major papers of record have benefited from a Trump bump since 2016. And while the COVID-19 crisis could, in theory, make citizens recognize the existential importance of receiving accurate information about their immediate surroundings, a local news bump has yet to materialize.

What can be done? One solution is to tax the Big Tech companies that have destroyed the local-news business model, then redistribute the funds to local outlets. Another option is to legislate an antitrust exception so that newspapers can bargain collectively with digital platforms. The media outlets providing the actual facts and information that show up in a Google search should be compensated accordingly. Australia, the European Union and several individual European countries have already moved in this direction, and similar legislation is pending in the U.S.

There has also been a blossoming of successful nonprofit news organizations in recent years, many of which have a local focus. But the risk now is that such institutions could become dependent on some billionaire philanthropist, leaving them beholden to one persons arbitrary will. The French social scientist Julia Cage has proposed an ingenious solution: ordinary supporters of accurate reporting could pool their resources to secure controlling shares of the most effective media nonprofits.

It can be fine for such nonprofits to have an agenda. After all, just as with political parties, supporters join organizations because the latter reflect their values in some ways. Having an agenda such as investigating social injustices is compatible with a commitment to the highest journalistic standards. What matters is accuracy, (ideally) accessibility and accountability. As philosopher Onora ONeill explains, truth-seeking media needs internal disciplines and standards to make it assessable. Audiences should be in a position to understand who funds an outlet, what guides its editorial decisions and how particular stories are generated.

The problem with many right-wing outlets today is not necessarily that they have an agenda, but that the agenda is hidden, with mere opinion being presented as professionally generated news. A particularly egregious example is Fox News, which earlier this spring eagerly spread dangerous disinformation about the coronavirus, probably costing the lives of some of its predominantly elderly audience.

The COVID-19 crisis has reminded us that journalists are essential workers. Many national media outlets will probably survive (indeed, some are already benefiting from governments spending on emergency relief). But local journalism was already in bad shape before the crisis, and the public good it provides tends to be less appreciated. For the sake of our physical health and that of our democracies, we urgently must support it.

Jan-Werner Mueller, a professor of politics at Princeton University, is the author of the forthcoming "Democracy Rules." Project Syndicate, 2020 http://www.project-syndicate.org

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Where is the local news about COVID-19? - The Japan Times

Anything taken to an extreme soon becomes absurd. Its interesting, if not surprising, that Trump-era politics is defined by its extremes, while moderate and well-reasoned voices are drowned out by hysterical ranting. But this sort of absurdity is nothing new.

In Political Hysteria: American as Cherry Pie, John Tierney, Jr. observes that Today, reason seems to be missing, on both sides In the Trump presidency (so far), his personality and character are the only real issues. Emotions dominate. To be fair, Tierney wrote this in 2019, before the novel coronavirus began ravaging the world and Trumps bizarre tweets and unfortunate press conferences gave his critics an increasingly tangible basis for calling him a lunatic.

When thousands of people die, its no longer just about emotions. But it would be wrong to say that emotion hasnt played a dominant role in how the United States has reacted to the virus. Theres great anxiety expressed over the loss of social identities, freedoms, political representation, and economic stability in addition to fundamental survival fears.

Moreover, those who have misunderstood Francis Fukuyamas end of history concept and who are unable to ground their hysteria in historical perspective may be inclined to think COVID-19 is so unique, so novel, that the country is coming apart due to incompetent leadership. That is also a fairly common, if highly emotional, attitude during a pandemic.

Take, for example, Greg Weiners op-ed in The New York Times: Dont Let Trumps Cult of Personality Make Covid-19 Worse; The National Interests: The Coronavirus Is Exposing Decay of American Political Culture; or a recent piece by American writer, Anthony Zurcher, for the BBC: Coronavirus pandemic exposes rather than heals America's divisions. Were receiving almost daily editorials like these, telling us how the virus is exacerbating the countrys dysfunctions, its culture wars and inequalities, and how our leaders are not addressing these with any amount of clarity or skill.

As a moderate liberal, and a registered Democrat, I believe that Trump was neither prepared for, nor is he capable of extricating us from this slow-rolling horror. Im inclined to agree with Weiner that, We have entered a bizarre space in which Mr. Trump makes concrete claims refuted by objective reality that people can see with their own eyes.

But I also think Weiner is wise to add at the end of his piece that It is plausible that had Mr. Trump taken aggressive measures against the pandemic from the beginning, there would have been plenty of Democrats who would have instinctively opposed them simply because of their source. Like everything else in American life, the pandemic is as political and divisive as it is personal.

Tierney puts it like this: From the beginning, Americans were fiercely independent, passionate, but deeply divided. He describes the partisan backlash against George Washingtons Jay Treaty with Britain, which gave concessions in exchange for their withdrawal from certain forts. And he adds that, according to Martha, the hatred towards her husband over the treaty hastened Washingtons death. If all this sounds familiar, writes Tierney, it may be that it is generic to the national character of America.

Still, Trump is no George Washington. Hes more like George Wallace, but possibly less articulate. And the hyper-partisan excesses of Mitch McConnell seeking to block federal bailouts to blue states or the armed demonstrations trying to get state governments to reopen early (both of which will no doubt result in unnecessary deaths) seem as ham-fisted and cynical as they are consistent with the pressures that have historically given rise to American political hysteria.

Andrew Burt, in American Hysteria: the Untold Story of Mass Political Extremism in the United States, argues that Americas sense of self-identity routinely comes under pressure, with the result that certain groups confront a loss in status. Engaging in political hysteria is how these groups seek to get it back.

In 2016, such hysteria gave rise to Trumps so-called base, emerging as a more pungent, less intelligent iteration of the earlier neoconservative, libertarian Tea Party. It evoked and amplified the opposing, mostly online/college-campus, identitarian Left, characterized by cults of victimhood and all-encompassing neo-Marxist race-and-gender theories, whose buzzwords have now permeated the arts and media. Now that the virus has shaken everyones sense of self, now that America faces the very real possibility of economic devastation as well as massive loss of life, Trump, the self-described chosen one, no longer seems like a right-wing messiah, if he ever did.

In a Daily Beast column thats funny, horrified, and enraged in equal proportion, Rick Wilson rants, There are really only three tenets of Trumpism that matter: a hatred of elites, a war with the news media, and the worship of Trump as an infallible and impervious avatar for their social insecurities But COVID-19 is coming to pay a house call they wont soon forget, and the damage in some of the places in this country where the Trump-Fox partys support is the most passionate and unwavering will be staggering.

This seems right. But just as Trumps base rose, according to Wilson, as a result of his transgressive naturenot that they can define itand love that hes a middle finger to decency, normality, tradition, and the law, the online identitarian Left has searched in vain for their own messiah figure, one with impossibly spotless credentials.

This person would have to be as diametrically opposite to Trump as humanly possiblesomeone who could, by virtue of race, gender, sexuality, impeccable conduct, and immanent wokeness, calm the Lefts portion of political hysteria and assuage their raging insecurities. Unfortunately, they will never find such a person. Ever.

In Kill All Normies, Angela Nagle suggests its because the Lefts online identity politics has formulated an impossible purity test for potential messiahs:

"Something about public social media platforms, it turned out, was conducive to the vanity of morally righteous politics and the irresistible draw of the culture wars. But soon the secret was out and everyone was doing it. The value of the currency of virtue that those who had made their social media cultural capital on was in danger of being suddenly devalued. As a result, I believe, a culture of purging had to take place, largely targeting those in competition for this precious currency. Thus, the attacks increasingly focused on other liberals and leftists often with seemingly pristine progressive credentials, instead of those who engaged in any actual racism, sexism or homophobia."

In other words, while the Right would forgive someone like Trump anything, the Left can forgive their avatar nothing because that would be tantamount to giving up their morally superior, righteous position.

For example, if they compromise on Biden and it turns out that Tara Reade isnt an opportunist and/or political tool, what then? Does this mean giving Trump a free pass for the Access Hollywood tape and calling the Charlottesville Nazis very fine people (or any number of other atrocious comments)? Biden cant be their savior. Hes not the Anti-Trump. He has the wrong skin color, wrong gender, wrong sexuality, and doesnt radiate the necessary wokeness. He simply cant pass the purity test.

Unfortunately, theres no right profile when it comes to the extremes of American political hysterics. The Left will despise Biden forever, even if some will grudgingly vote for him because they despise Trump more. The Right will support Trump until the Lysol theyve injected reaches their hearts.

The screaming voices on both sides are still jockeying for prominence in a time when COVID-19 is the only story that matters. They may be carrying on the grand old tradition of highly emotional American partisanship. But their sense of urgency seems radically absurd in comparison to massive loss of life and the need for America to swing back toward its political center, where cooler heads and calm judgment might still prevail.

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The Right Has Its Messiah. The Left Will Never Find Theirs. - Splice Today