Such arguments are not yet available to advocates of continued house arrests. The advocates, Don "Cafe Hayek" Boudreaux notes, are simply behaving consistently with their priors.
That the likes of Paul Krugman, New York Times’s editorialists, writers for The Nation, and other Progressive intellectuals, along with leftist politicians, support lockdowns is unsurprising. These people trust government, deeply, and distrust freedom. Long before covid-19, such people regularly revealed their belief that ordinary persons left free to act without the detailed supervision of government officials will cause chaos and calamity. These intellectuals and politicians routinely write and speak as if the almighty state possesses miraculous powers to design and enforce order – order that is the only alternative to chaos and calamity.Their priors are likely so tight that the evidence of rising contagion in the European states that were supposedly exemplars for our deplorable politicians will not be sufficient to change many minds.
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George Eliot, 1866:
"Fancy what a game of chess would be if all the chessman had passions and intellects, more or less small and cunning; if you were not only uncertain about your adversary's men, but a little uncertain also about your own . . . You would be especially likely to be beaten if you depneded arrogantly on your mathematical imagination, and regarded your passionate pieces with contempt. Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with a game man has to play against his fellow-men with other fellow-men for instruments."
That's a good one, was that an observation, or a passage in a novel?
Perhaps there's something in that passage that argues for some military experience among those who would seek to lead governments. Consider Grant, who was able to trust Sherman and Sheridan enough for independent command, but rode with Meade in order that the usual Army of the Potomac inertia wouldn't hobble the Overland Campaign.
It was from a novel: 'Felix Holt, the Radical'
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