Speaking at Hillsdale College on September 16th, Attorney General Willaim Barr responded to a question about religious freedom and COVID-19 restrictions with the following, "Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history." {Barr under fire over comparison of virus lock-in to slavery - by Eric Tucker, AP} I will not evaluate the legal aspects of that statement, which would require examining the COVID-19 restrictions put in place by 50 governors, hundreds of mayors, and thousands of municipalities, each operating under 50 separate state constitutions. The vast majority of challenges to the restrictions have been denied in court, so let the lawyers argue that point. {In 5-4 Split, US Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to California's COVID-19 Restrictions on Religious Services - by Cheryl Miller of Law.com} I will also not examine the restrictions from a medical standpoint, preferring to take my medical advice from the likes of Dr. Fauci, Dr. Redfield, Dr. Birx and the collective wisdom of the medical profession, rather than that of a lawyer like William Barr. Instead, I will examine William Barr's statement from a moral perspective.
The Christian moral hierarchy is reflected in Jesus' response to the question of which of the commandments in the Law of Moses (the rabbis counted 613 of them) was the greatest?
Matthew 22:36-40 (NIV) 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Christianity is not alone in considering the question of moral hierarchy, virtually every philosophy and religion contains inherent within it (stated in a variety of ways) a moral hierarchy. How we define Good and Evil, and how we view relative grades of both, is a question of utmost importance. For the United States, our national moral hierarchy is reflected in the words of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The order of the unalienable Rights in the Declaration is no accident, Life comes before Liberty, which comes before the pursuit of Happiness. The reason is simple: Life is more valuable than Liberty which is more valuable than Happiness (a catch all for things such as property rights, workers' rights, etc). As such, if a government were to deprive its citizens (or anyone within its power) of Life, that would by necessity be a more egregious violation than if that same government were to deprive those same people of Liberty (for example through imprisonment), which would in turn be more egregious than if that same government were to deprive those same people of the pursuit of Happiness. It would thus follow that in order for a government to be acting in a morally acceptable way, it would need a more compelling reason to take a life than it would to take liberty than it would to take property. This basic understanding of morality is enshrined in American jurisprudence and is reflected in our laws at every level.
Thus we see a government could be morally at fault on three ascending levels. It is on this basis that the actions of a government should be evaluated when comparing one (potential) violation against another (and also when weighing the cost vs. benefits of laws and policies).
The COVID-19 restrictions were designed to protect Life (a highest order) at the expense of Liberty (home 'confinement') and Happiness (loss of business, loss of work, loss of entertainment). On the surface, this is what we want from our government, protecting Life above other concerns. But let us for a moment concede {although I certainly do not} that William Barr is correct and that the COVID-19 restrictions (he didn't specify which ones from which governors, cities, etc) were unconstitutional and an 'intrusion on civil liberties'. Even if we concede William Barr's assertion, from a historical perspective, there have been many examples, other than slavery, of the American government (federal, state, or local) violating rights that would be more morally significant than the pandemic response.
The following are offered as examples, it is sadly far from an exhaustive list:
Japanese-American internment during WWII
4,743 Lynchings between 1882 and 1968
The denial of GI Bill benefits to a million Black WWII veterans
Decades of deliberate federal housing racial discrimination
Police Brutality during the Civil Rights Movement
The exoneration of 172 former death-row inmates since 1973
For a more comprehensive list of massacres in American History: Massacres in US History
It would not do each of the examples I've listed justice if I tried to summarize them in a few sentences. The links provide the horrific details of each of them, all of which were morally far more significant than any restrictions that have been put in place in response to COVID-19. In case you're wondering, similar restrictions were put in place during the Spanish Flu pandemic, these also were not mentioned by William Barr.
I don't know why William Barr ignored these far more significant examples of 'intrusion on civil liberties', only allowing that Slavery was more significant than the COVID-19 restrictions, but in doing so he made an assertion that is demonstrably morally false.
When we elevate deprivations of property above purposeful and deliberate massacres we not only weaken our moral compass, but denigrate those who lost their lives. (Scale matters to an extent, taking property from a million people weighed against taking liberty from a thousand, versus taking life from one, for example.) This same principle holds true with Holocaust Denial, the refusal to call the killings of Armenians during WWI a genocide, or the downplaying of the horror of South African Apartheid, to highlight a few examples. The way in which we morally evaluate history impacts the way in which we act in the present. No matter how unnecessary or unconstitutional a person may view the restrictions put in place because of the COVID-19 pandemic {again, conceding a point that has not been proven}, there is no morally justifiable way to view these as more significant than a long list of times when the government of the United States deprived large numbers of people of life, nor of the times that it deprived a large number of people of liberty, nor indeed even above many other instances of the government depriving people of property. William Bar is wrong.
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