Don't Let Closure-Mania Become Another Contagion

The Powers That Be just closed a popular Colorado hiking spot, Waterton Canyon, to recreationists. So, now we can't go outside and responsibly enjoy public lands that we own? "Social distancing" isn't just easy in such places; that's what they're there for, right? -- so people can find a little solitude and enjoy a healthy escape?

Closure-mania seems as contagious as COVID-19 at the moment and both are becoming equally menacing, not just to our bodies but to our "body politic." Here's the danger in where things are heading.

Once we hand politicians "emergency" powers to close things down, there's no end to what they'll start closing down, all in the name of "protecting" us, of course. Absolute power is intoxicating that way. "Erring on the side of caution" sounds reasonable, but it's a slippery slope if taken to unreasonable extremes. And I think we're already straying into that territory.

Yes, "something must be done." But doing something in a panicked, knee-jerk overreaction will do more harm than good. Now the go-alongers want to shame the slow-downers into silence. You must be rooting for the Plague if you question authority, or dare to argue that the "cure" could be worse than the malady. 

But not questioning authority, and going along mindlessly and passively with a cascading series of unacceptably extreme measures, many of which set a dangerous precedent for our future civil liberties, is out of character for Americans, to put it bluntly. And civil disobedience might be necessary at some point in order to sober-up our power drunk politicians and reassert citizen supremacy. 

There's only so far most Americans are willing to go, even in a "crisis," if they come to believe that they are being manipulated and a "crisis" is being exploited. I hope our political leaders have the good sense to pull back before they test those limits and push things too far.

PS: Now comes the closure of Rocky Mountain National Park, reinforcing the point I made in the post above. Closure-mania has become a second contagion. With all the businesses in Estes Park closed, where are the risks in letting the public get out and enjoy a 265,000-acre park? It might be just the tonic our battered souls need. If anything, they ought to waive any entrance fees and let the people enjoy their public lands (public lands they already pay for) without charge. It feels to me like we're moving from the precaution phase to this crisis to the punitive phase of this crisis.

PSS: Officials in Aspen also are using the threat of public trail closures to compel citizen compliance, although hiking in open spaces would appear to be very low-risk and it provides anxious and homebound citizens with a healthy and safe way to stay fit and blow off steam. 

Government officials appear to be one-upping each other in a race to trample our civil liberties. Parks and public lands have become chess pieces in the game of COVID coercion -- pressure points The Authorities are using to compel compliance with orders of dubious efficacy, legality and legitimacy.

Closing public lands and parks in the midst of government funding battles has by now become a budget battle cliche -- a routine ploy that one side or the other uses to gain leverage in negotiations. Such closures clearly are punitive in nature: if we make the public feel the pain -- and closing parks has proven to be a very good way to do that -- the public outcry will work to our advantage, or so the thinking goes. But current closures aren't related to immediate budget shortfalls (those will come later, when our leaders have successfully collapsed the economy in a coronavirus panic). There's very little cost involved in letting people enjoy their public lands. These are by definition uncrowded places, where the risk of transmission is small -- unless The Authorities can produce evidence proving otherwise.

The Authorities seem to be closing them just because they can, based on some flimsy, far-fetched link to a public health problem. It's a completely arbitrary and clearly punitive abuse of power that ought to give the public pause.   

No one in the midst of this lockdown has the means or motivation to challenge these actions in court, or to engage in civil disobedience. Most are just wondering where their paychecks have gone and when the last roll of toilet paper will be gone. But I worry that our reluctance to at some point resist sets a precedent, and sends a signal of passivity, that we could really come to regret someday.

Waterton Canyon, a popular recreation area for fishing, running, biking and more, was closed by Denver Water because of the coronavirus.

O Radical, Where Art Thou?

Protest marches on college campuses are old news, at least since the 1960s. But what makes this march different, and noteworthy, is the mysterious absence of students -- students who are usually quick to join in on civil rights fights.

This protest was organized not by students, or by the faculty, however, but by residents of neighborhoods near Columbia University, who fear the school will use eminent domain in pursuit of a West Harlem expansion project. A New York appeals court recently slapped down the school, ruling that its efforts to displace holdouts, through eminent domain, were unconstitutional. The protesters are asking Columbia not to appeal the decision; to build around the holdouts. But school officials are noncommittal.

It's curious that Columbia's famously-radical students are largely silent on the issue. This isn't the '60s, I know. But isn't the indignation of students stirred by seeing working-class people bullied by the school into giving up their homes and businesses? One of the school's few libertarians raised his voice in protest, yet campus liberals (the self-styled champions of civil rights) haven't much been heard from.

Where is the anger?

Where is the outrage?

Where is the outcry for justice?

All are absent in this case, except from non-students in the neighborhood.

Does apathy explain it? Or could it be that Columbia students, so quick to see injustice elsewhere (and everywhere), can't see it when it's right under their noses? Has self-interest in this case trumped self-righteous indignation? Perhaps, more ominously, the liberals at Columbia don't see property rights as a civil right, although they were recognized by the country's founders as paramount. The big brains at Columbia surely must see that all civil rights are undermined if a person isn't secure in her person or possessions. Don't alarm bells go off at seeing the state empowered to take someone's property, virtually at will?

This highlights a curious blind spot on the part of American left-wingers, who are so shrill in defense of other (arguably less-important) civil rights. Property rights apparently rank low on the list of causes they'll take to the barricades for, perhaps because these rights stand as obstacles to other agenda items, like "economic justice," redistribution of wealth, social equality, government regulation, etc.

Property rights aren't recognized in the leftist fantasy land called Cuba, just as they were absent in the former Soviet Union (with which many American liberals had a love affair, let's not forget, right up to the moment the wall came down). Property rights are the first things to go when leftists take power, because they carve out a zone of individual autonomy and control that statists can't tolerate. And even here, in the civil rights-happy U.S., property rights are looked on with suspicion and scorn by the left -- are seen as speed bumps that slow the pace of state-sponsored "progress."

That, more than anything, may explain the strange absence of student radicals from the anti-Columbia protests.