Americans have a built-in distaste for authoritarian diktats. Regardless of how well-intentioned the motives, the impact is not easily overlooked, nor meaningfully ameliorated by any measure of purity of purpose.

Simply stated, Americans are not fond of being told what to do, especially when those directives are accompanied by implicit or explicit instructions on how to think about the issue. Those long-accustomed to independent thought and action naturally chafe at attempts to reorder their lives. It is this particularity of the American experience that has largely held countless collectivist schemes at bay for more than two centuries.

You would think our government would’ve learned from its last grand attempt to control/direct our private behavior toward a goal lacking universal support.

Of course I’m referring to the great experiment for our own good known as “Prohibition.”

The parallels are numerous - from the use of major media to peddle a narrative to the hijacking of the sciences to lend an air of authority - Prohibition and “Coronamania” are ideological sisters as well as co-religionists.

Whereas Prohibition launched from a foundation of moral imperative, its flight was fueled by an unholy marriage of moralistic hubris and near-mystical scientism, awkwardly adapted from the relatively new disciplines of the social and behavioral sciences.

Coronamania precisely follows the same trajectory, differing only in the order of function. What began in science, has grown unimaginably through the application of a moral imperative justified by fully vested scientism, creating a toxicity of thought that treats legitimate inquiry/skepticism as an assault on the very concept of science.

Like Prohibition, Coronamania requires the heavy hand of government coercion to function. Like Prohibition, Coronamania insists we are all the same, equally vulnerable to the savagery of that which threatens us.

For Prohibitionists, “demon rum” (read: all alcohol for consumption) inexorably leads to the ruin of all foolish enough to partake. Moreover, even those who retain their moral strength and abstain from alcohol are still endangered by those who are “weak,” paying the terrible social costs of abuse, neglect and impoverishment.

While the human toll of alcoholism was, (and is) very real, the idea that such consequences were inevitable for all involved regardless of individual character and circumstance was demonstrably false; just as the idea that an encounter with the Coronavirus is likely to be lethal.

Both constructs are fallacious, and require a willful misunderstanding of available evidence to accept. Both constructs rely on an ahistorical worldview, rejecting the lessons of experience out of hand, in favor of an unsupported belief in the uniqueness of the situation.

Eventually, the support structure of Prohibition collapsed under its own weight as enough people came to the realization that the ill-effects of the cure outpaced the disease itself. The gaping holes in the theory (always there, but deliberately concealed) finally revealed themselves as truth, needing only a sufficient number of eyes gazing upon them to reassume their rightful place.

Just as Prohibition spawned an entire alternative marketplace outside of the law, so will Coronamania, if not soon repealed. As people not given to alcoholism chose to drink in spite of the legal strictures, the people not among the groups known to be vulnerable to serious illness or death from Covid-19 will choose to engage in the activities of life, work and faith whether or not the anointed approve.

Hopefully, it won’t be necessary for us to become a nation of bootleggers and rum runners before the “powers-that-be” come to their senses. But…if that’s what it takes, you can count on the American people to do it.