Permanent Crisis

From The Hangover by Kevin Willliams at National Review:

We have, in a way, been here before. The Covid-19 epidemic and the federal response follow a familiar pattern: A crisis emerges, extraordinary action is taken, that extraordinary action acquires interest groups who wish to see it become ordinary action, economic troubles inevitably follow, and sorting it all out gets pretty hairy pretty quickly.

We have, in a way, been here before. The Covid-19 epidemic and the federal response follow a familiar pattern: A crisis emerges, extraordinary action is taken, that extraordinary action acquires interest groups who wish to see it become ordinary action, economic troubles inevitably follow, and sorting it all out gets pretty hairy pretty quickly.

HKO

We need to realize that crisis are inevitable.  Ideologues will debate causes long after they pass, but it does not matter if the cause is excessive individualism, unfettered free markets, limited government, excessive government, globalism, the administrative state, or utopian socialism. Any theory of human action in a complex interrelated world will fail occasionally; but we fail a critical test when we equate the ‘failings’ of an ideology with the ‘failure’ of an ideology.  To understand our beliefs we need to know their limits.

Reform is seductive; it compares the very tangible problems of the status quo with the fantasy of untried solutions.  When we believe “that any tear in the social fabric should be mended with permanent entitlements or subsidies” (Dan Henninger) we create structures during crisis that inhibit growth in normal times.  Too often the cause of the next crisis was the solution to a previous crisis.

A crisis an excuse to exercise power. Once we equated the existential crisis of war to  economic and social problems, addiction to crisis followed, putting the country on a permanent war footing.  A nation that values individual rights and freedom will not long tolerate a permanent war footing.