I am not a libertarian. I believe in the concept of liberty, but not necessarily in the concept of licence. Freedom is, to me, something that serves human dignity rather than an end unto itself.

What we are doing has its dangers

Nevertheless, libertarians like Damien Grant are right to fret about restrictions on the freedom of movement, association and commerce that form part of the official response to the COVID-19 pandemic. What the government does now is not without adverse consequence. We are currently living under conditions that are inconsistent with the New Zealand way of life and it would be bad if we got comfortable with that.

The question I would put to the libertarians, however, is to ask which of the following they would prefer:

• Six weeks of harsh restrictions that everybody chafes under because they were imposed so rapidly; or

• A year or more of slowly accumulating restrictions that the people continually habituate themselves to, and then ask for, as hospitals and morgues become overwhelmed.

Better a short war than a long one

The coronavirus pandemic is often analogised to a war in terms of the large scale mobilisation of state resources, war socialism and curtailment of personal freedoms that is involved. Metaphorical wars are a dicey proposition at the best of times. In this case, however, the potential scale of immediate human mortality at the hands of this invisible enemy gives some validity to the comparison. 

So ask any student of history what the least worst kind of war is and it is likely that the answer will be a short, decisive one. Overwhelming force is the best assurance of that.  Long, indecisive wars of attrition generally mean more devastation, more resentment and a harder road back to normalcy.

The ‘generals‘ say we can win

The New Zealand government and its advisors believe that through severe and immediate sacrifices, we can eliminate COVID-19 as a public health threat in this country. Whether this is actually true or not I simply cannot say. I have no training or special knowledge in those matters..

We should be appropriately sceptical of experts. They are just as susceptible to the traps of hubris and group think as any other human. Furthermore, the narrow insights of expertise must always at the political level be subject to the value judgments about which science can tell us little. 

Nevertheless, it makes little sense to reject what the preponderance of experts in a given field say. Their suggestions need to be taken seriously, particularly when human life is at stake. And, at the moment, what they say is that can eliminate this thing for all practical intents and purposes if we act quickly and decisively.

In other words, we have the option of a short war instead of a long one.

Better to a temporary scalding than being cooked alive

If the military analogy just doesn’t do it for you then consider the old cliché about boiling a frog. At the moment, we’ve been flung into already scalding water and we are desperate to jump out. But if we instead placed in a pot of tepid water that had the temperature turned up slowly and by increments then the hotter water takes on a creeping normality.

What do you think would be a greater, longer term threat to liberty in this country?