A False God

(Don Boudreaux)

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Here’s a letter to UnHerd:

Editor:

Mary Harrington reports that Canadians who support strong Covid restrictions are more willing than are Canadians who are skeptical of Covid restrictions to risk a shooting war with Russia (“The Covid-cautious are hungriest for war,” March 23). She attributes this pattern of attitudes to tribalism: Persons who embrace the official narrative of Covid restrictions and mandates are especially prone to align without much thought with those who accept the official narrative of Russia vs. Ukraine.

I propose a different explanation for these attitudes. People increasingly believe that the state can work miracles – miracles such as using coercion to control the spread of a highly contagious virus without inflicting serious damage on society. For many who treated the state as an all-powerful savior from Covid, it’s a short step to support a shooting war with Russia. After all, if our leaders possess enough intelligence, wisdom, prescience, and trustworthiness to deploy coercion to defeat, at acceptable cost, an enemy called Covid, they surely possess enough intelligence, wisdom, prescience, and trustworthiness to deploy coercion to defeat, at an acceptable cost, an enemy called Putin.

Regardless of the correctness or incorrectness of one’s understanding of the dangers of Covid and of Putin, the problem is that too many people, in effect, worship the state as a god. For these people, there’s almost no blessing that this god cannot and will not grant – no prayer that this deity cannot and will not answer – as long as We the People faithfully kowtow to its high priests with fawning deference and reverence.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030