In my travels through the Wall Street Journal last week, I heard the following voices, calling out of the Wilderness that is “Coronavirus Lockdown”, variously enforced in most of the United States, by Governors and Mayors who don’t like the US Constitution very much.  They issue various decrees upon their Subjects, forcing them to stay in their homes, give up their livelihoods, and shut their small businesses.  Here is what the people say:

The virus is especially lethal to the elderly.  I can say, because I am 73 years old, that I don’t give a darn.  Mr. M.A.S. in Maine

 

I concurred almost entirely with your editorial until I got to the closing comment: “isolate society’s most vulnerable”.  Almost to the biblical four score, I recognize I am in that category.  However, my wife and I still drive our own cars (or did until the “stay at home” order), have many organizations in which we are active, enjoy going to our children/grandchildren’s home (local and out of state), look forward to gathering with friends, and are engaged in our church.  Thank you, but while I will be prudent, I am not ready to be involuntarily “isolated”.  Mr. J.A.B.C. in Virginia

 

Universal poverty isn’t an acceptable solution to any problem that I can think of.  Mr. R.B in Pennsylvania

 

And from Peggy Noonan’s column entitled: Scenes from the Class Struggle in Lockdown:

Since the pandemic began, the overclass has been in charge–schientists, doctors, political figures, consultants–calling the shots for the average people.  But personally they have less skin in the game.  The National Institues of Health scientist won’t lose his livelihood over what’s happened.  Neither will the midday anchor.

 

Here’s a generalization based on a lifetime of experiencd and observation. The working-class people who are pushing back have had harder lives than those now determining their fate. They haven’t had familial or economic ease. No one sent them to Yale. They often come from considerable family dysfunction. This has left them tougheror harder, you choose the word.

 

The overclass says: “Wait three months before we’re safe.” They [ordinary people] say “There’s no such thing as safe.”

And then the Governor of Michigan describes the ordinary people demonstrating against the lockdown as “racist and misogynistic”.  What does that make her?  Her livelihood is not at stake, and she always appears perfectly made-up and coiffed, while her subjects are denied haircuts.

Once again I say:

Defy Tyranny.  Break the Lockdown.