{"id":74212,"date":"2020-05-22T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-22T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=74212"},"modified":"2020-07-29T08:04:52","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T13:04:52","slug":"never-waste-a-crisis-libertarian-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=74212","title":{"rendered":"Never Waste A Crisis – Libertarian Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I pointed out with a bit of mindly tart surprise last month that California, after voting in lock step with the statist agenda for the past thirty years, had rediscovered the virtues of federalism<\/a> via the current public health crisis, and the (to progressives) greater crisis of Hillary losing the election. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was a tad sarcastic – but as Jos\u00e9 Ni\u00f1o at the Mises Institute points out, after quite a few policians romping and playing in power like Scrooge McDuck bathing in his coin vault…:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amusingly, the COVID-19 saga has been host to some of the most flagrant political posturing in recent memory. Early in March (which feels like eons ago in today\u2019s frenetic media cycle) New York City mayor de Blasio was\u00a0telling people<\/a>\u00a0to go to the movies and have fun. Now, he\u2019s done a complete 180,\u00a0shutting down most private businesses<\/a>\u00a0and even calling for the\u00a0nationalization of certain industries<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0begging<\/a>\u00a0the federal government for military aid to combat the epidemic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

…there’ve been some object lessons show, and learned, on the value of federalism coming out of this crisis:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are indeed living in the strangest of times when\u00a0LA Times<\/em>\u00a0columnists are expressing sentiments that better belong in a passage of\u00a0Human Action<\/em><\/a>. The jury is still out on whether\u00a0this is merely oppositional posturing from the Left, but any kind of conversation entailing the restoration of federalism is a welcome surprise.<\/p>

The\u00a0\u201cauthorized\u201d right<\/a>\u00a0can generally be counted on to disappoint its constituents who genuinely believe in small government principles. To their credit, there have been some bright spots on their side in the present pandemic. States like Texas have gone out of their way to declare gun stores\u00a0essential businesses<\/a>\u00a0and to\u00a0deregulate<\/a>\u00a0several parts of its economy at\u00a0a time where bureaucracy is impeding\u00a0various vital economic functions.<\/p>

Elected officials like State Representative Matt Gurtler in Georgia have raised the stakes by\u00a0floating a proposal<\/a>\u00a0that would allow law-abiding Georgians to concealed carry anywhere. South Dakota governor\u00a0Kristi Noem<\/a>\u00a0projected a stark contrast in her relatively lax approach to handling the pandemic. Jeff Deist used her example as the basis for several\u00a0pragmatic measures<\/a>\u00a0that state governments can take to reopen their economies without throwing civil liberties into the wood chipper. No doubt there is much work to be done, but we can find glimmering signs of promise every now and then.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The example I like to use – after Katrina, gun rights groups noticed the speed at which Louisiana and New Orleans’ layers of incompetent Democrat governments turned to confiscating the firearms of law-abiding citizens. In 2015, Minnesota’s gun rights groups pushed a law in Minnesota barring the state from confiscating guns from law-abiding citizens under states of emergency, or shutting down gun stores before every other store in the state was closed. The bills passed, with bipartisan majorities in both chambers powerful enough to scare Governor Dayton’s handlers away from telling him to sign a veto. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We – the good guys – need to do that with every other civil right. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starting in November. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I pointed out with a bit of mindly tart surprise last month that California, after voting in lock step with the statist agenda for the past thirty years, had rediscovered the virtues of federalism via the current public health crisis, and the (to progressives) greater crisis of Hillary losing the election. That was a tad […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,416,30],"tags":[423],"class_list":["post-74212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","category-covid19","category-liberty","tag-the-endless-emergency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74212"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74214,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74212\/revisions\/74214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}