OPINION:
The president, too many governors and more than a few local officials have apparently decided that they have the power to order the rest of us to do pretty much anything that strikes their fancy in the name of fighting the coronavirus. Some of their contradictory orders make sense and some don’t. Few would argue about the need for what we now call “social distancing,” but why can that be used to justify arresting a man for playing catch with his daughter in an empty park in Colorado or two men who dared to play a round of golf in Rhode Island to keep them or the rest of us safe?
In Michigan, the shutdown order makes it clear that the state’s citizens aren’t allowed to buy house paint, so those cooped up in their Michigan homes who decide maybe they’ll finally have the time to repaint that spare bedroom can forget it. In Montana, the state is requiring visitors from out of state to be quarantined for 14 days or for the length of their visit. So, if you’ve rented a vacation place out there you can still fly out, take a car to the place and be quarantined there … but you cannot stop at the grocery store on the way.
Any in the scientific and medical communities are suggesting that fresh air and natural sunlight are good things, but the National Parks are closed and one can get arrested for surfing in California whether or not there is anyone else on the beach. In Maryland, you can go fishing, but only if you do so with the intention of keeping, killing and eating the fish you catch. That intent makes your fishing an “essential” activity akin to visiting your local Safeway or Giant, but woe to you if you release the fish you catch because that would make your visit to your local lake or river non-essential and prohibited.
It’s quite a world we are living in these days. Common sense has taken a back seat to panic and the desire of political leaders to outdo each other in imposing restrictions on what supposedly free people can and cannot do. There are a few, like Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who get the distinction between telling people what they cannot do and what they shouldn’t do. That’s a distinction lost on too many of our leaders in these troubling times.
The growing public dissatisfaction with many of the restrictions imposed in the name of the shutdown stems in part from the spreading fear of an economic collapse that could take years or decades to overcome, but in part from restrictions that just don’t make sense and the gleeful eagerness with which some jurisdictions seem bent upon enforcing even those that make no sense at all. How, for example, was public health enhanced by the officers who grabbed, handcuffed and shoved the father in Denver in a patrol car in front of his daughter for playing catch with her? The video of the incident showed that the only people in that park ignoring the need to “social distance” were the officers manhandling the girl’s father.
That wouldn’t have happened in Arkansas or in South Dakota or other jurisdictions where public officials have taken the time to explain to their citizens what they should and shouldn’t do in these challenging times and adopting measures that can, in fact, be explained rather than simply issuing orders that more and more people are going to begin ignoring.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.