April 25 is celebrated as Freedom Day in Portugal.
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Freedom Day
Author: Editor
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The Great Divide
The current pandemic panic and crisis, Brian Doherty noted in Reason, “is a harshly vivid example of Americans’ inability to understand, fruitfully communicate with, or show a hint of respect for those seen to be on other side of an ideological line.”
Mr. Doherty, who profiled me in his book Radicals for Capitalism, calls the two major positions “Openers” versus “Closers.”
They do not trust each other, and their respective policy prescriptions — opening up society to normal commerce versus keeping it closed, under lockdown — are poles apart.
Doherty doesn’t mention how we treat experts. Virologists, medical doctors and epidemiologists also form ranks on both sides, and these experts sure seem to be talking past each other, too.
Which seems neither professional nor scientific.
Doherty concludes by asserting that, even after obtaining answers to questions regarding “the disease’s spread, extent, and damage” or coming to an eventual conclusion regarding “the long term damage to life and prosperity the economic shutdown is causing,” we must admit that “human beings of goodwill and intelligence might come to a different value judgment about what policy is best overall.”
Sure. But, looking over the divide as he presents it, I am afraid I see one side — the Openers — concerned about a broad number of possible disasters (economic dislocation and even mass starvation in addition to illness and death) while the other — the Closers — obsessing about fighting a disease about which there remains limited knowledge and little agreement.
The Openers seem a whole lot more open to diverse considerations.
Including the possibility that freedom might result in a better collective response than orders issued by mayors and governors and the president.
Which strikes me as more like Common Sense.
I’m Paul Jacob.
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C.-F. Volney
Can liberty be born from the bosom of despots? and shall justice be rendered by the hands of piracy and avarice?
Constantin-François de Chassebœuf (1757 – 1820), Comte de Volney, The Ruins; Or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires: And The Law of Nature, Chapter II (Thomas Jefferson, translator).
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Shush: Library
On April 24, 1792, the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise,” was composed by Capt. Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle.
Eight years later to the day, the United States Congress approved a bill establishing the Library of Congress.
“A rapidly increasing number of American families are opting out of sending their children to school,” Erin O’Donnell informs in the May-June issue of Harvard Magazine, “choosing instead to educate them at home.”
Yippee! Thanks for the great news — right?
Not to O’Donnell, or to Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Bartholet. O’Donnell’s article is something of a friendly regurgitation of Bartholet’s Arizona Law Review article, entitled, “Homeschooling: Parent Rights Absolutism vs. Child Rights to Education & Protection.”
Bartholet “recommends a presumptive ban on homeschooling.” Why? Because, as O’Donnell offers, it “violates children’s right to a ‘meaningful education’ and their right to be protected from potential child abuse …”
Her evidence? Professor Bartholet offers none. Harvard Magazine does not need any.
Avoided, perhaps, because research shows students educated at home significantly outperform public school students on standardized tests.
As for the specter of homeschooling as massive smokescreen enabling vicious child predators? “The limited evidence available shows that homeschooled children are abused at a lower rate than are those in the general public,” Dr. Brian Ray reported in 2018, adding that “an estimated 10% (or more) of public and private schoolchildren experience sexual maltreatment at the hands of school personnel.”
So, what is going on here?
Perhaps O’Donnell provides the explanation, writing that “surveys of homeschoolers show that a majority of such families … are driven by conservative Christian beliefs, and seek to remove their children from mainstream culture.”
Oh, my, can that be permitted? Should people choose their own religious and cultural beliefs? May parents freely educate their kids?
Bartholet calls that “essentially authoritarian control,” which is “dangerous.”
There, she is correct. Homeschooling is dangerous … to experts hell-bent on telling us what to think.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Has dissent about pandemic policy been outlawed?
I mean, “for the duration”?
Well, no.
The Internet displays every possible view of policy and epidemiology, expressed with every possible degree of temperateness or intemperateness.
Yet we are indeed seeing signs of indifference to freedom of speech even when that speech cannot entail breathing a coronavirus on anybody.
According to CNN, Facebook told the network: “Anti-quarantine protests being organized through Facebook in California, New Jersey, and Nebraska are being removed from the platform on the instruction of governments in those three states because it violates stay-at-home orders.”
Online posts “violate stay-at-home orders”?
Who knew?
Obviously, a protest that violates social-distancing rules (if it does) is not the same thing as a communication about the protest.
Apparently, Facebook is a willing functionary of whichever state governments will instruct it to carry out their censorship. Tyler O’Neil opines that “it is disconcerting that Facebook would work with local governments to remove pages organizing protests against them.”
Yes, indeed.
But such reports have been disputed. Facebook may be acting on its own. For example, a spokeswoman for New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy says that his office “did not ask Facebook to remove pages or posts for events promoting lifting the provisions of the Governor’s stay-at-home order.” Nebraska also denies making such a request.
Which version of the story is true?
Which is worse?
Both are creepy.
I just hope that this muzzling-speech-just-to-help thing doesn’t start spreading like a virus.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob
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