Was COVID authoritarianism a practice run?
Jan 2, 2022 15:38:19 GMT -5
Post by J.J.Gibbs on Jan 2, 2022 15:38:19 GMT -5
January 2, 2022
Was COVID authoritarianism a practice run for something far worse?
By Andrea Widburg
We’ve learned over the last 20 months that, if a government can cause people to panic, people will readily forgo all their freedoms in return for a promise that the government will keep them safe. One man has decided that the COVID panic is a successful trial run for future tyranny based upon the allegedly existential threat of climate change.
John Hinderaker, at Power Line, came across an article from Cambridge University Press entitled “Political Legitimacy, Authoritarianism, and Climate Change.” The author, one Ross Mittiga III, is a Ph.D. in Poly Sci who ran unsuccessfully as the 2017 Democrat party candidate for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates. According to a quotation on BallotPedia, his campaign focused on climate change:
As someone who has dedicated his career to studying the politics and ethics of climate change, no issue is more important to me—or central to this campaign—than the need for robust environmental protection and climate action.
Mittiga is a true believer and he believes in the “whatever it takes” approach to stopping the climate from doing what it does naturally. In the article’s summary, we get Mittiga mournfully concluding that “contemporary political theory literature” would answer “no” to the question “Is authoritarian power ever legitimate?” That, however, does not stop the panicked and intrepid Mittiga,
I argue, however, that there exists another, overlooked aspect of legitimacy concerning a government’s ability to ensure safety and security. While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise.
And how did Mittiga come to this conclusion that, if a government promises its citizens safety in an emergency, it can do away indefinitely with civil rights and individual liberty? Why, COVID—what else?
A salient example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government.
Mittiga is unmoved by the fact that it’s becoming increasingly clear that those “severe limitations on free movement and association” did nothing to slow COVID’s spread. He would dismiss claims that, by making the population less healthy, COVID authoritarianism probably increased the number of unnecessary deaths, whether from COVID itself, or from untreated diseases (cancer, heart disease, etc.), suicides, and overdoses. What matters is power.
Continued at link
Was COVID authoritarianism a practice run for something far worse?
By Andrea Widburg
We’ve learned over the last 20 months that, if a government can cause people to panic, people will readily forgo all their freedoms in return for a promise that the government will keep them safe. One man has decided that the COVID panic is a successful trial run for future tyranny based upon the allegedly existential threat of climate change.
John Hinderaker, at Power Line, came across an article from Cambridge University Press entitled “Political Legitimacy, Authoritarianism, and Climate Change.” The author, one Ross Mittiga III, is a Ph.D. in Poly Sci who ran unsuccessfully as the 2017 Democrat party candidate for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates. According to a quotation on BallotPedia, his campaign focused on climate change:
As someone who has dedicated his career to studying the politics and ethics of climate change, no issue is more important to me—or central to this campaign—than the need for robust environmental protection and climate action.
Mittiga is a true believer and he believes in the “whatever it takes” approach to stopping the climate from doing what it does naturally. In the article’s summary, we get Mittiga mournfully concluding that “contemporary political theory literature” would answer “no” to the question “Is authoritarian power ever legitimate?” That, however, does not stop the panicked and intrepid Mittiga,
I argue, however, that there exists another, overlooked aspect of legitimacy concerning a government’s ability to ensure safety and security. While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise.
And how did Mittiga come to this conclusion that, if a government promises its citizens safety in an emergency, it can do away indefinitely with civil rights and individual liberty? Why, COVID—what else?
A salient example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government.
Mittiga is unmoved by the fact that it’s becoming increasingly clear that those “severe limitations on free movement and association” did nothing to slow COVID’s spread. He would dismiss claims that, by making the population less healthy, COVID authoritarianism probably increased the number of unnecessary deaths, whether from COVID itself, or from untreated diseases (cancer, heart disease, etc.), suicides, and overdoses. What matters is power.
Continued at link
