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READING the comments sections ofTCWand the wider conservative media, it is evident that a war within a war is raging, as proponents of freedom from authoritarian government do battle with proponents of self-sacrifice in the national interest. Yet both are fundamental conservative principles, for conservatives value the interests of both the individual and the community. Matters are immeasurably complicated because such are the unknowns that any calculation of costs and benefits medical, economic, political, psychological is impossible.

I have argued for the lockdown, but I fully recognise that powerful arguments can be marshalled on the other side. As Trump has said, the cure may wreak more damage than the disease.

What, I wonder, would the late Sir Roger Scruton have made of it all? Scruton always veered more to the communal than the libertarian strain of conservatism. For him, the essence of conservatism was family and community, not the market. But at the same time, there was no braver or more principled opponent of communism, of the totalitarian state, or proponent of the importance of private property and of the rights of individuals to enjoy lifes pleasures.

The key to Scrutons conservatism, I think, lies in Burke, Hegel and F H Bradley. For Burke, wisdom lay not in one mans private stock of reason, but in the the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages. For Hegel, the individual is ultimately a social being. We owe an absolute obligation to the state and its institutions because the existence of civil society is conditional on the existence of a state. And for Bradley, it is only because man is first a social being that he can realise himself as an individual. We have found ourselves, writes Bradley, when we have found our station and its duties, our function as an organ in the social organism.

Libertarians and individualists might be shocked at these sentiments and they are easy to misconstrue; but they were second nature to Scruton. He particularly admired Bradleys essayMy Station and its Duties, from which the above quote is taken, and often referred to it. His early essayHegel as a Conservative Thinkerbowled me over when I stumbled across it more than twenty years ago. The subtly woven arguments are beyond my ability to summarise, but consider the import of this sentence from the final paragraph:

An understanding of the human being as a social artefact shows inequality to be natural, power to be good, and constraint to be a necessary ingredient in the only freedom we can value.

Libertarian advocates of the minimal state will heartily disagree and warn of the path to totalitarianism. But for Scruton, the guarantee of our liberties, of the liberties we might truly value,wasthe state. Not a totalitarian state, to be sure, but a state to which we owed profound obligations.

It may be that those obligations have never been greater than they are now.

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The duties we owe to the state - The Conservative Woman

Review by Brian Lowry, CNN

People who own big cats are unusual, we're told near the outset of "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness," which proceeds to prove that -- and then some -- over seven jaw-dropping episodes. Netflix has made a lot of noise with unscripted programming, but it's going to roar with this beyond-bizarre docu-series distraction, which demonstrates that outlandish people who love filming themselves are a formula for TV that's grrrr-reat.

It's hard to know, frankly, where to begin with all the strange twists and turns, but directors Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin rightly assume that it's easiest to work backward from the (almost) end: Joseph Maldonado-Passage, an eccentric keeper of tigers, lions and other big cats in Oklahoma who goes by the name "Joe Exotic," allegedly having orchestrated a murder-for-hire plot against Carole Baskin, a woman who runs a facility called Big Cat Rescue, who had lobbied to shut down operations like his.

After that, though, there's a whole lot to chew on. Big cats, it turns out, are a kind of aphrodisiac, inspiring what can only be described as cultish devotion -- including Joe's marriage to not one but two men; another big-cat owner, Bhagavan "Doc" Antle, who is basically a polygamist; and Jeff Lowe, who comes into Joe's orbit later and brags about using exotic pets as a come-on to find partners for threesomes.

But wait, there's more: The colorful characters that Joe attracts to work for him (including one who loses a limb to a tiger attack); Joe's desire to create his own media kingdom, enlisting a former "Inside Edition" correspondent, Rick Kirkham, to oversee his TV efforts; and finally, Joe's forays into politics, running for president before mounting a libertarian bid for governor of Oklahoma, despite being a little unclear on what a libertarian actually is.

Finally, there's Baskin, who would seemingly be the voice of reason in all this, objecting, as she does, to people housing and trading in dangerous cats. Still, she finances those efforts largely through the fortune she inherited from her late husband, who disappeared under the kind of mysterious circumstances that even a "Dateline NBC" producer might consider too good to be true.

Because the big-cat owners are showmen (beyond the zoo, Joe fancies himself a country-and-western singer), there's a whole lot of vamping for the cameras. They also tend to document their actions extensively, which makes the occasional use of reenactments here feel especially gratuitous.

Still, even by the standards of reality TV -- a genre populated by exhibitionists and those seeking their 15 minutes of fame -- "Tiger King" is so awash in hard-to-believe oddballs that lean into their image it genuinely feels like a Coen brothers movie come to life, the kind of thing any studio would return to the writer saying the screenplay was too over the top.

During the final chapter, one of Joe's employees says there's "a lot of drama in the zoo world." That's about the only thing that's understated in "Tiger King," which -- even amid the current glut of true crime -- is the kind of juicy morsel that's almost impossible to resist.

"Tiger King" premieres March 20 on Netflix.

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'Tiger King' is the weird docu-series distraction we can use right now - WICZ

The streets of Jordan's capital of Amman are seen empty after the start of a nationwide curfew, amid concerns over the coronavirus pandemic, on Saturday.

AP, Raad Adayleh

The country of Jordan has implemented one of the strictest lockdowns in the world to stop the spread of the coronavirus, forcing most people to stay indoors and temporarily shutting down even grocery stores andpharmacies.

The Middle Eastern country with its 10 million residents has so far arrested more than 1,600 people for breaking the five-day-old curfew, which bans even going for walks or allowing petsoutdoors.

After three days of complete lockdown, the government has commandeered city buses to deliver bread and other essentials directly to neighborhoods. It had considered ensuring distribution of cigarettes to smokers in a country with one of the highest smoking rates in theworld.

On Tuesday, Jordan began allowing a limited reopening of small grocery stores for those between ages 16 and 60. It kept a ban on driving. Security forces say they have impounded more than 600 cars for breaching theban.

The strict measures were taken after a less-severe curfew imposed the previous week was widely flouted, with some Jordanians continuing to hold weddings and other largegatherings.

Especially in countries without very much intervention, the infection rate can rise really very fast, says Dr. Najwa Khuri-Bulos, an infectious disease specialist and adviser to Jordans Ministry of Health. There is a window period where you can interfere effectively. Hopefully doing these kinds of very strict measures will make itmanageable.

As of Wednesday, the kingdom has 153 current confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, and the number has been rising steadily butslowly.

Jordan also hosts more than 600,000 Syrian refugees and the global pandemic had sparked fears that the countrys medical care system would be very quicklyoverloaded.

Last week, the country started placing arriving travelers, including Jordanians, in mandatory 14-day quarantine. About 5,000 people have been quarantined in hotels in the capital of Amman and the Dead Sea. Shortly after, it stopped all incoming and outgoing commercialflights.

The shutdown has had severe economic repercussions in the already poorcountry.

Nobody is in denial about the potential economic cost of the shutdown, but authorities perhaps believe that this cost is to be paid 10 times down the line if the virus spreads further. So the main goal is to reduce the human toll, says Nasser bin Nasser, director of the Amman-based Middle East Scientific Institute forSecurity.

Bin Nasser says most Jordanians seem to be accepting the restrictions. Maybe in the U.S. or other libertarian societies where freedom of movement is so ingrained in the national psyche this would be harder, he says.

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Jordan Keeps Coronavirus In Check With One Of The World's Strictest Lockdowns - OPB News

The coronavirus relief checks are coming. Businesses are closing, increasingly by state mandate; unemployment claims are spiking; and as many as eight in 10 American workers live paycheck-to-paycheck, while half can't cover an unexpected $400 expense. Republicans and Democrats alike in Washington agree on the necessity of cash aid distributed directly to the public, something in the range of $1,000 per adult and $500 per child.

The major point left to be settled is means testing: Should the payments be scaled down or phased out entirely for those in higher income brackets? Perhaps the expected response from libertarians like me and fiscal conservatives more broadly is support for upfront means testing or some other barrier (requiring people to request the money, for example, or subjecting it to 2020 income taxes) to reduce the overall expenditure. Perhaps it's my cynical expectation of perpetual federal insolvency talking, but I think that would be a mistake. The scale of our national debt is already so monstrous that penny-pinching pandemic relief aid will accomplish nothing good.

So if we're doing checks, it should be simple and democratic, with minimal bureaucracy and maximum opportunity for local redistribution.

There are several reasons why this is a good idea, none of which require affection for big government. First is the issue of speed. Means testing or requiring applications of any kind takes time. But the growing portion of those eight in 10 workers living paycheck-to-paycheck don't have time. Some live in municipalities, like New York City, where evictions and/or utilities cutoffs have been suspended, but not all. And even if their housing is temporarily safe and transport costs near zero, even the most Spartan quarantiners still have bills to pay.

Second is the reality that however much shutdowns may be the least worst option in many places the state is the party responsible for these losses of income. Eminent domain is a reasonable analogy here, and when your property is taken via eminent domain, you must be compensated. (The Fifth Amendment requires that "private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.") That compensation doesn't scale down for those with higher incomes, and rightly so.

Equally compelling, to my mind, is the real risk that means testing will prove destructively inaccurate. The preferred method seems to be checking income levels from 2018 tax returns but surely it's obvious that many people who were comfortable a year and a half ago are now on the brink of disaster?

I'm thinking of my friend who co-owns a local coffee shop, now shuttered indefinitely; or my friend the substitute teacher, who lost work when Minnesota closed all public schools through at least the end of the month; or my friend who works in mental health care in a hospital which could furlough her to make more room for COVID-19 patients. Whatever their 2018 tax returns said, that doesn't reflect their present reality. Here's a classic libertarian line: This isn't a call Washington will be able to make accurately. The feds aren't as smart as they think they are.

Finally, on a more hopeful note, simply sending checks to everyone allows those who don't need the extra money to give it to those who do. If "I still have a secure job" when a check shows up, tweeted Cato Institute scholar Scott Lincicome, "I'll blow it all on local restaurant gift cards and THEN donate all of those to my church." I hope to do something similar, and others will too. Thus permitting "citizens to make millions of separate and decentralized judgments about the needs in their communities will ... make the aid more effective overall," argued National Review writer and former columnist at The Week Michael Brendan Dougherty.

This is perhaps the most famous insight of libertarian economist F.A. Hayek (who, incidentally, supported a universal basic income, which these checks are on a temporary scale): No central authority can possibly collect all the local knowledge needed to plan a national economy. Indeed, "practically every individual has some advantage over all others because he possesses unique information of which beneficial use might be made," Hayek wrote in a 1945 contribution to The American Economic Review, "but of which use can be made only if the decisions depending on it are left to him or are made with his active cooperation."

The state does not know better than you or me about who in our communities is in sudden need. When and we all know there is no "if" here Washington borrows, loans, and spends enormous sums of money attempting to offset the economic distress the response to coronavirus has wrought, distributing responsibility for how that money is spent will make better use of local knowledge than any national means testing program can. The simpler and more democratic the relief spending, the more real good it will be able to do.

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The small-government case for giving everyone a big check - The Week

Vermin Supreme has been running for president for over 30 years. His two most recent bids polled at third and fourth in the 2012 and 2016 New Hampshire Democratic primaries, respectively. But now, the boot-bonneted boomer is running to win.

When I spoke to Supreme in January, he had just triumphed in New Hampshires Libertarian presidential primary. Now hes runner-up in the LPs primaries, with a chance to be on every Americans ballot come November.

This is my first legitimate, actual, bona fide, real campaign, he said. In the past, I ran as a Democrat and was not a Democrat, I ran as a Republican and was not a Republican. Right now, I am a Libertarian and seeking the Libertarian party nomination.

Its notable that I was recruited as a candidate. Supreme described how his now-campaign manager, Desarae Lindsey, approached him about seriously running, which hes been doing for about a year. His campaign staff now has at least 30 members.

Supreme said, This is a campaign that is unlike any other campaign that Ive run. It has strategic considerations.

For example, he told me, In the past, I loved to get on the New Hampshire primary ballot and get a lot of my publicity from that stunt. The Libertarian party of New Hampshire, however, did not want any fusion candidates, so I had to forego that.

He also feared that sore loser laws which forbid a defeated primary candidate from making a third-party run in the general might keep him off the ballot in some states.

I am making an offer to the Libertarian party, he said, an offer predicated on my internet celebrity, vast reservoir of political capital and good will, my experience as a seasoned campaigner, and of course, the power of the magic boot.

As you know, Supreme said, the boot is magic. It allows me to communicate with the media and millions of people from around the flat earth.

The magic boot is not all fun and games. According to Supreme, his public persona has helped him develop some simple, elegant, yet very effective techniques that are essentially a communications strategy.

My fanbase goes from far-left to far-right, it creeps into places where Im not even comfortable having fans, quite frankly, he said. But I cant really help that, except denounce their ideologies from time to time.

During our conversation, he expressed qualified optimism that this strategy would translate into success in the Libertarian primaries and even the coveted five percent of the national popular vote needed for a third party to receive federal funding. No Libertarian candidate has yet reached that threshold, but Gary Johnson captured 3.28 percent in 2016, the partys best-ever performance.

This expectation might not be unreasonable. More than just the American counterpart to the UKs Lord Buckethead, Supreme has long stood out among Americas perennial presidential candidates.

Some of his most famous policy proposals range from the pony pledge free ponies for all to the zombification of Americas political class, who would then operate power-generating treadmills. His endearing and memorable antics include the glitter-bombing of Randall Terry, another obscure candidate in the 2012 Democratic primaries.

But behind his political persona lies an incisive satirist and impassioned activist. A committed libertarian, Supreme has built up street cred as a cop whisperer in the rioters community.

I have been actively exercising the First Amendment to use my bullhorn to break the tension in some very intense police-demonstrator situations, he said. I like to read excerpts from crowd control manuals to the riot police to make sure they are trained up and aware of necessary public safety information. I help avoid crowd panic, which can be really dangerous.

Supreme believes that this background strengthens his credentials with people, especially young people, across the political spectrum.

Ive gotten TikTok famous all of a sudden, he said, discussing how he joined the platform after his campaign hashtags started trending. Essentially, Im the voice of a new generation, though its not my generation. Im a vessel, if you will.

I dont have any ambition about consolidating political power within the party or something of that nature, he said. But of course, theres a potential pay-off for the party and for myself. Thats the synergy.

Everybodys got their own motivations for running for president. Selling more books and college tours were never mine. With a chuckle, he added, But, eh, now they are a little bit.

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Vermin Supreme's quest to win hearts, minds and the Libertarian primaries - The Spectator USA