Lockdown as prison or as prism

Laura Welsh has an interesting take on our current situation, together with keen observation of a great movie (2017's Darkest Hour):

"Human interaction on a grand scale is what fuels extroverts. Their natural ability to cope with challenges depends heavily on being in large groups of people. When removed from crowds and sequestered in place, extroverts lose their steam and their gut-instincts become harder to discern.  Grounded extroverts are not at the top of their game."

Meanwhile, in what amounts to providing covering fire for the deeply problematic WHO (World Health Organization), Bill Gates laments nationalist impulses around the globe as "unhelpful framing" of our current situation. His own bias mirrors that of multinational corporations, in that he seems more enthusiastic about being a "citizen of the world" than he is about his own American citizenship, very possibly because he's accepted the progressive lie that conflates patriotism with jingoism or even national socialism. Patriotism is neither of those things. A bigger dose of it in our ruling class would have helped, for example, the beleaguered medical device industy.

In a related issue, we now know that many political journalists don't understand federalism. (I don't want mainstream media figures to 'learn to code' -- I want them to remember how to decode our founding documents. It's not that hard. A little philosophy from somewhere other than the Frankfurt School won't hurt. Neither would a little honesty or humility).

Daniel Flynn of The American Spectator observed this morning that a Washington Post writer who scorned sheriffs refusing to enforce stay-at-home orders from their own governor was wrong to dismiss the lawmen in Washington state as being 'part of a nationwide group of sheriffs who feel beholden to no one but their voters.' Come again? Flynn asked, before wryly noting that the sheriffs "perhaps feel beholden to the law, including the Constitution."

In a similar vein, the felicitously named Tristan Justice has an essay up at The Federalist today: Saying Lockdowns Must Last Until Mass Testing or a Vaccine is Absurd.

Dear old dad, a retired police officer now in a senior living facility, refers to himself as one of the "inmates," not least because social distancing rules have closed the dining room at that facility, and its staff now leaves meals at residents' doors. Whatever their thoughts about one size fits all edicts from various levels of government, both dad and his minders understand that they're among a high-risk population as far as the Wuhan coronavirus is concerned. The same can't be said everywhere.

Maybe the biggest problem with extolling "world citizenship" absent an existential threat along the lines of the alien attacks in the movie Independence Day is that such lazy sentimental thinking a) violates the principle of subsidiarity, and b) sabotages the concept of 'family' by stretching it out of proportion to what individuals can logically and emotionally sustain.

Apart from the way it gratuitously obscures significant political and cultural differences between countries, "world citizenship" is not synonymous with "common humanity" for the same reason that government is not synonymous with theology or biology. "World citizenship" has fans in high places, but if it were ever to be implemented, it would inevitably trade "influence" for fealty to its temperamental cousin, coercion. As a concept, it carries the stench of the pride that a few generations ago tarred medieval times as the "Dark Ages," while ignoring how they laid the groundwork for the so-called Enlightenment.

People like Mother Teresa (d. 1997) and Albert Schweitzer (d. 1965) are recognized as great humanitarians not because they loved everyone everywhere, but because we can infer that from how they treated the people in their immediate circles of influence.