Q: I find this line in one
of your recent posts: “The political response to Coronavius has returned us
to pre-Magna Carta days. Quite suddenly, the three branches of government, once
constitutionally separated, have collapsed and been subsumed by chief
executives unchallenged by legislatures or quiescent courts.” Would you care to
expand on that?
A: I’m not sure any expansion of the idea it would matter a
bit. The posts found in Connecticut Commentary are columns still sent to a
number of Connecticut papers. The columns are not being picked up any longer. Nor,
I should point out, are columns written by Chris Powell, a thorn in the side of
the state’s unitary media. Elsewhere I’ve said that modern journalism is ten
percent thought and ninety percent repetition. Powell is a ten percenter; something
in the man does not love nonsense. But, as you might imagine, his ten percent
is not often repeated in the state’s media echo chamber. The Register Citizen
papers used to run both our columns, but that line of papers was bought out by
Hearst media, which is a little more Pecksniffian in maters bearing on
progressive notions. Connecticut
Commentary, which stretches back to 2004, is read by about 14,000 people per
month. But really, we are surrounded – have you noticed? – by the state’s
progressive media.
The Magna
Carta, the Great Charter of England, was one of the turning points in
European republican – small “r” – government. It marks a point, at least in
democratic lore, when parliaments began to wrest power from the monarchy. Of
course the provisions of the Magna Carta, which included the right to a trial
by jury of peers, applied only to the lords of England, but even so the
wresting of power from an absolute monarchy has been viewed by some lovers of
liberty as “one giant step for mankind.” The point I am making in the post is
that the political responses to Coronavirus has collapsed the doctrine of the
separations of powers, but I’m not sure that anyone in politics or the media is
any longer concerned with republican – small “r” – government.
Q: “Political responses to Cronavirus?”
A: Yes. I insist on that formulation. It is not Coronavius -- whatever you may have
read or heard—that has CAUSED the only intentional, politically generated
recession in US history. This recession has been caused by a political response
to a virus -- and, some would argue, the fluttering “never-Trump” wings of the
Democrat and Republican parties -- not the virus itself. Viruses have come and
gone, and politicians have not seen fit in the past to shutter businesses or
proscribe constitutional liberties.
Q: But people argue that such steps were necessary in the
absence of a vaccine?
A: So I’ve heard. Given Connecticut’s shrunken economy and a
general disposition to avoid spending cuts, the free market cannot survive
until Big-Med and obliging politicians produce a vaccine that passes scrutiny
from the administrative state and its immodest politicians. My response to this sort of crooked thinking
is simplicity itself: Medical people should make medical decisions, politicians
should make political decisions and, most importantly, both should be held
responsible for the decisions they make. Traditional political decisions, in
Connecticut and elsewhere, become less likely when legislatures are shuttered
and business decisions are made by governors and presidents rather than
legislative representatives, restaurateurs and salon owners. The last
post/column to which you refer is not chuckle-proof. It’s full of barn-burning
ironies and stinging satire for those still able to read between the lines.
Q: What do you think of Ned Lamont so far as governor? His approval
rating on the Coronavirus issue appears to be good.
A: In an earlier post/column I said Lamont would be Malloy
II, a reference to former Governor Dannel Malloy, now the Chancellor of the University
of Maine college system. Malloy’s disapproval rating when he left office was 71
percent. Having a bristly character, he was famous for cutting the Republican
opposition party out of the backroom budget deliberations he held frequently
with fellow Democrat leaders in the General Assembly and union honchoes,
Connecticut’s fourth branch of government. Coronavirus has allowed Lamont to
take a lap on Malloy. Ordinary business in the General Assembly has been
suspended, and of course Connecticut courts, rarely inclined to buck powerful
politicians, have been shaped by nearly half a century of Democrat Party rule. Lamont
is Invictus, the master of his fate, the captain of his soul, the Capo dei
capi of Connecticut governors. He has in his gubernatorial tool box many
more powers than his predecessor.
Q: And yet you think Lamont is something of a duffer,
indecisive you say.
A: Not indecisive, multi-minded. Too many people – and more
importantly, some wrong people – have his ear. There is a growing sense among
political watchers that Lamont is playing by the numbers at a time when the numbers
no longer compute. But governors in Connecticut politics have always been less
important that the correlation of forces within the state, including political,
business and union interests, powerful Democrat leaders in the General Assembly,
and politically influential progressive voices in the state’s media.
Q: What permanent changes to you expect in the
post-Coronavirus years.
A: Oh, I don’t know really. No one does. The only constant
in the modern world is change – rapid change. Connecticut businesses may try to
recover some costs is a collapsing economy by economizing – reducing their work
force and plant sizes by continuing to allow some employees to do business from
home. That might, incidentally, reduce traffic and spare Connecticut further
debates on tolls. Here in Connecticut,
“the land of steady habits,” change may not be as disruptive as in some other
states. There is no tyranny like he tyranny of habits, and some habits are more
beneficial than others. Connecticut in its glory days used to be somewhat
reclusive, modest in its politics, prudent, and suspicious of tin-pot political
saviors. All that has been swept away.
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