Spring 2020—Silent Spring: The Coronavirus Crisis And The Opportunism Of Chaos

On September 27^th of 1962, a book was published that forever changed the environmental movement here in the United States of America, becoming a rallying text for the social justice crusade of the American left that started in the 1960s and has only grown in strength and force since then. The book, entitled Silent Spring and written by marine biologist Rachel Carson, targeted the then-extensive use of pesticides in the United States as dangerously threatening to environmental health and the stability of natural ecosystems. In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson warned Americans about the environmental damage inflicted by advanced industrial societies and lit the fire of grassroots protest that quickly metastasized into what we now know as the contemporary environmentalist movement. The book’s title was a direct reference to the kind of future Carson predicted would emerge if humanity did nothing to halt its abuse, exploitation, and irresponsible manipulation of the natural world. Because of environmental degradation, Carson predicted in poetic and dramatic fashion that the time would eventually come when there would be no bird songs to accompany the arrival of future spring times, no more beauty to celebrate or enjoy in a natural world tainted by the blight of mankind’s destructive influence upon Mother Nature.

For better or worse, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring set forth a pattern that would be emulated and copied both far and wide by American leftists in not only social justice movements of every conceivable category, but also in the halls of American government at every level and, even more pervasively, within the vast bureaucratic state that has been growing and expanding in the United States ever since the early 1970s. The pattern was a simple one. Again, for better or worse, whether accurately or inaccurately, Silent Spring identified an apocalyptic threat to the future of the United States. In response, a movement was born. As the movement percolated upwards in our society to those who held positions of power in the federal government and bureaucracy, a new drive to regulate and manage the American way of life for the supposed salvation of that way of life was created. In 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency was established. Since its establishment, the EPA mandate has grown and expanded just like with every other federal program or initiative. By the year 2016, ideologically-driven U.S. presidents had already employed the overreaching powers of the EPA to enforce extremely strict national environmental standards, to control environmental monitoring and permitting, and to essentially write environmental legislation outside the direct purview of Congress. Barring proactive challenges to such legislation from the courts (or, even less likely, from an increasingly lethargic Congress), the edicts and declarations of the EPA are irrefutable.

The bureaucracy, legislation, and regulation coming out of the EPA represent tragic and destructive examples of government overreach that have threatened private property rights and the economic prosperity of American businesses for several generations now. But it’s okay, right? After all, it’s all in the name of saving the country from the chaos of an impending apocalypse that always seems to be waiting just around the proverbial corner.

We are now currently living through a very different kind of silent spring here in the year 2020, a real worldwide crisis that is provoking yet again another new round of proposals for government expansions and intrusions into the private sector and private lives of American citizens. Back in December of 2019, a new and apparently highly contagious respiratory virus outbreak was reported out of Hubei province in communist China. By March of 2020, international organizations had declared a worldwide pandemic, and governments all over the world had enacted and enforced the severest and most comprehensive travel restrictions, curfews, quarantines, limitations upon social gatherings, closures of businesses and facilities, cancellations of events and public services, and shelter-in-place orders ever recorded perhaps since the flu pandemic of 1918. The socioeconomic disruption to the global community has been severe, to say the least, and in the United States, the miraculous “Trump economy” of the last few years has been put into serious jeopardy. “Social distancing” is all the rage right now, and public gatherings and travel outside the home are severely discouraged if not banned outright, depending on the jurisdiction under consideration. The economy has slowed to a crawl, unemployment is assumed to be trending towards historic highs, a new global depression seems to be on the horizon…and all of this is in addition to the more than 250,000 people who have thus far been killed by the Chinese virus all over the planet (I will not be writing, in this blog post, about the very worthwhile debate which has arisen over the validity of coronavirus death statistical reporting).

The spring of 2020 has turned out to be a silent spring indeed. But this is not the imagined silent spring of Rachel Carson’s book. The silent spring of 2020 is not ecological. Instead, it is largely economic, and I have no trouble attributing the current socioeconomic disruptions we are suffering under more to fear and panic than I do to the Chinese virus itself. Unfortunately, history has proven that with fear and panic come opportunities for government activism to step in as a saving force, as an immediate and allegedly temporary provider of relief and security in a time of emergency.

The only problem I have with this is that it allows for a season of chaos that attracts political and state-sponsored opportunism of the worst and most insidious variety.

Before I proceed any further with what I wish to say in this blog post, I want to first make it clear that I am not going to be downplaying in any way, shape, or form the very real health risks and threat to life that the COVID-19 virus represents. I am personally in favor of reasonable “social distancing” measures even while I am aware of its economically destructive influence upon our way of life. I am also strongly in favor of maintaining law and order as well as obeying and cooperating with government officials at all levels as they make requests and enact measures to fight the virus that I may or may not necessarily agree with. Throughout this pandemic, I've been of the opinion that too many of us are panicking and allowing fear to dominate our plans for the future, and I have not wanted to add to that unfortunate development by encouraging bad behavior from any quarter. No, instead, the focus of this blog post is to simply get others to start thinking seriously about how we have all responded to this virus, especially with regards to our leaders in government. How have we all reacted to COVID-19? Is this reaction a template for the future, and should it be? What are the real costs of shutting down economies and potentially limiting human freedoms? These are sensitive questions that I think we should all be asking ourselves, and I believe we should ask them in soberness and without accusatory tones in our voices, spoken or written. After all, we are still in the midst of the virus crisis, and we need to allow everyone dealing with it—even our politicians—a sizeable benefit of doubt.

That said, if I could share one piece of advice with my fellow Americans during this horrible economic crisis and this very real public health challenge, it would be this: please remember that our political leaders and government bureaucrats, even when they aren't filled with malicious intent, are inherently prone to make crises out to be worse than they truly are. I say this from experience as someone who has spent the last 20 years carefully taking note of the philosophies and teachings that most of our "expert" and "political elite" class has been embracing as common knowledge and conventional wisdom. Crises offer cunning and calculating opportunists the chance to push through dangerous policy proposals when they otherwise could not, and this becomes especially frightening when we live in a culture, like the one we have here in 2020 America, where even the politicians with the best of intentions are succumbing to the temptation to enact sweeping changes to the ways we live our lives and pursue happiness. We are already starting to see another round of politicians and bureaucrats using this virus as a reason to call for far-reaching and sweeping societal changes as well as alterations to our government's relationship with the people, with the details and freedoms of individual lives. Please keep an eye out for this, and please do not endorse it out of fear for the future.

When the United States of America was first established as a country, the Founding Fathers originally intended for American government to be based upon the principle of federalism, for governmental powers to be split between the federal government in Washington, D.C. and the state governments in each state’s capital. The idea was that the federal government would take care of some duties, like national defense, and that state governments would take care of others, like the maintenance of public schools. Ever since the Civil War, however, many commentators have argued that the principle of federalism has been eroding, with the federal government taking on more of the state governments’ original roles. This argument makes a certain amount of sense. After all, the federal government literally went to war against Southern state governments in order to free the slaves, and since that time, the federal government’s role in controlling what goes on in individual states has greatly expanded. Be it issues involving the legalization of gay marriage, the racial integration of schools, or environmental regulation, there is very little doubt that the federal government now dominates the headlines when compared with what goes on at the level of state and local government.

With the coronavirus pandemic sweeping over the nation, Nick Burns, an international politics writer for The American Interest, has noted that a rebirth of federalism may be taking place all across our country. In confronting the virus, many states have taken an incredibly proactive role in going their own way in terms of dealing with the disease and its repercussions. In states like California and New York, the state governments have gotten as much press as the federal government, if not more, regarding how they have chosen to face the coronavirus crisis. California’s Bay Area issued the first “shelter in place” order, followed quickly by a similar order for the rest of the state. New York, which was next in line for lockdown, has seen its governor, Andrew Cuomo, emerge as a leading and highly popular leader in the struggle against coronavirus. As Nick Burns explained it, previously marginalized state and local governments have taken the lead in fighting the present pandemic, and crucial life-and-death matters were suddenly in the hands not of the federal government but of state and local authorities.

We have heard a great deal from the mainstream media about all kinds of dark ulterior motives ascribed to President Trump’s handling of the virus. But what about the motivations of governors and other state and local leaders? Is President Trump the only political leader capable of using and abusing a worldwide pandemic for alleged power grabs or other misuses of government activity in our lives? There has already been friction between the Trump administration and Democratic governors in states like New York, Illinois, and Michigan over the particulars of coronavirus response, relief, and reopening. It has become clear in recent days that President Trump has an obvious political incentive to quickly reopen the country and provide timely economic relief to those millions of Americans whose lives have been disrupted by the coronavirus outbreak, and that is something we should all bear in mind. But at the same time, I believe it is important to keep an eye out for yet another kind of politically-motivated response from Democratic, liberal, and especially leftist politicians who are incentivized to work against President Trump regardless of whether or not doing so is the right thing to do. If the presidency and indeed the impeachment of President Trump have taught us anything, it’s that some politicians on the left wing of the political spectrum will do almost anything to stop Trump from implementing his agenda, even if that means going against the better interests of the country at large.

Even in a world completely free of the now ubiquitous Trump Derangement Syndrome phenomenon, some politicians and bureaucrats are quite simply inherently inclined to take advantage of crises by implementing various forms of “benign” authoritarianism and political centralization. Most Americans can figure out on their own that self-quarantines, wearing masks, and practicing social distancing all make a lot of sense in terms of combating the coronavirus outbreak. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that some politicians and bureaucrats have no faith whatsoever in the courses of action taken by free people. Instead, many American leftists see centralized and expansive government authority as the only plausible fix to a crisis of this magnitude. It has been more than a little worrisome to me to see just how many of our politicians and bureaucrats have, by their own admission, failed to be consistently conscious of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights while implementing various response and relief strategies to fight the coronavirus. According to the Heritage Foundation, the governor of Michigan has expressed the belief that “it is within her power to unilaterally ban garden stores from selling fruit or vegetable plants and seeds.” Jurisdictions in states like Vermont and Indiana have ordered private companies like Walmart, Costco, and Target to “stop selling ‘nonessential’ items” like electronics and clothing. All across the country, debate has arisen over whether or not people should be banned from simply taking walks around their neighborhoods, dragged from passenger buses for not wearing face masks, or handcuffed for simply playing with family members in public parks. In Kentucky, a mayor attempted to “unilaterally ban drive-in church services.” Incidents like these are occurring in the new world of coronavirus we suddenly find ourselves living in, and they are all examples of government acting out of concern for public safety and security, both of which are things all responsible citizens should care about.

But can we afford to care so much for public safety and security that we refuse to even consider the ramifications of such policies for our republican society’s first principles and freedoms: peaceful assembly, public protest, and religious worship?

On March 28^th of this year, Douglas Mackinnon wrote an opinion piece for The Hill that expressed his speculation that media outlets and politically-motivated news figures were possibly over-hyping the threat posed by the worldwide coronavirus pandemic. Mackinnon, a political and communications consultant who worked in both the Reagan and George H.W. Bush White Houses, described how unfortunate it is that we now live in a political and cultural climate where everything, even a life-destroying virus, is talked about through a lens of political bias. He described the public’s befuddlement over a strain of coronavirus that very few people, even in the ranks of medical experts, seem to understand. Even though relatively very little is still actually known about the COVID-19 virus, it has often proven to be the case that whenever any high-profile figures have questioned the doom-and-gloom predictions and models of epidemiologists, those people have been accused of denying science. Mackinnon wrote about the “unnecessary panic” that has swept across the globe because of “world-is-ending projections” from experts such as Neil Ferguson, professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College in London, who is now well known for a study which predicted that as many as 2 million Americans would die in the course of the initial coronavirus outbreak. Without personally blaming Ferguson or his team (Imperial College has since drastically revised the findings of the aforementioned virus study), Mackinnon pointed out how devastating the media’s reaction to the Imperial College study has been, accusing news outlets of running an incessant “panic machine” that has done more harm than good in effectively combating the coronavirus while still allowing for healthy economic activity to be maintained for individuals and communities relatively safe from the disease. The opinion piece written by Mackinnon ended with a hope and a prayer that caught my attention and made me think deeply about what is really going on psychologically behind the scenes, so to speak, of coronavirus shutdowns and quarantines. “Let’s hope and pray,” wrote Mackinnon, that pragmatic analysts “are indeed correct about the outcome of all this, particularly because the draconian measures now in place could create another health catastrophe if lost jobs and bankruptcies lead to poverty, hopelessness, and increased suicides. Whatever the correct projections turn out to be, tens of thousands of people are likely to die, and millions more are paying an unimaginable price. Politics and partisanship should play no role in this — only truth and indisputable, real evidence.”

As I have paid attention during this silent spring season of economic catastrophe, I have been reflecting on how often it seems people in positions of political power tend to use allegedly world-ending or life-changing crises to push for even greater control over our lives. After all, isn’t that what the American left is seeking whenever it uses Green New Deal rhetoric to warn Americans that they practically have no choice whatsoever when it comes to having fewer kids (or none at all!), driving fewer cars, buying smaller homes, and consuming fewer resources? In other words, if we Americans don’t give up more of our freedoms and senses of personal responsibility for our own actions and spheres of influence, are we not putting the very existence of Planet Earth and the human race itself at risk of utter destruction? Indeed, I have personally witnessed some American leftist politicians assuring their followers that the human-caused destruction of the planet is so inevitable and so impending that planning to raise a family of your own is foolish and irresponsible.

I’ve thought back to the years 2008 and 2009, when a worldwide economic crisis was blamed upon the ideology of capitalism itself even though there was far more evidence that generalized greed and corruption had combined with inappropriately activist government to overregulate and distort otherwise clear-cut market forces. Government has a tendency to call for more power and regulation in times of crisis; unfortunately, these regulations rarely get repealed and actually end up doing more harm than good. Proponents of big government love to use the victims of crisis to excuse using government to intrude upon the private economy in order to make things “fair” or “just,” or to simply “save” the victims from impending doom. Progressive activists and left-wing politicians foolishly believe that they can change or alter human behavior and create a better world by enforcing more draconian laws upon society. In reality, doing so only sacrifices individual liberties to the all-encompassing power of the state. By protecting citizens from themselves, governments destroy a people’s understanding of free choice, personal responsibility, and consequential action.

I earnestly plead with you, the reader, to understand that I do not wish to come across as unnecessarily combative or premature when I say that this season of coronavirus fearmongering has given me an insightful perspective as to just how poisonous a “nanny state” is, to one extent or another, to a free society. When we live in a world where our politicians are so comfortable with controlling and limiting our freedoms of speech, association, movement, and assembly in circumstances that may seemingly warrant such restrictions, we find ourselves in a very dangerous place, a place in which an overextension of government usurps our personal autonomy and undermines a wide variety of freedoms, all with the justification that doing so is for the increasingly nebulous “greater good.” By conditioning ourselves to look to the state to make even the most mundane decisions for us, a sad mindset is created, a mindset that sees the government as the answer to all our problems.

I currently work as a part-time school teacher, and in my short two years of working for a public school system in the increasingly socialist state of California, I have witnessed just how destructive the “nanny state” mentality is, how corrosive to the human spirit it can be. The coronavirus scare, sad to say, has only accelerated a process which has been underway for many years. The chaos of coronavirus has revealed California for what it has unfortunately turned itself into: a public welfare state where middle class private enterprises are no longer welcome, a nanny state where dependent citizens now feel entitled to handouts at every turn regardless of their ability to pay, citizenship status, or actual legitimate need. Those who live outside of California may be understandably doubtful of my rhetoric, which can sound alarmist and overdramatic. With that in mind, I once again insist with all soberness that the coronavirus scare has made plain for all who are willing to see that California is no longer a healthy free market- or middle class-friendly society. Instead, it is a place where government bureaucracies, state officials, and “experts” pushing for sundry special interest groups and union agendas hold most of the real political power.

To add my own personal testimony to the claims I am making about California, I wanted to end this blog post with a few personal observances of the coronavirus situation in California. As a school teacher, I have become alarmed at how often I hear school district officials all across my state spending vast amounts of time, energy, and money worrying and stressing about how they intend to feed their students. And yes, in case my readers wonder if they missed something significant in that last sentence, I will clarify: I am indeed referring to school districts providing food and drink to their students; yes, school districts in California are doing this and yes, Christopher Peterson is bothered by that. Perhaps some do not find this to be disturbing. Perhaps some have become so used to school districts footing the bill for kids to eat at least two meals every day that they see nothing to be upset about. Perhaps some do not find my feelings of concern to be warranted, but I just cannot resist asking: since when did school districts take it upon themselves to feed our children? Since when did school officials, during a time of pandemic, take it upon themselves to worry about paying for meals for all the children in their jurisdictions? I thought schools were places of learning. I’ve known, however, for many years now that schools are not primarily places of learning; instead, our schools have become state-sponsored babysitting centers. Though I have met teachers who would be profoundly offended at me for expressing such an opinion, I feel like being a teacher myself gives me the right to express what I feel about my own chosen workplace and the government institutions I serve.

Not too long ago, I heard a news story on the radio about the Los Angeles school district making a big announcement about how it was facing a budgetary apocalypse  because it just couldn’t figure out how to feed its kids “and their families.”

And their families? Why is a school district taking upon itself the responsibility to feed entire families?

About a month ago, I overheard a woman who lives in my community talking on the phone with some out-of-state relatives. She was describing the school closure situation in Stanislaus County, where I live. I heard her telling her relatives, in all seriousness, that while “the kids are loving it, the parents are not.”

I will be the first to admit that overgeneralizing about people’s life situations, economic challenges, and traditions for family planning is EXACTLY what I am preaching against in this post. However, I also feel like we can all diagnose societal problems without necessarily pointing personal blame at others.

I am not blaming parents who are feeling overwhelmed right now because they unexpectedly find themselves having to take care of a crop of kids at home during the coronavirus shutdowns. I am not upset at whole families taking advantage of the free food programs offered by school districts all across my state. And I honestly don’t have enough energy to be upset by all the politicians’ speeches extolling the irreplaceability of public schools or all the taxpayer dollars being spent to subsidize programs for free handouts. I am simply noticing as a public employee living in the state of California that we are now finding ourselves in a terrifying situation, a situation in which millions and millions of Californians literally don’t know what to do with their lives without the direction, support, or go-ahead of the government. Shouldn’t we all be distinctly worried when we are looking to the school districts to take care of our kids, even to feed them twice or more daily? I actually live in a town that felt so zealously the need to feed schoolkids and their families that during spring break, the school district actually delivered meals to families’ doorsteps!

Free delivered meals! During a planned school vacation!

Again, and for the last time in this blog post, I want to stress: I am not losing my temper in expressing my worries and concerns. Nevertheless, I think a moderate level of alarm needs to be raised by those of us who are witnessing firsthand what happens to a society that relies so heavily upon the auspices of government. It feels rather unjustified to get angry at all when our culture has been so thoroughly inundated with the cradle-to-grave socialism that I am warning against. How do you turn something around that has come about through the teachings and common practices that have been raising our children practically since birth? How do you tell people who have been taught to obey stay-at-home orders without question that it’s not morally correct to mock people for protesting on behalf of their freedoms as outlined in the Bill of Rights? How do you convince others that times of emergency do not nullify at least a healthy debate about personal freedoms and the boundaries between the public and private spheres? How do you create a narrative in which the need for maintaining public health and safety is not inherently viciously at war with the need for individual liberty and economic activity?

These are questions and debates that too many people are unwilling to consider, and I think this needs to change, and soon.

Meanwhile, our economically silent spring is fading away and turning into what promises to be a very unsettled summer.

--Christopher Peterson, May 7^th, 2020